On Saturday, July 28, nearly 200 protestors gathered at noon at the intersection of Beacon Avenue South and South Columbian Way to voice their desire for U.S. leaders to improve medical care of Iraq war veterans while simultaneously ceasing funds to keep the war alive.
The event was endorsed by the Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Troops Home Now Coalition, the International Socialist Organization, and Veterans for Peace chapter 92, Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War (SNOW), the American Friends Service Committee, the Seattle Green Party, SCCC Student Anti-war Collective, the Freedom Socialist Party, Stand Up Seattle, Radical Women, and Youth Against War and Racism.
The groups were calling attention to the tens of thousands of American soldiers coming home with physical and psychological injuries, including large numbers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and then facing a government that is not providing these veterans with adequate resources and levels of care.
The controversy began earlier this year in Washington D.C. where the Walter Reed Army Medical Center was exposed for its sub-par conditions and inadequate care. Saturday's protest made a point of singling out the under-funded Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals across the country, including the one on Beacon Hill, that have denied medical health professionals in the VA system the tools they need to provide world-class care to wounded vets.
The protestors labeled the military medical infrastructure's treatment of Iraq war veterans as "shameful, especially coming from an administration who is hypocritically stating they 'support the troops.' It's time to stand up and demand better funding for returning veterans and an end to the war that is causing the casualties in the first place."
The protestors demanded an immediate end to the Iraq war, fully funding the VA system, a separation of VA funding from other funding for the Iraq war, and meeting all the demands advanced by the VA workers union, the AFGE.
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