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    A new civil war erupts inside Trump's VA as Secretary Robert Wilkie is accused of pushing white supremacy

    Joe Maniscalco, DC Report @ Raw Story
    July 08, 2020

    Thanks for your support!

    This article was paid for by reader donations to Raw Story Investigates.

    Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Tammy Nooner)

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Joe Maniscalco, DC Report @ Raw Story

    Long before Donald Trump exposed himself as a cheerleader for white supremacy, workers at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs were complaining that the Neo-Confederate running the agency didn’t care about them and was “mimicking” the racist-in-chief.


    Trump picked Robert Wilkie to run the VA in 2018, despite, or because of, the former naval intelligence officer’s long-established love affair with the 19th Century traitor Jefferson Davis and the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy.

    Now, two years into his tenure, VA staffers and veteran advocates alike charge that Wilkie’s top-down authoritarianism and penchant for marginalizing people of color within the organization would make the dead Confederate president proud, indeed. Not to mention Trump himself.

    Wilkie’s personal behavior and participation in Confederate activities appear that he’s a white nationalist. He’s mimicking the president of the United States right now with his behavior.

    “Wilkie’s personal behavior and participation in Confederate activities appear that he’s a white nationalist,” Gayle Griffin, president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3 told me. “He’s mimicking the president of the United States right now with his behavior. That clashes with what a leader should be—especially with the VA’s diverse population.”

    The VA’s Veterans Health Administration is the largest integrated healthcare network in the country, serving some 9 million veterans annually at 1,255 facilities. Many VA employees are, themselves, military veterans still struggling to reestablish their lives following combat duty.

    Racists in the Department

    The white supremacist views that Trump—and, later Sec. Wilkie—brought to the VA emboldened workers who share those views, as Griffin, the first woman of color to head the union’s Milwaukee local, learned almost immediately after she became Local 3 president in 2017. Four white union stewards resigned in protest and attempted to have that election overturned. According to Griffin, the leader of the opposition complained during a 2018 grievance meeting that Griffin had gone into the Milwaukee VA’s kitchen and “gathered up the help” to fill out her slate of officers.

    “It trickles down from the leadership of the agency,” Griffin says. “The atmosphere is very intimidating and hostile. It’s a lot of bullying. People are afraid. But not only the people of color—when Caucasians help me, they become targets also.”

    Barbara Galle, president of AFGE Local 3669 and a registered nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, is convinced that Trump installed Wilkie to “get rid of the union.” Galle says the goal is to make sure that employees are silent and servile—just like in the plantation days of the antebellum South.

    'Like the Confederacy'

    “It’s just like the Confederacy and going back to slavery,” Galle told me. Wilkie and his team “want [workers] to not be able to speak up—have no rights” while they can do whatever they want. “It’s outrageous,” she says.

    According to Galle, people of color working at the Minneapolis VA hospital—everyone from housekeepers to emergency room nurses—are routinely “picked on” and “put under a microscope.”

    “Staff are looking at it as, ‘No wonder we’re not getting proper PPE [Personal Protection Equipment]; no wonder we’re not all getting hazard pay. Look at the attitudes, the beliefs and statements coming from Wilkie.’”

    Griffin says “disciplines are just off the chain,” a reference to the practice of chaining enslaved people to limit their movement as they worked cotton fields. She said the majority of frontline VA workers terminated in Minneapolis during the pandemic have been people of color.

    “When people come to work, they cannot function or do their jobs effectively because they’re too busy trying to watch their backs to see if management is going to reprimand them,” Griffin says. “They don’t know what to do.”

    Kevin Ellis, president of AFGE Local 2338 in Poplar Bluff, Mo., says that since Wilkie’s appointment many people of color working at the John J. Pershing VA Medical Center have been denied promotions in favor of lesser-experienced white staffers.

    Whites Promoted over Others

    “African-American employees have trained Caucasian employees after they came to the Department of Veteran Affairs — and when the job announcements were made available, the [white] employees that African-Americans trained actually were picked above them,” Ellis told me. “You can only imagine the morale, the sense of loss, the sense of self-worth—knowing that you trained somebody who was new to the Department of Veterans Affairs—and within seven months after you trained them, they’ve been promoted above you.”

    Ellis, an Army veteran, attributes the racially-based bullying, to the Neo-Confederate atmosphere that has become “rampant” throughout the Heartland Veterans Integrated Service Network, which covers most of Missouri and Kansas and parts of Illinois, Kentucky and Arkansas.

    Ellis says this de facto white supremacy policy is behind a 16-month-long investigation into his conduct and efforts to have him terminated from the Pershing center. This included a Labor Department audit of the union local, which turned up minor recordkeeping failures, but no evidence of abuse or fraud.

