Thankful doesn't begin to describe how we feel when we look back on 2011.

• Since our founding in 2010, our organization has grown into a national force. We now have strong chapters from the east to west coast with new member-Leaders emerging.
  
  
•  We worked with Iraq Veterans Against the War to launch the organizer program at Ft. Hood, one of the largest military   installations in the country, and sent members to Under the Hood Cafe and Outreach Center in Killeen, Texas to do front-line GI organizing there and develop a replicable organizing model as part of our Operation Recovery campaign.
  
  
• We held our first annual national gathering in Portland, OR this summer, bringing members of IVAW and CivSol together to plan the next steps of the Operation Recovery Campaign.
•  CivSol members across the country have supported IVAW and veteran mobilizations within Occupy Wall Street, including care and support for our IVAW brother Scott Olsen in Oakland, a two-tour Marine veteran critically injured by police while demonstrating.
  
  

Please make an end of year donation today to help us continue this work.

President Obama recently declared the Iraq War “over.” While we are grateful that so many of our friends and family will no longer risk deployment to Iraq, we know that the effects of this war are far from over. For many, this holiday season is not a homecoming, but a redeployment to Afghanistan or Kuwait. For others, the experience of their service will never truly be over.

After over a decade of continuous war, the members of our Armed Forces face a crisis. We are seeing rampant problems of sexual assault and rape within the ranks, with an estimated one in three women sexually assaulted during their military service, and sexual assault constituting the number one predictor for PTSD for women in the military. Repeated deployments of soldiers, before they are fully healed, has exacerbated wounds of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury(TBI) and Military Sexual Trauma. We are seeing 20% of returning troops seeking PTSD treatment through the VA, with a far greater amount keeping their symptoms silent. Meanwhile, a suicide epidemic is sweeping through the services. Military suicides continue to climb, as more troops have taken their own lives than have been killed in combat.

This crisis within our military has been the backdrop of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Without a committed and active social movement, it will remain a lifelong crisis for an entire generation of veterans.

Led directly by active-duty service members and veterans themselves, Operation Recovery seeks to guarantee all service members’ right to heal. In order to win concessions from decision-makers, we are actively growing a strong base of support in the military community. By organizing service members to demand their right to heal, we can end these cycles of abuse. We can transform the conditions that allowed the Iraq War to happen and are enabling the war in Afghanistan. We can support soldiers withdrawing their consent from U.S. wars and occupations, and we can support them as they collectively organize for the healthcare and treatment they deserve.

Accordingly, over the summer we established a Resident Organizer program outside the gates of Fort Hood, the largest military base in the US and home to some of the most egregious violations of service members rights. Fort Hood has the highest suicide rate of any Army post, with a reported 22 suicides last year alone. Despite this, Fort Hood counselors meet with 4,000 patients per month.

The CivSol resident organizer works with Iraq Veterans Against the War and Under the Hood Cafe and Outreach Center conducting daily direct outreach to soldiers on base. Organizers than follow up with door-to-door home visits to collect qualitative and quantitative evidence of violations of service members rights. The program also provides resources to service members, and organizes local events to reach service members, veterans, and their communities.

But our work doesn’t stop in Fort Hood. Through our Guest Organizer Program, volunteers from around the country have an opportunity to experience our approach and bring it to their community. Guests spend a minimum of one week in Fort Hood and are trained in active-duty outreach  by the IVAW and CivSol Resident Organizers. To date, we have sent 5 guest organizers through the program. In the first 3 months, our organizers made over 300 active-duty contacts. With this baseline, we have set quantitative goals for outreach through 2012.

We are happy to announce that L.T., a founding member of the Civilian-Soldier Alliance, will be our next resident organizer. L.T. is a long-term organizer in the anti-war veteran and G.I. resistance movements as well as an active organizer of military family members. She has extensive experience in media projection, outreach, leadership development, and IVAW and CivSol chapter-building. L.T. has committed to organizing at Ft. Hood for a six month term beginning just after New Years. "My main objective is to create communities that allow people to heal. I want to address the issues that are hurting the people we care about," says L.T.

In order to make L.T.'s organizing residency a reality, we need your help. We need to raise $6,000 by January in order to make this program a reality. Your contribution will directly cover the costs of L.T.'s monthly living expenses for the entire six months of her residency.

To contribute by credit card, visit us online at www.civsol.org and click “Donate” on the left-hand side.

To contribute by check or money order, please make checks payable to “Civilian Soldier Alliance” and mail them to Civilian Soldier Alliance, 2638 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218.

This next stage of the Operation Recovery campaign is crucial: we are entering an intensive outreach phase. The goal is to build leadership amongst active duty service members, the most affected community in this struggle. We are also continuously working to build the Under the Hood Cafe and Outreach Center community which provides critical support for, and access to, the larger Ft. Hood community.

We are grateful for all of the support you have already given: your donations, your participation, and your encouragement have made this past year a remarkable one. As we look forward to the coming year and all of the work yet to be done, we are asking you to consider giving again and generously. Ensure that we will have L.T. at FT Hood for that six-month stint as a resident organizer, bringing all her expertise and energy to the task and moving us one step closer towards our goal of ending the wars and dismantling militarism in the US.

Sincerely,

Civilian Soldier Alliance Steering Committe

Sarah, Brad, Lily, Sergio, and Jonathan