Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) knows a thing or two about the military.

In 2004, while enrolled with the Illinois Army National Guard’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, Duckworth was called up and deployed to Iraq. She participated in a number of combat missions as the pilot of a Blackhawk helicopter before being shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade. As a result, she lost both legs and partial use of her right arm.

After recovering, she put her focus into Veterans Affairs activism, eventually landing the title of assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In 2012, she ran for Congress and won. In 2016, she ran for Senate and won.

This photo from 2010 shows Duckworth when she was assistant secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images.

When Donald Trump, a man who received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War, attacked transgender service members, Duckworth responded as only she could: from experience.

With reports circulating that the trans military ban, first announced via tweet in July, is making its way through official channels and inching closer to becoming reality, Duckworth shared a blistering note on Facebook about unit cohesion, trust, and national security.

“When I was bleeding to death in my Black Hawk helicopter after I was shot down, I didn’t care if the American troops risking their lives to help save me were gay, straight, transgender, black, white or brown,” she wrote. “All that mattered was they didn’t leave me behind.”

“If you are willing to risk your life for our country and you can do the job, you should be able to serve — no matter your gender identity or sexual orientation. Anything else is not just discriminatory, it is disruptive to our military and it is counterproductive to our national security.”

Perhaps a war hero like Duckworth can get through to Trump.

So far it hasn’t been enough for him that the Department of Defense commissioned a 112-page report on the effects of allowing trans people in the military, finding that there weren’t any financial or medical reasons to ban them.

Maybe there’s hope that the voices of actual trans people who have served in the military might sway the president’s mind or that he can be convinced by his own words, which extolled the virtues of the military’s “shared sense of purpose” that transcended our differences, adding, “All service members are brother and sisters.”

Duckworth speaks at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

If all that fails, however, Duckworth is prepared to push for legislation that takes this decision out of his hands.

“If the President enacts this ban, which would harm our military readiness, the Democratic and Republican Members of Congress who oppose this discrimination must enact legislation that prevents it from taking effect,” she says at the close of her statement.”

There’s no telling whether such a bill would have a shot of making it through Congress and avoiding a veto, but there’s hope. After all, a surprising collection of otherwise conservative lawmakers stepped forward to criticize Trump’s ban the day he tweeted it out. They may soon have the opportunity to take it beyond simple words and show their support through action.

Read more: http://www.upworthy.com/sen-tammyduckworth-takes-trump-to-task-over-his-trans-military-ban

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti made a bold promise in 2014 when he pledged to provide accommodation for all the citys homeless veterans by the end of the next calendar year. Shortly after making the promise, it was clear that the ambitious timeline, though admirable, wasnt feasible. Los Angeles suffers from a homelessness epidemic, and even with a concerted effort by the government, the issue plaguing disenfranchised veterans would take longer to solve.

However, the city and charitable groups such as Step Up, which has been tackling this very issue for years, didnt get discouraged. They got creative instead.

During the evolution of the Los Angeles cityscape, many once-viable motels and lodges have fallen into disrepair and abandonment. Seeing these structures as yet another opportunity, Step Up began transforming one such property, utilizing civic incentives.

Not only does Step Ups new Hollywood facility give shelter to displaced veterans, but it also provides humanitarian services ranging from psychiatric care to job search assistance. Further, thanks to vouchers from the Department of Veterans Affairs, those placed in the new projects may reside there for up to 15 years free of charge.

Read more: http://www.upworthy.com/homeless-veterans-now-have-a-place-to-live-in-these-converted-motels

A woman stopped Christianna Capra at the Marine Ball. “Thank you for saving my husband’s life,” the stranger said, before giving her a big hug.

It wasn’t the first time Capra had been thanked so profusely. It won’t be the last.

As the co-founder of Spring Reins of Life, a New Jersey nonprofit focused on equine-assisted psychotherapy, she has helped more than 700 combat veterans, nearly 1,000 high-risk youth, and 100 kids grieving or dealing with trauma. But Capra takes little of the credit.

“The horses are the ones that do the work,” she says. “I’m merely a conduit that allows them to do the work.”

In the video below, veterans take part in Spring Reins of Life’s “Operation Horse.” Read on to discover how this life-changing program came to be.

