Notes
Introduction
Donald Robinson, Town Meeting: Practicing Democracy in Rural New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011), 2.
See https://evp.nd.edu/town-hall/ and https://9to5mac.com/2016/02/04/tim-cook-india-iphone-apple-watch-android/.
L.D. Burnett, “Selling (Out) the Good Old Days,” Society for U.S. Intellectual History (blog), May 10, 2015, https://s-usih.org/2015/05/selling-out-the-good-old-days/.
Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. (Cambridge: Zone/Near Futures, 2015), 17.
Danny Meyer, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business (New York: Harper, 2006), 222.
Susan Clark and Frank Bryan, All Those in Favor: Rediscovering the Secrets of Town Meeting and Community (Montpelier: RavenMark, 2005).
Pete Wells, “Top New York Restaurants of 2016,” New York Times, December 13, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/dining/best-restaurants-in-nyc-pete-wells.html.
David Landsel, “Here’s Why It’s Time to Stop Comparing In-N-Out to Shake Shack,” Food & Wine, last modified January 24, 2018, accessed January 24, 2019, https://www.foodandwine.com/news/heres-why-its-time-stop-comparing-in-n-out-shake-shack.
Brown, 42.
Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 12.
Town Meeting as Democratic Ideal
The website of the Vermont secretary of state, “Town Meeting and Local Elections,” last modified January 9, 2019, https://www.sec.state.vt.us/elections/town-meeting-local-elections.aspx.
Frank Bryan, Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How it Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 1–28.
Sandra M. Gustafson, “Democracy and Discussion: Albion Tourgée on Race and the Town Meeting Ideal,” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 5, no. 2 (2017): 389–96, https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed January 11, 2019), 391.
John Locke, “Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina” (The Avalon Project, Yale Law School), accessed January 22, 2019, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/nc05.asp.
John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 14, 1776 The Massachusetts Historical Society, accessed January 22 2019, https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17760414ja.
John Gould, New England Town Meeting, Safeguard of Democracy (Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Daye Press, 1940).
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. University of Virginia American Studies Program, vol. 1, ch. 5. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/detoc/1_ch05.htm.
Tocqueville, vol. 1, ch. 5.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. and trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), xviii.
Donald Robinson, Town Meeting: Practicing Democracy in Rural New England (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011), 5–6.
Donald Pease, The New American Exceptionalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). 98–128.
New Republic. “Tocqueville and the Mullah.” February 2, 1998, 7.
Pease, 100.
Voices of Democracy, “Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1941 State of the Union Address ‘The Four Freedoms Speech,’” January 6, 1941. University of Maryland, Accessed January 23, 2019, http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/fdr-the-four-freedoms-speech-text/.
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Kevin J. Kelley, “Diminishing Democracy? At Kirby Town Meeting, the 18 Percent Rule,” Seven Days, March 8, 2017, https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/diminishing-democracy-at-kirby-town-meeting-the-18-percent-rule/Content?oid=4488848.
Time. “New Hampshire: Town Meeting Tonight.” March 26, 1945. Accessed January 23, 2019 http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,803455,00.html.
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Jane Lindholm, Patti Daniels, and Angela Evangie, “Photography Exhibit Remembers a Lost Vermont Era With ‘Kodachrome Memory,’” Here and Now, Vermont Public Radio, January 22, 2015, http://digital.vpr.net/post/photography-exhibit-remembers-lost-vermont-era-kodachrome-memory#stream/0.
“Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jimmy Buffett to Discuss Careers on the Radio,” Theatermania, March 22, 2018, https://www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/lin-manuel-miranda-and-jimmy-buffett-conversation_84552.html.
John Patrick Leary, Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism (Chicago: Haymarket, 2018), 48–49.
Town Hall Meeting as Debate Format
Molly Osberg, “How Bill Clinton and MTV invented the once-thrilling, now-meaningless town hall debate,” Splinter News, October 9, 2016, https://splinternews.com/how-bill-clinton-and-mtv-invented-the-once-thrilling-n-1793862627.
John Kifner, “Clinton Back to Normal after Carter’s visit,” New York Times, March 18, 1977, 11 https://www.nytimes.com/1977/03/18/archives/clinton-back-to-normal-after-carters-visit.html.
Patrick Healy, “Resurrection: How New Hampshire Saved the 1992 Clinton Campaign,” New York Times, February 8, 2016 (accessed January 23, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/08/us/politics/bill-hillary-clinton-new-hampshire.html.
Gwen Ifill, “The 1992 Campaign: New Hampshire; Clinton Stressing His Economic Plan,” New York Times, February 15, 1992, 1 (accessed January 25, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/15/us/the-1992-campaign-new-hampshire-clinton-stressing-his-economic-plan.html.
“Presidential Debate at the University of Richmond,” The American Presidency Project, UC-Santa Barbara (accessed January 25, 2019), https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/217084.
