PEABODY — A town hall meeting Tuesday night with Rep. Seth Moulton was marred by outbursts, audience arguments, and answers that were unsatisfactory for residents of both sides of the political spectrum.
Peabody City Hall’s Wiggin Auditorium reached its capacity as constituents packed the room to ask burning questions, in particular regarding the new Republican administration as well as comments the congressman made about transgender women in November.
Many transgender people and allies expressed their frustration over his comment that he doesn’t want his daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete,” with protests across the district, a trend that continued last night.
“I’m here tonight because I’m afraid… I’m afraid of what’s going on in this country. I’m afraid of people trying to erase me,” Hannah, a transwoman protesting at the town hall, said to the Daily Item. “It’s ignorance… Ignorant comments, made because they don’t know any better, because they hear and they just parrot back what they said.”
After a 20-minute delay, Moulton took to the podium and began the meeting by discussing his journey to the U.S. Congress and speaking on his achievements, including getting the 988 Suicide and Mental Health Crisis Lifeline established, which has fielded millions of calls in the two years its been active.
This relatively routine beginning went wayside quickly when the congressman opened the floor to questions and was immediately interrupted by a man claiming to be on the “Spiritual Advisory Committee” for Donald Trump. Momentary chaos befell the auditorium before officers escorted him out of the room.
It wasn’t the only moment of boiling emotions last night. Another Trump-supporting resident went back and forth with Moulton over immigration, another contentious point with the recent passage of the controversial Laken Riley Act that he voted against.
“The problem with this bill is that it doesn’t just deport people who have domestic violence convictions. It assumes guilt,” Moulton said. “There’s also, of course, a lot of concern in the community, which I also share, about the influx of illegal migrants coming over the southern border.”
Multiple audience members showed up to speak against the Trump administration and question the actions, or lack thereof, Moulton’s Democratic Party has taken to combat what has been seen as extreme actions in his first month in office.
“What step of Trump’s ‘Final Solution’ are we waiting for? Many of us are looking for bold leadership from our party and not seeing it,” said resident Ben Web. “If you call for boycotts, I will go with you for the sake of our future. What further horror must Trump manifest for us to hear that call?”
This question, along with others calling for action against Trump and the Republican Party, received loud applause from the room and were met with agreement from Moulton, who criticized the president’s attempts at ceasing all federal spending.
However, his proposed solution wasn’t to stand up to Republicans, but for his own party to “get our act together.” The specifics of this weren’t made clear, but not being preachy, “having conversations,” and coordination were all attributes Moulton underlined in his answers.
“We need to do a lot more listening and a lot less preaching. You sounded very preachy as you were telling me what to do. I don’t think that’s a strategy to win over voters,” Moulton said in response to audience member Matthew Cassie. “We’ve got to be willing to meet Americans where they are.”
Cassie questioned the push from the Democratic Party to work with the Republican Party and Democratic politicians like Moulton not meeting younger generations with progressive policies.
“The reason [young voters] went for Trump is they bought into his lies,” Cassie said. “We’re not going to get anywhere by electing more moderates; that’s not what we need.”
Other progressives who questioned Moulton include Bob Mason, a member of Boston Jewish Voice for Peace and North Shore for Palestine, who expressed his concerns in regards to Moulton’s lack of action in regard to the genocide in Gaza.
Unsurprisingly, many constituents attended the Town Hall in support of transgender rights and took the time to ask Moulton about his comments that have disturbed many in the LGBTQ+ community.
Melissa, a receptionist in the district who works with many transgender students, recounted to Moulton how they read the name of Nex Benedict, a transgender student who committed suicide after being attacked in school.
“I know that you want to play the long game and I see the strategy that you want to engage with Republicans, but our kids don’t have that much time,” they said. “How can we take this passion that you have for suicide prevention and make sure that we are doing everything we can for every single student when… team sports are shown to prevent suicide.”
In the first half of Moulton’s response, he pointed towards “carving off” Republicans through compromise to prevent legislation that will directly target LGBTQ+ Americans.
The rest of Moulton’s response addressed the angered response to his comments, saying to “have some civility” and pointed to a Salem school committee who denounced his remarks as “proving his point of Democrats not willing to have a debate”.
It’s an answer that Melissa and other LGBTQ+ people at Peabody City Hall think is a continuation of Moulton’s trend of what they see as dancing around the fears they have as a targeted population.
“All of the attention, all of the rhetoric is focused on five trans women in the entire United States. And I don’t think Seth Moulton understands what that feels like to go through,” Celeste Rocchio, a student at Clark University said to the Daily Item. “Many congressmen and senators ran on, ‘I’m for trans rights, but I don’t want biological men playing in women’s sports,’ and they still lost.”
Last night’s rhetoric cemented the feeling of invisibility that Moulton’s rhetoric has caused within the transgender community. As a result, they don’t plan to vote for the congressman in the next election.
“He’s never known what it’s like to hold a loved one while they cry themselves to sleep while you watch them go through dysphoria… He doesn’t know what it was like to feel like you can’t be yourself among the people that you love most,” Melissa said. “I look forward to seeing who ends up challenging him in the primary.”