Christianna “CC” Capra literally grew up a horse-person well, almost.

“From about the age of 2 to about 6, I became a horse,” Capra says with a laugh. “You had to feed me out of your hand and I wore one of my mother’s hair pieces as a tail. So that was kind of how it started.”

She was obsessed. Capra found ways to be around horses as much as possible and she got her own at 11 years old. Soon after though, she had to give up horses when she moved to New York in high school. It would be nearly a decade before Capra would be back in the saddle. In 1997, her job in publicity helped her afford her “horse habit” again, and Capra purchased a horse that’s still with her today.

But it was an offhand suggestion at the veterinarian’s office that led Capra to her life’s work.

Through one of her veterinarians, Capra learned about the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (EAGALA). Founded in 1999, EAGALA is an international nonprofit association for professionals interested in using horses to address mental health needs.

“I read the website start to finish and I pulled out my wallet and my credit card that night and signed up for both trainings, sight unseen,” she says. “I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was a cathartic moment.”

Capra trained as an EAGALA-certified equine facilitator and started her own nonprofit, Spring Reins of Life.

Spring Reins of Life offers equine-assisted psychotherapy for combat veterans with PTSD, children dealing with grief or emotional trauma, and kids in high-risk situations, such as teen violence and crime or substance abuse. Capra, together with licensed mental health professionals and the horses, works with individuals to talk (or not talk) through their grief, concerns, and fears. The group format session for veterans is dubbed “Operation Horse.”

“We don’t do a lot of talking,” Capra says. “What we do is that if the horses start to bring up something, either if they express verbally or we see physically, we might ask some questions about that. ‘So what’s happening with this horse right now?’ And then let [the veterans] project whatever they need to onto the horse and we can talk about it.”

The unique thing about EAGALA-certified programs like Spring Reins is that there’s actually no horseback-riding.

While Capra admits there is great value in therapeutic programs that offer riding, EAGALA programs are different in that they encourage individuals and horses to be on equal footing, untethered to one another.

“We work in an enclosed space, but the horses are loose. And the clients are loose too,” she says. “We’re all loose in this space; we call it our community.”

Since 2012, Spring Reins of Life has helped around 700 veterans in the New Jersey area.

“Once we come home, the war’s not really over. It’s very tough to deal with a lot of the issues that we have,” says Andrew Haines, an Army calvary scout. “Every time I leave [Spring Reins], my anxiety always goes down. I always feel more relaxed, more calm, more confident that I can do things.”

Though Capra has no military background, she’d heard of the troubling statistics surrounding the number of combat veterans living with PTSD and depression. The latest figures estimate 20 military veterans die by suicide each day. Capra knew she had to do something. Today, Spring Reins of Life is the first and only EAGALA approved military service provider in New Jersey.

Spring Reins has a contract with the Lyons campus of the local VA health care system. Veterans from their in-patient PTSD clinic come to Operation Horse once or twice during their 45- to 60-day stays. Homeless veterans from Lyons’ domiciliary program, who reside for up to a year, visit Spring Reins even more. Now, local vets with PTSD have started coming to “open” sessions at Spring Reins to work with the facilitators and horses as often as they need to. The mental health professional assisting Capra with Operation Horse is Maria Katsamanis, a licensed psychologist and National Guard veteran. Everything is HIPPA compliant and sessions are not open to the public.

“Being out here, I don’t feel like a person with PTSD,” Michael Otto Steiger a U.S. Marine Corps veteran says. “I just feel … average or normal.”

For now, Capra prays and she works. She believes in the program, and like the veterans she serves, she’s not going down without a fight.

“I believe in my heart there is the perfectly facility out there,” she says.

Capra continues to search for it and is following every lead. She is optimistic that the perfect spot will come her way. But if she can’t find one, and Spring Reins has to shutter indefinitely, her equine therapy work will continue in some capacity or another.

“Even if I had to close my doors, which I can’t even fathom the idea of that, but even if I did; I would live the rest of my life with that purpose,” Capra says. “We are saving lives right now. If that’s one a month, or one a week, or one a year even, I think that’s worth it.”

