Not Fair

The officials who decide which organizations may have booths at the International Street Fair in Orange either don’t know anything about Amnesty International or can’t be bothered to learn something about the group. Whatever the reason for their rejection of Amnesty International’s request for a booth, the decision is unfounded, unfair--and inconsistent with the fair’s own guidelines.

The Orange chapter of Amnesty International was rejected because it did not meet the fair committee’s definition of a service group. Adela Graves, vice president of administration for the fair, said that fair committee guidelines prohibit the distribution of propaganda or intervention into any political campaign.

Graves said she was also bothered by the fact that Amnesty International, which has won the Nobel Peace Prize, “is opposed to the death penalty here and all over” and that one of its members in Orange once participated in a political demonstration.

Flying in the face of her stated reasons and logic are the facts: Amnesty International has no government ties, takes no partisan political stands and did not plan to hand out any kind of “propaganda.” The organization that writes letters seeking the release of nonviolent political prisoners around the world is much less “political” than the Orange chapters of the Democratic Party and Republican Women’s Federated, both of which have booths at the fair this year.

And those partisan political groups, no doubt, have members who at one time may have participated in a political demonstration or who oppose capital punishment.

Amnesty International, which has helped to free political prisoners from cells in the Soviet Union, Argentina and many other repressive dictatorships, is an educational organization whose presence would be no more out of sync with the fair’s atmosphere than the booths of the political parties. The Amnesty chapter has asked Jess Perez, the mayor of Orange, to help reverse the fair committee’s arbitrary rejection. He should do so.