Activists Denounce Endowment’s Critics : Controversy: Two dozen members of the Long Beach/Orange County chapter of the National Campaign for the Freedom of Expression plan an organizing meeting for July to rally support for the NEA.

About two dozen arts activists lashed out at critics of the National Endowment for the Arts on Tuesday night and announced a July 12 organizing meeting to rally greater Orange County support for the embattled federal agency.

At the first meeting in Orange County of the recently formed Long Beach/Orange County chapter of the National Campaign for the Freedom of Expression, arts supporters targeted Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita), one of the NEA’s most vocal foes, as the focal point for local action.

“We’ve set a date to get Orange County artists, arts leaders and others together to start networking . . . to get the word out and to generate interest and become part of this movement,” said Joe Felz, director of the Fullerton Museum Center, on Tuesday at the meeting at the Huntington Beach Art Center, also the site of the July 12 meeting. Felz is one of five planners of the July meeting.

Felz, who said he was acting not as a museum center representative but on his own behalf, spoke specifically of increasing county involvement in the Freedom of Expression campaign, a coalition of artists and arts supporters. The local group recently sent mailers to hundreds of Rohrabacher’s political contributors.

Rohrabacher, whose district straddles Los Angeles and Orange counties and includes Huntington Beach, has accused the NEA of funding obscene and sacrilegious art. He and other conservative politicians have been working to impose tight content restrictions on the art eligible for NEA grants, a move that artists nationwide have condemned as an attempt at censorship.

Legislation that would impose content controls is scheduled to be voted on this summer when Congress considers reauthorization of the NEA.

Several Orange County arts groups have taken public positions supporting the NEA, have sent pro-NEA letters to their legislators and have urged their members and audiences to do the same.

But Naida Osline, another organizer of the July meeting, argued that not enough has been done locally. Greater unity among county arts supporters is needed, and that is one goal the coming meeting is intended to meet, Osline said. Osline is director of the Huntington Beach Art Center, but she said she was speaking on her own behalf.

Osline also denounced a recent Costa Mesa City Council action in which the council moved to withhold a city grant from South Coast Repertory until the theater company could prove that it had not used city money for a pro-NEA flyer distributed at performances.

“I think there’s a need to get Orange County people together to begin to fight what I see as a trickle-down effect” of the NEA controversy, which played a role in the Costa Mesa incident, she said. “I think that kind of thing is likely to happen more.”

Organizers hope to draw as many as 300 people to the July 12 meeting, which begins at 8 p.m. and is free. It will include educational forums, speakers and updates on pending legislation. In addition, members of the Fullerton-based Poets Reading Inc. literary group are scheduled to perform readings.