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Christine Lagorio, “Meet Hilary 2.0,” CBS News, March 8, 2007 (accessed January 26, 2019), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-hillary-20-24-01-2007/
Adam Nagourney, “Hilary takes a New Tack, and Talks,” The New York Times, January 28, 2007, p, A14 (accessed January 26, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/us/politics/29clinton.html.
John Pat Leary, “The Conversation,” Keywords for the Age of Austerity (blog), May 22, 2014, https://theageofausterity.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/keywords-for-the-age-of-austerity-6-the/.
Leary, “The Conversation.”
Nagourney, A14
Town Hall Meeting as Constituent Service
Charles O. Jones, “Nonstop! The Campaigning Presidency and the 2000 Presidential Campaign,” The Brookings Institution, December 1, 2001 (accessed January 26, 2019), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/nonstop-the-campaigning-presidency-and-the-2000-presidential-campaign/.
“About,” Town Hall Project (accessed January 26, 2019), https://townhallproject.com/#about.
“About,” Town Hall Project (accessed January 26, 2019), https://townhallproject.com/#about.
Town Hall Project (@townhallproject), “Is your MOC a ‘Missing Member?’” Twitter, April 27, 2018, 7:42 p.m., https://twitter.com/townhallproject/status/990013261713059840.
Senator Lindsey Graham Town Hall Meeting, C-SPAN, March 4, 2017 (accessed January 26, 2019), https://www.c-span.org/video/?424917-1/senator-lindsey-graham-town-hall-meeting.
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Paul Hyde, “Senator Graham Gets an Earful in Raucous Town Hall Meeting,” Greenville News, March 4, 2017, https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/2017/03/04/graham-gets-earful-raucous-town-hall-meeting/98699218/; “Sen. Bill Cassidy Presides over Raucous Town Hall Meeting,” Nola.com, February 22, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAMqsuIMGxY; Gromer Jeffers Jr, “After Confronting Pete Sessions at Raucous Town Hall, Can Democrats ‘Vote Him Out’ in 2018?,” Dallas News, March 1, 2017, https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/03/22/confrontingpete-sessions-raucous-town-hall-can-democrats-vote-2018; Bryan Logan, “Sen. Jeff Flake Gets Slammed in Raucous Town Hall Meeting,” AOL, April 14, 2017, https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/14/republican-sen-jeff-flake-gets-slammed-in-raucous-town-hall-meeting/22039773/; Sarah Rankin, “Dave Brat Hears an Earful,” US News & World Report, May 9, 2017, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/virginia/articles/2017-05-09/virginia-rep-brat-hosts-raucous-town-hall; Angela Hart, “McClintock Exits with Police Escort after Raucous Town Hall Meeting in Roseville,” The Sacramento Bee, February 6, 2017.
Henry M. Robert III et al., Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised, 11 ed. (Boston: Da Capo, 2013), 201, 43, 392.
Town Hall Project (@townhallproject), “This Is What Accountability Looks Like,” Twitter, May 9, 2017, 8:32 p.m., https://twitter.com/townhallproject/status/862102898645381120.
Matthew Chapman, “Devin Nunes Melts Down as Hometown Paper Asks if He’ll Hold Town Hall,” February 22, 2018, Shareblue Media, https://shareblue.com/devin-nunes-fresno-town-hall/.
Town Hall Meeting as Campus Spectacle
Robert H. Jones, e-mail to Clemson University Faculty and Staff, November 18, 2014.
Jones to Clemson Faculty and Staff.
Gregory A. Petsko, “Open Letter to SUNY Albany,” November 22, 2010, Inside Higher Ed, https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/11/22/open-letter-suny-albany.
Tori Neimann, e-mail to Clemson University Student-Athlete Advisory Council, March 13, 2018.
Ioana Patringenaru, “Faculty, Staff Have Voices Heard at Chancellor Town Halls on Budget Cuts,” This Week @ UCSD, June 29, 2009, https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/thisweek/2009/06/29_townhall.asp.
The University of Kansas “University to Host Town Hall Meeting on Race, Respect, Responsibility,” November 9, 2015, https://news.ku.edu/2015/11/09/university-host-town-hall-meeting-race-respect-responsibility.
Emily Donovan, “Black Students Interrupt Univ. of Kansas Town Hall in Wake of Missouri Protest,” USA Today, November 11, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20151114012133/http://college.usatoday.com/2015/11/12/black-students-interrupt-univeristy-of-kansas-town-hall/.
The University of Kansas, (@KUNews), “Thank you everyone who spoke & attended the #KUconvo tonight. We see you, we hear you; YOU MATTER. Please continue the conversation with us,” Twitter, November 11, 2015, 7:23 p.m., https://twitter.com/KUnews/status/664599382315171846.
Jeannie Hornish Rakow, “Campus Response to Recent Incidents,” The University of Memphis President’s Blog, October 3, 2016, https://blogs.memphis.edu/president/2016/10/03/campus-response-to-recent-incidents/.
