Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) gave a floor speech Wednesday composed
entirely by her social media followers through tweets and Facebook
comments.
“This is a part of my effort to bring Americans closer to Congress,” Waters said on the floor before commencing with the portion of the speech
written by others.
All of the comments Waters used in the speech called for action on the economy.
“Stop worrying about party and do something for the people,” Waters read. “Pass the
jobs bill, we all need to work.”
One user explicitly linked congressional inaction to the Occupy Wall
Street movement that has inspired protests around the country.
“The global Occupy Wall Street movement illustrates beautifully the
consciousness of the people which has been missing from the political
landscape,” Waters read.
Others added a personal element to their responses.
“We have not been able to save for our children’s college education as
we live paycheck to paycheck,” Waters recounted. “We worry about the
more immediate dilemma — will we be able to keep our home? We are two
months behind in our mortgage. Bank of America, our lender, was bailed
out with our tax money. Now who is going to bail us, who played by the
rules and worked hard, out?”
Waters gathered the parts of her speech by asking people to use the
hashtag #ourspeech on Twitter or comment on her Facebook page in
response to the question, “If I could give a speech on the House floor
about jobs and the economy, what would I say?”
Waters’s office selected the responses used in her speech, and she
tweeted her congratulations back to those who got in.
