U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle held a town hall in Eugene Wednesday evening, where she was met with a lot of anger from people in the audience.
In an auditorium at South Eugene High School, protestors and attendees frequently interrupted the Springfield Democrat with chants and shouting. While Hoyle answered questions about mail-in ballots, the defunding of arts and humanities, and women’s rights, she was repeatedly interrupted by audience members protesting her refusal to call the war a “genocide.”
They also questioned her on one of her donors, JStreetPAC, a pro-Israel lobby group. The PAC currently endorses Hoyle and has helped raise donations for her campaign.
Hoyle didn't back away from her connection to the group.
“There are people that support JStreet, which supports a two-state solution, and people who support JStreet do support me,” she told the crowd.
Pat Driscoll, a spokesperson for Veterans for Peace Chapter 159, said his group would like for Hoyle to take a more proactive stance on the war in Gaza.
“We are watching a live-streamed genocide,” said Driscoll. “We cannot look away, and so we're asking Congresswoman Val Hoyle to not look away and to call the action out as what it is: genocide.”
In a press conference before the town hall, Hoyle addressed the question by emphasizing that her power lies in helping her constituents, not in ending the war.
“If I could stop the war in Gaza, I would do it,” she said. “I don't actually have that power, and we have an administration that literally doesn't care at all about the Palestinian people.”
