Demanding that Congress “prioritize our safety and our future, not more war,” Rep. Barbara Lee unveiled a resolution proposing up to $350 billion in cuts to the Pentagon budget by closing U.S. military bases overseas, ending ongoing conflicts, scrapping weapons programs, and eliminating President Donald Trump’s Space Force.
Read in more detail where the cuts to spending are going to be made. Click on this url: Barbara Lee Unveils Plan to Cut Up to $350 Billion From Pentagon (truthout.org)
The latest project from Warrior Songs is their new CD, The Last Thing We Ever Do. . Their aim is to help heal Vets through Music.
Here is a video of one of the songs, “Let It Go,” by Larry Reed with Frogwater, based on the experience of veteran Charlie Walton, about getting over survivor’s guilt. You will find more videos on our website https://www.warriorsongs.org/
The CD release is taking place at Turner Hall Ballroom in Milwaukee on Aug.8, from 2 to 6 pm. The musical lineup includes 10 of 14 contributing artists including: Lisa Johnson, Vets on Frets, Jake Froelke, Kyle Rightly, Larry Reed with Frogwater, Jeff Mitchell, Aaron Baer and Paul Wisneski, Jason Moon, The Mambo Surfers, Watermelon Slim, and Elvis Thao and The Creatives. A donation of $10 is asked for civilians. The event is free to veterans. Everyone receives a complimentary CD. Find Out More (click here)
Freedom Sisters is the first and only digital magazine by and for Women Veterans. Each month Warrior Songs in featuring a different song created by women veterans. In return, friends and supporters can get a 10% discount on a year’s subscription at this special link. With each subscription, Warrior Songs and Women Veterans Social Justice share in a $10 donation. They’ve already featured Women Veteran Social Justice founder and former Warrior Songs board member BriGette McCoy. WVSJ was recently awarded the Medal of Honor Societies 2020 Citizen Honors Community Service Award. Click here to subscribe at a discount and save.
Join the Leave No One Behind Coalition in a mural installation and art exhibition in Santa Paula, CA
Saturday, April 17, 2021,11am PDT
Corner Cottage
925 E. Main Street, Downtown, Santa Paula
FB event, https://www.facebook.com/events/1516033725400864/
#LeaveNoOneBehind
Details
The Leave No One Behind Mural Project is embarked by a coalition of veteran support groups, immigrant organizations, and academics. Through a multi-sited public art project entitled “Leave No One Behind,” the coalition urges the Biden-Harris administration and Congress to enact immigration policy to repatriate Deported Veterans, protect Childhood Arrivals, end family separation, and reunite families.
Through a multi-sited public art project, the project seeks to uplift the stories of Deported Veterans, Dreamers, childhood arrivals, and permanent residents.
The VFP Ventura County group is proud to invite you to join us at the unveiling of the mural in Santa Paula.
A Facebook Live will be available during the event as well if you don’t wish to attend in person.
#LeaveNoOneBehind
#BringDeportedVeteransHome
#NewWayForwardAct
#Fix96
#FamilyReunification
#ImmigrationReformNow
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The U.S. Army has fired or suspended 14 officers and soldiers stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, following an investigation into sexual assaults and murders at the base, including the bludgeoning to death of 20-year-old soldier Vanessa Guillén, whose remains were found in July, 2020.
Follow this link to the news story: Shut It Down: Calls Grow to Close Fort Hood After Probe into Murders & Sexual Assaults at Army Base | Democracy Now!
On the weekend of March 30-31, 2019, VFP Chapter 112 was invited to attend and present at the California Progressive Alliance’s founding convention at the union hall in San Luis Obispo, CA. Please check out Chapter 112 member Michael Cervantes, who presented the CPA proposal on Corporate Power, Militarism and Perpetual War. Go to url: Bylaws, Platform and Proposals – (californiaprogressivealliance.org) and scroll to the proposal Corporate Power, Militarism and Perpetual War to read the proposal and note that we are signatories to the proposal. To view Michael’s presentation go to minute 11:23 in the video here.
Check out Justice For All Ventura County latest interview with George J. Sandoval with Veterans For Peace Ventura County. Mr. Sandoval, a veteran and filmmaker, is currently working on a documentary about deported veterans. You can see the powerful trailer during the interview.
To learn more about George visit http://www.westendproductions.tv/
To see the Justice For All video interview and documentary trailer with George Sandoval go here: https://youtu.be/vqtiExzkQZM
[excerpted from a previous event given at the UU Church in Ventura, Jan. 2020]
“How Deportation has banished thousands of U.S. Veterans to Mexico”
About the topic: Mr. Sandoval has embarked on his latest project taking him to Tijuana to film and interview U.S. military veterans deported by our government. Mr. Sandoval joins a growing number of American elected representatives, veterans and civil liberties groups demanding justice for military veterans and to Bring the Deported Veterans Home!
