Fountain Valley : ‘Freedom Fighter’ Rally Sparks Plan for Protest

A rally scheduled Sunday in Mile Square Park to raise funds for Nicaraguan Contras and other “freedom fighters” is expected to be met by protesters who characterize the soldiers as “terrorists.”

Americans for Freedom Fighters, a fund-raising organization that formed two months ago and holds meetings in Garden Grove, is sponsoring the event, to begin at noon in the Euclid Street park. Politicians including Reps. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) are slated to speak, as well as several military leaders, including Laotian insurgent leader Gen. Vang Pao and Lee Thang, a former admiral in the South Vietnamese Navy.

In addition, Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) will assist California Veterans for Justice and the Veterans of Foreign Wars in gathering signatures for his ongoing effort to have Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) ousted from the Legislature. Ferguson said he hopes to succeed in that effort by charging that Hayden isn’t worthy of his seat on the basis of his anti-war stance during the Vietnam War.

He said about 113,000 signatures have already been gathered, half of them from Californians and the rest from across the nation. The petition wouldn’t bring about any election or other legal process but rather is intended to convince legislators to take action, Ferguson stressed. “It’s purely political,” he said.

Twenty-six “freedom-fighting” groups will attend the rally, said Ken Ditty, chairman of the fund-raising group. “It’s a rally that will recognize freedom fighters from various countries involved in overthrowing Communist regimes,” he said, adding that organizations from Afghanistan, Cambodia, Czechoslovakia, Cuba and Angola will be represented.

However, the Orange County Coalition for Peace and Justice, which includes such groups as the Alliance for Survival, the Peace and Freedom Party, the National Organization for Women and the Unitarian Church, will hold a counter-rally from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. In a prepared statement issued Thursday, coalition spokeswoman Shirley Cereseto said that “the so-called ‘freedom fighters’ are, in fact, terrorists who are trying to illegally and violently overthrow legally constituted and legally recognized governments.”