Conservatives hold rally in Westwood

  Students Arian Haig (left) and
Carlene Natan at Monday’s rally during columnist
David Horowitz’s visit to UCLA .

By Sophia Chakos-Leiby
Daily Bruin Contributor

Controversial right-wing speaker and columnist David Horowitz
and author Dinesh D’Souza drew 200 students from UCLA and
surrounding colleges to Westwood Plaza Monday and prompted an
on-campus counter-protest.

Horowitz gained notoriety last January for his “10 Reasons
Slavery Reparations are wrong ““ and Racist Too”
campaign in college newspapers. Publication of the ad sparked
national controversy at universities such as Brown, Princeton and
UC Berkeley. He has since begun a campus speaking tour at colleges
across the country.

As Horowitz spoke on terrorism and his opinions against slavery
reparations Monday, about 70 members of the African Student Union
staged a counter-protest in Meyerhoff Park.

ASU organized the protest because, members said, Horowitz uses
racist ideology to speak about African Americans. He claims that
African Americans are the prime beneficiaries of slavery, said
third-year political science and African American studies student
Anica McKesey.

“We understand that he has the right to express his
viewpoint,” McKesey said. “Instead of being
reactionary, we wanted to produce a forum to have the campus
understand the implications of him coming here.”

As ASU members walked down to Westwood Plaza to join other
protesters from the Spartacus Youth Club ““ a Marxist group on
campus ““ Horowitz criticized UCLA academia, arguing that it
does not support a politically diverse environment:

Fifth-year political science student Simon Perng said students
on campus are apathetic in some ways.

He said that Bruin Republicans sponsored Monday’s
“Rally for America” to bring to campus underrepresented
conservative perspectives, such as avid support of the United
States’ capitalist economy and the Bush administration, out
into the open.

“We wanted to show academia at UCLA ““ as well as the
greater Los Angeles and California ““ that there are students
on campus with this perspective,” Perng said.

Fourth-year history student Lital Spiegel, a member of the
Spartacus Youth Club, said the rally offered more than just another
political viewpoint. She specifically criticized Horowitz and
D’Souza’s political approach.

“(Horowitz’s) purpose is to shut up any dissent of
this system … D’Souza says that if you protest the war, you
are un-American. This takes us back to the days of McCarthyism and
political witch hunts,” Spiegel said.

Not everyone who attended the rally and counter-protest strongly
identified with the right or left perspective. Many students
stopped to listen to the debates as they passed by Westwood
Plaza.

Fourth-year theater student DJ Gugenheim stayed to hear the
protesters’ viewpoints.

Throughout the event, Gugenheim said he noticed a gap between
the left- and right-wing perspectives ““ a gap he said
prevented the free exchange of ideas.

“They were just shouting at each other, so I decided to
get in the middle to create a dialogue for myself,” he
said.

In the end, Gugenheim said he only re-affirmed his old
opinions.

“There are definite problems in America, and it’s
unsafe to turn your back on these problems … The answer is
somewhere in the middle,” he said.