Does this pin offend you

Greetings to all Legionnaires, American Legion Auxiliary members, Sons of the American Legion members, Legion Riders and anyone else who supports our veterans and our children.
This and the next three blog entries address this issue.

Does this pin offend you? 

Maybe not terribly so as a random object. 

However, does it offend you as The American Legion values and attitudes portrayed by National Commander-Elect Jimmie Foster by handing out the pins with remarks that the one with two white bears is “politically incorrect”, chuckle, and the black bear on the white bear is “really politically incorrect”, chuckle, chuckle, in the hotel lobby at the National Convention? 

Does it concern you that Commander Foster totally ignored my letter of complaint and later in personal conversation with me justified his actions by indicating they had been handing out the pins for 60 years? 

Does it concern you that National Judge Advocate Philip B. Onderdonk and National Adjutant Daniel S. Wheeler, men whose responsibilities are to oversee the administration and policies (including conduct unbecoming a member) of The American Legion, answered my concerns on behalf of women veterans and the Auxiliary by accusing me of eavesdropping on Foster’s conversation (in the main hotel lobby) and stating “He did nothing wrong.” 

                                                    

THE ISSUE: 

Do these pins reflect the values you support as you or your daughters and sons or sisters and brothers fight halfway around the world or serve in the National Guard? Are these Legion values that support you as a Blue Star or Gold Star parent? As a veteran, is this the attitude you want in your leadership as you encourage young men and women to join the Legion or the Legion family…blatant undermining of true Legion values, lip-service for public display and support of that by the organization officers? Our service women and men deserve better than that.

WHY DOES IT MATTER? 

Why, you may ask, is this my concern? I am not a Legionnaire, I am “only” an Auxiliary member. My father served in the Philippines and on submarines in WWII. I have bi-racial grandchildren. The mission of the Auxiliary is to support the mission and values of the American Legion and this blatant disrespect for and hypocritical speeches regarding women veterans, the Auxiliary and persons of color are not values I wish to support.

WHAT CAN YOU DO? 

I do not want you to read this and quit the Legion or your Auxiliary unit. 

I want you to take a stand with me and tell the National Legion leaders this is not acceptable conduct. Legionnaires and Legion Family members are owed an apology from these officers, and recognition in the bylaws that this kind of conduct is unbecoming and deserves reprimand. 

If they continue to support such conduct, Onderdonk and Wheeler need to be replaced by officers who “get it” that the Legion is not sexist or racist and will not tolerate this kind of behavior at Legion Family events or on Legion property. 

They are up for reappointment after National Convention in September by the National Executive Committee. Each Department (State Legion) has a National Executive Committee member. 

Please contact your National Executive Committee Member, NationalCommander Wong and the National Vice-Commanders and insist that this issue be addressed and if necessary that new appointments be made.

In my conversations many members have told me that this attitude is alive and well in the Legion. Ignoring it will never make it go away. Here is a way to begin the change within the organization to be sure that the standards of conduct honor all members of the Legion family alike. 

Letter written to the National Commander

I am an American Legion Auxiliary member and witnessed this pin being distributed with sexist and racist jocular remarks being handed out by the National Commander -elect Jimmie Foster at the 2010 National convention and listened to his remarks the next day which were totally opposite in tone. I was upset but waited until I returned home just to see if I felt I was overreacting. I still strongly felt the issue should be addressed and so I wrote the following letters (abridged for space purposes):

                                                                                                                       

September 6, 2010

Dear National Commander Foster:

First I want to congratulate you on your hard-earned election as National Commander. I am aware that it takes years of dedication to the Legion to get to that position. However, I do have a personal bone to pick with you over your conduct during the campaign and its direct conflict with the principles you professed to hold as described in your speech to the Auxiliary and later to the Legionnaires.

I was in the lobby of the Hilton when you were handing out the Alaska pins a night or two before the election. 

There were three pins you were distributing: 

the official one (very nice by the way), 

one that you jovially described as “politically incorrect” and 

one, in an equally or more humorous tone, was described as “really politically incorrect”.  

As a person of the female gender, I found the “politically incorrect” pins offensive and for you to differentiate between the two of them as you did was to my mind racist. I have biracial granddaughters and although racism has been a concern of mine for years it is far more personal to me now. 

You have a wife, seven (?) sisters and three granddaughters. Do you not recognize how demeaning being willing to distribute such pins is to those family members? I find it hard to believe that you needed to resort to such low standards to garner votes in your campaign. In your speeches, you praised the Auxiliary and said that President Navarrete′ was your friend and had worked well with you. You mentioned the female veterans and how the Legion should support them and give them the dignified treatment and respect they are due, that diversity should be honored as well. Your closing to the Legionnaires said that nothing should be done to demean another person.

I … worked my entire professional career with 90-95 percent men and ended it as Director of a division of 52, mostly men. I believe that I have the background to comment on this incident with some understanding. I hope you will seriously consider this reflection on your attitude toward women and persons of color… I firmly believe that such simple acts as distributing those pins do pervade the public consciousness and contribute to the opinions young men and women hold about themselves and others. As an important leader in the national community, I expected more of you.

Sincerely, 

Member Ladies Auxiliary

Letter Written to National Headquarters

I received no response. 

Then I heard that Commander Foster was to visit our state on his tour so I purchased tickets to the dinner and asked him at an opportune moment to have a private conversation with him. 

