ICYMI: Military.com & SiriusXM Preview We the Veterans Mount Vernon Convening Set to Honor Flag Day
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 11, 2024
Executive Director Ellen Gustafson: “This is an incredible opportunity to gather the veteran and military family community to showcase patriotic and civic participation.”
In case you missed it, We the Veterans Executive Director Ellen Gustafson, joined Sirius XM’s Julie Mason Show to discuss the 75th anniversary of Flag Day and the organization's forthcoming convening on June 13 at Mount Vernon. The event, which is open to news media and will be livestreamed on YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook, will bring together notable veterans and military family leaders and organizations to spotlight how this community can be a model for continued service to our country.
On SiriusXM’s Julie Mason Show, Gustafson, a military spouse, underscored the opportunity for veterans to utilize Flag Day as a springboard for continuing patriotic service and inspiring others to do the same. “Quite naturally, when people leave service when they're married into the service, we very naturally do things that are good for each other and good for the country. And we want to showcase that as a model for other Americans to get involved as well,” said Gustafson.
You can listen to Gustafson’s SiriusXM interview in its entirety here.
Separately, Military.com also reported on We the Veterans’ Flag Day event at Mount Vernon, spotlighting the organization’s initiative to mobilize 100,000 veterans to volunteer as poll workers during the forthcoming 2024 elections. In 2022, a similar campaign led by We the Veterans recruited 63,500 poll workers.
Members of the press interested in attending the event should contact Joe Plenzer at joe.plenzler@wetheveterans.us and Chris Maloney at cmaloney@blackrockgrp.com.
Full transcript of Gustafson’s interview is available below.
Transcript: Ellen Gustafson of We the Veterans on Sirius XM’s Julie Mason Show
June 10, 2024
Julie Mason: I'm Julie Mason. Joining me now Ellen Gustafson, Executive Director of We the Veterans and Military Families Foundation here to talk about the 75th anniversary of Flag Day and a big effort to get veterans to serve as poll watchers. Ellen, welcome.
Ellen Gustafson: Hi, thanks so much for having me, Julie.
Julie Mason: Wonderful to have you. So I'm not really up to speed on Flag Day, I admit.
Ellen Gustafson: Right. That is what we saw as an incredible opportunity. It's this holiday that was was, you know, bandied about for years actually came from Philadelphia, where I'm from, Pennsylvania, and then eventually was made only 75 years ago into a national holiday to celebrate the flag and the values and we thought, well, you know, this is one of those incredible patriotic holidays that maybe we can make about something a little bit new.
Julie Mason: Indeed, well, we are having quite a bit of flag drama here in Washington D.C., we can use a, you know, a palate cleanser on flags. So your organization is having an event at Mount Vernon?
Ellen Gustafson: We are. What better veteran leader to have as our theoretical host of this event about Flag Day than the first one, George Washington. We're gathering a bunch of leaders from the veteran and military family community to actually showcase all of the incredible patriotic, and civic participation that we do as a community. Quite naturally, when people leave service when they're married into the service, we very naturally do things that are good for each other and good for the country. And we want to showcase that as a model for other Americans to get involved as well.
Julie Mason: That's wonderful. Tell us about some of your activities. What are some of the things you do?
Ellen Gustafson: Well, you know, veterans are incredibly good at fulfilling our obligation to care. You know, when obviously, when people leave the service, they're not finished with America, caring about them, but especially the veteran community, caring about them and creating organizations to serve all of those needs. We're very good at remembering what unites us, you know, people meet at a an American Legion post or a VFW and they don't go into those settings worried about what people's politics are, they go in because they're all Americans who served and they want to remember and have you know, that camaraderie that always came from service. We are really good at leading as citizens. We are more involved in things like being poll workers, like our campaign Vet the Vote asks people to do. We vote at a higher level, you know, we are a community of people who doesn't leave the service and sort of, you know, leave that commitment to citizenship. We started a new, you know, as a military spouse myself, I see it as part of my duty in sort of supporting my service member to be a really good citizen.
