Skip to main contentThe issue of whether to support President Obama's military intervention in Libya has prompted one former congressional candidate to quit his leadership in the Pacific Green Party of Oregon.
Michael Meo tells WW he resigned from the Green Party's state coordinating committee during a March 27 teleconference in which five committee members debated what to say in a press release on Libya.
After debating the merits of the military intervention, the committee voted to put out a press release that does not condemn the bombing. So Meo says he resigned his position and hung up the phone.
"I'm disappointed, and I will have to continue fighting against unnecessary wars in some other venue," says Meo, who joined the party leadership in 2008 and ran unsuccessfully last year against U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.).
Meo—who retired in January from his job as a math teacher at Benson Polytechnic High School—says he had insisted on a press release that condemned the intervention in Libya. But Meo says two of the five members on the phone supported military action, and in the end a majority approved putting out a release that does not condemn the bombing.
Committee member Seth Woolley says he participated in the conference call and was one of the members who supported limited military intervention. Woolley—who ran for Oregon Secretary of State in 2008—confirmed Meo's version of events.
"In an active massacre, limited intervention—with Arab League support—can be justified," Woolley says.
Woolley says the news release is still being written, and he expects it to be out in a few days.
WWeek 2015