He and I stepped aside and I spoke with him. 

His response was totally unsatisfactory to me so I then wrote this explanatory letter to the National Judge Advocate and National Adjutant:

Gentlemen:

I am a member of the Auxiliary …concerned about an incident that occurred at the National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin last September. 

A detailed account follows:

On September 26, 2010 I sent the enclosed letter, marked personal on the envelope, to National Commander Jimmie Foster, fully expecting to be taken seriously and to receive a response by letter or e-mail.  No answer was forthcoming … Needless to say, I decided to attend the dinner and see if I could speak to him. 

The following events transpired that evening.

… Commander Foster was at the bar when I asked if I could have a personal word with him, which he readily acceded to when he finished talking with someone. We stepped aside in the room and he asked what I wanted. I said I wanted to talk with him about my letter that I had sent in September about his polar bear pins. 

When it was not immediately clear that he recalled the letter, I handed him a copy which he scanned. I repeated my concern in the letter that he should not have been handing out the pins because it was disrespectful of female veterans and Auxiliary members.  

His first response was that they “were not his pins, they were Department pins.”  I said that it seemed that they were his since he was the one handing them out and I explained that I felt his action and similar activities were not acceptable from an officer of the Legion on Legion property or at Legion functions since they seemed to condone disrespect. 

He said “as National Commander what do you expect me to do?” and I said that as National Commander he should let the Departments know that such activities were against Legion policy. His response was that National cannot tell the Departments what to do, and that anyway Alaska has been handing out the pins for 60 years and that even if he did take some action it would not keep the pins from being given out. In fact it would “probably make them collector’s items”. My response was I realize this would not prevent any Legionnaire from giving them out on their own, but it would show that the Legion thinks it is not an action becoming a Legionnaire. I told him that in the past we have done many things that are not acceptable now and the Legion should come into the 21^st century and confront issues that denigrate women. 

He simply stated that he did not intend to do anything about this and said that if he had offended me personally he apologized. I said that, obviously, I was offended, but he was missing my point that I felt that the female veterans and the Auxiliary members were being disrespected and that was my issue. He repeated that if I was offended personally he apologized. Then he asked if he had actually given a pin to me. When I said no, he said then he was offended because I was eavesdropping on his conversation with the others in the lobby. In a very condescending tone he then said “Besides, I haven’t handed any out since National Convention.”  At this point I figured that I was getting nowhere, said thank you for his time and left the conversation…

About a week later, the Post … Commander called the Department adjutant on a totally separate matter
and was told that the Post had embarrassed the National Commander and that he should keep his people in line if he wanted to move up in the state command.
(The then Commander is running for Third District Commander). 
I am a member of the Auxiliary, so the Commander has no say in what issues I bring up to the National Commander and in any case I do not see how he could fail to appreciate my position in this matter. 

No one that I have talked to about this has indicated that I do not have a legitimate complaint… I have been considering this matter ever since and still feel that the Legion needs to take action to raise the consciousness of its members , particularly the officers, that such apparently sexist/ racist actions will not be tolerated.  It was pretty clear to me that the National Commander does not “get it”! If at any time he had indicated that he recognized that his action was inappropriate and would try to see that the culture of the Legion was more respectful of women, I probably would not be writing this letter.  I am equally disappointed that my Department Commander backpedalled as fast as he did instead of continuing to support my position.

I realize that you will not wish to make this directly related to Commander Foster’s actions and in truth that is only one of many such inappropriate activities that should be curtailed. So I am asking that whoever in the National American Legion sets and distributes policy directives creates one that addresses this overall issue either separately or in the bylaws and distributes it to all the Departments. Please let me know how you intend to address this matter. Thank you.

Sincerely,

I received this response dated June 20, 2011:

Why I created this blog

I have spent the last year and a half trying
to get someone in The American Legion or the Auxiliary units
to acknowledge that this is behavior unbecoming a Legionnaire and to indicate that the Legion does not condone or assert these values. 

I have been totally ignored even though all the Legionnaires, men and women alike, to whom I have shown the pin and the correspondence, have agreed that it is at worst reprehensible and at best totally unacceptable. 

The Legion leaders have never acknowledged that this was a severe lapse of good judgment on Foster’s part nor had the grace to express any regret. 

Instead they steadfastly support him. Also note that in a recent kerfluffle between two veterans (who both had been drinking) current National Northeast Vice-Commander James Hale indicated that such disrespect to a veteran was an outrage and he would like to ban the offending veteran from participation in any patriotic events or entering Legion property for life! Why is this one Marine more important than thousands of other veterans? 

 The kind of disrespect indicated by the National Commander’s distribution of the pins and his accompanying demeaning comments has not garnered any such concern….”He did nothing wrong.” There seems to be a severe double standard here.

I cannot be an Auxiliary member unless I have a veteran as a close relative. In that regard, the National Commander and his staff are the chief executive officers of the organization which my organization exists to support. 

It is my sincere hope that the Posts, Departments, Units and Detachments who learn of this underlying attitude at National will contact the National Vice Commanders and NEC members and insist that the situation be remedied by making the National Judge Advocate and Adjutant accountable, and if necessary replaced, and that National Commander Wong and the NEC will see to it that the bylaws assure that Legionnaires who violate the standards of conduct of the Legion will be appropriately censured.