Men and women from around the country staged a pray-in outside House Speaker John Boehner’s door Tuesday. It’s their chance to tell lawmakers face-to-face that budget cuts won’t work and that they want a tax hike on the wealthy. Sue Gries flew in from Chicago to protest the sequestration. A winter storm could cancel her flight home, but she says the opportunity to voice her opinion makes the trip worth it. “We have to do it,” she says. “If we’re silent, we’re complicit in the problem.” Reverend Dwight Gardner hails from Gary, Ind., where he says budget cuts would be catastrophic for his congregation. “If the sequester goes through, there are children who will not eat,” he says. “There are people whose houses are subsidized that will be homeless. Those are real issues.” Pamela Franklin, a Cincinnati native, says her presence makes a real impact. “If we can get one person to get up off the couch and say ‘I wanna do that,’ or ‘that makes sense’ or ‘how can I help?’ how can it be a lost cause?”
