President Trump tweeted in late July that the military would not “accept or allow” transgender service members. The news blindsided transgender members of the U.S. military deployed in hotspots and active war zones around the world. “There’s a lot of anxiety and chaos that’s been injected into the system. It’s a national security issue, we need [our service members] focused and doing their jobs. Not afraid of losing them,” says Matt Thorn, executive director for Outserve-SLDN, the nation’s largest advocacy group for gay and transgender service members. To be clear, nothing has been put into law yet. Politico obtained a message from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, that said there will be no changes in how the military deals with transgender service members, “until the President’s direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance.”
Until then, recent history, advocates and elected officials collectively offer precedent for protecting LGBTQ rights within the military.
Outserve’s fight for LGBTQ rights in the military
OutServe began as a secret Facebook group during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” days when gay men and women could be discharged from the military for their sexual orientation. Since connecting with more than 4,000 service members, the group merged with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network to form OutServe-SLDN, an influential lobbying force fighting for civil rights within the armed forces for LGBTQ service members. The organization’s efforts have paid off. In 2011 the military (with the support of the U.S. Senate) repealed its historic anti-LGBT “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. And OutServe-SLDN’s founder, Josh Seefried, was contacted by Pentagon officials to help shape future policy. In 2012, a report issued by the Palm Center, an independent research institute on public policy, found that a year after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” was repealed, there was no change in service members’ abilities to complete their missions or work — putting conservatives at ease on how the change in policy would affect day-to-day duties. Then two years ago, the Senate nominated Eric Fanning, who is openly gay, to his former post as Army secretary under President Barack Obama. The ban for transgender service members was lifted in June 2016, removing the last barrier of service for members of the LGBTQ community. The decision came after a study found that the cost to pay for transgender service members’ gender reassignment and medication would cost less than one percent of the entire military budget, according to a RAND Corporation report that was conducted while the ban was still in place. In July 2017, OutServe-SLDN worked with the American Military Partner Association against the Hartzler Amendment, which cut government funding for transition surgeries and hormone therapy treatments for transgender service members. The amendment failed 214-209.
As a result of President Trump’s announcement, OutServe-SLDN is preparing for legal battles to help protect transgender military members currently serving and to fight any regulation that might come from the White House. “If it comes to it, we’re prepared to go to court if he puts anything on paper,” says Thorn.
Bipartisan support for LGBTQ service members
Working in tandem, policy makers from both sides of the aisle are also standing up for LGBTQ rights. Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who lifted the transgender ban last year,saidTrump’s decision would, “send the wrong signal to a younger generation thinking about military service.”
Sen. John McCain, who has recently gained renewed fame (thanks to his speech on bipartisanship), said in a statement, “We should all be guided by the principle that any American who wants to serve our country and is able to meet the standards should have the opportunity to do so — and should be treated as the patriots they are.” Though, he reserved his opinion on whether transgender service members would serve until medical studies were done.
And other members of Congress have returned fire on Twitter. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah posted a statement on the social platform that said, “I don’t think we should be discriminating against anyone. Transgender people are people, and deserve the best we can do for them.” Meanwhile, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio wrote, “All who serve in our military deserve our gratitude [and] respect. We should not turn away people who are willing [and] able to serve this country.” MORE:Marriage Equality Happened, But LGBTQ Youth Still Face Struggles. Not Here
In the spring of 2007, during his second tour of duty in Iraq, 1st Lt. Travis Manion was killed by a sniper’s bullet. His sister, Ryan, has always remembered his courage and his dedication to service and to doing the right thing. So much so, that she thought of herself as his younger sister, even though she was 15 months older. After her brother’s death, Ryan and her family established the Travis Manion Foundation in his honor. Their goal was to highlight the strength of character within the military community and inspire others to serve — both in their local communities and abroad. Among the friends and family who helped Ryan and her family through their grief was Lt. (SEAL) Brendan Looney, Travis’s roommate at the United States Naval Academy. In direct support of the foundation’s mission, he dedicated his next tour of duty in Afghanistan to Travis. But in 2010, tragedy struck again. Watch the video above to see how Ryan and Brendan Looney’s wife, Amy, have become the leaders of one of the country’s top veterans’ organizations.
