Veterans Rally June 6, 2025 for Unity and Purpose
‘Research budget cuts include research for substance use, mental health, and other health issues. With Project 2025’s Veterans Healthcare cuts, the potential for homelessness of veterans will grow since services for rental assistance and homelessness are greatly reduced . . . Even our active duty service members will have increased healthcare costs when the Department of Defense Tricare program is privatized . . . ‘
There is no one who has sacrificed more than our Veterans to protect Democracy, especially in wars on the frontlines battling the rise of fascism. Men and women made a life decision and took an oath to defend our constitution in confidence knowing in return their country had their back for life. With recent demolition to Veterans Affairs Healthcare, we have broken this promise.
So why are our Veterans being attacked and their basic promise of care for having served is being stolen from them?
We need not look any further than toward a Koch affiliated organization, Concerned Veterans for America, who play a major part in the Heritage Foundation, the architects of Project 2025, that have pushed relentlessly for VA privatization stealing billions of taxpayers dollars and giving these funds to private hospitals and clinics.
This would create an open checkbook for the private sector with little accountability, stripping Veterans of jobs, Medicaid and SNAP benefits, reduce eligible medical conditions making it impossible to receive disability benefits, increase healthcare costs and decrease the quality of care. This includes dental, mental, surgical, specialty, and primary.
Research budget cuts include research for substance use, mental health, and other health issues. With Project 2025’s Veterans Healthcare cuts, the potential for homelessness of veterans will grow since services for rental assistance and homelessness are greatly reduced.
Even our active duty service members will have increased healthcare costs when the Department of Defense Tricare program is privatized.
Veterans are not taking this sitting down. Tomorrow, June 6th, 2pm at the Washington DC National Mall just north of the Smithsonian National Space and Air Museum, veterans and military families from across the country will gather for the Unite for Veterans Rally, to defend the values and promises made to those who served. The Unite for Veterans Coalition, a nonpartisan, national coalition of veteran and civilian organizations including AFL-CIO, VALOR Media, Burn Pits 360, and The Chamberlain Network are organizing for unity and purpose to defend their liberties, their institutions, and the rule of law. The goal is to elevate urgent, nonpartisan issues affecting veterans and ensure the country lives up to its commitments.
In a statement in a toolkit generated by the coalition they state, “We believe each generation must defend our liberties, our institutions, and the rule of law. This march is a call to ensure that those principles—fairness, public service, accountability—are not undermined.”
Unite for Veterans Toolkit
https://www.unite4veterans.org/
Georgia de la Garza, who is from the beautiful Shawnee Forest of Southern Illinois, has served on the front lines as an organizer for social justice for many years. De la Garza has fought for Indigenous rights, Environmental Justice, Labor and Women’s rights on national and global fronts. She serves on the editorial board of the People’s Tribune.