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Do Your Job, Jamie! Thursdays with Comer [1]
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Date: 2025-02-13
Four Rivers Indivisible answered the call the first week of February and participated in national Indivisible’s Call to Action to visit the local field offices of their Senators in small groups of 5 to 15 and to ask them to vote NO on Vought, and to push back against Musk and the funding freezes. Local media covered their event “Fight Vought-Musk at Sen. McConnell’s Office” on Tuesday, February 4th. The segment aired on the 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm news that day (WPSDLocal6) and was a headline article in the Paducah Sun the next day (paywall to article). Local writer/author Berry Craig also covered the event, which had 26 attendees show up, in the LA Progressive .
The response from the progressive community in the area was very positive, with many calls and inquiries to the group. Many expressed they had been looking for some way to participate and DO SOMETHING! The group decided to launch weekly visits not only to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office but to Rep. James Comer’s office as well. Thus, STOP MUSK! Mondays with Mitch and Do Your Job Jamie! Thursdays with Comer were launched this week. Rep. James Comer is Chair of the House Oversight Committee, which is supposed to be keeping up with all this “waste fraud and abuse” stuff. . .And Democrats have been shut down every time they try to bring up bringing in Musk for questioning under subpoena. Again, the aim was to have 5 to 15 volunteers show up to deliver a list of concerns and questions to the staffer at the field offices, along with standing along the street with protest signs for visibility with the public. With the fire-hose of breaking news every day, it has not been hard to come up with an ever-expanding list of concerns about Elon Musk. The group decided to focus on Musk as being the most salient and urgent threat at this moment, and the target most likely to break through with the public in this very red community. National Indivisible provides a free Mobilize account to groups to help with organizing signups for such events.
The event this past Monday was attended by six members, and additionally there were three passersby who stopped to talk. One was interviewed by Berry Craig and quotes included in his coverage of the event, here on Daily Kos: Mondays with Mitch/Paducah KY
A half dozen Four Rivers Indivisible members might have won over a Trump voter during the group’s first “Mondays with Mitch” peaceful protest outside Sen. Mitch McConnell’s field office in Paducah’s 1937-vintage red brick Federal Building. It wasn’t Kentucky’s senior senator. He was in Washington. Nor was it a local office staffer. The possible convert was the driver of a pickup truck who spotted the group’s anti-Elon Musk signs, stopped and suggested that President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency head “go to Mars.” He confessed that Trump got his ballot. “I thought he was going to do good for us,” the man said. “Now I’m seeing all kinds of crazy stuff going on.” He said he’d had a stroke, has a hard time walking, and is afraid he’ll lose his Social Security. After taking a cell phone of the group for his Facebook page, he posed for a photo with everybody.
The group was heartened by the frequency of honks and waves from passersby on the moderately busy downtown street. It will be noted that Sen. McConnell’s office has been moved from an openly accessible local office building about 12 blocks down the same street, to the basement of the U.S. Federal District Court. So now there is nothing identifying near or in the building that his office is even located there, and you have to know the number from his website and find it in the basement after going through security. Plus there is now no mail slot, so the questions had to be delivered under the door on the first visit, which was on a day the staffer was not present.
Thursday was a different story. By then the group had picked up a registered Republican who described herself as a more independent “swing voter”, but with clearly progressive values. Rep. James Comer’s office is in a much more accessible location, being inside the Commerce Building, where the Paducah Chamber of Commerce is also located. This is a historic building that was once a freight house, and a local high-end restaurant called The Freight House is located at one end of the very long structure. However, in past years there was a sign identifying Rep. Comer’s office as being inside. Now, there is nothing to indicate his field office is there, as evidenced by the outdoor signage.
However, once inside the secretary for the building quickly let Comer’s staffer, Austin Wetherington, know we were there. He immediately came downstairs, introduced himself, and began letting us know we were welcome to come upstairs to the offices and express concerns and ask questions. We asked him to wait until the rest of the group of 9 arrived and he agreed to meet with three of us at a time in one of the offices while the others waited in a waiting area.
He was polite, attentive and took notes as we let him know that our concern was the chaos, confusion, harmful freezes, dangerous data intrusions, and illegality of Musk’s interference and usurpation of the balance of power. Three members of our group were Christian ministers and they provided a biblical focus to the concerns. I was able to focus also on Medicaid waiver programs and the disruption to local agencies and providers of Adult Foster Care through the Supports for Community Living Waiver, as my husband owns a local provider agency. I asked if he would read an article about one of the recipients of this program, and he finished the name of the online news-journal before I could say its name, saying he was familiar with it. The article is Medicaid: Beyond Doctor Visits, and was written for the West Ky Journal, a local publication for which a few members of our group have assumed editorial responsibilities. We hope to use it to share news and stories with local focus that might not get attention in traditional local media.
Mr. Wetherington tried to respond with his prepared responses about how the Oversight Committee had just started its new subcommittee and it would take awhile to “get things going”, but attendees pushed back hard on the urgency of what was happening-- and he was given a lot of details by our members of what we knew or suspected was going on. We clearly knew our stuff and he definitely earned his salary today, as he spent quite a bit of time with us. We emphasized repeatedly we needed Comer to “do his job” and look into how these things could proceed and how much damage we were seeing and hearing about from people we knew.
As each group of three finished speaking in the office, they moved outside to the street and held signs in some pretty cold temperatures (low 30’s) and breezy winds. This was a bypass one-way a short distance from the downtown riverfront, and not the slower downtown pace by a stop sign we had at McConnell’s office. At least it wasn’t raining like it had been the day before. We had one couple, that appeared to be going to the restaurant, walk over to see the signs, who gave a thumbs up and said “Yeah, Musk sucks!” and more supportive honks and waves; but also this time a man in a truck who stopped and rolled his window down and said “Musk is going a great job!”. At least he wasn’t as ugly as some of the MAGA supporters can be.
Here is a photo of most of the group standing inside:
Four Rivers Indivisible is going to continue these small-scale visits to help increase public awareness of the dissatisfaction with Musk and to highlight the unprecedented corruption. Visits with new talking points each week are scheduled through the end of February, and participants are expressing appreciation for the opportunity to express themselves and take part in something with like-minded people. It’s hard being a blue dot in a red sea, and those honks and waves mean a lot!
You can donate to Four Rivers Indivisible at bit.ly/4riversdonate
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