One more time, because anyone still spreading this crap about this Dem needs checking

[bigtree]

Kate Kelly ☂️ @Kate_Kelly_Esq 5h
Hello everyone 👋🏼

The Cannon House Office building & the U.S. Capitol are not the same building.

If there was a plan was to delay voting (which takes place in the Capitol)— pulling a fire alarm in Cannon would in no way impede that.

This dumb conspiracy makes no sense.



Ted Lieu @tedlieu 3h
Nope. The vote was in the Capitol, a completely different building than the Cannon House Office Building.

[Kablooie]

1. But it might scare the crap out of customers at Dunkin'.

[usonian]

2. Facts? We don't need no stinking facts.

We need headlines.

[Ms. Toad]

4. I have not seen any democrat suggesting it was Bowman's intent to delay the vote.

despite all of the posts in various threads around here accusing people of doing just that.

BUT - Bowman has clearly acknowledged that pulling the fire alarm was deliberate. He wasn't tring to delay the vote - he was trying to open a door that was locked. He mistakenly believed pulling the fire alarm would open the door.

It was an irresponsible, stupid, move. Pulling fire alarms is not a means to open doors - especially when there are signs which clearly describe how to open the door in an emergency.

That said, calls for him to resign over this are silly.

[ShazzieB]

5. The ign on that door was as clear as mud.

There's another post about it here, with a picture of the sign.

If I can find it quickly, I'll ad it to this post.

Edited to add: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218318383

The sign's not quite as cryptic as I remembered, but I can see it being easy to get confused especially if one is a hurry to get somewhere.

[betsuni]

6. Not at all unusual for people to not understand signs or directions.

Would've been clearer if it said something like: To exit, push door. An alarm will sound after 3 seconds. Door will unlock in 30 seconds.

[Ms. Toad]

12. Not cryptic at all.

The alarm on the wall is a pull alarm. The bar on the door (which the sign is directly above) is a push bar. The sign instructs how to use the push bar (right below the sign) to open the locked door, in the event of an emergency.

I'm sure he was panicking to get to the vote, and was not trying to delay the vote. But he has acknowledged pulling the fire alarm thinking it might open the door. I don't get all the excuse making.

[ShazzieB]

24. No excuses need be made.

The sign could have definitely been clearer. The man was obviously in a hurry, probably stressed about possibly being late, and his brain didn't process the information on the sign correctly. He made a silly mistake. Big deal.

[Ms. Toad]

34. He has made zero comments about the sign, that I'm aware of.

If that was the issue, he's capable of saying it - rather than having others put words in his mouth.

[pnwmom]

8. He was in a hurry, and in the stress of the moment, goofed.

If you've never made a mistake under stress, you're very unusual.

[Ms. Toad]

13. I'm just correcting factual misstatements.

I have not seen any Democrat abusing him of using the fire alarm to delay the vote. I have seen several people on DU responding quite rudely to others accusing them of attributing that intent to Bowman.

As for the mistake, he has acknowledged it was a mistake, but not the one you are suggesting. He said that he pulled the fire alarm thinking it might open the door, not that he believed the sign referred to the fire alarm.

[pnwmom]

14. He may have incorrectly thought the fire alarm would open the door BECAUSE of the sign.

Norm Eisen thinks the signage was confusing, and I do, too, now that I've seen it.

[Ms. Toad]

15. Why is it important to make up explanations he didn't provide?

He made a statement that he pulled the fire alarm because he thought it might open the door. He said nothing about being confused by the signs.

And the signs is pretty clear. The sign sitting directly on the push bar talks about pushing to open the door in emergencies. It says nothing about pulling, and it says nothing about the fire alarm on the wall to the left.

[pnwmom]

17. I think in his urgency to get out of the building, so that he could go vote,

that he made a stupid mistake.

The unexpected sign (which isn't normally there) didn't clarify anything for him, it added to his confusion. What is clear to you, sitting at home, wasn't clear to him in the moment.

[Ms. Toad]

18. Why is it important to make up explanations he didn't provide?

He is capable of speaking for himself, and has done so.

