||| FROM SHARON ABREU |||


Each year our local school district holds a Veterans Day celebration. It concerns me that our schools continue to celebrate those who fought in wars without acknowledging the tremendous damage done to the people – mostly innocent civilians – where these wars occur – the damage done to their bodies, families, homes, communities, livelihoods, water supplies, energy infrastructure, and every aspect of their lives. We don’t see it, and we need to see it. Our students need to know this or we are denying them a critical piece of their education to be engaged citizens.
It’s also extremely important that people, especially students, who are inheriting a polluted planet with serious impacts of global warming, understand the huge  environmental impact of U.S. military activity, not the least of which is a huge carbon footprint – or as Veterans for Peace says it “carbon bootprint”. (See https://www.veteransforpeace.org/take-action/climatecrisis)
There is much information available online about all of this, from PFAS poisoning water on Whidbey Island, to Native Americans dying in cancer clusters in Alaska, to CO2 emissions to toxins absorbed by high school students in JROTC programs.
I would be happy to do a presentation on this for our schools or to set up a series of presentations by people I highly recommend who have been researching and presenting on these subjects for years.
I acknowledge that it’s also important for our students to know how many U.S. veterans return to the U.S. missing limbs, cognitive abilities, suffering from PTSD, and how many commit suicide.
Here in the 21st century, there is a huge opportunity to transition away from our country’s dependence on military and defense industry jobs (and arms sales to countries that do not share our democratic values) to much-needed life-affirming jobs which create value for everyone, including apprenticeships for students not planning on attending college.
I highly recommend that we return to celebrating Armistice Day, the holiday originally celebrated on November 11 – a solemn day to celebrate peace and an end to wars, most of which at least have been unnecessary, illegal and immoral.


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