Fifth District Congressman John McGuire has held two virtual town halls by phone, and calls were screened beforehand. That didn’t satisfy many voters, and last week about a hundred went to his district office to complain.
Rev. Jarrett Banks is the senior minister of the First Christian Church Disciples of Christ in Lynchburg.
He's not what you’d consider an old white hippie. That’s how Trump advisor Stephen Miller described those who protest administration policies, but Banks is angered by cuts to Medicaid.
"Medicaid is a lifeline. It is breath. It is heartbeat. It is rural hospitals open. It is medicine in the cabinet," he told a crowd outside the office of Congressman John McGuire.
He noted all religions call on their followers to feed the poor and argued spending less on the supplemental nutrition program is also wrong.
Banks then scolded the congressman who backed Trump’s spending reductions.
"I say to McGuire and to all who voted for this deadly bill: You cannot wave a Bible on Sunday and vote to starve children on Monday. (cheers) You cannot in any way claim morality while signing the death warrants of the vulnerable. This is not about right or left. It’s about right and wrong. It’s about whether we will be a people of compassion or a people of cruelty. We will not stand quietly while billionaires bribe politicians like McGuire. This bill turns compassion into a crime, empathy into a sin and poverty into a death sentence.”
And he urged those who believe in the Bible to condemn what Donald Trump called his Big Beautiful Bill.
"This bill is big. This bill is ugly. This bill is deadly, but the movement for justice, oh it’s way bigger."
Constituents of Congressman Ben Cline have also held weekly protests outside his offices in Harrisonburg, Staunton and Roanoke, while unhappy voters have rallied on the first Monday of every month at the Free Speech Wall on Charlottesville’s downtown mall.