Life on a forward operating base is dirty (no showers, only water bottles and baby wipes) and isolating. Supplies arrive via airdrops and internet connection can be fickle at best. On most military bases, deployed soldiers use WhatsApp to communicate with loved ones at home, but those living on remote ones are forced to make expensive, long-distance phone calls. For those service members, seemingly antiquated calling cards remain the go-to. Providing free talk time is the nonprofit Cell Phones for Soldiers. With more than 4,500 drop-off locations nationwide, the organization accepts donated devices: The newest are sold for market value, and the oldest are scraped for precious metals. (More below on the ones in between.) Profit from those sales goes towards purchasing calling card minutes. During the height of the troop surge in the Middle East, Cell Phones for Soldiers sent more than 15,000 calling cards each week. With the number of deployed troops decreasing in recent years, Cell Phones for Soldiers has expanded its services to serve veterans here at home. It works with all the major wireless providers to give free airtime — more than 500,000 minutes each month — to former service members. As for those donated cell phones that are in good enough shape to be used? They’re given to vets, too. By the end of 2017, the organization hopes to sign up 100,000 veterans for free cell phones and service. Bruce Jewett, a 55-year-old veteran living in Vermont describes the phone he received from the organization as “a godsend” and says that it helps him manage the 10 to 12 doctors’ appointments he has each month to treat his shoulder and back problems. The organization also issues one-time $500 grants to service members who find themselves in a financial hardship, such as being unable to afford rent, dental bills or car repairs.
Mindfulness, the practice of being awake to the present moment, is now in vogue in American workplaces as varied as Google, Goldman Sachs, Aetna and General Mills. Backed by scientific research of the cognitive benefits of ancient Buddhist meditation, corporate types thinking of productivity and the bottom line quickly trained their workers how to focus using mindfulness. Outside of finance, tech and manufacturing industries, NationSwell found seven more workplaces where you find employees reaping the benefits of meditating on a regular basis.
1. Concert Hall
Where: Tempe, Ariz.
After studying mindfulness for four decades, Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is renowned as the field’s mother. Her concept of mindfulness differs from the common practice, in that she believes no meditation is necessary to change the brain’s chemistry; instead, she achieves mindfulness by existing in a state of “actively noticing new things,” she tells NationSwell.
As part of her research, she once split the Arizona State University Symphony Orchestra into two groups and instructed each to play a piece of music by Johannes Brahms, which she recorded. Langer asked the first group to remember their best performance of the familiar piece and try their best to replicate it. She told the other group of musicians to vary the classical piece with subtle riffs that only they would recognize. Langer taped both performances and played them side-by-side for an audience. Overwhelmingly, listeners preferred the second one. To Langer, it seemed that the more choices we make deliberately — in a word, mindfully — as opposed to the mindless repetition, the better our end-product will be. The most important implication for Langer came later, when she was writing up the study: In America, she says, we so often prize a “strong leader to tell people what to do,” but as the orchestra’s performance proves, when an individual takes the lead instead of doing what someone instructs her to do, a superior result is the likely outcome.
2. Primary School
Where: East Village, New York City
“The research is pretty conclusive: when kids feel better, they learn better. One precedes the other,” declares Alan Brown, a consultant with Mindful Schools where he offers mindfulness training to the private school’s freshman and sophomores. Brown incorporated a serious practice into his life at a week-long silent retreat, after “jumping out of my skin, reading the toilet paper, doing anything but to be with your own thoughts and with yourself.” He now teaches kids how to be attuned to themselves and recognize feelings that may be subconsciously guiding their lives, like when they’re hyped up with sugar or are stressed out about a test. (Solutions: spending a moment in a designated corner calming down, breathing through a freakout to restore higher cognitive functions.)
