Vets Against Trump & Common Defense & VoteVets & The Huffington Post & Veterans for Peace – 2018-08-18 00:44:42
https://act.commondefense.us/signup/cancel-trumps-parade/
Trump’s Military Parade Is Postponed.
Now Let’s Cancel It!
Tell Congress to shut it down
Vets Against Trump and Common Defense
WASHINGTON (August 17, 2018) — This is huge news. Last night, the Associated Press reported that Trump’s military parade has been POSTPONED.
Since February, we’ve been on the front lines demanding that this egotistical parade be cancelled. Now, after months of public outcry from veterans, military families, and concerned people, our hard work is paying off. But we can’t let up the pressure — not even for a second, because Trump won’t rest until he fulfills his dream of lining the national mall with tanks and banners in self-aggrandizement.
I can’t stress it enough: this is a BIG win. In the last month alone, more than 3,100 Common Defense members including 700 veterans signed up to strategically converge on DC. We’ve been hard at work meeting with allies and planning a powerful response in the streets. Numbers like that are terrifying for petty tyrants like Donald Trump. We showed him — and all his complicit GOP enablers — that our movement is a serious force to be reckoned with.
We’ll have more to say on this news in the coming days. But right now, we need to send a message that we won’t be satisfied until their postponed parade turns into a cancelled one.
ACTION: Sign our petition today, and tell Congress to shut down Trump’s parade for good. Let’s send a message that we won’t rest until this battle is fully over. Add your name today: send a message that we won’t rest until Trump gives up on this plan entirely.
Vets Against Trump is at the very core of the Resistance movement and our work continues to be possible only because of your continued support, generosity, and dedication. For that, we’re eternally grateful.
Let’s do this.
Perry O’Brien
US Army & Afghanistan War veteran
Organizing Director, Common Defense
Instead of a War Parade,
Let’s Have a 5k Run for Vets and Peace!
Jon Soltz / Vote Vets.org
(August 17, 2018) — Last night we heard the news and this morning Donald Trump made it official on his Twitter feed: The Military Parade is canceled.
But Trump did say this in his tweet: “Maybe we will do something next year in D.C. when the cost comes WAY DOWN.”
Well, here is the thing, last night, VoteVets submitted a Letter of Intent with the D.C. Government to do a 5K-foot-race around the National Mall for Veterans Day 2019. One K for each of Donald Trump’s Vietnam War draft deferments. And we’ll do it to raise money for a good cause like eradicating veterans’ homelessness.
Add your name to encourage D.C. to support our request:
ACTION: Sign our petition: Tell the D.C. city government that you are eager to work with them and support a VoteVets 5K next Veterans’ Day. Together, we can stop the next parade while doing some good for a good cause.
We stopped this parade. Together. Veterans and military family members made this ego-driven abomination such a headache that even Trump couldn’t bear it.
And we’ll do it again next year, as well.
Jon Soltz
Iraq War Veteran and Chairman
Trump Blasts DC Politicians Over Postponed Military Parade
A military parade has long been a desire of Trump —
now he says he’ll attend an Armistice Day parade in Paris instead
Marina Fang / The Huffington Post
(August 17, 2018) — President Donald Trump on Friday protested a decision to postpone his planned military parade, criticizing Washington city leaders and announcing that he’ll attend an Armistice Day parade in Paris in November.
Donald J. Trump
The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up! I will instead . . .
. . . attend the big parade already scheduled at Andrews Air Force Base on a different date, & go to the Paris parade, celebrating the end of the War, on November 11th. Maybe we will do something next year in DC when the cost comes WAY DOWN. Now we can buy some more jet fighters!
The Pentagon said Thursday that it would postpone Trump’s parade indefinitely because of ballooning costs. The Defense Department estimated the cost at $92 million, including $50 million for the Pentagon and $42 million for other government agencies, a Pentagon official told CNBC. The parade had been scheduled to coincide with Veteran’s Day this year.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, responded to Trump’s broadside in a tweet that referenced the “realities” of the parade’s estimated $21.6 million cost to the city.
