Rep. Tran on MCRA
Oregon Representative Thuy Tran was the Chair of the Oregon House Committee On Emergency Management, General Government, and Veterans on September 23, 2024, when this conversation occurred. She was also a part of the ORLA Veterans Caucus at the time, and had her paid staffer present for the meeting as well.
Transcript
Rep Thuy Tran: Alright, I am here. What are we going to talk about?
Logan M. Isaac: Civil rights.
Rep Thuy Tran: Go ahead. Should I get this? Sure.
Logan M. Isaac: Yeah, Romero and I know one another from not too long ago. I emailed as I'd like to see Oregon become the first state in the nation to pass a comprehensive military civil rights bill.
Rep Thuy Tran: Okay.
Logan M. Isaac: The unstated thesis is that service members, including all three of us in this room at the federal level there are some laws, the earliest was VEVRAA, Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act of 1972. 1974, it was amended, made explicitly about affirmative action. However by 2007, there was a court case brought by a veteran who had alleged discrimination on an employer.
It went all the way up to the 8th District Court and retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Said that there's no reasonable standard against which to apply judicial oversight. It is no law at all. Employment discrimination for vets not only is poorly written it also excludes 20 percent of our community.
It excludes peacetime veterans without a service connected disability. Peacetime veterans without a disability are also some of the hardest hit with employment, under employment. And those with the greatest need are excluded but none of that actually matters because the Department of Labor's Enforcement Agency, the OFCCP from 2000 to 2020, received more complaints from veterans alleging employment discrimination than any other class that they oversee.
Nonetheless, they disproportionately deny those claims at a rate of, half of that of other claimants. Essentially saying, we don't believe veterans. They're all just making it up. They're all profile queens. Malingerers, et cetera. In 2009, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 included an entire section protecting service members, their families, up to five years after discharge from hate crimes.
Section 4712, the Soldier's Amendment, was introduced by Jeff Sessions. Passed unanimously onto HCPA, which itself was passed under the NDAA for 2010. DOJ in f fifteen years? Yeah, 15 years has never brought the soldier's amendment to a charge sheet. The basic Google search for adjacent laws turns up, I found about seven, service members who were targeted for violent crime because of their service. Most noteworthy was in Cincinnati in 2006. A man targeted a I believe a National Guardsman, their wife, and child for beheading, televised or stream, streamed beheading and then he would go blow himself up at a police station.
That service member was protected and the person pled out and Title 18, Section 1389 was never applied. Hate crimes are specifically for the interest of a community targeted. Matthew Shepard and James Byrd their murderers were not convicted under hate crimes. But, their targeting was the problem, it wasn't Matt Shepard, it was a gay man or it was a black man.
Service members are targeted for their service, not only is it a civil rights and human rights issue, it's a readiness issue that the DOD does not seem to be aware of. I spoke with Eric Davis at Senator Wyden's office. He's getting the emails for the Joint Chiefs and DOD staff to make them aware of the fact that hate crimes are happening.
But they're not being reported because the DOJ has not provided means of reporting to victims. The DOJ has a service member and veterans initiative, mentions hate crimes exactly donuts. When I've called up to test whether or not the FBI field offices know about Title 18 Section 1389, they know donuts.
That hasn't happened to me. Employment discrimination has. Hate crimes is a little bit more high contrast, and it's happening, but they're not being enforced. There's laws on the books. DOJ is not enforcing. This is no different from the Freedom Riders. If it hadn't been for black military veterans returning from World War II, Freedom Riders, bus boycott, never would have happened.
Before Martin came on the scene, Sarah Keys, who was a PFC in the Marines, in uniform, was forced to vacate her seat for a white Marine. She didn't want to make a stink, but her World War II Navy veteran father insisted that she send this up the chain. Keys v. Carolina coach was decided by the ICC, Interstate Commerce Commission, in November of '55, less than a month before Rosa Parks took her stand. Without (Sarah) Keys, Rosa Parks would have had no standing.
