IMPACT: Local protests supporting disabled veterans making a difference

It was a public relations migraine headache for a county fair board in the middle of Middle America.

Earlier this year, the Champaign County (IL) Fair Board tossed out the local Disabled American Veterans after nearly 70 years of the vets selling beer at the annual event as a fundraiser to help local wounded veterans and their families.

Instead of organizing a schedule of veteran volunteers to man the beer garden for this year’s event, they instead organized a protest of sorts for the event, culminating in an informational picket during prime-time hours for fair goers.

Local TV news, as well as the local newspaper covered the event, giving the disabled veterans a lot of publicity.  It also gave the fair’s board quite a headache.

In talking with Marty Poling, the DAV’s local commander, he said fair attendance seemed sparse in the first weekend of the event.  How much of that decline in attendance is related to the scandalous treatment of the DAV is unknown.

Everyday Americans don’t appreciate it when veterans are ill-treated by people who would lie about them, steal from them or cheat them out of what’s due to them.