Julie Mason: That's great. Yeah, and tell us about the effort to Vet the Vote.
Ellen Gustafson: Yeah, so Vet the Vote is this incredible program that is a coalition of military family and veteran organizations launched in 2022. We learned in 2022, this summer, around this time, that there was a need for poll workers to make the 2022 midterms happen, and that many Americans through you know, many different reasons COVID and fear and different things were not continuing their services as poll workers. So we put out a call to this incredible community through the organizations that represent it, to ask people to serve and step up to serve. Our organization, we learned that the need in the 2022 midterms was around 120,000 poll workers.
Julie Mason: Wow.
Ellen Gustafson: And our coalition recruited 63,500.
Julie Mason: Wow, that’s fantastic.
Ellen Gustafson: Thank you. Yeah, so that means that of the new poll workers in 2022, half of them were veterans or military family members. And, and we were so proud, first of all, obviously, you know, this is a group when they're asked to serve, they step up and do it. But amazingly, 96% of people who responded to us, who stepped up to serve said they would do it again. And universally, they said that it increased their faith in our election by serving and getting in the game.
Julie Mason: That's so great. Oh, that's wonderful.
Ellen Gustafson: Yeah!
Julie Mason: I mean, you know, so many people are upset about the election this year and I've urged them to become poll workers to get involved in like, in a volunteer kind of way, that it's a good, good way to sort of restore your faith in how we do things here. So that's, that's just wonderful to hear.
[Crosstalk]
Julie Mason: I was gonna ask, are these mostly older veterans or is it all different ages who are getting involved?
Ellen Gustafson: No, that's what's cool. You know, we had, we found people from all different, you know, times, lengths of service and all different times of their service. And, you know, backgrounds, women, men, you know, and this is, again, this is a reminder of what the military is. It’s a representation of our country. It's not a perfect representation, but it is a representation. And it's people from all different backgrounds, all different, you know, geographical regions, and that is exactly what we saw as the same portfolio of folks who signed up to serve as poll workers. You know, the universal feeling was that you know, as for a military spouse like myself or for veterans, people felt like, you know, I haven't had as a veteran, many, many people said I hadn't had an opportunity to feel like I was serving my country and this was it. And what an incredibly powerful thing to say that you can do this every couple of years in your own community, in your own neighborhood, supporting your neighbors to make sure that they can, you know, effectively and safely go through the sacred process that we do.
Julie Mason: Ah, that's terrific. So what's the event going to be like on the 13th?
Ellen Gustafson: So we are going to livestream this event on the 13th. WetheVeterans.us. And we really hope to inspire Americans from all backgrounds like ourselves to get in the game, you know, there's a lot of patriotism by Facebook, or you know, civic engagement on TikTok, and we believe that that is not the best way to serve your neighbor and to serve your country, but rather actually get in the game, get out there and get involved. You learn so much more, you see that in many ways, we are not a massively divided country, we are a bunch of really good people who want to be good citizens and maybe have different pathways to do it. But we as a community can really showcase a world of living outside of a media silo or of a, you know, neighborhood silo, an America, which we really are represented and we get in the game and do something for our country.
Julie Mason: That's so wonderful. What a great project, Ellen. I can hear it in your voice that it's like it's good work too, really making a difference.
Ellen Gustafson: Well I'm a mom of three young kids and a military spouse that I feel like, you know, already I'm doing a lot of serving to the country and in many capacities, but I'm really passionate about citizenship being an action. And that, you know, it's frustrating when I hear things about what our country looks like doom and gloom, or when I, you know, think that people don't realize that look, anyone from any different background can do good things. And the more we remember that the more things like an upcoming election become just another process, not some massive overhaul.
Julie Mason: What a great attitude. Ellen Gustafson is Executive Director of We the Veterans and Military Families Foundation. You can check them out at WetheVeterans.us. Ellen, thank you so much.
Ellen Gustafson: Thank you for having me.
Julie Mason: Talk soon. Take care.
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We the Veterans and Military Families is a nonpartisan organization created by veterans and military members. More information about the organization can be found at WetheVeterans.us