Martin Luther King had a second in command, Ralph Abernathy, World War II platoon sergeant. They stood up behind ROSA, created the M. I. A., called the Montgomery Improvement Association after Montgomery, Alabama. What you don't always hear is that Montgomery is a military town. Maxwell Air Force Base, half of their constituents in the M. I. A. were military or veteran families. Military Improvement Association is hoping to pick up where they left off.
In '64, they managed to get the Civil Rights Act passed. Ralph wrote in his autobiography later that all their statutory obstacles had now been removed and so they started looking at economic rights. In April of '67 King makes his anti war speech with Ralph in the audience and he said that the business of war includes sending men home from battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged. In 2015, I was on the cover of Christianity Today magazine, and its title, unbeknownst to me until publication, was War Torn.
How a psychiatrist, a civilian psychiatrist, my academic advisor, how a psychiatrist was deploying hope to soul scarred veterans. Because we are not in control of our own narratives. Civilian normativity has been the rule since we did away with the draft. I had no veteran mentors when I went to divinity School.
I had no veteran mentors as an undergrad in Hawaii. And I had no veteran mentors when I studied overseas. But the VA programs are better when you're overseas. I just called up about the GI Bill got it done. When I came home for my second master's degree, I was working at Duke. I got a contract as a (Teaching Assistant).
It was after that "War Torn" cover came out and that magazine was in there, divinity School Library. When I was given a section with half the number of students in the only section at night, and that would've been fine. I was an artillery man. I know how to shut up and drive on. But while I was teaching, I learned I'd become a father and the pain I bore no longer would be carried by me personally. And I couldn't make decisions just in my own interest or another adult's interest. I now have a second child, but my first was born the day I was supposed to be at an orientation that my former hiring manager believed they did me a favor by letting me have a table at orientation.
And I knew that whole day that they were going to use that against me. Friends used it against me. And when I later stood up and tried to assert what little rights I had, I was warned that I would be blacklisted from PhD programs. It happened that my wife's career needed some time to take off, and I was a stay at home dad. Now both my daughters are in school, and this is what I'm doing.
I just came from Rick Lewis's office, and he does not seem to want this to happen. But Our nation was founded on the idea that those whose sacrifices secure our rights should receive those rights, and it hasn't been right since day one.
At least not within a context in which there is a sharp divide between civilian and military since the end of the draft.
Rep Thuy Tran: Is, are veterans a protected class?
Vet Caucus staff: I haven't seen anything that specifically calls that out. I know that there's some bills that do protect veterans from discrimination when it comes to certain instances. Instances like if they're deployed. If they're deployed and they are evicted, then they're protected from that. If they are charged interest while they're deployed, there's a financial actional, the Soldiers Protection Act that protects them. There are certain instances, but there isn't anything that I can think of off the top of my head that's just like a blanket. Identifying veterans as a protected class
Logan M. Isaac: ORS 659 excludes veterans. Chapter 408 includes benefits and there is veterans preference in hiring. But those aren't always easily enforceable. I have a BOLI complaint with LBCC. I put an application for an adjunct position or in the adjunct pool. I never got a confirmation that I even received my application. I called BOLI a couple weeks later. They said I'd have a complaint. I waited a year just to see how things would happen.
Rep Thuy Tran: Did you call them and see if they received anything?
Logan M. Isaac: I spoke with HR. And they Yeah, they would not tell me if they made any hires in the previous, in that, in the same year. They required me to file a $25 public information request to find out if they abided by state law. BOLI still, I've sent them my authorization. I still have not heard any progress on it. And any there's other arenas in which harassment, bias, and discrimination occur, but when you say veterans rights, you usually are met with this kind of cottage industry of discharge upgrades, disability claims, but not civil rights.
