From what I have seen, players initiated everything happening now, then were stuck in a weird land of "is this ok to do/continue per ID rules/Server rules?" and repeated questions/inquiries to the Admins about it, to then we had a couple different posts/PM's asking Admins to do an event or something regarding the situation. So either we ignore this and do one of the other events that (I agree) should have already been done and get yelled at by those wanting an update regarding the current stalemate regarding liberty, or we do the Liberty event real quick since both sides were waiting for what's going to happen, but we then run the risk of what is happening now with people asking 'Well why Liberty and not these other ones?".
As far as indies participating, looks like for now it was decided to just have officials. I wasn't apart of that vote/planning, so can't speak from first-hand account regarding why exactly, sorry. :/