As someone in the caregiving profession, Brown reminds himself and his fellow teachers they need to adopt mindfulness practices as well. With them, “the way I interact with others comes from a place of much greater compassion for the kids: clearly this young person, who is not a fully-formed, self-regulating adult, is probably trying their best and probably has some really significant hurdles outside the classroom. I’m not going to let that get to me.” If teachers expect similarly enlightened behavior from their kids, Brown adds, they have to know, “You can’t teach what you don’t have in your own body” and better embrace a meditative practice to see the results at every desk. The UMass Mindfulness in Medicine program teaches the benefits of meditation to their staff members.
3. Hospital
Where: Shrewsbury, Mass.
Modern mindfulness was formalized in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where Jon Kabat-Zinn created an eight-week meditation routine to reduce stress for the hospital’s chronically ill patients that’s now replicated worldwide. Back on the medical campus where it all started, a new mindfulness program is being offered this summer for the people on the other side of treatment: the physicians, nurse practitioners and care managers.
The Mindfulness in Medicine program works to combat the frequent feeling of dissatisfaction about a lack of patient interaction among doctors. Instructor Carl Fulwiler gives lectures about the clinical research on meditation’s benefits, teaches 90-minute workshops for busy staffers and leads full-blown courses for a dedicated few. His teachings focus on how to avoid burnout with strategic pauses; by taking a breath immediately prior to seeing a patient, doctors can focus solely on the interaction. “Often they’re thinking about what’s the next thing they have to do or the documentation. They’re not even hearing a lot of what the patient is saying,” Fulwiler observes. With mindfulness, they can see what “might be contributing to a bad encounter, what’s preventing us from being empathetic, compassionate and more efficient in our style of communication?” The whole interaction may be over in three minutes, but having that time be meaningful is vital for helping the healers themselves feel the rewards of a demanding job.
4. Government
Where: Washington, D.C.
Change rarely comes to our nation’s capital, but that’s okay in Rep. Tim Ryan’s mind. A meditative practice equipped him to deal with legislative gridlock and partisan bickering. The seven-term Democrat representing northeastern Ohio practices mindfulness in a half lotus position for roughly 40 minutes daily — a regimen he began after attending one of Kabat-Zinn’s retreats in 2008, after which he gained “a whole new way of relating with what was going on in the world,” Ryan tells The Atlantic. “And like any good thing that a congressman finds — a new technology, a new policy idea — immediately I said, ‘How do we get this out?’” Ryan first wrote the book “A Mindful Nation,” exploring the ways mindfulness is being implemented across America, and today, in sessions of the House Appropriations Committee on which he sits, the representative advocates for more funds to be deployed to teach meditation tactics. The money may not be forthcoming just yet, but that hasn’t stopped mindfulness from gaining more new converts like Ryan every day.
5. Police Department
Where: Hillsboro, Ore.
Last month, Americans watched videos of officer-involved shootings in Baton Rouge, La.; St. Paul, Minn; and North Miami, and they read about the five cops who died in a sniper attack in Dallas. While those crises were deeply felt by civilians nationwide, they were only a glimpse of what cops encounter regularly. “Law enforcement is a profession that is deeply impacted by trauma. On a daily basis, we bump up against human suffering,” says Lt. Richard Goerling, head of Hillsboro Police Department’s investigative division and a faculty member at Pacific University. “It doesn’t take very long for police officers’ well-being to erode dramatically,” he adds, ticking off studies that track early mortality and cardiovascular issues among public safety professionals.
Through the organization Mindful Badge, Goerling teaches several police departments in the Portland area and in Northern California how mindfulness can better cops’ performance: sharpening their attention to life-or-death details, cultivating empathy and compassion that’s crucial for stops and searches and building resilience before encountering trauma. The theory goes that once an officer receives mental training, he can sense when a stressor in his environment is activating his flight-or-flight reactions and then check those instincts. “If a police officer is in their own crisis,” Goerling suggests, “they’re not going to meet that person in a way that’s totally effective.” The lieutenant is aware mindfulness isn’t a cure-all for “a landscape of suffering,” but he believes it’s a first step to changing a “broken” police culture that takes its officers’ health for granted.
6. Athletic Competition
Where: San Diego, Calif.
