On this Memorial Day Weekend, @VetsForRL & @commondefense went to the @NCGOP Convention to secure a pledge from its leaders & @realDonaldTrump to "renounce violence and implicit threats of violence" during the 2024 campaign.
Here’s what happened:
We wrote in a respectful letter delivered to 1,000 mostly MAGA delegates. "Republicans, Democrats, and Independents fear potential tragedy" this election.
Can you pledge to not engage in political violence or threats?
They booed us.
You can see the letter we delivered:
We went because this is everything we fought for - the Constitutional order, the peaceful transfer of power… American democracy.
They haven’t signed it.
To us, any politician unwilling to renounce political violence is unfit for any office.
What does it mean to you?
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1/🧵
A few awesome lines from @VetsForRL board member Lindsey Schiro in her OpEd in the @fayobserver.
“With the possibility of Donald Trump reclaiming the presidency in November, voices from the veteran’s community must speak up…”
Link at the end…
2/ “…Trump has never understood us, our devotion to service and our faith in each other. We don’t always agree on politics, but we share a common understanding of duty, honor and country.”
3/ “[Trump’s] interactions with, and comments about, military families consistently reveal a disturbing lack of respect and understanding. It started during the Vietnam era when he schemed to avoid military service.”
Last month, a 22yo nursing student was on a run at the University of Georgia. Laken Riley was an innocent woman that was killed by blunt trauma. The man arrested is a Venezuelan in the U.S. illegally and has been charged with murder.
2/
This is a tragedy. A promising young life taken by violence in a place she should be safe.
We clearly need to do a better job of controlling who enters the U.S., both for identifying threats & for making sure everyone here has documentation.
3/
But it’s also true that immigrants commit significantly *fewer* violent crimes than native born Americans.
And those here illegally are the least violent as a group.
Statistically, allowing *more* immigration would *lower* the crime rate.
Three years ago, thousands of people broke into the @TheUSCapitol, assaulted @CapitolPolice, and tried to violently stop the peaceful transfer of power.
This insurrection was intentionally fomented by its beneficiary- Donald Trump.
#NeverForgetJanuary6th
There will be people today that will tell you that you what you saw happen - in real time - didn’t really happen.
Some of them will have changed their story from condemning the violence to excusing or even denying it.
They’re cowards & crooks.
#NeverForgetJanuary6th
If you love this country
If you believe in the American Experiment
If you have sworn to support and defend the Constitution against ALL enemies
Then you have a moral duty to stand against these lies and stand for holding those who did this to account.
As Trump slinks away, we’re left wondering if perhaps America was lucky.
Lucky that our 1st national taste of fascism came from someone with disastrously good instincts, but without the drive or the competence to pull it off.
Even with thousands of lives destroyed, we escaped.
Let us resolve to never come so close to the edge again.
To hold to account those who brought this tragedy, with the law where appropriate, but socially & politically in all cases.
To raise the memories of the fallen and the stories of the abused prominently & respectfully.
To end the concept of selfishness and vengeance as patriotism.
To insist that rebuild our communities and country in a new image - one focused on mutual respect and public service as the virtues they are.
To insist that the government must work and it should for all people.
That Sgt La David Johnson’s widow should be disrespected so he could help @realDonaldTrump send the Kurds to@their slaughter?
That @SenJohnMcCain - a man who couldn’t comb his own hair because of the injuries he received while tortured in captivity but refused to trade on his family name for early release - wasn’t a hero.
To help take military budgets to fund a useless monument to border racism?
Thread: @VetsForRL, was formed by veterans of the American military who stood not only against @realDonaldTrump, but the infection of Trumpism in the United States.
1/13
Belittling American greatness, kowtowing to despots, and “flood(ing) the zone with shit”, is amongst the many evils of the man and his enablers, but it was his destruction of our common identity that is most troubling.
Calling his political opponents - other Americans - traitors, terrorists, & enemies of America, he has so damaged the political discourse that we don’t view each other as countrymen.