A Movement Befitting 21st Century Vets
BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, November 11 2009
When you go hunting for demonstrations of how technology is changing civil society and politics, you could do a lot worse than to look to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, better known as IAVA.
In 2004, Paul Rieckhoff came back from service Baghdad found his fellow vets scattered, without the support from the country that many needed and all deserved. Rieckhoff immediately grasped how the creativity and collective action of his brothers and sisters in arms could be captured by the web, and married fruitfully with strong top-down leadership. IAVA has not only given a welcoming and supportive home to more than 125,000 newly-minted American vets. But IAVA goes beyoud being a social network. It has also, in a remarkably short period of time, put points on the board when it comes to concrete political change. Rieckhoff and IAVA, for example, engaged in hard-nosed politics as they were a driving force in turning a 21st century GI bill into law. Through IAVA, they are fighting for one another at home as they once fought for their comrades in a war zone.
The trick now is to draw even more vets into the fold. To that end, IAVA has partnered with the Ad Council and the legendary ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi in a campaign to attract even more Iraq and Afghanistan returned soldiers to the vet-only CommunityofVeterans.org. The theme of the campaign, "We've Got Your Back," is intended to draw vets out of isolation and into contact with their peers. A reimagined model of community for today's veterans seems sorely needed. The New York Times' James Barron had a good story today on how VFW chapters are shriveling without an influx of younger vets. A generation gap, says Barron, makes it difficult for younger and older vets to socialize, and the younger as less attracted to the dimly-lit-bar model that VFWs are known for.
Back in spring of 2007, I interviewed Rieckhoff via IM for an interview series I was doing at the time on the political blog MyDD. Give it a read for Rieckhoff's taken on how IAVA began its growth into what it is today. "I had a flat website, and lots of vets started contacting me, suggesting we get together and start something," he said. "The movement began online, with no money, and was totally grassroots. We got the website up, starting writing and things grew very fast from there. At one point we were almost 50K in debt on our credit cards, but we believed we were building something critical that people would respond to. Thankfully for my credit rating, we were right."