This is a response to the opinion article "No Libyans allowed at ANSWER Libya forum," posted here at Daily Kos and on various email lists on June 23, 2011. The writer of the response is the co-coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition in Los Angeles and a friend of mine, and I am posting it here with his permission. I was not at the Los Angeles meeting, so I have no knowledge of what happened there, but I was at the San Francisco meeting a few days later, and before posting the ANSWER-LA response below, let me just add my observations from SF:
There, there were a handful of anti-Libyan-government people (some may have been actual Libyans, others not, I have no way of knowing) demonstrating outside the forum, and several handfuls inside. As far as I could tell, the ones outside were outside voluntarily, since there was obviously no attempt to exclude all people with views contrary to the organizers. Inside, there was a small amount of verbal disruption a couple times, but nothing serious, and most of the questions and comments (largely comments) in the discussion period came from that point of view (i.e., there was no attempt to suppress them, but one who "demanded five minutes to present the other point of view" was told that A) the "other point of view" is on offer on CNN, FOX, MSNBC etc. every day of the week, and that B) he was more than welcome to organize his own forum to present that point of view (Akbar Muhammed of the Nation of Islam even offered to come speak at that forum if they wanted him to)).
Read More