If you missed any portion of the recent struggle between organizers of the 11th Annual Long Beach Veterans Day Parade and members of the three veterans groups they excluded from Saturday’s parade–Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and Iraq Veterans Against the War–tonight’s Long Beach City Council meeting is your chance to catch up.

Members of the three groups will be in the audience for the meeting, which begins at 5 p.m. in Council Chambers at City Hall, and they’re planning to send someone up to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting.

“They’re going to mostly complain about how it’s such an injustice that they’ve been denied their rightful place in the parade,” says MFSO’s Pat Alviso, whose son, a Marine, returned from an Iraq tour in June.

But is complaining the right word for what will happen tonight?

Another way to put it might be asking–asking for the same rights as the veterans groups which were allowed to march on Saturday, because their members do not oppose the Iraq war.

Alviso says that the three anti-Iraq war groups are anxious to work with the city in hopes they’ll be allowed to march in next year’s parade–which is only about 360 days away.

That’s all they want: to put city folk at ease about next year’s parade–and to set the record straight on this year’s event.

“I think the whole concept of them thinking that we were going to protest was just a way to bar us from the parade,” Alviso says. “But I don’t think the public thinks that. They just think, ‘Parade, antiwar protestors–of course they’re going to protest that.’ ”

Alviso says these three veterans groups never planned to protest.

“[Ninth District Councilman] Val Lerch and [parade organizer] Martha Thuente continue to use that word but it’s just not right,” Alviso says. “We were never going to protest.”

If they want to speak tonight, the trick will be being one of the first 10 people to fill out a public comment card and give it to the city clerk 15 minutes before the meeting starts.

That’s what you have to do if you want to speak for a tightly-regulated three minutes.

If you’re No. 11 through infinity, you’re stuck–and all you can do is just wait and watch. Or watch from home. You can do that, if you have a computer and a high-speed Internet connection. Go here to find out how.

Tags: 11th Annual Long Beach Veterans Day Parade, California, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Long Beach, Long Beach City Council, Martha Thuente, Military Families Speak Out, Pat Alviso, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas, val lerch, Veteran's For Peace