Sam and I talk about what is happening in our country all the time. We talk about daily news, national and local events, our horrible president who doesn’t seem to have a good grasp on either, and our congressmen who represent us.

Representative Anthony Gonzalez, our representative in the House, has not spoken, tweeted or given any other indication he even knows about the protests that are going on in our country.

I know I live in a heavily gerrymandered district. I wrote about that in the past. And despite Ohio passing a redistricting measure to fight gerrymandering 2018 – Republican’s petitioned the Supreme Court to ensure any redistricting wouldn’t take effect until 2022 – after census results are released.

My reading of it is “You guys (republican’s in Ohio) created this map to unfairly advantage yourselves in elections for the state and federal levels, and voters agree so much that it is an issue that they voted to take those decisions out of your hands for good – but we’ll (the conservative justices on the Supreme Court) let that slide for another four years because we don’t want to intervene.”

What the conservative court justices actually said is that they aren’t responsible for making sure states draw fair districts. “And none provides a solid grounding for judges to take the extraordinary step of reallocating power and influence between political parties.”

Basically – states made this mess with gerrymandering – they need to fix it. The issue being that technology and data collection has only gotten the point where gerrymandering can be super effectively recently. But the courts don’t want to listen to that argument.

Regardless – my Representative in the House is basically ignoring the issues that are facing our nation now. He is burying his head in the sand and not saying anything about race, police abuses of power, presidential abuses of power (and seriously – how is gassing and shooting peaceful protestors in front of the White House for a photo op not an abuse of power).

And if you don’t think it was a photo op, just listen to the White House press secretary try to compare it to Churchill walking through London after WWII bombings. So American Citizens protesting the death of an American Citizen at the hands of police, representative of systematic injustices, is the same as a foreign country threatening the very existence of your country. That should tell you how Trump views the protests.

Of course anyone who has followed Trump in the media for years would probably know that this is the par-for-the-course. This is the man who said this about Tiananmen Square:

When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world

The Playboy Interview with Donald Trump

Anyways, I digress. My e-mails and phone calls to Gonzalez have gone unanswered. His twitter feed shows that he celebrated the space launch and nothing since. So in the 6 days since the space launch – 6 huge days of protests, lock downs, curfews, rioting, presidential power abuses, violence against media, violence against foreign media, and violence against peaceful protestors has been ignored by my representative.

It probably won’t hurt him either, because our district is so gerrymandered. But it’s a disgrace that to our district that the obligatory “What happened to George Floyd should never happen in America” didn’t even happen. But he probably feels like he doesn’t need to, we are a 93% white district.

I’ll keep leaving him 2 or three messages a month, which will probably continue to get ignored.

Senator Sherrod Brown has come out pretty forcefully against how Trump has handled this current moment in time. And has an interesting idea of declaring race a ‘public health emergency’ that would require the disparities in mortality among races in America to be looked at. He conisders it an amplified issue, particularly with how Covid-19 is hitting minorities the hardest.

At the very least Senator Rob Portman gave what can only be called an unenthusiastic and monotone speech on the floor of Congress that things must change. Then again, this is Senator Rob “I’m late for lunch” Portman when it comes to Trump’s removal of peaceful protestors so he could have his photo op.

But Representative Anthony Gonzalez, from Ohio-16, can’t be bothered.