[pnwmom]

19. Nothing he said is inconsistent with my understanding. You are insisting on

a very narrow, legalistic interpretation, not the way an average person would understand him.

And even Norm Ornstein, who understands something about the law, thinks the signs were confusing and views Bowman's statement the way I do.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Ms. Toad]

21. Why is it important to make up explanations he didn't provide?

He said nothing about being confused by the signs. He is perfectly capable of speaking for himself, and does not need words put in his mouth.

[bigtree]

22. you 'made up' that he 'pulled' the alarm

...when he clearly said he 'activated' the alarm.

His explanation tracks with the alarm on the door, which will sound if you push on it. There's a 30 second delay afterward.

Did he push the door, triggering the alarm and just give up, thinking he'd screwed up? Or did he wait 30 seconds for the door to open?

What you've posited isn't definitive proof he 'pulled' the alarm..

[Ms. Toad]

23. I'm not making it up. It is what he said.

Bowman’s office said it was an accident, and the congressman told reporters later Saturday: “I was trying to get to a door. I thought the alarm would open the door, and I pulled the fire alarm to open the door by accident.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/09/30/politics/jamaal-bowman-pulls-fire-alarm/index.html

[bigtree]

26. okay I see where you got that. I'm going by his official statement

... so I'm wrong. You did not make it up.

I really, really wish you had. This is banal.

Bowman’s office said it was an accident, and the congressman told reporters later Saturday: “I was trying to get to a door. I thought the alarm would open the door, and I pulled the fire alarm to open the door by accident.”

“I was just trying to get to my vote and the door that’s usually open wasn’t open, it was closed,” Bowman added.

...so he pulled the lever thinking the door would open.

Why? Most reasonable explanation is he thought it had something to do with the ridiculous process of opening the emergency door. I'd bet he pushed on it as well.

Why shouldn't there be conjecture in his defense? There's plenty trying to bury this Democrat right now. That's not a random concern. It's Mccarthy baying the loudest, and he's a habitual liar.

This is a big nothing. I think the pushback you're getting is because there isn't some other explanation that makes sense. There's only one concern. Was it nefarious?

Is he a vandal?

Is he a prankster?

Was he having a joke?

Frame this in a way that makes sense, because the rap on him which supposes he had some nefarious purpose, which is the ONLY reason anyone should look twice at this, is extremely remote.

Ridiculous, actually.

There.

[MichMan]

28. According to this post, the alarm was pulled long before the 417-0 vote occurred

https://democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=18319979

[bigtree]

29. even less of a nothingburger, then

..with the congressman eventually voting aye.

[Ms. Toad]

35. The way it makes sense is just what he said -

He pulled the alarm, thinking (mistakenly) it would open the door. He was wrong. There's no need to embelish it with stuff he didn't say that may not have played a role in his thinking at all. He doesn't need to be correcting misinformation from our side of the aisle, on top of disproving the stupid allegation from the other side of the aisle that he was trying to delay the vote.

[ShazzieB]

37. Did you read his personal statement?

It's in post 20 of this thread. That's what I'm going with. Not that I think it really matters that much, to be quite honest.

[herding cats]

7. This whole thing is ridiculous.

He made a stupid mistake. It's not a career ending move and now we all need to move the hell on to important matters.

[quakerboy]

9. can you walk from the one to the other without going outside?

As I recall, I believe you can, but i could be misremembering. its been a few years.

I wonder if the free food survived covid. You could get a half decent if oddly provisioned meal by visiting all the offices, most had small goodies that were supposed to represent their states products available. Peanuts. Rice. A fair number of Craisins

[W_HAMILTON]

10. It's especially fucking stupid because his vote was not needed.

And more than enough Democrats were there to push it over the line to begin with.

And there was already a procedural delay (a vote on a move to adjourn, I believe) in place that allowed Democrats more time to review the last-minute continuing resolution. Bowman's vote was not needed for that either.

But it's not surprising that idiotic conspiracy theorists are conjuring up another conspiracy theory here. It's all they know and it's all they do.

