Convention Done. Now What?
Jon Luker
It is safe to say that the convention didn’t go as many people expected. The main cause of that was that VVA National presented a Board Approved resolution to the delegates using a procedure that did not provide the opportunity to ask questions or gain a better understanding of the resolution and its effects. Their method did not provide delegates with any opportunity to challenge or recommend changes to the resolution. With maybe two exceptions, no person who rose to speak got more than 10 words out before being ruled “out of order.” My lawyer brain says that several of those rulings were, at best, premature and several more just plain wrong.
I believe the result was that regardless of the goals of the delegates attending the convention, the delegates decided to vote against the board approved resolution. I heard many say that if National was trying to do something good, they would not be trying to shove it down our throats. They would have given us plenty of time to learn about it, understand it, suggest improvements or even propose alternatives. None of that was done.
The attempts at discussion and conversations afterward did paint a picture of the attending delegates that I think will help us decide how to proceed.
First, a loud and well spoken but minority point of view is that the most important thing is being a Vietnam Era Veteran. Those folks are concerned about the future to the extent that they want those who come after us to remember us; remember our service during war time; remember our sacrifice to the community despite how we were treated by them; and, remember the war itself. When these people think “legacy,” they are thinking reputation, and preservation of history. They are concerned more with creating a museum than with figuring out how to help veterans after we are dead. Most of these people think that when we can’t do the job anymore, we should just shut down, but there is disagreement about whether that time is coming sooner or later. There is also disagreement about how long it will take to prepare and execute a simple shutdown plan.
Second, there is a group of people that appear to be in the majority who think that “Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another” is not just a cute slogan, but an oath like the one we took when entering the military. This group is not united about “when” the new generations should take over nor about how the commitment should be passed on to the next generations.
Next time, we can go into a bit more detail about the plan developed by somebody other than the National Board but presented as the April Board Plan.
Below is Jon's follow-up article about the just completed VVA Convention
*Any reference to Board or Board meetings are National and not our Chapter*
The Board Plan. A Closer Look.
Jon Luker
Let’s review the board plan so we can see some of the concerns raised by the delegates. Maybe there are fixes available.
Back in 2019, delegates instructed the board through Resolution GA-21 to develop a plan that would allow VVA to continue even after Vietnam Era Veterans had all passed away. That resolution called for changing our name and allowing non-Vietnam veterans to join. The required resolution was not presented because VVA administration could not find any non-Vietnam veterans that were willing to be trained to take our place. We saw that ourselves with Local Veterans United – nobody was interested in it. The April Board Plan calls for working with organizations that already exist and have members who may be ready to learn how to pick up where we leave off.
The April Board Plan presumed AVVA would change its name to Vietnam Veterans of America Legacy Society and that other organizations would join the newly named AVVA. We were not permitted to challenge any aspect of that presumption. Will AVVA change their name? Will they allow VVA to take over leadership of AVVA for a few years? Will AVVA want to provide administrative leadership of these combined organizations in the future? So far, AVVA has taken no action in support of the Legacy Society plan.
No discussion was permitted concerning which organizations were invited to join the Legacy Society nor which organizations were excluded. Nobody explained why the chosen organizations were chosen.
Long after the April Board Plan was shot down, we got a chance to learn a bit about the two organizations that were invited to join the Legacy Society: Sons and Daughters In Touch (SDIT) and Mission POW-MIA. This is what SDIT’s website says about the group:
“Sons and Daughters in Touch is an all-volunteer, national support organization committed to uniting the Gold Star sons and daughters of American servicemen who were killed, or who remain missing, as a result of the Vietnam War. In addition, our membership includes family members and many military veterans who served with our fathers — all dedicated to furthering the mission of SDIT.”
I didn’t see a mission statement on their website. Mission POW-MIA’s website records the following statement about itself:
Mission: POW-MIA pursues its mission of seeking the fullest possible accounting of missing Americans from all past conflicts through partnerships, research and outreach; by collaborating with like-minded organizations; advocating for families as they S.E.A.R.C.H. for answers; conducting research and investigations to aid in case resolution to end uncertainty; informing and educating current and future generations; honoring the service and sacrifices made by past generations and their families and ensuring the Nation fulfills its promise to “leave no one behind.” Mission: POW-MIA is an inclusive organization recognized for its transparency, determination, and dedication to end the uncertainty faced by generations of America’s POW-MIA families.
Will either of these organizations officially adopt the promise that never again will one generation of veterans abandon another? They don’t have that mission now.
The new Legacy Society would be a combination of AVVA, Mission POW-MIA and SDIT. The first Board of Directors of the new Legacy Society would include three VVA officers, one appointed VVA State Council President, one appointed Regional Director and six elected directors. AVVA would elect 2 Directors, SDIT would elect 2 and Mission POW-MIA would elect 2.
The April Board Resolution also called for eliminating the 10 Directors at Large that make up part of the current VVA Board of Directors. Most of these directors chair one of the VVA committees. Most are members of one or two more committees. We were told at the Region 5 preconvention that the reason for reducing the VVA board size was to make the Legacy Society board small enough to be manageable. One issue we were not allowed to discuss at the convention was the timing of the reduction of the board size. Even though the new organization is not yet formed and AVVA has not committed to the plan, the April Board Resolution would have meant that 2025 was the last time we would elect board members at large. How will the work of those directors get done when they are not there to do it? What happens to the Agent Orange Committee? Who would be left to raise member concerns to the entrenched VVA administration?
Remember that the Legacy Society won’t do Veterans Benefits nor sue the government or others. Veterans Benefits and some of the Government Affairs work is already in the process of being handed off to Veterans Voice of America (VetsVOA or VVOA). VetsVOA was created by National leadership in 2020. This was done so that no matter what happens in VVA’s future, veterans with open claims that cannot be serviced by VVA for whatever reason can have their claims handled by people who were recruited and trained by VVA. VetsVOA will not be invited to sit on the board of directors of the new Legacy Society. I’m not sure why that is.
While the general idea of VVA working with other organizations to morph them into a conglomerate that is committed to our mission as well as theirs seems possible, I would hope that the planners are much more interested in keeping us posted about the who, what, when, where and why than they have been so far.