Olivia Nguyen, “SMU Student Leaders Host Town Meeting, Discuss Incidents of Hateful Behavior on Campus,” The Daily Campus, November 17, 2016, https://www.smudailycampus.com/news/smu-association-of-black-students-host-town-meeting-discuss-incidents-of-hateful-behavior-on-campus.
Tom Fitzgerald, “Upset American University Students March Out of Meeting on Campus Hate Crime Incident,” Fox 5 DC, May 2, 2017, http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/upset-american-university-students-march-out-of-meeting-on-campus-hate-crime-incident.
Shira Stein and Sarah Latimer, “Confederate Flag Posters, with Cotton Attached, Found at American University,” The Washington Post, September 27, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/09/27/confederate-flag-posters-with-cotton-attached-found-at-american-university/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8199615386e5.
Westfield State University, “Bias Incident Response Team” (accessed January 31, 2019), https://www.westfield.ma.edu/bias-incident-response-team.
Brown, 177.
Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, second edition (New York: Routledge, 2015), 108–9.
Town Hall Meeting as Corporate Event
“Services,” Davis & Company (accessed February 7, 2019), https://www.davisandco.com/services.
“Rethink Town Hall Meetings as Two-Way Conversations,” Polleverywhere (blog) (accessed February 7, 2019), https://blog.polleverywhere.com/town-hall-meeting-format/.
Brown, 199.
James Vincent, “Apple Calling Its Stores ‘Town Squares’ Is a Pretentious Farce,” The Verge, September 12, 2017, https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/12/16296460/apple-self-love-iphonex-iphone8-event.
Alexis C. Madrigal, “The Great Thing about Apple Christening Their Stores ‘Town Squares,’” The Atlantic, September 13, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/the-great-thing-about-apple-christening-their-stores-town-squares/539667/.
“8 Interesting Tidbits from Whole Foods’s Town Hall Following the Amazon Acquisition,” Entrepreneur, June 20, 2017, https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/296101.
Krista Gleason, “Top Midsize Employer: Datto Thrives by Inspiring Its People to Do Well,” Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, March 28, 2018, https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/money/business/2018/03/29/datto-austin-mcchord-rochester-top-workplaces-midsize-employer/323753002/.
Brown, Undoing The Demos, 138.
Andrea Duke, “5 Dos and Don’ts for Planning a Corporate Town Hall,” Catalyst (blog), Convene (Accessed February 7, 2019), https://convene.com/catalyst/5-dos-donts-planning-corporate-town-hall/.
The Future of the Town Hall Meeting
Ylan Mui, “Conservative Koch Brothers’ Network to Spend up to $400 Million for the Midterm Election Cycle—Including $20 million to Sell the GOP Tax Law,” Politics, CNBC, January 28, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/27/koch-brothers-network-to-spend-400-million-in-midterm-election-cycle.html.
“CNN Announces Town Hall with Students, Parents Affected by Florida School Shooting,” Politics, CNN, February 19, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/17/politics/parkland-town-hall/index.html.
Sarah Chadwick (@Sarahchadwickk), “Upset to hear our governor Rick Scott wont be attending the town hall meeting on Wednesday. To be fair, he does have an A+ rating from the NRA, and i think he’s scared of my peers and I,” Twitter, February 22, 2018, 12:56 a.m., https://twitter.com/Sarahchadwickk/status/965827435567730688.
Todd Starnes, (@toddstarnes), “It’s a public flogging, not a town hall meeting. Hope the ratings are worth it, @jaketapper and @CNN), Twitter, February, 21, 2018, 10:03 p.m., https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/status/966508702340734978.
Joe Concha, “Fox News to Host ‘Battle at the Border’ Town Hall Featuring Kilmeade, Lahren, The Hill, January 24, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/media/426811-fox-news-to-host-battle-at-the-border-town-hall-featuring-kilmeade-lahren.
Zooming the Demos: A Pandemic Update
Mark Johansen, “The ‘Zoom Towns’ Luring Remote Workers to Rural Enclaves,” BBC Worklife, June 8, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210604-the-zoom-towns-luring-remote-workers-to-rural-enclaves.
Ramisha Maruf, “‘A Surreal Moment’: Fired Employees Share What It Was Like on That Mass-Firing Zoom,” CNN Business, December 8, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/07/business/better-zoom-firing-employees/index.html.
Mike Isaac and Shira Frankel, “Zoom’s Biggest Rivals Are Coming for It,” New York Times, April 24, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/technology/zoom-rivals-virus-facebook-google.html?searchResultPosition=2.
Hiten Shah, “How Zoom Became the Best Web-Conferencing Product in the World in Less Than 10 Years,” Nira.com (accessed February 8, 2022), https://nira.com/zoom-history/; “Meeting and Webinar Comparison,” Zoom, last updated January 3, 2022, https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115005474943-Meeting-and-webinar-comparison.
“What Is Zoom Meetings” Clemson University (accessed February 7, 2022), https://www.clemson.edu/online/tools/zoom.html.
“Chatting in a Zoom Webinar,” Zoom Support, last updated January 10, 2022, https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205761999.
Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1991), 27.
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Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 223.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 49.