Oakland, Iowa, was host to a controversial meeting Thursday night. The chairman of the Pottawattamie County Republican Party, Jeff Jorgensen, brought in a group to talk about the threat of radical Islam.
Protestors stood outside Oakland City Hall, disagreeing with the message from the speakers.
The Global Faith Institute invited Understand the Threat to come talk, an organization created to go over the global Islamic movement. UTT was established by former FBI agent John Guandolo and Chris Gaubatz, who both spoke at Thursday's gathering.
“I want to learn more about the threat we are facing in this county from Muslim groups, extreme Muslim organizations, international organizations,” Jorgensen said.
Jorgensen said he invited the parties to Iowa, even though the Republican Party did not officially endorse the visit.
“Muslim groups are targeting the state of Iowa, international Muslim terrorist Muslim organizations are targeting Iowa,” he said. Protesters did sit it on the meeting, holding newspapers and spreading the message they were not going to listen to the speaker’s message.
Jorgensen also said he wanted to find out whether the national group Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, is involved with terrorist groups. He said the protestors outside were involved with CAIR.
“They are obviously in cahoots, they are liberal progressive organizations, this was a coordinated effort, on a part of care and Iowa Indivisible group,” he said.
Jackie Cordon from Indivisible Iowa responded, “I never had heard of the group we are conspiring with, the only people I have conspired with are indivisible people.”
She said they just wanted to come protest.
“This is something new for us, is it kind of amazing to us that Muslim hate groups are moving into Iowa. This is not 'Iowa nice',” Cordon said.