I spoke with Senator Thatcher this morning. She mentioned doing a resolution. I'm working with Senator Wyden's office about the federal side. Because there's laws on the books, it's easier to amend something that needs amending but Oregon doesn't contain any civil rights acts for veterans or something to amend. So it's my understanding that it may be that we need a bill from the ground up in order to affect what I'd like to see happen.
I don't know where the protected classes are in the ORS. Somebody had mentioned it earlier. I yeah, I can't remember it may have been Thatcher But I'm not aware of any that we could amend to make the work lighter.
Rep Thuy Tran: Well thank you for bringing this up to me. I did not know, because I get discriminated as many reasons, but not as a vet.
Logan M. Isaac: Yeah I have joked with my progressive friends I'm cishet, white, evangelical that everything else, in every other way, I'm normative. And that's one way I'm able to see it, because I don't get discrimination in any other way. But once I started seeing it, I couldn't unsee it, and it's everywhere.
I published a book with Hachette, which is a big five publisher. And I was doing things for them that I shouldn't they asked me to write before I had a contract or advance, and then when I was halfway through it, they pulled the editor. They slandered me on two occasions to other industry professionals, and they didn't actually edit my book. But if I take that to a libel or a contract lawyer, For some reason that's a gray area, but I mean they didn't follow through with their contract.
So they're, like, once I was able to see it, I couldn't unsee it. One of the examples I use is Ralph and Martin. Martin if Ralph were to go to a landlord to rent a property, that landlord, in any state of the union that I'm aware of, Maybe not California, but enforcement's another thing. That landlord could say, I'm fine with black people in my apartment. I'm not taking any baby killers in my apartment. There is no law. That says that's discrimination, or it is lawful discrimination. And if we're serious about suicide prevention, I think we have to get the human dignity and civil rights piece right, and it's unfortunate that we haven't.
It was when they started moving toward economic rights, or an economic kind of campaign, they hadn't, they weren't aware that October '67, the New York Times was the first national outlet to report that civilians were spitting on service members. The same protest at the Pentagon where we get the protestor putting a flower in a soldier's gun. That's a unit of the 82nd Airborne Division, my first unit. And it's the same protest that we get New York Times reporting on spitting on soldiers.
It peaked in '71, and there was, in the 90s, a campaign by Jerry Lemke, who was educated at the University of Oregon, to discredit all their accounts, saying it was just mythic, it's just in everybody's heads, don't believe veterans. But the, unless journalism, journalists are lying, this has been happening. And we seem to have this tendency to make soldiers guinea pigs, and we allow ourselves to think that they can just take it.
But I think the suicide epidemic proves that we can't. Just because we think we can keep carrying on doesn't mean we (should). And I, I don't know if I've mentioned this to you, I think I'm still around because I'm too stubborn. Survival may not be a virtue, but it's sometimes a form of resistance. I'm not letting anybody look away from the fact that our community is hurting, and we're not, we don't have the equation right.
And I think the missing piece is human dignity. Hosea Williams worked with Martin Luther King, and he called himself a general in the fight for human dignity. Because that's what's behind civil rights. It's "You don't get to (target) me just because I'm not like you". America is a land where everybody should have access to these rights. And if anybody should, it should be service members whose families are sacrificing to make them possible.
Rep Thuy Tran: So what's the ask?
Logan M. Isaac: A comprehensive military civil rights act.
Rep Thuy Tran: Okay,
Logan M. Isaac: I don't know how big a lift that is. Thatcher on the Senate side mentioned a resolution. I wouldn't want, I wouldn't support that if I knew that it would detract from the possibility of a Civil Rights Act, but I'm also very aware not only does do Democrats follow the West Coast and a Civil Rights Act would garnish some attention to the matter. If a resolution could do that, if we can get some oxygen in the room to talk about this, I'd support it. But I've I've been doing this for eight years.
Rep Thuy Tran: Is there? Here's how it works. It starts out with a legislative concept form. What's the problem? What's the solution? And then in the legislative concept form, has any other state done it before?
