VETERAN VOCE 2024
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Standby by for Veteran Voce 2025
Call for Art & More Info! Veteran Voce SATX - San Antonio, Texas is organized by the About Face San Antonio Texas Crew (AF SATX) as a local project of the About Face South Central Regional Chapter.
Contact: AF SATX Crew Contact: About Face National to reach the South Central Regional Chapter or a chapter near you. Press
Resources:Crisis Call Center
24/7 Help Line Call 1 (800) 273-8255 Text CARE to 839863 US Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255. Suicide & Crisis Lifeline Text: 988 Thank yous!We thank Veronica Castillo, Rosie and staff for hosting us at their beautiful space - Galeria EVA.
Thank you to Jules for curating and coordinating the set up of all the pieces. This behind the scenes work does not go unnoticed and facilitated a smooth process. Thank you for being awesome! Thanks to Trish for coming to SA for this gallery and being an integral part to ensuring this event’s success. Thank you for shipping your pieces and for sharing your skills and talents with us. Thank you to the members of AFVAW South TX for making this happen in a short notice. Working and building together is amazing and we look forward to continuing our work together. Thank you to ORWP for helping us set up! THANK YOU to you for coming out and engaging with our anti-war, anti-imperialist perspective of the veteran experience. Please take what you hear and learn with you as we need your help in changing our militaristic war-centric culture and shallow glorification of soldiers to promote and justify US intervention. Support the ArtMuch of the art exhibited can be purchased & downloaded at these links:
From Just Seeds Collaboration:
Celebrate the People's History IVAW Portfolio IVAW Flicker Portfolio War is Trauma Portfolio 
Art Process Video
Veterans creating their artwork, much of which was exhibited at Veteran Voce 2024
How to take action:
About Face Veterans (National Org)
About Face for Active Duty: Right to Refuse If you are currently in the military and want to get out connect with GI Resistance Hotline 1-877-447-4487 and with us here at About Face Veterans Against the War Contact your representatives about military spending - MONEY FOR JOBS AND EDUCATION NOT WAR AND OCCUPATION! https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member Get Involved!
Join a local San Antonio organization!
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The CONVERSATION
We created opportunities to continue this conversation throughout the weekend, including artist talks on opening and closing night, an open mic session on Opening Night, and alternative Veterans (Armistice) Day transmuting fire ritual, and art + chill hang out, complete with free food, games, and camaraderie open to the public.
Background Information
About the Fire Ritual & Additional Background Information on Armistice Day:
Veterans Day actually began as Armistice Day, established November 11th, 1919 at the end of World War I, — the “war to end all wars.” It was meant to be a time for all sides to come together to collectively grieve, mourn their losses, and work together toward World Peace. Over time, this goal was forgotten, and World War II seemed to prove peace was an imaginary ideal. Eventually, the U.S. renamed November 11th as Veterans Day after World War II. In parts of Canada, Britain, it has become Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday. Each is now more about commemorating war and honoring veterans than taking time to connect on a larger level and mourn the havoc war has wrought on the world. All of these days of military recognition in November, regardless of name or location, are rooted in the original November 11th Armistice Day established by the Allied Nations. Armistice Day is still celebrated in France and Belgium.
I can’t help but lament how renaming Armistice Day to Veterans Day might have missed the point of Armistice Day’s inception in the first place — which was a call to end all war and rally people together for peace. There is a growing call among many U.S. Veteran organizations to reclaim Armistice Day.
Why did Armistice Day cease to exist? Is the goal of peace so far-fetched? Has the world given up on the dream of peace? Wouldn’t honoring Veterans mean more if we stopped waging war than giving Veterans an awkward thank you and a free cheeseburger? I know it would to me.
Perhaps that is just a silly dream or an idea too extreme because many people believe that violence is inherent in humanity. Still, what if peace is possible – not through rheotoric – but through ritual and fostering hard conversation. I can’t find my peace, or at least something close to it, without reckoning with grief and sorrow first. It hurts – this search for peace. The world can’t reach peace without reckoning with its own stories of war and violence and feeling the accompanying loss and grief. We have to feel the pain to reach peace. We can’t skip lamentation and expect to find peace. Peace is found through lamenting — facing the deep and piercing grief as we walk through our shadows. It is only through embracing our shadows, individually and collectively, that we can transcend to peace.
