Ron meets with Eva Jones

Ron met recently in Hood River with Eva Jones, the Hood River Valley High School student who spoke up about gun violence at his town hall last year in Odell.

The meeting this week with Eva and her classmates involved in Girl Up came before this year’s Hood River County town hall – one of six town halls the senator held throughout Oregon before returning to Washington, DC for votes on Donald Trump’s shutdown.

Ron invited Eva last year to Washington, DC to share her generation’s concerns about gun violence in schools. He heard last week from Eva and her classmates about work they’re doing to reduce gun violence, improve women’s health care and more.

“Change rarely comes from the top down in Washington, DC,” he told the girls at their meeting at a Hood River coffee shop. “It comes from the grass roots right here with the great work that all of you are doing.”

While in the Columbia Gorge, Ron also visited Dufur School before his Wasco County town hall for the debut there of Google’s “rolling study halls” that provide wi-fi access and instructors on school buses for students during long bus rides to and from the rural school.

In addition to Hood River and Wasco counties, the other town halls he held last week were in Benton, Linn, Polk and Clackamas counties.

Oregonians attending those town halls expressed concerns about the Trump shutdown, as did workers and volunteers at food banks in Portland and Springfield dealing with furloughed federal employees and their families needing help putting meals on their tables.   

Six other town halls were postponed because of Senate votes and will be rescheduled.