Excluded veterans will walk in Martin Luther King Jr. event, possibly Veterans Day Parade

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM

An adviser to Lt. Gov. John Garamendi—a veteran whose grandfather was a Superior Court judge in Long Beach—says that pacifist veterans groups excluded from last November’s Long Beach Veterans Day Parade in North Long Beach will likely be permitted to march in this year’s event.

“They’ve been solicited to apply,” says Wade Sanders, Garamendi’s senior adviser on military and veterans affairs, who says he had a series of conversations last month with veterans, parade organizers and city officials.

That development would be an about-face for organizers of the Veterans Day parade. Last year they charged that the veterans groups—Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace—didn’t “fit the spirit of the parade” and would politicize the event . . . even though other parade regulars, like the American Legion, certainly have their own political perspectives.

But that development may not have actually developed, yet.

Parade organizer Martha Thuente insists that no decision has been made on whether to invite the veterans groups to march this November, and that the issue won’t even be considered until organizers’ first meeting of the year, in February.

Really? Sanders sounded pretty sure of himself. The retired Navy captain, who once rented in Belmont Shore when he was stationed here (His roommate? A young man named John Kerry), asserted that “The city is willing to let any member of any organization march as long as they conduct themselves accordingly.”

If that’s the case, however, no one appears to have told Councilman Val Lerch, whose Ninth District is home to the Veterans Day parade.

“The city is not reaching out” to the veterans groups, Lerch maintains. “It’s the [organizers] board.”

Lerch did allow that members of the three veterans groups have been invited to the committee’s meeting, the last Tuesday in February, and that they’ll all talk about it then. Thuente is clearly in no mood to talk about it before then.

When asked about her communication with Sanders, the interview ended rather abruptly.

“For the third time, Theo, I will tell you that I can’t comment on that,” Thuente said, meaning she couldn’t comment on what members of the organizing committee—which she heads—are thinking, and how the committee will decide when it meets next month. “What part of ‘No’ don’t you understand?”

Then, Thuente hung up on me.

Meanwhile, Sanders continues to sound confident that he’s got everybody on their way to a compromise.

“In the parade itself, I got both parties to understand that the parade is there to honor veterans. This may not be the appropriate place to carry protest signs,” Sanders said. “Just carry your banner and walk. That’s kind of where we are.”

And the more Lerch talks, the more he sounds as though he agrees. Except he’s opposed to letting the anti-war veterans wear T-shirts protesting the Iraq war, either. As a nonprofit corporation, Lerch said parade organizers can’t allow anything to politicize the parade.

“I would vote ‘yes’ if they were willing to come in their uniforms or their civilian clothes,” said Lerch, a 24-year Coast Guard veteran. “Civilian clothes would be okay. Some of them may not be able to fit into their uniforms any more.”

Members of the veterans groups have a different view of protesting—and it’s interesting to consider that, at the 2007 Veterans Day parade, the loudest cheers came from some of the groups prohibited from marching.

If she protested on Veterans Day, Long Beach mom Pat Alviso—a member of Military Families Speak Out, whose son has done two tours of duty in Iraq—told The District, “I’d be protesting my own son.”  In the interim, the three pacifist veterans groups will have an opportunity to get some exercise. They have been accepted to march in the parade that will kick off the 20th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on Jan. 19.

Tags: Iraq Veterans Against the War, Long Beach, martin luther king jr., Military Families Speak Out, Veteran's For Peace, veterans, Veterans Day