Thich Nat Hahn is quoted in A Lifetime of Peace by Jennifer Schwamm Willis (editor) as stating: Veterans are the light at the tip of the candle, illuminating the way for the whole nation. If veterans can achieve awareness, transformation, understanding, and peace, they can share with the rest of society the realities of war. And they can teach us how to make peace with ourselves and each other, so we never have to use violence to resolve conflicts again.
This fire ritual provides a peace for all the things that war brings home…grief, confusion, separation, violence – If we veterans are the light at the tip of the candle, then may we stoke the fires of peace today though our offerings of paper, uniform, leaf – whatever you see fit to transmute to the hope of peace, the end of separation – transmute in these flames.
Thank for be willing to face the fire of transformation with us. It is not easy task to face difficult conversation. In the words of Amanda Gorman: “The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light, if only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it.”
- Presented by Trish Simone Wild prior to the Fire Ritual at 11:11am at Veteran Voce, November 11, 2024, E.V.A. Galerie E.V.A, San Antonio TX
Veterans Day actually began as Armistice Day, established November 11th, 1919 at the end of World War I, — the “war to end all wars.” It was meant to be a time for all sides to come together to collectively grieve, mourn their losses, and work together toward World Peace. Over time, this goal was forgotten, and World War II seemed to prove peace was an imaginary ideal. Eventually, the U.S. renamed November 11th as Veterans Day after World War II. In parts of Canada, Britain, it has become Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday. Each is now more about commemorating war and honoring veterans than taking time to connect on a larger level and mourn the havoc war has wrought on the world. All of these days of military recognition in November, regardless of name or location, are rooted in the original November 11th Armistice Day established by the Allied Nations. Armistice Day is still celebrated in France and Belgium.
I can’t help but lament how renaming Armistice Day to Veterans Day might have missed the point of Armistice Day’s inception in the first place — which was a call to end all war and rally people together for peace. There is a growing call among many U.S. Veteran organizations to reclaim Armistice Day.
Why did Armistice Day cease to exist? Is the goal of peace so far-fetched? Has the world given up on the dream of peace? Wouldn’t honoring Veterans mean more if we stopped waging war than giving Veterans an awkward thank you and a free cheeseburger? I know it would to me.
Perhaps that is just a silly dream or an idea too extreme because many people believe that violence is inherent in humanity. Still, what if peace is possible – not through rheotoric – but through ritual and fostering hard conversation. I can’t find my peace, or at least something close to it, without reckoning with grief and sorrow first. It hurts – this search for peace. The world can’t reach peace without reckoning with its own stories of war and violence and feeling the accompanying loss and grief. We have to feel the pain to reach peace. We can’t skip lamentation and expect to find peace. Peace is found through lamenting — facing the deep and piercing grief as we walk through our shadows. It is only through embracing our shadows, individually and collectively, that we can transcend to peace.
Thich Nat Hahn is quoted in A Lifetime of Peace by Jennifer Schwamm Willis (editor) as stating: Veterans are the light at the tip of the candle, illuminating the way for the whole nation. If veterans can achieve awareness, transformation, understanding, and peace, they can share with the rest of society the realities of war. And they can teach us how to make peace with ourselves and each other, so we never have to use violence to resolve conflicts again.
This fire ritual provides a peace for all the things that war brings home…grief, confusion, separation, violence – If we veterans are the light at the tip of the candle, then may we stoke the fires of peace today though our offerings of paper, uniform, leaf – whatever you see fit to transmute to the hope of peace, the end of separation – transmute in these flames.
Thank for be willing to face the fire of transformation with us. It is not easy task to face difficult conversation. In the words of Amanda Gorman: “The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light, if only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it.”
- Presented by Trish Simone Wild prior to the Fire Ritual at 11:11am at Veteran Voce, November 11, 2024, E.V.A. Galerie E.V.A, San Antonio TX
