Share Your Stories of Advocacy from Memorial Day and the Congressional Recess

This weekend, legislators are once again home in their districts to observe the Memorial Day holiday alongside the men and women they represent. Many legislators will join VFW members and advocates who will gather to honor the brave American men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our nation, hoping to hear our concerns on the issues facing service members, veterans, and military families. If you seize the opportunity to advocate this week on behalf of our nation's veterans and want to share your story, we want to help spread the word on the VFW Capitol Hill blog.

For more than a century, VFW has helped to get passed into law virtually every significant quality-of-life legislation for service members, veterans and their families. VFW has also helped to defeat bad legislation that would reduce or eliminate those hard earned programs, which is why our sustained voice in Washington is only as strong as the voice of VFW members and all of our veterans’ advocates around the country.

Without your help and your grassroots action in communities from coast to coast, accomplishments like the Post-9/11 GI Bill, Agent Orange presumptions, veterans’ hiring preference, survivor benefits, advance health care appropriations and Family Caregiver benefits would not have been possible.

If you don't know where to begin, the VFW offers a variety of tools to help you reach out to your elected officials and discuss many of the most pressing national issues facing our service members, veterans, and their loved ones.

To army yourself with the latest VFW Legislative Priority Goals, click here.

To learn about key bills VFW is working to pass in Congress, click here.

To find contact information for your congressmen and senators, click here.

The VFW Capitol Hill blog brings together the efforts of the VFW Action Corps and the VFW National Legislative Service to provide updates in real time on veterans and military issues as they develop in Washington and around the nation. We hope that you will send us your stories and help us inspire members to reach out to their representatives and take action!

To send us your news, use the Blog Submission Form posted here, or simply email photos and stories directly to vfwac@vfw.org.

Does “Agent Orange Corn” Debate Exploit Vietnam Veterans?

Every day your VFW sifts through the headlines, looking for stories related to key issues within the veterans’ community. When we saw a heading late last week reading “Agent Orange Corn,” it naturally caught our attention. This unusual story is about a debate brewing in American agriculture over a new kind of herbicide-resistant corn, but it touches on a potentially sensitive subject for America’s Vietnam veterans, which is why we want to know what you think.

Dow AgroSciences is seeking U.S. Department of Agriculture and EPA approval for their new genetically-modified corn resistant to 2,4-D — a chemical that can be used as a high-powered herbicide, but which was also an ingredient in the notorious Vietnam-era defoliant known as Agent Orange. Dow says that the new corn – officially called “Enlist,” but known to critics as “Agent Orange Corn” – is necessary for farmers because invasive weeds have developed immunities to traditional herbicides.

Critics are concerned that the use of 2,4-D herbicides on American crops would pose a serious public health risk, pointing to research on Agent Orange exposure that links the chemical to certain kinds of cancer, Parkinson’s disease and other health conditions.

Proponents of “Enlist” say that the campaign against “Agent Orange Corn” is just a scare tactic environmentalists are using to exploit public sympathy for Vietnam veterans, citing that the chemicals 2,4,5-T and dioxin were the ingredients in Agent Orange responsible for the litany of health conditions associated with exposure to the defoliant, not 2,4-D.

Both 2,4,5-T and dioxin are off the market; 2,4-D, however, is EPA-approved for home lawn care and has not been officially classified as a human carcinogen.

To learn more about the issue, check out New York Times coverage by clicking here.

So what do you think?

Does the debate over Agent Orange Corn exploit the real health problems faced by our nations Vietnam veterans?

Yes, environmentalists shouldn't exploit our vets to make a bad pointNo, veterans should be worried that this chemical could get in our foodOther, I'll leave my thoughts in comments

pollcode.com free polls