After demonstrations across the Sixth District and a flood of constituent email and phone requests for Congressman Goodlatte to hold face-to-face town hall meetings, he has responded by… promising to hold more “telephone town halls.”
He even added a page to his Congressional website for people who want to sign up for them.
But Goodlatte has carefully avoided promising any actual face-time at meetings open to everyone in the district. (In fact he has not held such a meeting since 2013.) And “telephone town halls” are a poor means for communication between a legislator and the people he is supposed to represent. Phil Stump, a retired Lynchburg College professor and Indivisible Lynchburg organizer, explained the problem in an article in the Lynchburg News & Advance:
“I tried to participate in one of the call-in town halls in the past that [Goodlatte] had, and it was hopelessly frustrating. I just gave up after a while,” Stump said. The format allowed aides to screen callers and did not allow for the “possibility for interchange” with Goodlatte or other constituents, Stump said.
Goodlatte Watch 
Town Halls? Putin and Russian intelligence is clearly calling the plays for Trump and you chair HJC that could find the ugly truth. Again lead, follow or get out of the way.
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The pressure on Disappearing Bob is obviously working, to the extent that he is willing to break cover enough to let surrogates speak to us by phone to the extent that it suits them. If we ramp up the pressure, we might actually get D.B. to do his job and actually talk to his constituents. So let’s all contact him and tell him we aren’t impressed with his latest telemarketing brand of retail politics.
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I hope that Mr. Goodlatte will soon get up the nerve to meet with the people he represents and he does represent us all not just the people he chooses to talk with directly.
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Feb. 16 Tried to call Aaron Van Allen at Lynchburg Office agin today, 3 days now. New message is Lynchburg Office will be closed until Feb. 21. Nice long President’s Day Weekend!
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Maybe people will stop voting for him now!
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