Stacy Bannerman has spent sixteen years speaking out against the Iraq War, even as she was living with — and nearly died from — the consequences.
 She was a leader with Military Families Speak Out and is the only anti-war activist in U.S. history to testify before Congress three times while opposing a war her husband was fighting.
Stacy secured the first-ever hearing on the effects of war on families of veterans, and helped break the national silence about the horror of returning veteran violence in the home, which she wrote about in her 2015 book, Homefront 911: How Families of Veterans Are Wounded By Our Wars.
Stacy needs our support:
Stacy is, as far as we have been able to determine, the only military family member in U.S. history to ever return a war award to the President who issued it. The Freedom Medal was given to the families of National Guard troops who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bannerman gave it back to former President Bush at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Veterans Day, 2018 (video).
Stacy also launched the first statewide Divest from War campaign in August of 2018, which has already received the support of the Oregon Governor and State Treasurer.
But calling out the Pentagon comes at a massive price, particularly when the Department of so-called Defense signed the paychecks of your former spouse, and controls the purse strings of your court-ordered half of the military pension.
Stacy’s bank balance as of today is six dollars. She needs to raise money to pay her rent and utilities, replace the radiator in her car, and put food on the table while she’s working toward another landmark first involving legal action against a federal agency, which she hopes will put the issue of how the war comes home and the lethal price being paid by too many families of veterans squarely into the national conversation.
Click here to support Stacy Bannerman and her upcoming work with a tax-deductible donation.Half of every dollar you donate will go directly to Stacy, while the other half will support RootsAction Education Fund's efforts to raise up the voices of whistleblowers and truth-tellers.
 Part of the conversation Stacy will be launching will address the murder of her friend, Kristy Huddleston, by her husband, an Iraq/Afghanistan veteran, and how Kristy’s 10-year-old son, Ethan, tried to keep his mom alive while she was bleeding out on the kitchen floor after being shot by her husband and left for dead.
The dialogue will also include how a three-year-old boy was murdered by his veteran father on his very first weekend visitation with his dad after the divorce because the court refused to heed the warnings of the mother and her attorney, and health professionals refused to report their concerns about child abuse and domestic violence to the court or other authorities.
The national campaign Stacy is working on is an effort to advance justice and expose the truth about the severity and prevalence of violence committed by combat veterans with PTSD or a brain injury, the signature wounds of the post-9/11 wars. The project will also reveal how frequently that violence is ignored or covered up by police, the courts, the Pentagon, the VA, and the mandatory reporters who sacrifice the spouses and children in order to protect the veterans and the wars.
Stacy speaks from experience. Her (now ex-) husband, a two-time Iraq war vet strangled her to the point of unconsciousness and threatened her with an M4 before trying to commit suicide-by-cop. Stacy fled in terror; sacrificing everything she loved just to stay alive.
The trauma was so severe that her Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) score cratered at 42 out of a possible 100; this was eleven points lower than her veteran husband's worst score. The GAF is the standard scale of DSM-IV-TR that measures "psychological, social, and occupational functioning on a hypothetical continuum of mental health-illness."
Stacy was 100% disabled from severe PTSD, depression, and anxiety. She's spent the last several years working to recover from the physical and psychological wounds of a war that she never fought.
And now she’s back, and she needs our help.
A rare level of courage, clarity, and credibility is required for the work she does, and the massive project she’s got underway. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today to help Stacy stay housed and mobile and provide the financial stability necessary as she’s making the case for federal accountability for the families who are killed or wounded when the war comes home.
-- The RootsAction Education Fund Team
Background:
>> Homefront 911: How Families of Veterans Are Wounded By Our Wars
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