A small group of veterans and county leaders came together yesterday to protest statements made by Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, in front of the Historic Pima County Courthouse.
All in all, about nine protesters showed up, including Pima County Supervisor Jennifer Allen, State Representative Betty Villegas and State Senator Priya Sundareshan.
Aiden Swallow, an Army veteran and candidate for State Legislature, said she came as a veteran and victim of sexual assault to protest the end of anonymous reporting.
“As someone who is also a sexual assault survivor — and I served in the military for nearly 20 years — I think that’s appalling and disgusting and I want to talk about that,” said Swallow.
Secretary Hegseth recently ordered the Navy and Marines to replace anonymous reporting with confidential reporting in cases of discrimination and harassment. Anonymous complaints for these issues are no longer filed as Military Equal Opportunity complaints.
Unlike anonymous reporting, confidential reporting requires identifying information from the person filing the report — although that information is still kept confidential except in cases involving imminent harm or the committing of a crime. The Air Force and Army ended anonymous reporting in July.
Bullying, sexual harassment and hazing can still be reported anonymously.
Other protesters spoke out against Hegseth’s climate change denialism. Last spring, Hegseth shut down over 90 climate change studies and said in a social media post that, “The (Department of Defense) does not do climate change crap."
Melissa Cordero, the protest’s organizer and Deputy Director of Climate Justice for Veterans Power America and Common Defense, said that the two issues were intertwined.
“Service members and Mother Earth have something painful in common. Both have been expected to absorb damage in the name of a mission, and remain silent about the scars,” she said. “Strength cannot mean demanding unlimited sacrifice from people, communities, and the planet while treating accountability as a convenience.”
While Cordero gave her speech, she laid out pieces of paper with block letters drawn on the back, which eventually spelled out “NO BODY IS DISPOSABLE”.
As the afternoon wind threatened to blow the papers away into the hot and largely empty plaza, other veterans in attendance stepped forward, collected stones from the ground, and placed them on each page to ensure the message could be read.
