Unlike Jan. 6, These Veterans Entered the Capitol to Stop the Abuse of Power
Veterans entered the Capitol peacefully to stop another catastrophe before Congress funds more funerals.
📌 NOTE FOR NEW READERS: This is an independent publication covering 50501, No Kings, and the broader pro-democracy and civic-action ecosystem. We cover the forces shaping this moment, the communities pushing back, and the peaceful actions taking shape across the country. Read by thousands, subscribe to join our community.
Monday April 20,
More than 60 veterans and military family members were arrested inside the Cannon House Office Building rotunda on Capitol Hill.
They had come with red tulips for Iranians killed in the war and a flag-folding ceremony for American service members killed in the war.
They unfurled banners reading “End the War on Iran.” and they demanded a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson and urged Congress to stop funding the war. They refused to leave when ordered.
There was a total of 71 people were arrested
The country knows what it looks like when a mob enters the Capitol to destroy democracy… Jan 6…. These veterans entered peacefully, in formation, carrying symbols of grief and moral clarity, trying to stop a war and confront the officials enabling it.
On April 16, the House narrowly rejected a war-powers resolution that would have directed Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran absent congressional authorization.
The vote was 214 to 213. Just one vote of a difference. The Senate blocked a similar measure the day before, the latest in a series of failed efforts to reassert congressional war powers.
These brave and courageous veterans acted at the moment when the branch of government charged with checking executive war-making chose, once again, not to. Congress had a chance to act and it didn’t, but these veterans did.
These are veterans, military families, and allied groups with direct knowledge of what wars do to families, minds, and countries.
The people who know war best were the ones trying to stop more of it.
The coalition behind the action included 50501 Veterans, Common Defense, About Face, Veterans For Peace, Military Families Speak Out, and the Center on Conscience & War.
They stood in the rotunda holding flowers for the dead and demanded that the Speaker face them, asking whether Congress intended to keep financing more funerals.
As the president of 50501 Veterans put it, “Veterans are done being used for war abroad and ignored at home. We stood knowing we’d be arrested because silence is complicity, and to show our brothers and sisters that the wounds of war may be permanent, but there is a way out and we have your back. We refuse to watch our own and innocent civilians suffer while politicians fund endless war while Americans struggle just to make ends meet.”
American politics is very comfortable praising veterans in the abstract. Veterans are thanked at games, invoked in speeches, and used to decorate the moral image of the state. But the moment veterans stop serving as patriotic scenery and start speaking with moral clarity about what war actually is, the response changes fast. Video and photo coverage from the rotunda showed Veteran protesters being zip-tied and escorted away. A government that loves veterans in speeches put them in restraints when they raise their voices together to stand up for us all.
This protest happened inside a country already deeply uneasy about the war in Iran.
An Ipsos poll released last week found only 24% said the military action had been worth it.
These veterans were speaking more honestly than most elected officials have dared to.
The unease is visible inside military culture, too. Reporting from The Guardian found that reaction across military social media was filled with anxiety, dread, and deployment fear rather than confidence.
NPR reporting, carried by Jefferson Public Radio, said calls to the GI Rights Hotline had surged, with service members asking about conscientious-objector status and other options, and that the Center on Conscience & War took on more than 80 new clients in March alone. The disquiet is moving through the military.
Monday should be understood as anti-authoritarian as much as antiwar.
These veterans refuse to let patriotism be defined by silence. They refused to let their service be used as a prop for a war they believe is reckless, unpopular, and morally corrosive.
Patriotism is not obedience And It never has been.
There is a long American tradition of veterans returning to Washington to push back against war and to tell the truth about it. In 1971, Vietnam Veterans Against the War ended a five-day demonstration by throwing their combat ribbons, helmets, and uniforms on the Capitol steps. That history lives in what happened Monday.
If people trained inside the institutions of war are now risking arrest in the Capitol to stop where this is heading, then it’s past time for the rest of the country to stop pretending this is normal politics.
These veterans honored our country. They walked into a building where too many officials are treating war as procedure and reminded everyone that war is still made of bodies, funerals, trauma, and the long damage done to democratic life. They were brave in the most concrete sense of the word. They told the truth where truth was inconvenient and accepted the price of saying it out loud.
What You Can Do to Help
Here is what you can do right now: Contact your representatives and demand they support war-powers legislation requiring congressional authorization for continued military action in Iran.
Call them directly or use Resist.bot or 5Calls.org to make it simple.
If your representative voted against the war-powers resolution, tell them you noticed and that the 214-to-213 margin means every single vote is important next time.
If your representative voted for it, thank them and tell them to keep fighting for us.
Follow and support the veteran-led organizations behind this action, including 50501 Veterans, About Face, Veterans For Peace, Common Defense, the Center on Conscience & War and Military Families Speak Out.
The people who know war best have told us what they see. They have the right to speak up, we must act alongside them.
What does this protest tell us about the difference between obedience and patriotism?
 | A guest post by
|
This is an outrage
Thank you for making the historic connection!
Vietnam Veterans Against the War, VVAW’s, motto was “Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another.” This tradition has carried over to cohorts that followed.
This was my tribute to them Veterans Day 2025:
https://rgilmartin.substack.com/p/a-tribute-to-vietnam-veterans