Odd 2nd meeting w/the state rep.

A few weeks ago, there was a follow-up meeting between the community-organizing group that I've been volunteering with, and that state rep in the area.

Most of the meeting was follow-up points, though there was some rehashing of basics. I got stuck holding the agenda, and it was a little to shepherd everyone through in a timely fashion, since there were tangents, etc., and it also represented questions from different people.

Anyhow, there were two weird things.

First, he completely switched his advice on how to fight against budget cuts. Before, he had said not to advocate for individual programs, but rather equal cuts so no-one's program was gutted, but now, he said to find specific programs to advocate for (? - and he also said that we might not have a good grasp on what programs are vital across the state). Before, too, he had said to contact committee chairs who were making cut recommendations, but now he said they wouldn't listen to us since we weren't their constituents, and plus we couldn't tell them any concerns that they hadn't already heard a ton... He also said before that we should try to set up a meeting with a committee chair (who's a rep from a neighboring district), but he now said that was pointless.

Very odd, with the only commonality between everything, it seemed, being that he wanted us out of the process, and to say that he had no control over results.

Second, towards the end of the meeting, I was trying to wrap things up, but then someone spoke
up with some other concern, and then after I tried wrapping things up again after a silence, someone spoke up again, the guy made some crack about not having to follow an agenda so closely, like I was a bad chair or something...

I didn't think much of it at the time, but later I realized that that was really shitty of him to make a joke like that in front of a group of people, esp. since I hadn't really wanted to chair, was trying to do a good job, and was in a vulnerable place.

After the 1st meeting, I was all fired up to maybe volunteer for him in future campaigns - he has a very good grasp of policy and what to do - but now I really don't care so much. I might not go out of my way to attend meetings with him in the future, either.