Then they came for Emily Feiner

In Trump's America, a 64-year-old social worker is deemed a threat and must be removed

Intro by Sam Bellamy

If you haven’t seen the latest video of an anti-Trump protester being forcibly removed from a public meeting, you’ll want to watch below as a 64-year-old social worker named Emily Feiner is carried out by armed security guards.

Feiner’s offense, it appears, was speaking — amid a large and raucous crowd — against the Trump administration at a constituent meeting hosted by Republican Congressman Mike Lawler at a Catholic prep school in Somers, NY.

Here’s the account she provided Salon’s Russell Payne: “I got called on. I asked a question. The question was: ‘What was his red line? What would it take in terms of unconstitutional actions that the Trump administration was doing for him to finally exercise his oversight role and call for an end?’”

Lawler, according to Feiner, “didn't answer my question. He talked about appropriations. So I was frustrated, and I did call out, ‘Answer my question, answer my question.’ And then the next person, he didn't answer their question either.”

Next. she was approached by a member of Lawler’s staff, who told her: “You’ve been warned twice. You’re coming out now.”

As you’ll see in the video, an oddly large group of officers surround Feiner. (Lawler has been retaining security guards, state troopers and local police for his town halls.) A woman seated near Feiner is told to stop recording the incident with her phone.

Lawler is then carried out of the auditorium by the officers. The person recording the exchange is also forcibly removed, as is another attendee.

Fellow protestors began chanting, “Let her stay” as the officers cornered Feiner. In another video, an onlooker can be heard responding, “Kill her, kill her.”

Feiner told Salon she thinks she was targeted by Lawler’s staff because she has protested outside Lawler’s district office and criticized him online.

She said the ejection itself matters less than why it happened.

“What is much more important to me is that they are pursuing a playbook that is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s — that this is what they do with dissent; that they have no problem carrying a 64-year-old woman out of a town hall that was being held by my publicly elected congressional representative,” she said. “There's no doubt in my mind this is meant to try to chill dissent.”