photo credit: Michelle Marques
Attendees pack a public forum in Santa Rosa hosted by Congressman Mike Thompson and Assemblyman Chris Rogers.

Hundreds turned out late Friday evening, February 21st, for a public town hall in Santa Rosa. It was organized by North Bay Congressman Mike Thompson and recently elected state Assembly member Chris Rogers. 

It's unclear why a city building on Stonypoint Road in Santa Rosa was selected as the venue as many more people showed up than could be safely allowed inside. At one point, interactions between the crowd and police and fire officials got contentious and some people came to protest Thompson's votes in Congress.

"Mike Thompson sent over $26 billion dollars to Israel to commit a genocide against Palestinians. So I showed up today. They didn't allow us to bring flags, so I brought a watermelon which has the same colors as the Palestinian flag. I'm disgusted that we don't have enough care and enough resources in our society. And then we have someone who's on top of all that. We need all that money here. We need housing, we need basic services here so bad and yet we sent this money to commit a genocide for a US foreign policy agenda that there's just not for any of us here," said Michael Totone.

That is Michael Totone of Santa Rosa who spoke to me outside of the venue.

Others inside came to hear what Thompson has to say about the current administration.

"The chaos and the divisiveness that's going on right now in Washington, D.C. is an absolute embarrassment. And what this president is trying to do to our country and to our democracy is shameful. And you know, it's not something that's happening over there. It's not something that's happening to a group over here, over there, or somewhere else. Everything that they're doing ties right back to us here at home," said an attendee at the forum.

With hundreds of people showing up the previous night in Petaluma for a similar event held by North Bay Congressman Jared Huffman, Assemblyman Chris Rogers says he's encouraged by the crowd sizes at recent town halls around the state.

"And I'll be honest, from the election up until the swearing in, I was wondering where the hell everybody was. It seemed like everybody had collectively put their heads in the sand and weren't willing to resist this time around. And just since the swearing in, just watching the interest in these. It's giving me hope that we can build a big enough movement to push back on the cruelty from the Trump administration," said Rogers.

Those who came to listen to Thompson and Rogers had various motivations. Here is Santa Rosa's Terry Fundack:

"Democracy is kind of on fire and it's a time to see what our representatives are actually up to and or if they're up to anything and are listening to the tenor of the folks here and what they want him to do. So we're in the minority party, so there's limited possibilities of things to do, but it's not zero. And he has to be willing to stand up and have his voice heard," said Fundack.

Fundack says Trump's rhetoric around the 14th Amendment is particularly relevant to his family.

"She's one of the people that will be thrown out under Trump's desire that people who whose parents aren't from here won't be allowed to stay here. And so that resonated a lot for me. And that's actually why I brought her because I mean it's very difficult for anyone to really fathom what he's talking about," said Fundack, gesturing to the woman standing next to him. "But the tendency he has is something out of, you know, Project 2025 and one of those things includes birthright citizenship elimination."

Sarah from Sebastopol says she came to the town hall to keep informed.

"I'm here because our country is being destroyed by Nazis. And I kind of like democracy. We need something actionable. We need to see how we're all.. We have solidarity to work together, the legislature, those in the judiciary, those in the fourth estate, the unions, the people, everybody who's affected by this, how we can all unite and combine our resources," said Sarah.