ORLA Testimony

Audio from my December 10, 2024, #GIJustice testimony before the Oregon Senate Veterans Committee. For video, transcript, and links go to gijustice.com/blog/orla-testimony. 

Transcript

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Good morning and welcome to first formation. This is brother Logan, Isaac. Broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. This morning, I don't have a Sunday reading for you. You have this Sunday's. Reading and reflection already available. But this morning, I'm sharing with you. My testimony from the Oregon legislative assembly. From two days ago, Tuesday, December 10th. At, from 4 45 to 4 55. I gave a brief testimony about GI justice and the military improvement association. Which can learn more about it. J just to start com. And it's a short 10 minute testimony. The video. Is available at GI justice. Dot com slash blog slash O R L a dash testimony. You can find it in the show notes as well. And I don't, I haven't done something outside. RCL and reflection and a while, but I have before. And part of that is I want to keep first formation prayerful. As in literally, first formation, zero six. Or is it a six 30? But also like formation and prayer should happen. It should be prioritized in your day. And so I, for several years shared the morning. Morning prayer. Based on the revised common lectionary. And to me. Prayer is something that Abraham Heschel. Described best when he said. That when he, and the civil rights movement with Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther king. When they were marching to Selma, Heschel said I could feel, I was praying with my feet. And the motto or the slogan a first formation is get up and pray. And we sometimes have this idea that praying is kneeling down with our hands folded or cross your fingers. Crossroad. I don't know. Anyway, you know what I mean? Your hands class clasped together. And, saying things to God, maybe in your head. Maybe out loud. But that's the only part of prayer. Prayer sometimes means that we are answering someone else's prayer by what we do, what we say, how we conduct ourselves with our neighbor. And that's why prayer. Should be active. And on Tuesday, I felt. I was praying. On with my voice, but not in the typical way. And. I won't give a, all the backstory here. I want to keep it relatively brief, under 20 15, 20 minutes as usual. But I wore my combat boots. My actual combat boots from 20 years ago. In 2004, when I deployed to Iraq, I still have my same desert combat boots, the suede and oh, pause for my blood type. Because Tuesday felt like an important battle in a spiritual. Engagement spiritual war. That I've been having. With oppressive forces and injustice and. It took a lot of. Unique effort on my part to get the testimony to where it was. And I'm very proud of it. And I think it is. Reflective of where. I need to be going in the near future until there's some civil rights for the military community. There's some things I'm really passionate about and really want to do, but I feel like I can't until I know that at least. As much as I can. I've made a difference for the guy or the gal behind me. And. It doesn't have to be widespread. Doesn't have to be perfect, but I need to know that there's. Something more tangible than what we have. And if that only happens in Oregon, then by God. I've done all I can and I'll move on to some things I've been. Really passionate about which obviously is reading. And reflecting on the Bible. So here is my Oregon legislative assembly testimony before the Senate committee on veterans. And yeah, if. You hear something that resonates with you? Let me know. Let me comments on apple podcasts or Spotify or. Overcast, wherever you listen. First formation is going to continue to do a spiritual exercise for rank and file believers. And this is one of those things. That's going to be a little bit out of the box, but I think you'll, once you listen to it, you'll recognize the. Why it was important for me to include. So without further do. I will let you now listen in. To my testimony before the Oregon Senate, just a few days ago./My name is Logan M. Isaac. I'm here to provide context for two legislative concepts I authored that were submitted on September 27th by Vice Chair Senator Thatcher and Representative James Hieb. LC2560 urges Congress to conduct Public hearings on anti military bias and improved enforcement of hate crimes protections for military families. LC 2984 will be our nation's first comprehensive military civil rights act. All citizens are supposed to be equal in a democracy, but states have more rights than their residents, and some citizens have more rights than others. As a soldier, I bet my life. On liberty and justice for all. But as a veteran, I'm deprived of the civil rights my service is supposed to secure because G. I. Justice is M. I. A. I spent six years in light infantry and airborne units serving our nation as an artillery forward observer after deploying to an unjust and unpopular war. I came home to civilians. Profiting off of my service when I called for accountability. They shored up their ill gotten privilege by labeling me untrustworthy Mentally ill and disrespectful through it all I exhausted every Opportunity to bring our civil the lack of our civil rights to public attention if this is the first time you've heard of me It's not because I've been making myself Civilian bias has been throttling my voice. My mournful melody muffled by forces that prefer I open my wrists than my mouth. We cannot be serious about military suicide prevention until we are serious about human dignity for military families. Just because soldiers can take more shit than civilians doesn't mean that we should. Military training and culture is such that when veterans discover their own finitude, self harm is more intuitive than self advocacy. I refuse to live a life determined by a civilian gaze, insisting that I make myself small, colorless, dull, and numb. For caged birds, survival is a form of resistance. I'm here to sing of freedom, but it's up to each of you to determine whether you hear my song as a fearful trill or a rallying cry. What will be clear by the end of my presentation is that GI justice is MIA. I'll begin with the need for military civil rights in Oregon, then I'll speak about the memorial in the context of political and media silence. So what does military, anti military bias look like? For brevity, I'll focus my testimony on employment, education, and hate crimes. The Oregon revised statutes contain three laws intended to protect military families, none of which represent meaningful legislation, and all of them fit within employment. It's a lesson I learned after my application to the adjunct pool that a public employer was ignored. The Executive Director for Human Resources at the Lynn Benton Community College refused to confirm ORS 408 230 was followed unless I filed a 25 public records request. I know accountability comes at a cost, I just didn't realize that at a price tag. As for private employment, ORS 408 497 is no law at all, since subsection 2 makes it optional, and I quote, a private non public employer may Give preference, end quote. ORS 659A. 082 appears to have some enforceability, but I could find no Oregon case law other than the case of a National Guard Major General, Bush v. City of Prineville, which dealt mostly with attorney's fees. As far as I can tell, grunts like myself have no meaningful employment protections in Oregon State Law because G. I. Justice is M. I. A. As a resident of Benton County and an aspiring academic, Oregon State University represents the closest opportunity for me to complete a terminal degree and enter the professional workforce. But data suggests OSU is a hostile environment for veterans. According to the most recent equal opportunity and access report, veterans are disproportionately represented in the lowest tiers of university employment. At the top, you can see the census percentage of veterans in the, in as residents, workforce is something like 5. 