Anti-War Veterans Banned From Veteran's Day Parade

Posted by Paddy , Brave New Films at 5:31 AM on November 9, 2007.

This post, written by Paddy, originally appeared on Cliff Schecter's Brave New Films Blog

Boy, this pisses me off.

Veterans For Peace Say They Will Pass Out Flyers

DENVER -- A group called Veterans for Peace will not be participating in this Saturday's Veterans Day parade.

Parade organizers didn't invite Veterans for Peace this year because they say the group staged an inappropriate protest at last year's parade.

"The parade is not a platform for protesting. It is a platform for honoring the veterans of all services," said Andrew Grieb, with United Veterans Council of Denver.

Vietnam veteran Frank Bessinger believes the ban violates his groups freedom of expression.

"Certainly, our point of view is different from a lot of other people in the parade. But, we believe it's legitimate," said Bessinger.

Bessinger said his group still plans to have a presence at this year's parade. They will be on the sidewalks distributing flyers.

Sounds to me like this could have been easily taken care of with some ground rules, but they just decided that it was too much "trouble" to include the VFP.

"The parade is not a platform for protesting. It is a platform for honoring the veterans of all services,"

Tagged as: anti-war, veterans, us military, wariniraq, veteran's day

Paddy is a regular contributor to Cliff Schecter.com.