We can remember Jay Aubin, the pilot, who met his wife on an aircraft carrier, and told his mother before shipping out, ‘If anything happens to me, just know I’m doing what I love.’
We can remember Ryan Beaupre, the former track star, running the leadoff leg, always the first one into action, who quit his job as an accountant and joined the Marines because he wanted to do something more meaningful with his life.
We can remember Brian Kennedy, the rock climber and lacrosse fanatic, who told his father two days before his helicopter went down that the Marines he served alongside were some of the best men he’d ever dealt with, and they’d be his friends forever.
We can remember Kendall Waters-Bey, a proud father, a proud son of Baltimore, who was described by a fellow servicemember as ‘a light in a very dark world.’
And we can remember David Hickman, a freshman in high school when the war began, a fitness fanatic who half-jokingly called himself ‘Zeus,’ a loyal friend with an infectious laugh.
We can remember them. And we can meet our obligations to those who did come home, and their families who are in the midst of a different, but very real battle of their own.
(Source: barackobama, via bestkeptlacedup)
Civil Rights March, Washington, 1963.
(Source: anneyhall, via nocaloriesinpussy)
U.S. VETERANS OF IRAQ AND AFGHAN WAR THROW THEIR MEDALS AT THE NATO SUMMIT
Sunday’s Pro-Peace demonstrations marked the largest protest in a week-long series of actions against the NATO summit. The march was led by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. At the conclusion, Iraq Veterans Against the War held a ceremony where 50 some veterans discarded their war medals by hurling them defiantly in the direction of the NATO summit. The publication of the following statements are not intended to impose any sort of political or ideological beliefs. They merely seek to amplify the voices of a group of courageous patriots who risked their lives on the frontlines, saw firsthand the devastating consequences of combat on military and, particularly, innocent civilian populations of both sides and to share their points of view regarding the legitimacy and viability of these specificwars – all of which are part of the larger “War on Terror” which more and more appears to be a monolithic excuse to project American power into any region of choice.
(Source: proactivism, via mosaicsunlight)