[bigtree]

11. that's the real point, in response to the stupid nonsense that he was trying to stop a vote

...in an entirely separate building from the Capitol.

It's amazing to see people still stuck on 'he pulled the fire alarm' as if that's something nefarious - all with out proof of anything but a pic showing him looking at the fire alarm on the wall.

Folks still griping and pointing fingers really have to be invested in bringing this man down at this point. Who cares if an alarm was triggered? It's attached to a central monitor which would check on the disturbance and someone would simply turn the alarm off.

I'd like to know what authority is accusing him of something more pernicious than mistakenly pulling an alarm, other than republicans in Congress. But the fact that House maga goons are claiming he wanted to delay a vote he supported - which didn't require his participation to pass - is just so typical of the dirt-dumb accusations that arise from that side and persist and spread, even among our own party supporters.

emptywheel @emptywheel ·7h
There'll be time to test Rep Bowman's explanation for pulling an alarm.

But can we talk about what it means that Republicans think they vote in the Cannon Building?

[Ms. Toad]

16. He said he pulled the fire alarm.

I'd say his words are proof he pulled the fire alarm.

I agree that his intent was to get through the door so he could get to the floor and vote (not to delay the vote).

Pulling the fire alarm was a stupid move, but that's all it was.

[bigtree]

20. not what he said. Check the statement

...Rep. Bowman said in his statement that he 'activated' the alarm.



That could have been the door, for all we know at this point. The sign says if you push on it an alarm will sound.



Okay?

[ShazzieB]

25. Thanks for this.

Now that we have his exact words from his official statement, I hope this can be laid to rest.

Personally, I never cared whether he "pulled" a fire alarm or "activated" it by pushing on a locked door he couldn't get through any other way, but I always suspected the latter, because it's more consistent with the wording on the sign. Either way, there was nothing nefarious abut either his actions or his intentions.

[bigtree]

27. keep yer boots on, the poster found a quote where he said he said he 'pulled' the alarm

...the cacophony of concern continues.

[ShazzieB]

30. Yes, I saw that. 😁

As I recall, that was a quote from a news article, which could have easily been misheard or misquoted by the reporter in question. The congressman could even have momentarily misspoken himself. I hope most will agree that his official statement should carry more weight.

Some may remain unconvinced, but either way, it's a tempest in a teapot, for sure.

[MichMan]

31. I can't believe people are debating the semantics of "activated" vs. "pulled"

I've never "activated" one personally, but isn't that how one activates a fire alarm? By pulling it?


I saw a report by the Capitol Police that the Cannon Building was evacuated for two hours in response to the alarm.

[bigtree]

33. so his mistake caused a temporary evacuation?

...like we used to have in grade school?

Thomas Jefferson spoke often about a time to come when the nation's ability to withstand a crisis like this would be tested.

We were all hunkered down in my home with duct tape on the windows and doors waiting for word that the unanimously passed legislation Bowman eventually voted for was safe.

Little did we know at the time that, but for the will of Bowman, it almost had one less vote.

[ShazzieB]

36. There are doors that are wired to "activate" an alarm if you try to open them.

I'm very familiar with doors like this, They're usually exits that are locked but can be opened from the one side so they can be used as exits in case of emergency (and they activate an alarm when someone does that).

They had them all over the library where I went to college. The idea was to discourage people from sneaking out a side door with stolen items while rendering the doors still usable if people needed to vacate quickly in an emergency. Based on the information on the sign, I think this was that kind of door.

I'm not trying to argue that he didn't cause an alarm to go off. I'm just saying there's more than one way to do that. However it happened, I don't think it was that big of a deal, and I don't personally care; but some here seem to think it matters a lot, so I'm offering a possible explanation.

[MichMan]

39. His own statement said it was a fire alarm in Post #20

[mcar]

32. Kick

[qwlauren35]

38. Thank you.

That was helpfui.

In general, I am not familiar with pulling a fire alarm to get out of a building that is not on fire, so I wouldn't call it a mistake, but I don't think the effect was at all what he had intended.

No beef with him.