BMX bikers may not seem like a group that’s primed for meditation, but when an elite biker stuttered with anxiety at the starting line, his coach James Herrera looked into any way to solve the problem of managing stress before a high-stakes event. Herrera soon got in touch with the Center for Mindfulness at the University of California, San Diego, and he signed up his seven-man team for a small study into the effects of meditation on “very healthy guys who are at the top of their sport,” lead author Lori Haase tells NationSwell. Over seven weeks, the bikers practiced a normal mindfulness routine, but with extra impediments like having their hands submerged in a bucket of icy water to teach them to feel the sensation of pain, rather than reacting to it cognitively. As the weeks went on, their bodies seemed to prepare for a physical shock, without an accompanying psychological panic. In other words, participants’ bodies were so amped up and hyperaware that they didn’t need to react as strongly to the stressor itself compared to an average person. The study didn’t test whether it made them faster on the course, but it seemed to suggest that reaction times could be sped up by using mindfulness to slow down.
7. Military
Where: Honolulu, Hawaii
Like cops, members of the military have much to gain from situational awareness. A couple seconds’ of lead-time for a soldier to notice someone in a bulky jacket running into a public square could prevent a suicide bomb from taking out dozens of civilians and comrades abroad. But that’s not all mindfulness is good for in a service member’s line of duty.
Before soldiers even leave home, they must deal with leaving family and putting other aspects of their lives on hold. To prepare soldiers for deployment, University of Miami neuroscientist Amishi Jha offered mindfulness trainings at an Army outpost on Oahu to soldiers heading to Afghanistan. To fit the program into an already crowded training regimen, Jha drastically cut down the standard 40-hour model to an eight-hour practice scattered throughout eight weeks. Despite the stress of leaving that could sap the mind’s attention and working memory — “everything they need to do the job well when they’re there,” Jha notes — the mindfulness trainings prevented their minds from wandering. Tentative research Jha’s still conducting suggests those benefits persist post-deployment. Her session was just like boot camp, Jha found, only for the brain.
The son of an Air Force veteran and a history teacher, Jeff Eggers attended the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., with his heart set on learning to fly jets off of aircraft carriers. Once he learned about the SEAL program, however, his future headed in a different direction because, “I wanted to get in the business of leadership,” Eggers explains. After a “mostly straightforward SEAL career,” Eggers transitioned from operations to strategic policy, most recently serving as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.
These days, Eggers has more work-life balance and the flexibility to invest in his family (which includes two small children) that his previous military service and government work largely prevented. Serving as a senior fellow at New America, his focus on leadership remains, researching how to revitalize American prosperity by changing how the business community thinks about workplace independence and how public policy must take into account behavioral science in order to be effective. NationSwell sat down with Eggers at the Washington, D.C., offices of New America to discuss the need to create a “self-driven, self-directed, more autonomous workforce.” What is the best advice you’ve ever been given on leadership? Someone once said to me, “don’t take yourself too seriously.” We’re all the same species, and one of the greatest mistakes that occurs when people get promoted to increasing levels of seniority is that they start taking themselves too seriously. I think leaders can ground themselves in a sense of humility, empathy, awareness and a respect for others. Doing so is one of the cornerstones of effective leadership. It’s not about you; it’s about the team. Jeff Eggers in the Oval Office with President Obama, Vice President Biden and National Security Advisor Susan Rice. What’s on your nightstand? It’s David Rothkopf’s “National Insecurity,” which is professional reading. I’m writing a longer piece on how our culture of fear is undercutting our national decision-making and that’s one of the books I keep for that research. Unfortunately, my nightstand is not well equipped with enjoyable, light reads. What is your biggest need right now? My greatest need was to rebalance work, life and family, which I did. That box is largely checked, and that was a big deal. One of my big needs right now is to create a network of experts and likeminded practitioners around this idea of behavioral policy and to develop a framework for how you could, with some scale, start to influence at a strategic level how you think about public policy, how we train people to do public policy. Bringing together this kind of core network will become the people who shape and build this program with me.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job? Too many people said it was going to be easy and not to overthink it. I think that I wish more people would’ve said the opposite — that it was going to be very difficult, steady yourself; it’s going to be harder than you think. Because for me personally, my desire was to test this hypothesis: To do the work-life balance and put family first you need to accept risk and you need to leap and hope that the net will appear. I came to advocate for that in such a way that I had to promote it by doing it. I had to live it. I did and that coupled with this mantra of “don’t overthink it; it’ll be easier than you think” — whoa! The leap has been a doozy at times, and some cautionary note of, “Absolutely, take the leap, but do a lot of thinking about all the various aspects of it,” [would’ve been nice.] What inspires you? Mostly, I’m always inspired by people that I respect and admire. My parents have been the longest, consistent source of inspiration. They put a lot of their energies in to their family — invested in their family, made sacrifices for their family. But also, they significantly advanced from one generation to another in life for more opportunities and that’s pretty inspiring, especially at a time when so few people have faith in the American Dream.