Read more: http://www.upworthy.com/this-life-changing-program-pairs-combat-vets-with-horses-the-results-are-amazing

“President Trump. I hear you watch the morning shows,” begins the latest TV spot from VoteVets, the self-described “largest progressive group of veterans in America.”

The ad, which debuted during Monday morning’s episode of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” (a show Trump reportedly watches on a regular basis), features an Afghanistan war veteran who lost a leg in combat, addressing the president directly in a voice-over.

“President Trump. I hear you watch the morning shows. Heres what I do every morning. Look, you lost the popular vote. Youre having trouble drawing a crowd. And your approval rating keeps sinking. But kicking thousands of my fellow veterans off their health insurance by killing the Affordable Care Act and banning Muslims wont help. And thats not the America I sacrificed for. You want to be a legitimate president, sir? Then act like one.”

Just minutes after the ad aired, Trump tweeted, which the group suspects may have been in response to the ad.

Trump has talked a pretty big game when it comes to how he sees the military’s role, but VoteVets has concerns about what exactly that means.

“I will be so good at the military your head will spin,” Trump said in a September 2015 interview. In one of his first acts as president, Trump signed an executive order calling for a “great rebuilding of the Armed Forces.” While those actions and statements might sound good, there’s not a whole lot of substance to them.

That’s why VoteVets is trying to reach the president where they’re most likely to be heard: on cable news.

“All we’re really doing here is elevating the voice of one of our members who wants to speak directly to Trump, and obviously, we feel he’s earned that right to do it,” says VoteVets Chairman and Co-founder Jon Soltz. “So, we just wanted to do something that was direct, something that addressed him personally, something that would catch his attention that had substance to it about the Muslim ban and the Affordable Care Act.”

While the ACA and the travel ban are receiving much attention lately, there are a number of other issues VoteVets and other veteran advocacy organizations are concerned about.

Soltz cites possible privatization of the Department of Veterans Affairs as one of the larger concerns on the group’s radar. While Trump has made some bold promises to “fix” the VA, it’s not entirely clear what that will look like. Adding to the concern, Trump held a “listening session” for possible improvements to the VA that didn’t include prominent veterans advocacy organizations.

Additionally, Soltz notes that Trump’s federal hiring freeze will hurt veterans in a number of ways. There are more than 2,000 job openings at the short-staffed VA that, due to Trump’s hiring freeze, will remain vacant. Additionally, 31% of all federal employees are veterans. For that reason, along with the fact that veterans are given hiring preference for federal jobs, the hiring freeze will disproportionately affect veterans in search of work.

Not to mention the concerns some veterans and active members of the military may have over Trump’s views on things like NATO and his general decision-making capabilities when it comes to issues of war.

But why take out an ad? Why not just flood the White House comment line and use more traditional avenues of lobbying for policy change?

Well … with the White House comment line down, people and groups have been scrambling to find new ways to make their voices heard.

How do you get through to a president that doesn’t listen to anyone outside his own circle of advisers, refuses to acknowledge any poll that shows disapproval of his performance or policies, calls any news not to his liking “fake news,” and accuses anyone who protests of being nothing more than a paid plant?

VoteVets’ strategy of targeting his favorite TV shows is an innovative approach, to say the least.

It’s an approach that brings with it another challenge, however: TV ads take time to make. That’s why VoteVets deviated from the approach they’ve used in the past veterans talking directly to the camera and instead chose to rely on a voiceover message so the audio can be swapped out as needed to keep up with the quickly changing news cycle.

“We’re interested in shooting this ad in a way that’s simple, that does not look like a political ad because it’s not. It’s a veteran’s story,” says Soltz, “but in a way that if we have to make his statements more pointed, we have the ability to do that quickly so it’s still relevant to the news cycle.”

As for why the veteran who stars in the ad isn’t named, Soltz explains that there are concerns about the veteran’s and his family’s safety, as well as a belief that “less is more.”

“If you really want to hit hard, you’ve got to say something,” says Soltz. “We don’t need to explain a lot for people to know this is a combat-wounded Afghanistan war veteran. We don’t want to distract from the visual or the words.”

To learn more about this ad, visit the VoteVets website.

Read more: http://www.upworthy.com/a-powerful-ad-challenges-trump-to-act-like-a-legitimate-president-heres-the-backstory