On Veterans Day, a day meant to honor service, dozens of veterans gathered at City Hall Park with a different mission, protesting what they call the growing militarization of the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re heading towards fascism. And to me, we have to be out on the streets,\u201d Navy veteran Bob Peilbach said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just makes no sense to me, the approach that we are taking,\u201d Army veteran Susan O\u2019Neill said.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Dozens of veterans gathered at City Hall Park to protest what they call the growing militarization of the city
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The demonstration targeted ICE operations, cuts to social programs and what organizers fear could be future deployments of National Guard troops to the city under the Mamdani administration
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Veterans say they want leaders to make clear what happens if orders given by the federal government conflict with their oath<\/p>\n
The demonstration targeted ICE operations, cuts to social programs and what organizers fear could be future deployments of National Guard troops to the city under the Mamdani administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re actually saying, \u2018Vets say no war in our cities.\u2019 So no ICE, no cuts to vital services while we\u2019re increasing spending for militarized police or endless wars abroad,\u201d organizer Thom Keppen said.<\/p>\n
Keppen served in Afghanistan. He says National Guard members could be ordered into city streets. Veterans want leaders to make clear what happens if those orders conflict with their oath.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want Kathy Hochul to say, \u2018If you defy these illegal and immoral orders, we\u2019ll defend you,\u201d Keppen said.<\/p>\n
For others, those concerns echo lessons from their own service decades ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was against what\u2019s been going on since I got out of the Army because I saw the racism in this country. And now they\u2019re arresting people on the basis of their skin color,\u201d Army veteran Tarak Kauff said.<\/p>\n
Veterans Day marks the armistice that ended World War I, a holiday first created as a reminder of peace. These veterans say honoring service also means confronting what they see as threats at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour oath is to the Constitution. The oath is not to your commanding officers,\u201d Army veteran Michael Handy said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Veterans Day, a day meant to honor service, dozens of veterans gathered at City Hall Park with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[109,25,388,9,24,11,10,12,108,87,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-36729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-louis-finley","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}