Local News in Brief : Countywide : Group Protests Sending of Troops to Honduras

Orange County members of a national group opposing Nicaraguan Contra aid delivered letters to their congressmen’s local offices Monday, protesting the deployment of U.S. troops in Honduras.

Three groups of Pledge of Resistance members, totaling more than 50 people, turned up during the lunch hour at the offices of Reps. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) and Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach).

Dorothy Callison, county coordinator of the group, described it as “one of many actions (by the Pledge of Resistance) happening across the country to express mourning and outrage” at the U.S. government’s move.

About 150 of the group’s 350 Orange County members turned up for a demonstration Saturday at Anton Boulevard and Bristol Street in Costa Mesa, she said.

The group is planning to resume Friday evening vigils with banners and signs protesting U.S. policy in Central America. They halted such vigils after Contra aid was voted down in Congress last year.

“We thought we could have a breather,” said spokesman John Smith, one of the 35 demonstrators who appeared in a show of “frustration and outrage” at Badham’s office. They delivered individually signed copies of a letter protesting the movement of troops to Honduras.

“The ‘show of force’ put on by U.S. troops in Honduras is in fact a means of supporting and supplying the Contras with aid and equipment that Congress has just legally denied them,” the letter says.