Today, I’m inspired by people who have a lot of moral conviction and intellectual courage to speak up against the mainstream conventional wisdom, especially when the mainstream conventional wisdom needs to be disrupted. That takes a significant amount of courage. How do you inspire others? By making people believe there is greatness in themselves. No one needs to look to anyone else for greatness or inspiration. There’s a tremendous amount of potential for greatness is each person. Too often we look to people that we ascribe greatness as having some sort of inherent advantage that made them great and that’s not the case. I would like everyone to understand that they are themselves a superhero, a genius. There’s no reason why everyone can’t tap into that. If everyone taps into a little bit of that, that small amount of incremental change is going to be extraordinary. What is your proudest accomplishment? It hasn’t happened yet. My proudest accomplishment will be raising my kids [ages 3 and 6]. That’s going to be my life’s work.
It’s more gratifying to see pride in accomplishments made by people that work for me. You don’t get any credit for them, but in my case, they’re more important [than what I’ve accomplished]. Eggers paragliding in the Canadian Rockies in 2009. What should people know about you that they don’t? I’m a pretty avid paraglider pilot. It’s the remnants of a formerly active and robust recreational lifestyle that had to be whittled down and made manageable with a family. The only real thing that I couldn’t ever let go of is my passion for paragliding. I had a bit of a scare back in September [2015] and kind of grounded myself and I’m now going through the soul-searching process of whether I can be both a responsible dad and an active paraglider pilot. That’s kind of a big deal. [Paragliding] is kind of scratching that aviation itch that I’ve had ever since I was a tiny kid and it’s how I’ve become a pilot. So it’s very, very fundamental and hard to let go of. To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here. This interview has been edited and condensed. MORE:How This Veteran Went from the Open Sea to Open Data
What Army Wives Need to Understand About Female Soldiers, The Washington Post Much is said about bridging the military-civilian divide, but as writer (and wife of a veteran) Lily Burana realizes, there’s also a distance between the women who proudly sport the uniform and those who are married to someone wearing it. Knowing that the military is full of inspirational females — including those now serving in the Ranger division — Burana set out to build a bridge the only way she knew how: by sitting down to lunch and having a chat. Are Doctors the Key to Ending Philly Gun Violence? Philadelphia Magazine Renowned for providing lifesaving medical treatment to kids, doctors from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia are focusing their efforts on reducing the cycle of youth violence that plagues the City of Brotherly Love. The hospital’s Violence Intervention Program (VIP) grew out of internal discussions about the Sandy Hill Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., and a shocking report from the city government, which found that 5,051 Philadelphia youth were shot or murdered between 2006 and 2012. It’s difficult to know for sure if the screenings, bully prevention lessons and intensive counseling sessions, which make up VIP, is reducing the number of gunshot victims, but the outlook is hopeful, considering most participants say they desire to be a normal teenager, not one packing heat. The Power of Vision in Urban Governance, Governing Every politician may have the goal of being dubbed a “visionary leader,” but Indianapolis’s former four-term mayor, Bill Hudnut, actually was. In order to bring forth the Midwestern city’s potential, Hudnut enlisted help from Indianapolis business and philanthrophic leaders and economic development experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together, these heavy-hitters combined their strengths, collaborating on a plan that eventually brought $1 billion to the local economy — proving that collective vision and use of community assets is key to long-term impact.