    Name Calling on the Job

    “We have a major issue in” the VA network, Ellis says. “Co-workers have been called, ‘n-----s’ and ‘black dogs.’ This is rampant. We are all dealing with these issues of just being called racial names out in the open—and no one seems to be able to stop it.”

    According to Ellis, it happened to Ashley Whittaker, a veteran working as a clerk at the Pershing center. A co-worker called her the “n-word” on the job in the fall of 2017, not long after Trump’s inauguration. There were reportedly no repercussions.

    Things have only gotten worse since Wilkie’s appointment.

    Last month, at his Tulsa rally, Trump called VA staffers “bad people” who don’t love the veterans they serve.

    Fear of reprisals have intimidated union members into not speaking up when racist managers protect whites who use racial slurs.

    “We’ve got employees who say, ‘I would speak up, but I have a job, I have a family, and if I say anything about what’s happening, I’m going to get fired,’” Ellis says.

    COVID Response Affected

    The Vietnam Veterans of America is a national membership advocacy organization with chapters in 47 states. Rick Weidman, a co-founder, told me that the authoritarian model that exists under Wilkie “disrespects the average service providers” and is hampering the VA’s COVID-19 response.

    “PPE is an example,” Weidman says. “They say, ‘we have plenty of PPE, no problem.’ But anybody at the local level who says above a whisper, that they don’t have enough PPE — they get retaliated against. That’s that authoritarian model. What it does is try and stifle worker input.”

    The VA needs better organization Weidman adds—but not the brand that Wilkie and the rest of the Trump administration are pushing.

    “You gotta have structure, nobody is challenging that,” he says. “But an authoritarian, top-down thing—frankly, that’s more like Russia than it is America. Like many others, I just find it anathema. You need to lead, not drive” workers.

    Yvonne Evans, recording secretary for AFGE Local 933 in Detroit is a registered nurse at the John Dingell VA Medical Center. In mid-March, Evans, who is black, tested positive for COVID-19. She said trying to get help was so difficult she ended up breaking down in frustration.

    “I sat here in my living room crying because I’m like, ‘How can I be a nurse who takes care of people and I can’t get anybody to take care of me?’” Evans told me.

    Evans’ 71-year-old husband James is also an Army veteran. When he went down to the VA hoping to get tested for COVID-19, he was told he’d have to wait up to four hours to be seen. He ended up going to the drive-thru testing center at the Michigan State Fairgrounds where he learned he was positive.

    'Zero Faith'

    “I have absolutely zero faith in Wilkie,” Ellis says. “We would not survive another four years of Secretary Wilkie or President Trump. We would not survive—you would see a purging of African-Americans within the VA system like you’ve never seen before.”

    Wilkie’s critics are adamant that the Trump-appointee must now step down as VA secretary for the good of the agency. They have no expectation of that happening, however, so long as Trump remains in office.

    For Galle, Wilkie has about as much business running the Veterans Administration as Bob Kroll—another Trump acolyte with racist views—has heading the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis.

    “How can you represent the VA with those [Confederate] beliefs,” Galle said.

    Griffin says that in an era of mass demonstrations protesting the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many other people of color, the VA just doesn’t need “that type of leadership.”

    “I would like to see [Wilkie] resign,” she says. “The leadership that he is exhibiting is not good for the diverse population of the VA throughout the country.”

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

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    READ COMMENTS - JOIN THE DISCUSSION

    Survey: Will Melania leave Trump now that he's out of office ?

    'You're out of order': Interview with Trump campaign official breaks down over insurrection excuses

    Sarah K. Burris
    January 24, 2021

    MSNBC's Ari Melber did a Sunday evening special on the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. His final interview was with the former president's campaign staffer Boris Epshteyn who revealed the only excuse that Republicans will have to justify Trump's innocence.

    Melber spent the hour outlining the case against Trump, citing the funds the $2.7 million in campaign spent to hold the rally in Washington and the statements from those arrested that they followed what the president told them.

    The excuse Epshteyn used is that Trump told his supporters to be "stay peaceful." It's a comment that comes after months of telling his supporters to act and to fight for their votes.

    The argument many have made is that using incendiary rhetoric for months, urging a crowd to "fight," a "trial by combat," and "walk to the Capitol."

    "Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy," he said. "And after this, we're going to walk down — and I'll be there with you — we're going to walk down ... to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. We're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you'll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength.

    "We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for [the] integrity of our elections, but whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. Our country has been under siege for a long time, far longer than this four-year period."

