In 1990, when I lived in the fair metropolis of Manchester, NH, the town mothers and fathers decided that the city couldn't afford to foot the bill for the annual November Veterans Day parade. In a city that has one of only two Junior ROTC programs in the state and a well-placed scattering of American Legions, VFWs, and other ex-military watering holes (and the airport used to be an Air Force base), saying that the public would not support a Veterans Day parade, one of the defining moments of a Manchester November, was equivalent to erecting a platform in the middle of Elm Street, standing on top of it waving a red flag with a hammer and sickle, and inviting any Commies left in the world to come in and finish off the soul of America. (This image captures the tone, if not the exact editorial phrasings, of the enduring Nacky Loeb and her artillery battalion, the Manchester Union Leader.) They got their parade.
But their protests got me thinking about what it means to be a vet. According to the various veterans organizations filing their disapproval, a vet is someone who should be honored because he or she served the country by being in the military, whether that service involved being a clerk or a soldier killed in battle. But this is a very narrow definition of service. Many Americans have served their country without being in the military, and it might do us all some historical and intellectual good to expand Veterans Day celebrations to include them as well.
One group that comes to mind is one that most Americans belong to: the working class, the laboring class. Now, we don't hear much about these people. A recent issue of Extra (put out by Fairness and Accuracy In the Media) detailed how labor issuses are pretty much ignored by newspapers and television (striking Soviet miners got more press than the Pittston coal strike in Virginia.) But while Trumps come and Iacoccas go, the grunts who clean, assemble, repair, and deliver keep what's left of America afloat. And they give their lives to do it. Ten thousand workers a year die right at their jobs, while another 50,000 to 60,000 are maimed in some way by American's economic cuisinart. They have shed blood for capitalism; they should be honored as vets.
Another group who should be honored as vets, as people who lived and died for America, are African-Americans. It may not be chic after a decade of Republican Social Darwinism to point out that African Americans are worse off today than 25 years ago (as the Urban League keeps pointing out every year), but it's true. We as a nation need to understand the aftershocks of 300 years of slavery, and we haven't yet. Slavery didn't end that long ago -- this month, the last surviving Confederate widow died -- and African-Americans have only had a protected right to vote (that is, full citizenship) since 1964. But their blood helped build the nation, even if they didn't have full access to the wealth they created. They should be included.
I'm sure you can think of many others who should be in the muster for a proper Veterans Day: migrant workers, political activists, people around the neighborhood. Let's have a bigger parade and honor them as well. In this way, service to America will lose its military glow, and we can concentrate on real national security: food, shelter, good jobs, justice, freedom.
(September 1995)