USA Today: Some Black congressional lawmakers boycott or walk out of Trump's address in protest
WASHINGTON _ Several members of the Congressional Black Caucus walked out of President Donald Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday or boycotted the speech altogether.
“There's a MAGA fest, a MAGA rally going on in the House chambers,’’ Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said soon after leaving the chamber as Trump delivered his speech. “I knew what was next in the lineup of (his) greatest hits. I didn't need to sit there.”
Clarke and some other caucus members who left the House chamber spoke during an online program called “State of the People,’’ a 24-hour livestream to counter Trump’s address.
The coalition of civil rights leaders, Democrats and grassroots activists urged viewers to skip Trump’s address and tune in instead to the livestream, which included discussions about administration policies they said are harmful. Some caucus members spoke with Mark Thompson of the National Newspaper Publishers Association as they left the House chamber early.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Texas, said she went to the chamber because if she hadn’t Republican staffers would fill her seat.
“I wanted to make sure that the space that my ancestors bled and died for that I occupied that space, but I also got the privilege to walk the hell out of it,’’ Crockett told viewers. “That’s exactly what we did so that he could have those empty seats.”
Crockett said she wanted to make sure she stood up in defiance and turned her back on Trump “like he turned his back on the Constitution, like he has turned his back on the laws in this country.”
One caucus member, Rep. Al Green, a Democrat of Texas, was escorted out of the chamber after he stood and interrupted Trump early in the address.
“You don’t have a mandate,” he yelled out.
Other caucus members later stood up and walked out.
“When you don’t have all the power you want use all the power you’ve got,’’ said Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Democrat from Florida. “And we do have power because there’s only a two-seat majority in the House and we have the ability to obstruct, to delay, to push back on this extreme agenda that most people don’t believe in.”
The caucus, made up of Democrats, is one of the largest voting blocs in the Republican-controlled Congress.
Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who also walked out, took issue with Trump's approach to governing.
‘’We cannot normalize this. This man has no respect for Congress,’’ said Pressley. “He does not respect us as a co-equal branch of government. He has contempt for the American people. He pardoned January Sixers, who desecrated the very well that we’re in today.”
But Lisa Blunt Rochester, a newly elected Democratic senator from Delaware, said she stayed during the address as a show of protest.
“This is our House. We’re not leaving,’’ she said. “You’re going to look me right in the eye and say these things. We are going to then take our power and act…Now, the real work begins.”
By: Deborah Barfield Berry
Source: USA Today