    Epshteyn's argument is that nothing else that Trump said matters, only the word "peacefully."

    Melber's guests including a slate of former prosecutors described Trump's excuses as like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. In an earlier interview, Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-NY) described Trump as doing more than just yelling "fire" in the theater. She described the ex-president as bringing the matches and the gasoline, paying for the arsonists to meet at the Capitol, and telling them to burn it down with a brief comment that fire is bad.

    Epshteyn argued against Melber that he should "fire" the person who put together his clips reel because it didn't include Trump's comment about "peacefully and patriotically" attacking the capitol.

    "We're not here for your advice to do what we do," Melber said. "You're out of order."


    You're out of order www.youtube.com

    Impeachment officer details the case against Trump as the second trial begins

    Sarah K. Burris
    January 24, 2021

    Monday night, House impeachment officers will officially walk the Articles of Impeachment to the U.S. Senate and the process will officially begin as President Donald Trump is tried for a second time before the body.

    Speaking to MSNBCs Ari Melber on an impeachment special Sunday evening, a solemn Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-NY) explained that this is not something the House members do lightly.

    "And then we'll begin the trial of our president, of former President Donald Trump in the Senate, for what we believe to be one of the most heinous crimes against our country in its existence," she said. "Something that the founders anticipated and put in guardrails against. That being a despot, drunk with power, trying to keep his grip on power and using the people of this country to try and stage an insurrection."

    She didn't intend to reveal the strategy for impeachment but explained that the attack on the Capitol Jan. 6 wasn't the beginning of Trump's efforts to incite violence against the legislature.

    "President Trump has engaged in a prolonged effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and spent months spreading disinformation and the results falsely claiming that he had won by a landslide," she explained. "He stated it would be illegitimate to accept those results, and then he brought individuals to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6. Make no mistake that that was an extremely important date in his mind and in our Constitution's time, because there was a time where the entire body of Congress along with the vice president would be present at the Capitol to fulfill our duties, that being to certificate five the election. And with that, he knew who the individuals were, who would be coming, what they would do and what hold he had over them."

    She described what happened as "foreseeable," in fact, Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling warned that what Trump was doing would "get people killed." Indeed, five people were killed as a result of what happened on Jan. 6.

    "It's bad enough that we have a president who wanted to obstruct justice, who wanted to obstruct a free and fair election, who did not want the fulfillment of Constitution, but the worst part that he did it through the attack, assault, mayhem, vandalism, the attempted assassination of the vice president and the speaker of the House, potential attempt to kidnap members of congress and the fulfillment of felony murder as well. All for his own self-aggrandizement. Absolutely shameful," Plaskett said.

    See the full interview below:


    Presenting the articles of impeachment...... again www.youtube.com

    Will cops caught in Capitol attack finally motivate police chiefs to purge their ranks: Watchdog asks

    Sarah K. Burris
    January 24, 2021

    A former FBI special agent detailed in an Aug. 2020 report that white supremacists and militia members have infiltrated law enforcement ranks across the country. The abstract information didn't lead to a call from law enforcement leadership to look through their teams to purge possible problems. Now that off-duty law enforcement members were part of the Capitol insurrection, the Washington Post reported police chiefs are finally starting to act.

    "National Sheriffs' Association President David Mahoney said many police leaders have treated officers with extremist beliefs as outliers and have underestimated the damage they can inflict on the profession and the nation," the Post reported.

    "We saw the anti-government, anti-equality and racist comments coming out during the Obama administration. Shame on us for representing it as freedom of speech and for not recognizing it was chiseling away at our democracy," Mahoney said in an interview. "As we move forward, we need to make sure we are teaching our current staff members that they must have the courage to speak out when they know about another deputy's or officer's involvement. There should be no reference to the thin blue line."

    At least 12 Capitol Police are under investigation for their behavior during the attack on the building, including one officer seen taking selfies with insurrectionists. At least 14 off-duty officers didn't go inside the building, but they were there on Jan. 6.

    "They know who these bad apples are,'' said former FBI agent Michael German. "They learn about them when they are investigating white supremacists and militia groups."

    But legal experts and police watchdog groups have little hope of change. They've heard law enforcement commitments after police killed unarmed Black Americans like Michael Brown and Tamir Rice, young boys shot and killed by police in 2014.

    Georgetown Law professor Vida Johnson explained that "these officers are hiding in plain sight." Still, nothing has changed.

    "Until they're willing to . . . discipline officers, this is going to continue to be a problem, and it's one that's completely destabilizing the country and putting us at risk," she said.

    Read the full piece at the Washington Post. Washington Post.

     
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