Thousands of veterans of the U.S. armed forces have been unceremoniously deported. Many are combat veterans who sustained physical wounds and emotional trauma in conflicts going back to the war in Vietnam. Many were decorated for their service. But service records notwithstanding, the U.S. has seen fit to kick them out of the country they swore to defend. The largest number of these veterans live exiled in the border cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
The vast majority had been in the United States lawfully for decades and long ago lost any ties to the nations in which they were born. Many do not speak Spanish, and Mexico is a foreign land far from home.
Our federal government failed to ensure that service members were naturalized during military careers, or shortly thereafter, although nearly all deported veterans were eligible to naturalize during their service. Deportations have denied veterans comprehensive medical care they would receive in the U.S., leaving many to die or suffer. Nearly all deported veterans have left behind families who have struggled with the absence of a spouse, sibling, parent or child.
About George J. Sandoval: Mr. Sandoval is the executive director and founder of the non-profit Oxnard Film Society. In 2015, He produced and co-curated the exhibit, We Remember- Ventura County to Vietnam and Back, for the Museum of Ventura County, which included a memorial wall honoring the 114 soldiers from Ventura County who died in the war. From 2001-2014 he was a member and past president of the Ojai Film Society. He has produced and directed numerous documentaries including El Campo: A Brief History of the Piru Labor Camp built during the Bracero Program; The Chinese in Ventura County; Oxnard -The Changing Face of an American City; and The Moment a 30-min. film in collaboration with writer/poet Aram Saroyan.
In 90 days, the treaty will enter into force, cementing a categorical ban on nuclear weapons, 75 years after their first use.
veterans for peace ventura county, QAnon, conspiracy theory
TICKETSIt’s been 75 years this month since the start of the Atomic Age, with the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, but its trail of destruction has never ended.
Dark Circle covers both the period’s beginnings and its aftermath, providing a scientific primer on the catastrophic power of nuclear energy while also relating tragic human stories detailing the devastating toll radioactive toxicity has taken on people and livestock—focusing in large part on Rocky Flats, Colorado, whose plutonium processing facility infamously contaminated the surrounding area.
Documentary Grand Prize winner at Sundance, Academy shortlisted for Best Documentary, and Emmy winner, Dark Circle is no less potent today than it was 40 years ago.
Film Sponsor: Veterans for Peace – Ventura County Chapter #112
Here’s an amazingly good online talk by Erik Endstrom to a meeting of the
Massachusetts Peace Council. Endstrom is a graduate of Stoughton High
School (MA), West Point, and combat in Afgahnistan. He’s the author of a
new book, “Un-American: A Soldier’s Reckoning of Our Longest War “.
Endstrom enlisted after 9/11, and has a lot of insights in his book into
military recruiting in high schools.
After leaving the military he got an MBA from Oxford University and worked
for the Boston Consulting Group in the US and abroad. He brings that
analytic skill to his assessement of recruitng, war, PTSD, etc.
https://www.enedstrom.com/
Draft Registration and Draft Resistance:
http://Resisters.info
Compulsory National Service:
http://NationalService.info
Health Care Workers and the Draft:
http://MedicalDraft.info
Edward Hasbrouck
edward@hasbrouck.org
http://hasbrouck.org
This week Fire Drill Friday is all about WATER. There will be many impacts of climate change, but among the most important are impacts on water resources. The key impacts will be changes in rain and snow, rising temperatures and hence rising demand for water, especially to grow food, worsening water quality, and worse extreme events including floods and droughts that overload systems built for more stable weather patterns–all of which could contribute to increased militarization as the climate becomes more unstable and access to resources are limited. Watch the Teach In: Water Can’t Wait.
Garett highlighted these connections when he spoke at today’s rally. Watch Veterans For Peace’s Executive Director, Garett Reppenhagen speech:
“War in general is destructive to our planet in so many ways. In Iraq I saw firsthand total demolition of utility infrastructure. Destroyed plumbing made available clean water scarce and further damage to waste systems contaminated water supplies. The fertile crescent was nurtured by the Tigras and Euphrates Rivers, now too polluted to swim in. Today, precious few can even now count on something so simple as a safe cup of tap water.”
At the end of his speech, Garett shared an experience that many of us can relate to:
“When I came home I became very self destructive. I was a sniper in Iraq and because I perpetuated those crimes I felt a heavy weight of grief and guilt and finding my way into activism started to save my life. Repurposing myself and finding a new identity in the movement to serve this country in an HONEST way and protect my community in a REAL way that allowed me to start healing my moral injury.
If activism can save my soul then activism can save the soul of this country”
Veterans For Peace knows that it is critical to continue making these connections between war and the environment and to stand up for climate justice.
Will you stand with us?
“We need to burn more oil or suffer horribly” is slowly being recognized as a vicious deception, as more and more people come to understand that we need to burn less oil or suffer horribly. “We need to dump more money into war preparations or suffer horribly” is the same type of statement. The notion that a population must be prepared to fight off an invasion and occupation violently or do nothing may someday be understood as on a par with “We need to eat the roasted flesh of livestock or eat nothing.” Some of us grasp that there are other things to eat. Refusing to grasp that there are other ways to resist a military is daily becoming a more irrational act.” READ COMPLETE ARTICLE