Any other country have done it before? So that there's some model languages, okay? Once that is submitted, then it goes to legislative council and they do their research. That's the bunch of attorneys that's here. And then they draft the bill language. And then after that, then we make amendments, and then we go and get support for it.
But just from speaking with you so far, or hearing you I, I don't have a clear enough idea of what the ask is. To put it into a problem. So if you can, RJ, if you get him a legislative concept form, and then write that out, and then see how that works. And then we'll probably have to run it through who else will be willing to support it. But just from your conversation, I hear you, but I'm like trying to.
Logan M. Isaac: Yeah,
Rep Thuy Tran: ...make it work and say, okay, this is a bill it's coming and who to ask for support and how I can do it. So we need to clarify what you're saying a little bit. I think because you know so much and we're going to be talking about to people who may not know as much and so let's put it down on paper and see what the problem is, what the potential solution is and we'll move on from there.
Logan M. Isaac: Okay.
Vet Caucus staff: I've got a question. Have you ever looked into the parent's bill of rights or like the patient's bill of rights?
Logan M. Isaac: I've heard of them. I only know bits.
Vet Caucus staff: I wonder if something like that might be a model.
Logan M. Isaac: So the G. I. Bill was supposed to initially be a G. I. Bill of Rights. It was 1931, Cox's Army and the Bonus March. They went to pressure Congress. So World War I, we didn't pay, we didn't pay vets when they got out. And this was mass mobilization, mass demobilization. So we sent people home with $500 checks and that was it. So in '31, it had gotten to a point where they said, no, you owe us money. And they camped out on the mall for, I can't remember how long, like a month.
Then they were dispersed by Patton's army. A couple people died, some women miscarried, and that pressure helped get Roosevelt elected, and Roosevelt reluctantly signed the Servicemember Civil Relief Act of 1944, which became the G. I. Bill, but initially had these are the rights that G. I. s should have.
Yeah, that might be a parallel. If the Senate pursues a resolution, does this at all interrupt potential activity in the house?
Rep Thuy Tran: I don't think so. What I would ask is that we write it down and see if it can happen. Okay? The Legislative Counsel do their research and see what is there. So I cannot say, because this is the first time I've heard about this. My experience is different than yours. Okay? And I'm not even a veteran, so I can't really say.
Logan M. Isaac: Yeah, you're still in, I think, right?
Rep Thuy Tran: I'm still in, yeah, I'm still in. But let's mold this and get it to to be more precise. Because if you go and you share the history like this it's hard for people to grasp it.
Because you know so much, but we might have to pare that down to just the meat and potatoes. And then as they ask for more, then you can share more. Okay. But like what exactly is the ask and what the problem and what is the solution? Just keep it simple. So you're, that's your man.
Logan M. Isaac: Okay.
Rep Thuy Tran: Okay and then get that done and see how we can massage things.
Logan M. Isaac: Would federal law be one of those precedents you were talking about? Has somebody else done that?
Rep Thuy Tran: We have to follow federal law, but we can do more than federal law, right? Federal laws are just the minimum that we have to meet. Okay. And what is it that federal say? And then is that enough? Okay. If Federal say that, then we have to apply it. For example, like when the state has a bid, an RFP for a service, construction, bridge, whatever, they send it out. And if you are a veteran owned business, then you get right a point for that, right?
There's many other factors that are involved, but. Our state do give precedent for that but yeah, I need to know more, so can I keep some of this?
Logan M. Isaac: Yep, that's all yours.
Rep Thuy Tran: Okay. And then that way, he's your man.
Logan M. Isaac: Okay, sounds good.
Rep Thuy Tran: The legislative concept form, and we'll start there. I think that's the best.
Logan M. Isaac: Awesome.
Rep Thuy Tran: Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time. I know it must be a busy time.
Vet Caucus staff: Thanks for stopping by.
Logan M. Isaac: I'll follow up by email then. Alright, thanks man.