When you think of special operations forces in Afghanistan, you probably picture a group of men: buff, tattooed and sunburnt. But right beside some of them, a “band of sisters” kept them safe. In her 2015 book “Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield,” journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon details a little-known Army program that assigned all-female units to support male soldiers. Known as Cultural Support Teams (CST), these women helped gather intelligence from mothers and daughters in Afghan households, while male counterparts conducted raids to find insurgents.
“In a conservative and traditional society like Afghanistan, particularly places where the insurgency was strongest, male soldiers — no matter how good they were at fighting — could not speak to Afghan women,” Lemmon recounts at a Got Your 6 Storytellers event in Los Angeles. Lemmon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who spent an extensive amount of time in Afghanistan for her previous book “The Dressmaker of Khair Khana,” reported the story of Lt. Ashley White and her unit through hundreds of hours of interviews over the course of two years. In an interview with NationSwell, Lemmon discussed what she learned about women’s role in the military during her research. What inspired you to share the story of CST in Afghanistan? It was the impossibility of the story on the surface — this group of teammates who became friends and then family at a time when women officially were banned from ground combat. Here was a group of Americans who answered their country’s call to serve, who went onto the battlefield alongside Rangers and SEALs, and who were forever changed by it. They broke ground in service to their country, and we didn’t know them. I wanted to share this slice of history we didn’t know. While embedded, what did you learn about what it means to serve as an American soldier? I saw young Americans going in and out of Afghanistan, risking their lives for their nation and for the friends they had come to love. I wanted to share that connection, that friendship, that desire to serve. What does camaraderie look like in an all-female unit? Much the same as in an all-male unit. It was about friendship and sisterhood and caring for one another — only it was even more extreme because they were all they had out there, the only people who knew and understood all that they saw and did at the tip of the spear while women officially weren’t there. How did meeting these female warriors change your idea of womanhood? This story took me into a world I had never known of women who were funny and fierce, driven and kind, intense and warm. So many times the women we see on our pages or on our screens are one or the other. I wanted to show these women in all their dimensions and to tell a story that was true to who they are and were. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon talks about her experience in Afghanistan at a Got Your 6 Storyteller event. What three words describe your experience abroad? Afghanistan is a generous, inspiring and heartbreaking place. What is the quality you most admired in the troops you met? Tenacity and grit alongside great heart. How can someone support veterans? Get involved. Listen to veterans’ stories. Help veterans with their transition into the next phase of life and be aware of the wars we have asked them to fight. Too many are too distant from the battle and don’t want to hear what it was like for the 1 percent of the country that has fought 100 percent of its 15 years of war. That must change. What unique challenges do female veterans face? We must recognize that veterans are women and women are veterans. We must expand our version of the veteran to make sure it includes women and the valor they have shown these past decades of war. Otherwise, our antiquated views of what women have and are doing keeps us as a country from offering the respect and the support they deserve from us. MORE:This Resourceful Soldier Goes From Fighting on the Front Lines to Running a Fashion Line
Redmond “Red” Ramos, a burly and bearded Navy corpsman, stepped on an IED while serving with the Marines in Afghanistan. The explosion ripped through his flesh, causing him to lose his left leg. But the Southern California resident says he felt lucky. He humorously tattooed his right calf “I’m with Stumpy” and compared his injury to a “paper cut.” In Ramos’s mind, his disability is minor. It hasn’t prevented him from being physically active. In fact, he says that it’s made him better. Within seven months of his injury, Ramos won five medals at the Warrior Games, a competition for wounded soldiers, using sports “to destroy the negative stigma associated with injury,” he says.
Last week, Ramos competed with 11 other veterans in the inaugural Triumph Games, a weeklong series of competitions in New York City, participating in a triathalon and obstacle course at LeFrak Center Lakeside in Brooklyn, a videogame event livestreamed at the Times Square Arts Center and a motorsports race upstate. The winner will be revealed on Oct. 17 by former Congressman Patrick Murphy and Al Roker, the Today Show’s weatherman, on NBC Sports Network.