2%. 7%, their academic tenures is 1%. So as and as we go down, the numbers get closer to representation. But as a whole, veterans are only 43% utilized at OSU. The diminishing reputa representation is a trend at OSU, although responsible for the funding and construction of Memorial Hall after Union, after World War I. Memorial Union after World War One, veterans voluntarily moved to Snell Hall in 2019. But, if you're looking for battle buddies at the address listed online, you're met with seven arrows pointing you in the other direction. Like a warning label. Proceed with caution. I know it's important for vet centers to be able to offer anonymity and respite from civilian bias, but invisibility should be an option, not an expectation. Despite serving the third largest student population, the OSU Veteran Center doesn't get the same treatment as other centers. Maybe because OSU thinks military has no culture? Sequestering military students penalizes humility while making invisibility non negotiable. An echo of the refrain beaten into us at boot camp, shut up and drive on. You think veterans don't know? Just check the EOA data on discrimination and harassment complaints. They're the only population that successfully shuts up. Soldiers learn to keep our heads down because when you speak up, you get shot down. As we'll see with hate crimes, civilian bias is just there to make sure we don't forget our training. And if we don't silence ourselves, civilian journalists and politicians will gladly do it for us because GI justice is MIA. On July 4th, 2010, my local American Legion hall in Albany was burned to the ground in a three alarm fire. It took five months and the assistance of federal law enforcement agencies to finally arrest Trent Allen Fox. After passing a mental exam, he took a plea deal that allowed him to avoid trial, leaving members of the American Legion Post 10 without an answer as to the why of the matter. Eight months before the blaze, Congress passed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. Section 4712 of the HCPA, known as the Soldier's Amendment, sorry, known as the Soldier's Amendment, created protections from hate and bias for soldiers and their dependents up to five years after discharge. The only civil rights law with an expiration date, by the way. In his speech introducing the landmark bill, President Barack Obama made no mention of the Soldiers Amendment, a chilling precedent that subsequent administrations have shamelessly maintained, from the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights and the EEOC, to the Departments of Labor, Education and justice. Oops. The prohibition on attacks of United States servicemen on account of service, or 18 U. S. Code section 1389, has never been enforced by the FBI. Not when Trent Fox burned down a Legion post. Not when Antonio Martinez targeted enlisted soldiers of a recruiting station in Baltimore. Not when Mufi Elfke targeted regulars of his New York City pizza parlor coming home from deployment, and not when Munir Abdelkader targeted an entire military family in Cincinnati, including their child, for a televised beheading. Their targets are G. I. Does because soldiers identities are the only part of them that receive meaningful protections. America prefers its sacrificial lambs nameless and faceless. Every soldier, a no body for everybody except their own body. Military suicide is just collateral damage of civilian privilege, because GI justice is MIA. To conclude, let me draw our attention to the moral failure of the so called fourth estate in order to provide context for the memorial. Having a free press used to mean protecting journalists from political influence, but now it names the price American consumers expect to pay for things to which they feel entitled, like freedom. In an attention economy like ours, salaries are paid with the ads, not the verbs, not the words. When sensationalism is what sells, service must be sensationalized to be noticed. Civilian bias forces soldiers into one of three caricatures. The victor, Instills pride as though our war heroes can do no wrong on our behalf. The villain evokes panic as though flexing your individual, your index finger is a specialized skill. The victim deserves pity as if soldiers have everything to receive and nothing to give, but responsibility is the price of power. The decline of journalism is not the fault of consumers. Journalists turn a blind eye to civilian bias because they're civilians blinded by their own bias. From powerhouses like the New York Times to our own The Oregonian. After a veteran was charged with intimidation in 2017, both outlets called it a hate crime. As though veterans are only newsworthy as perpetrators, but not survivors. Because G. I. Justice is M. I. A. Civilian stereotypes persist because there's a grain of truth in them. But when a few grains get a disproportionate amount of resources, civilian stereotypes become silos for Americans to sort everyone from friends and family to complete strangers. Military families are a minority governed by elected officials who do not represent them. Civil rights are the political expression of human dignity. My life has no value if laws protecting it go unenforced. FBI Director Christopher Wray has already ignored two congressional inquiries asking why the Soldier's Amendment has never been enforced, the first from the House in 2019 and the second just two months ago from our own senior senator. The memorial will be the third legislative attempt to hold executive agencies accountable, but it will only succeed if the press, the And legislators alike demand better stories be told about soldiers and veterans. Military families need civilian allies because G. I. Justice is M. I. A. I'm tired of being labeled untrustworthy, mentally ill, and disrespectful for asking why my family and I are denied the rights my own service supposedly secures. I've petitioned Congress, the press, veteran service organizations, the list could go on. And now there's two legislative concepts set. Set for consideration by the most powerful entity in our union, a state legislative assembly. These sponsors, these concepts need sponsors before session begins in January. So I'm asking, who will step up to the mic to sing with me of freedom? At best I'll feel the little remedy, but at worst, the world. G. I. Justice may be M. I. A., but don't let it be dead on arrival. I ask for the time and opportunity to respond to any questions or comments the committee may have. Questions from the committee? Seeing none.