'Tonight, something kinda magical happened on the steps of the Capitol'
tweeted by, Ben Wikler? @benwikler (Washington Director at @MoveOn.)
1. Tonight, something kinda magical happened on the steps of the Capitol. It started like this:
2. Those two guys on the Capitol steps: NJ Sen @CoryBooker and civil rights hero @repjohnlewis. Another shot of the beginning:
3. Booker and Lewis started a Facebook Live to talk about Trumpcare and what this moment means for America.
6. The person I was trying to meet up with told me he was on the East Capitol steps on the Senate side. I found him, and saw this:
7. @CoryBooker @SenJeffMerkley @ChrisMurphyCT @SenGillibrand & @brianschatz, five fighters, passing around an iPhone. Whoa! Hi, Senators!
8. Maybe 20 people were sitting around them. They were telling stories about health care, laughing, answering questions. Felt like a picnic.
9. I sat down. Realized I was sitting on the jacket of @SenBobCasey, who I realized was sitting next to me. Oops! Hi! Wow! Is this real?
10. Totally real. Organic, spontaneous. Senators kept drifting out. Passers-by kept wandering over and sitting down.
11. This, I thought, must be what democracy is like in very tiny countries, or Ancient Greece. Senators & citizens kibbitzing about issues.
12 The funniest thing to me was seeing people you normally see on TV passing @CoryBooker's phone back and forth to shoot video. @SenSchumer!
13. And then @CoryBooker asked me to speak. And he said, stand up so the crowd can hear you! And I realized it had grown. A lot.
14. Suddenly everyone was on their feet—and roaring. Hundreds of people. There spontaneously. Ready to fight for health care.
15. It was hard to get a shot of thr while crowd, but here's a piece of it. That's @ChrisMurphyCT holding the phone, videoing @CoryBooker.
19. People told their stories. A refugee diagnosed with cancer weeks before her graduation, alive now thanks to Medicaid.
20. A child of immigrants, born with a rare disease, now healthy and an organizer fighting for justice for all—preexisting conditions or no.
21. People asked how they could fight. We shared ways to do it. Come protest at the Capitol this week. Protest at local offices. Make calls.
22. @CoryBooker's phone was running out of juice. I had a battery! Very proud that that's my iPhone cable in the photo. Keep it going! – at United States Capitol Building
30. Look, I can't predict what will happen this week. Very strong chance it will end tragically. But tonight—a spontaneous, joyous protest?
31. Hundreds of people outside the US Capitol at 11pm on a Monday, thunderously promising to show up every day this week to fight Trumpcare?
32. People texting their friends then and there, asking them to show up for the human chain protest this Wednesday? (5pm! You should come!)
33. This is what it's supposed to feel like at the beginning of something big. This is what movements are supposed to feel like.
thread:
Link to tweet
watch video of the event: facebook.com/corybooker/videos/10156979723652228/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thank you for this, bigtree. Thank you so much. 
is we were all warned about what would happen if trump and the repubs won. Why didn't folks believe the warnings? Now everything is a major fight that comes out of the White House and repub controlled Congress. 
Thank god.
This is beautiful.. Thank you for some inspiration so early in the morning.
Here is the Democratic leadership...........sitting on the Capitol steps, talking to whoever came by.
I could not be prouder!
This feels wonderfully familiar
.
Thanks so much for posting this!!
it may be corny to say but there is power in numbers.
watch that stupid don the con say they were paid spectators/protesters?
Thank you so much for posting this bigtree.
Those are our Dems.
