What is Veterans For Peace?

Veterans For Peace is a national organization founded in 1985. It is structured around a national office in Saint Louis, MO and comprised of members across the country organized in chapters or as at-large members. There is an annual convention each year attended by our members, families and supporters from across the nation. Members receive periodic VFP publications.

The organization includes men and women veterans of all eras and duty stations including from the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), World War II, the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf and current Iraq wars as well as other conflicts. Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary.

Veterans For Peace is an official Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) represented at the UN.

Whether or not you wish to participate in chapter activities, please consider becoming a Veterans For Peace member. As an organization, we are what our members make us. You can be part of that effort. Help us put an end to war.

We draw on our personal experiences and perspectives gained as veterans to raise public awareness of the true costs and consequences of militarism and war - and to seek peaceful, effective alternatives.

Some major areas of concern and involvement are:

WAR IN IRAQ:
When our government threatened invasion, we conducted public forums, met with elected representatives and participated in marches to express our opposition. As the war began, we gathered in Washington, DC, with other veterans groups for Operation Dire Distress. Since then, we joined together with Military Families Speak Out and others in the Bring Them Home Now campaign and supported recently returned vets who formed the Iraq Veterans Against the War. Local chapters continue to conduct educational forums, demonstrations and ongoing Iraq memorial displays, such as Arlington West, to remember the growing human cost of the war, to end the occupation and to bring our troops hone now!

AND AT HOME:
Members and chapters actively participate in efforts to save VA healthcare and defend of veterans’ rights; to protect our civil liberties threatened by the “Patriot Act” and other repressive legislation; to provide counseling through the GI Rights Hotline to active duty military needing assistance; and providing alternative information to counter military recruiters in the schools.

VIETNAM:
VFP has worked with other Vietnam veterans to bring medical supplies, help build clinics, hospitals, and schools, advocate for Agent Orange victims and promote reconciliation and friendship between our two countries and peoples.

SOA WATCH:
Each year VFP members from across the country go to Fort Benning, Georgia, to demonstrate for the closing of the Army's infamous School of the Americas, a training center for thousands of soldiers from repressive regimes in Latin America with long records of human rights abuses.

KOREA:
After revelations of the massacres of civilians by American soldiers during the Korean War, we sent several fact-finding delegations to investigate these allegations and bring the hidden history of that war before the public. Today we continue to work for an end to that conflict through our Korea Peace Campaign.

VIEQUES:
Along with other veteran and community groups, we actively supported the people of Puerto Rico in their struggle to end the US Navy's six decades of bombing and shelling on the island municipality of Vieques. We continue to support current efforts for cleaning up the environment and return of the land to the people of Vieques.

COLOMBIA:
VFP sent fact-finding delegations to this violence-torn land and educated U.S. citizens to the US military involvement, the murder of union leaders by para-militaries and other human rights abuses, including the harmful effects of chemical defoliants used in the "war on drugs".

CENTRAL AMERICA:
In the 1980s, we opposed US sponsored wars and continue to support people struggling for their rights and dignity. We regularly send election observers to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador in support of justice and peace. Veterans For Peace was founded in 1985, as a non-profit 501c3 educational organization and recognized as a United Nations Non-Governmental Organization in 1990. Chapters and members are active in communities throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. National conventions are held annually and members communicate through quarterly newsletters as well as daily list-serve news, on line discussions groups and the national and many chapter websites.