Fearful of rising political violence and declining democratic norms, Chris Purdy is organizing veterans to combat both.
The former Army National Guard member and advocate for Afghan evacuees launched the Chamberlain Network this month, aiming to combat rising authoritarianism and political polarization.
Purdy hopes that veterans, who are consistently considered one of society’s most trusted messengers, can combat attacks on democracy.
“Today, we see crisis after crisis that causes many Americans to lose faith in democratic institutions. We need people – veterans – to come out and say, ‘No, democracy works,’” he told The Hill in a recent interview.
“I think we’re in an interesting place right now as a country when it comes to political violence, and we need to know how to talk about it. We need to know what to say; we need to be messengers of hope for our communities,” she later added.
“Democracy is fairy dust, right? It only works if we believe in it.”
The work could not come at a more critical time.
The Chamberlain Network, along with other veteran-affiliated groups, gathered in Washington, D.C., just weeks after the failed assassination attempt on former President Trump’s life.
Its creation also comes a few months before an election in which Republican Party candidates have already begun to lay the groundwork to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the vote.
“I always say ‘if’ we win, ‘if’ we win, because I don’t like saying ‘when’ we win, because they cheat like hell. So, ‘if’ we win,” Trump said during a rally in Michigan earlier this month.
But the Trump campaign is doing more than just encouraging uncertainty.
Along with the Republican National Committee, it is organizing an effort called “Protect the Vote” with the goal of getting 100,000 volunteers and lawyers to go to the polls across the country. The campaign also plans to have these volunteers available for any post-election audits and recounts, a sign of the potential legal action Trump’s team would take in the event of defeat.
Purdy’s group, meanwhile, is organizing veterans to serve as poll workers on Election Day, something he said serves as a civic duty while also putting veterans in a position to combat any false claims of voter fraud.
“What they are going to do is create a team that can amplify these untruths and make people not believe in the system,” Purdy said of some members of the Republican Party.
“So while I don’t want to create an agenda specifically opposing Trump, I think our agenda is built around this idea that we are opposing people who want to sow distrust in the democratic process and want to try to dismantle the process. democratic. standards we have.”
Purdy joined the National Guard after being split between different recruiting tables in his college’s student union: one for the Guard, one for the Peace Corps. He jokes that the dilemma may seem “counterintuitive,” but it reflects a desire of service.
He chose the National Guard in hopes of serving as a medic. Instead, he was a combat engineer.
His career as a public school teacher in D.C. was cut short when he was deployed for six months to Iraq. His job was to travel in the front car of a night convoy that traveled across the country, keeping an eye out for any danger that could interrupt the path of up to 80 vehicles.
When he returned to teaching, he volunteered for several veterans’ efforts, eventually landing a role leading Veterans for American Ideals.
The organization was one of several veterans and immigration groups that coordinated with those on the ground during the fall of Kabul, advocating for both evacuees and those left behind in Afghanistan after the withdrawal.
But in the midst of all this deeply personal and emotionally exhausting work, he became alarmed by rhetoric that questioned democratic norms, attacked institutions, and called for political violence, leading him to form the Chamberlain Network.
The group is named after Joshua Chamberlain, a Civil War hero and former governor of Maine who, as head of the Maine Militia, responded to discord over a contested election that resulted in the occupation of the State House.
Purdy said there is danger in the country’s failure to share a collective reckoning over a more recent occupation: the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
The Republican right called those serving sentences for their participation in the riot political prisoners. And since the GOP overtook the House, they tasked Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who gave a tour of the Capitol to two men who would later take part in the attack, to review the former president’s work in January. 6 selected committee.
“There needs to be accountability for political violence,” Purdy said, noting that in some circles people’s participation is being celebrated.
“In fact, there are people who are running for Congress because they are there. … People are now encouraged by it. And I don’t know if there’s no responsibility, but you can actually get political or personal gain from being associated with this. Therefore, there is an incentive structure for more political violence.”
His group, in coordination with others, brought about 30 veterans and allies to DC for training on how to confront political violence and dangerous rhetoric.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the January 6th insurrection followed a speech in which the political rhetoric, the rhetoric of everyone out there, basically said: ‘Your political rights have been stolen; they were violated. Your voice has been taken from you. You spout that kind of rhetoric for a whole morning and people get excited,” Purdy said.
“This is a communication issue right now,” he added, saying it is essential to have “trusted messengers and validators and people who can come out and say, ‘No, I know what political violence does to communities. I was in the military, I trained to go to places devastated by political violence, and I don’t want to see that happen here in the United States.’”
Veterans who joined the network pointed to their own experiences that raise concerns about democratic decline in the U.S.
“If we look at the type of societies I saw on deployment, like Iraq and Lebanon, we will know what happens to a country when it loses its democratic practices and institutions. It’s bad — bad for people and bad for your neighbors,” said Reed Bonadonna, who retired from the Marine Corps as a colonel.
Bonadonna said he was alarmed by some of the calls he received, particularly from conservatives.
“There have been statements made, particularly on the right… in favor of undemocratic practices such as voter suppression, such as locating more authority in the executive branch, such as insisting on qualifications or political standards for public officials… These are illiberal ideas that seem to have more presence in public discourse,” he said.
Emir Hadzic, a former Marine Corps infantryman who grew up in Bosnia, said he sees echoes of the same rhetoric he heard growing up before Yugoslavia went to war.
“There was a lot of primitivism in those policies, but it worked. It really worked, because they gained the power to destroy the country from within, which is something I’m similarly noticing in American political discourse. There’s a lot of divisive rhetoric, there’s a lot of, ‘You’re not a true American if you don’t agree with me 100 percent or if you don’t toe the party line,’” he said.
“All of this is corrosive to a healthy democracy.”
Part of the training for volunteers from the Chamberlain Network and others included a workshop on how to prevent and, in some cases, de-escalate alarming rhetoric or political violence.
And the group also met last week with lawmakers, asking them to sign a pledge to reject political violence — but also to work toward “ending divisive rhetoric designed to fracture our political community.”
The weeks leading up to the election will certainly be busy for the fledgling group, but Purdy noted that the work to undermine democratic norms will not end with the 2024 contest.
“I don’t believe that regardless of who wins these elections, the threat of political violence will disappear,” he said.
“I think we are, unfortunately, in a generational struggle for our democratic norms. And we need to build systems to adapt to that.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
