Wyden and Bynum Take Questions, Urge Civilian Engagement During Town Hall Forums in Oregon

When Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Oregon) attended the president’s State of the Union address, she was one of many Oregon representatives to bring a fired federal worker as her guest. 

The move was in protest of a rash of abrupt firings carried out by billionaire Elon Musk, a Trump financier who, though unelected, heads up the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Bynum’s plus-one was Liz Crandall, a fired federal Forest Service employee who served in the Deschutes National Forest office.

“What was important is that she could look in his eyes, and theoretically he could look in hers, and she could say, ‘This is harming our community. What you’ve done to me – aside from the personal part of ripping out the carpet from under a young worker – you’ve hurt our community,’” Bynum told the crowd of about 900 attendees during the Linn County Town Hall on March 16 at Linn-Benton Community College. 

“But what’s really interesting is we touched base with her Thursday, and we were excited that they were told they were going to get their jobs back,” Bynum continued. “What she said was, ‘They have no idea how to reach us. They don’t have our email addresses. They don’t really have our phone numbers. Getting back to work is going to be really difficult.’

“That to me is the challenge, less so than Trump and Musk not obeying, is the rewinding and putting everything back together. And I think they know that, and I think that’s why it’s been this ‘slash and burn.’”

Bynum joined U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) as Democrats increasingly schedule and publicize community town hall forums as a way to communicate with constituents amid the chaos of Trump’s second presidential term – and as a kind of rebuke to Republican legislators who have canceled, or threatened to cancel, future town halls in response to angry attendees. Wyden skipped the State of the Union address to hold a virtual town hall meeting at the same time. The same day as their appearance in Linn County, Bynum and Wyden held another town hall in Clackamas County. 

“What we need to do with communication is we need to flood the zone,” Wyden said during the town hall, using a term that has been used to describe the Trump administration’s tactics. “We need to be everywhere. That means old legacy media, it means new media…this is urgent, urgent times, folks.” 

The question-and-answer format gave Wyden and Bynum opportunities to illustrate the direct impacts of federal-level disorder on Oregonians. 

As one example, Bynum spoke of her own dissatisfaction with the Oregon Department of Education. 

“Let me tell you, I am not happy,” she said. “I have watched for two to three years now our students with (Individual Education Program plans) – one of mine included – be left behind and their needs not met both in this state and at the national level. And I am pissed. I have no room for any one of our children to be left behind because they experience life differently. 

She spoke of her experiences seeing a growing need for the individualized plans, alongside increasingly frustrated students and families. 

“I had unprofessional behavior on the part of one person that went unchecked,” Bynum said. “I filed complaints and went through the district process. They ended up at ODE. Two years later I do not have resolution. ODE has been given money to help reduce their caseload, and it’s still there. 

“And this is why the feds are so important. Because when the state doesn’t do their job, the feds are supposed to back parents up. And they’re not. So I have no room for decimating at the federal level what is supposed to protect us when there are failures at the state level.”

Bynum added, “There are real consequences – whether it’s student loans, whether it’s kids experiencing disabilities, whether it’s Title I schools, schools that need additional supports because they experience poverty – all of those things we are relying on our federal government to do. And Pres. Trump and Elon Musk pulling back on those is a failure of our federal government.” 

One attendee urged everyone in attendance to look up Neo-Reactionism, a philosophy popularized in Silicon Valley in the past two decades. Neo-Reactionsim is a reactionary anti-democratic school of thought that is classified as part of the larger Neo-fascism movement.

“They openly want to dismantle democracy and in its place establish a corporate entity, and that is what Elon Musk is doing, under the facade of DOGE,” the attendee said. She asked what the states could do to push back against federal malfeasance. 

“Number one, is for me to show up,” Bynum said. “And to take what you say, and take it back to Washington. I can’t do anything if I don’t have the stories. If I don’t have your rage. And if I don’t have your passion. Because I have the passion, but I gotta have yours, too.”

Bynum emphasized the importance of civil action. 

“You know when things started to turn is when those people in Republican districts started to hand their representatives their asses,” Bynum said. “You cannot go home and go to sleep anymore. That is not an option. Someone asked are we at war? Hell yeah, we’re at war. And if I don’t think we’re at war then I’m not doing my job. We’re in a different kind of war, but we’re in a war for our democracy. We’re in a war for our children. We’re in a war for our seniors. And that means you can’t go to sleep. And I can’t go to sleep.”

Wyden agreed. “Last time I looked, Donald Trump supporters aren’t having meetings like this. We’re here to make sure the people know what’s really going on, and I started doing it at the State of the Union.”