The “Terrific 12” were welcomed to the Big Apple at an opening ceremony just blocks away from One World Trade Center and the 9/11 Memorial. Notables — including Loree Sutton, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs, and Damien Sandow, a WWE professional wrestler who goes by the stage name Macho Mandow — praised the warriors for their inspiring stories. The veteran-athletes proved that the well-worn narrative of former service members who are traumatized, crippled, homeless and helpless isn’t necessarily true, reiterating that veterans aren’t victims.
“This is a unique opportunity to showcase what’s great about our American veterans: their resiliency, their competitiveness, their drive and work ethic, and frankly their camaraderie,” Murphy, the first Iraq War veteran elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, tells NationSwell in an interview. It’s difficult for the average American to comprehend “the incredible sacrifice that our military and their family members go through,” adds Murphy, now a lawyer in Pennsylvania. “The Triumph Games bridges that gap in understanding.”
For all the celebration that the games embody, there’s a poignancy in the way these veterans talk about overcoming adversity. Some of them add a reminder to their story: They made it home safely, but not all of their comrades did.
Raised by a military family in Arizona, Sgt. Elizabeth Wasil signed up for the Army in 2008, right after her 17th birthday. On duty as a combat medic in Iraq, she suffered a hip injury that made her lose use of her lower left leg. She got in the pool to rehab and found joy in competitive swimming two years later. Soon, she won a gold medal in the men’s division at the World Military Swimming & Para-Swimming Open. “When my body hurts and I feel as though I can’t push any harder, I remember all of those who no longer have the choice,” Wasil says. For them, she pushes on. Editors’ note: Patrick Murphy is a NationSwell Council member.
When Eli Williamson returned from two deployments to the Middle East, his hometown of Chicago felt at times like a foreign battleground, the memory of desert roads more familiar than Windy City central thoroughfares. As he relearned the city, Williamson noticed a strange similarity between veterans like himself and the young people growing up in tough parts of Chicago. Too many had witnessed violence, and they had little support to cope with the trauma.
Applying the timeworn principle of leaving no soldier, sailor, airman or marine behind, Williamson co-founded Leave No Veteran Behind (LNVB), a national nonprofit focused on securing education and employment for our warriors. Williamson formed the organization based on “just real stupid” and “crazy” idealism: “You know what?” he says. “I can make a difference.” Since work began in 2008, with a measly operating budget of $4,674 to help pay off student loans, LNVB has eliminated around $150,000 of school debt and provided 750 transitional jobs, Williamson says.
“Coming out of the military, every individual is going to have his or her challenges,” says Williamson, who served as a psychological operations specialist and an Arabic linguist in Iraq in 2004 and in Afghanistan in 2007. “We’ve seen veterans with substance abuse issues, homelessness issues.” Additionally, at least one in five veterans suffer from PTSD, and almost 50,000 are homeless and 573,000 are unemployed.
Williamson started the group with his childhood friend Roy Sartin. They first met in high school, when they joined choir and band together. “I think we’ve been arguing like old women every since,” Williamson says. Both joined the U.S. Army Reserves while at Iowa’s Luther College and were mobilized to active duty during their senior year after the Twin Towers fell. Williamson finished his education at the Special Warfare Training Center at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, while Sartin put his learning on hold.
Upon return, both struggled with crippling interest rates on their student loans. Sartin received a call from the loan company saying that he needed to make a $20,000 payment. “Although I had the funds, it was just enough to get myself back together. So, for me, the transition wasn’t as tough, but I was one of the lucky ones.” Williamson got a bill for $2,200 only 22 days before the balance was due. Desperate, he took to the streets playing music to cover the costs.
After talking with other vets, the two realized that many didn’t qualify for the military’s debt repayment programs. That’s when they started going out to financial sources for “retroactive scholarships” for our country’s defenders. And they sought employment opportunities for former military members to help cover the rest.
