Last week, in a choking haze of ash and smoke as wildfires burned through the state of California, with unemployment still over 16 percent, and in the middle of one of the greatest global health crises in our lifetime, California continued its descent into absolute madness as Lorena Gonzalez, architect of AB-5, argued for the eradication of several hundred thousand jobs, and what would effectively be the end of ride-sharing. As ride-sharing is one of the most popular business innovations of the last twenty years, dismantling Uber and Lyft is a tricky puzzle for politicians trying to eat their rich and have them too. The assault could never be straightforward, so Lorena has instead woven an incredible lie about “worker rights.” The only way to save drivers from the hellish working conditions they are overwhelmingly not reporting, she says, is to force them from the independent contracting work they overwhelmingly want to keep.

I first noticed the AB-5 fight was back on the table when a dust-up on Twitter surfaced a comment of Lorena’s to which I couldn’t respond, which is not (just) to say her stupidity stunned me to silence. The much-loathed politician deactivated replies to her tweets from people she isn’t following — in other words: her “constituents” — as public reaction to her legislation has been so furious she’s no longer able to comment anything, anywhere, without being met by hundreds of angry responses. While the peasantry in her mentions begging to keep their jobs must of course be frustrating, I can’t help but wonder… can she actually stop us from responding to her on a public forum? Last I checked, U.S. public officials were not allowed to block people on Twitter. The courts argue we have a right, in this country, to petition our government for redress of grievances. The right includes social media, and is by the way probably also why every member of Congress maintains a phone number so comically accessible. If not to safeguard our communication with the public officials representing us, what else could possibly be the point of blocking the block? Do we merely have a legal right to read the unhinged attacks people like Lorena routinely levy against citizens of the state? Or do we have a right to tell her — a politician meant to be representing us — what we actually want?

In any case, things got heated.