“Sad,” the mayor remarked.
MurielBrower
Yup, I’m Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington DC, the local politician who finally got thru to the reality star in the White House with the realities ($21.6M) of parades/events/demonstrations in Trump America (sad).
D.C.’s estimate includes more than $13 million for police, and several million more for emergency medical services and traffic control, a spokeswoman for Bowser told HuffPost.
A military parade has long been a desire of Trump, who admires the strongman practices of authoritarian leaders. He reportedly wanted military vehicles at his inauguration parade last year, and later expressed a desire for his own military parade after seeing one celebrating France’s Bastille Day during a visit to Paris.
Veterans For Peace Condemns Military Parade
Veterans for Peace
(August 17, 2018) — Veterans For Peace completely condemns the Trump Administration’s plans for a military parade later this year. We call on all people who believe in our nation’s democratic ideals to stand together and say no to this outrageous, pomp and circumstance parade of military personnel and hardware for no reason other than to feed a pompous ego.
The Administration claims that the purpose of the parade is to give, “a celebration at which all Americans can show their appreciation.” But there has not been a call by U.S. service members or veterans for a parade. In fact, Military Times conducted an informal poll with more than 51,000 respondents. As of the afternoon of February 8th, 89 percent responded, “No. It’s a waste of time and troops are too busy.”
If the president wants to show gratitude to the troops, provide real support:
* Develop better programs and services to reduce suicide rates
* Cultivate a culture where asking for help to manage Post Traumatic Stress is not perceived as weak.
* Stop trying to privatize the Veterans Health Administration and provide it with more funding and staff.
* Continue to reduce the number of homeless veterans.
* Increase the pay of service members who must use SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as food stamps) to feed their families.
* Stop Deporting Veterans, separating them from their friends and families including their children. Thank them for their service by bringing them home.
Finally, stop these endless wars and turn away from war as the main tool of US foreign policy. Nothing is more sacred to a soldier than peace. Countless deployments and a foreign policy that consistently creates new enemies is abusive and immoral. It guarantees a stream of deaths and broken families, bodies and minds. Killing and hurting people does not come easy.
With all this in mind, Veterans For Peace asks, what is the real reason for this parade? It can’t be for the people in uniform. Trump has been ramping up US current wars which have no end and continue to deplete the service members he claims to support.
After sixteen years of war, the US has sent more troops to Afghanistan, with no plans to withdraw in sight. The US is keeping a force in Syria and continuing a presence in Iraq nearly fifteen years after the March 2003 invasion.
Trump is set on a conflict with Iran though most of the world is trying to work through the tensions. And the US has troops in 20 countries in Africa that until October of last year, no one seemed to know about.
The parade proposal is only one of the ways Trump has been preparing the country for a new war on the Korean Peninsula for months. He keeps reminding us that all options are on the table. He has escalated rhetoric with the president of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un. He has all but said, war is the only option. And now Vice President Pence is attending the Winter Olympics in South Korea to ratchet up tensions.
This parade is an attempt to increase emotional zeal and pride in the US populace for our Armed Forces. It is an effort to quash dissent by elevating US military prestige and daring anyone to speak against, “the heroes that protect us”. He is attempting to pave the way for an attack on North Korea that will not be questioned without looking as if dissenters hate this country and will not support the men and women defending us.
But this is only part of his larger effort to change the meaning of our democracy. If this president is allowed to continue to increase his personal power, by default it will increase the power of the executive branch, with the military as the nation’s central institution.
This is the natural outcome of years of abdication by Congress, (both Republican and Democrat) to hold the executive branch accountable for the conduct of endless wars with no boundaries, bloated military budgets, extrajudicial killings and torture, while also giving the executive branch limitless tools for surveillance.
This is a parade, not about service members, but about a delusional president who sees himself as the American strongman. The parade is one more step towards making his delusion our reality.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