Jobs and debt relief for our nation’s warriors are the main focus of LNVB, but the group oversees several initiatives, including S.T.E.A.M. Corps, which pairs vets with science, technology, engineering, arts, and math experience with at-risk youth. More than 200 students have graduated from S.T.E.A.M., but Williamson, director of veteran affairs at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, points to a more intangible benefit of his non-profit’s work: the ability for veterans “to articulate a larger vision of themselves … is our advocacy mission,” he says.
“Veterans can paint a vision for where our country needs to be, and the only reason we can do that is because you realize that you are part of something larger than yourself,” Williamson adds. “That’s a fundamental value that veterans can share, as they leave military, with the communities that they come back to.” For those who’ve just returned home from Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, in other words, service is just beginning.
Documentary films are known for sparking social change. (Case in point: Who wants to eat at McDonalds after seeing Super Size Me or Food, Inc.? What parent suggests visiting SeaWorld after seeing Blackfish?) Though 2014’s nonfiction films weren’t massive box office hits, they pointed out injustice and lifted our eyes to the doers making a difference. Here are the 10 must-see documentaries that inspired us to action.
10. The Great Invisible
BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 still darkens the coastline along the Gulf of Mexico in the form of altered ecosystems and ruined lives. Named best documentary at the SXSW Film Festival, Margaret Brown’s documentary dives deep beyond the news coverage you may remember into a tale of corporate greed and lasting environmental damage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDw1budbZpQ
9. If You Build It
Two designers travel to the poorest county in rural North Carolina to teach a year-long class, culminating in building a structure for the community. In this heartwarming story, 10 students learn much more than construction skills. http://vimeo.com/79902240
8. The Kill Team
An infantry soldier struggles with his wartime experience after alerting the military his Army platoon had killed civilians in Afghanistan. On the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ long list for best documentary, Dan Krauss’s challenging film shows how morality dissolves in the fog of war and terror of battle.
7. Starfish Throwers
Three people —a renowned cook, a preteen girl and a retired teacher —inspire an international movement to end hunger. Jesse Roesler’s film includes the story of Allan Law, the man who handed out 520,000 sandwiches during the course of a year in Minneapolis, which we featured on NationSwell.
6. Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story
A former Navy SEAL (formerly named Christopher, now Kristin) says that changing genders, not military service, was the biggest battle of her life. In retrospect, her SEAL experience takes on new importance as she comes to understand the true value of the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
5. The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
An online pioneer who developed Creative Commons with the academic and political activist Lawrence Lessig at age 15 and co-founded Reddit at 19, Swartz crusaded for a free and open internet. Another potential Oscar candidate, the film poignantly recounts how Swartz ended his own life at age 26 after aggressive prosecutors initiated a federal case against him.
4. True Son
A 22-year-old black man recently graduated from Stanford returns to his bankrupt hometown of Stockton, Calif., to run for city council. Michael Tubbs convinces his neighbors (and the movie’s audiences) you can have “a father in jail and a mother who had you as a teenager, and still have a seat at the table.”
3. The Hand That Feeds
After years of abuse from their bosses, a group of undocumented immigrants working for a New York City bakery unionize for fair wages and better working conditions. Led by a demure sandwich maker, the employees partner with young activists to fight their case against management and the food chain’s well-connected investors.
2. Rich Hill
Three boys confront impoverishment, learning disabilities and dysfunctional families in this human portrait of growing up in small-town America. The backdrop to the teenagers’lives is their Missouri hometown of 1,396 residents, where one in five lives in poverty and where the fireworks still glow every Fourth of July.
1. The Overnighters
Our top film and a favorite for an Academy Award nomination details how an oil boom draws a city-sized influx of workers to a small town in North Dakota, where they scrape by on day labor and live in their cars. With the heft, detail and narrative twists of a Steinbeck novel, Jesse Moss profiles the Lutheran pastor Jay Reinke, who welcomes these desperate men into a shelter called “The Overnighters,”to his congregation’s dismay.
Are there any documentaries that should have made the cut? Let us know in the comments below.
