Why Tulsi Gabbard Mysteriously Disappeared from People’s Summit

For almost six months, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard was scheduled and advertised to speak at the premiere progressive conference in this country, the People’s Summit, just as she did last year. She was slated to give a talk on June 10 titled “Peace and Justice in the Era of Trumpism.” On May 28 (or thereabouts), she was quietly removed from the speakers’ list and someone replaced her at the same talk.

Rumors swirled that Gabbard had been uninvited after a May 26 hashtag campaign #TulsiGottaGo highlighted her pro-war, anti-Muslim, anti-Syrian refugee record and support for India’s BJP, a right-wing neoliberal party that attacks the religious freedom of non-Hindus. After a few days, the People’s Summit organizers denied via Twitter that she has been uninvited and claimed that a “scheduling conflict” (rather than sound political judgment on their part) prevented her from speaking.

This raised more questions than it answered: Why did it take so many months to figure out that Gabbard had a scheduling conflict? What event or events was Gabbard planning to attend instead of the People’s Summit?

On June 9, Gabbard sent out an email (below) revealing where she would be instead but conveniently neglected to mention some important details relevant to the People’s Summit/#TulsiGottaGo controversy.

UFC fighter Max Holloway became featherweight champion on June 3 and Hawaiian public officials quickly organized a victory parade for him and Yancy Medeiros.

The point here is this: there was no victory parade for Gabbard to attend as of May 28 when she was removed from the People’s Summit speaking schedule because Holloway had not yet won the featherweight championship. Which means there was no “scheduling conflict” at all.

The “scheduling conflict” was a lie, one probably told to People’s Summit organizers by Gabbard and/or her staff which they understandably took at face value, just as Vice-President Mike Pence took Mike Flynn’s word that he had no communications with Russian officials during the transition at face value.

This would not be the first time Tulsi Gabbard’s staff have lied about her schedule. In 2014, she skipped a veterans’ hearing to do a surfboard photo-op with Yahoo News. This hearing was specially moved from Washington, D.C. to Hawaii to make it easier for the island’s veterans to attend so they speak directly to their elected representatives. As Honolulu Civil Beat reported:

“U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard skipped an August hearing on veterans care in Hawaii so she could go surfing for a Yahoo News profile.

“Despite telling Civil Beat at the time she missed the hearing because she was delayed in another meeting, Gabbard’s staff acknowledged last week that she was instead tied up with a Yahoo News reporter in Waikiki where she was surfing for a video the news outlet was shooting. … The video aired on the news website Sept. 19, a month later, and last week Gabbard also included clips from it in a fundraising message she sent out.

“On Aug. 19, Gabbard failed to show up at a U.S. Senate field hearing in Honolulu about the treatment of veterans and problems in the Veterans Administration. The hearing was being chaired by Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, who had expected Gabbard to attend and did not know the congresswoman was not going to show up.”

The empty chair next to Senator Mazie Hirono in the photo above is Gabbard’s. Here is where she was instead:

So what is the real reason Tulsi Gabbard pulled out of the People’s Summit?The most likely and plausible explanation given the above set of facts is that she got wind of the #TulsiGottaGo hashtag campaign and decided to avoid any potential in-person confrontation at the summit between herself and the Muslim, Syrian, Palestinian, South Asian, Queer, and anti-war activists behind the campaign.

After all, this is someone who has refused to debate her general election opponent three Congressional election cycles in a row and refused to debate her primary challenger in 2016. The courage of conviction is not exactly Tulsi Gabbard’s strong suit and people of color denouncing her many regressive positions at the People’s Summit would be a PR disaster for her since many progressives are simply unaware of her alarmingly right-wing record.