Lieberman meets Occupy protesters outside Capitol Hill office
Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Connecticut independent
About a dozen Occupy
protesters who drove through the night from Connecticut and spent hours camped out in
front of Sen. Joe Lieberman's Capitol Hill office got what they came for: a
meeting with their senator to press him on extending unemployment insurance and
creating jobs.
The group had been
waiting in a Hart
Building hallway, across
the street from the Capitol, for a few hours on Tuesday when a Lieberman aide
came out and said the senator was rearranging his schedule to meet with them for
10 minutes.
The protesters,
whose ages ranged from early 20s to late 50s, were part of the Connecticut
Citizen Action Group, which is aligning itself with the Occupy movement and its
protest of economic and social inequality.
The group is in
Washington for
the week as part of the larger "Take Back the Capitol" demonstration, involving
thousands of Occupy protesters flooding the city to urge lawmakers to put the
interests of struggling Americans before those of the wealthy.
The group headed
into Lieberman's office with a handful of talking points: urge their senator to
pass an extension of unemployment insurance before it expires at the end of the
year, to make sure the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans "pay their fair share,"
and to push for passage of President Barack Obama's $447 billion American Jobs
Act.
When they emerged 15
minutes later and reviewed how the meeting went, the group's unofficial
spokesman said he wasn't happy. "We never got an answer to our question on the
American Jobs Act. They would not commit to that -- at all," said John
Murphy, political director for the
Connecticut Citizen Action Group.
The group also
lamented that Lieberman seemed to brush aside their calls to provide heating
assistance to low-income families. Still, they said they were pleased he
reiterated his support for extending unemployment insurance.
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