Veterans gather at Liberty Plaza to have their say

Ahead of CNN’s Biden-Trump presidential debate in Atlanta, Common Defense, the nation’s largest grassroots veterans organization, gathered for a rally at Liberty Plaza on Thursday. Just steps away from the Georgia State Capitol, veterans from states such as Texas and Arizona traveled to the battleground city to address voter intimidation, advocate for reproductive rights, and demand the protection of democracy.Ed Anderson, the Georgia lead organizer for Common Defense, said veterans probably understand the values of democracy better than anyone else.“In Georgia in 2019, over 200,000 people were purged from the voter rolls. Cross-reexamination of those rolls show that a lot of those people lived in counties around military bases,” Anderson said. “We’re trying to break that down even more. We feel like military voters and families of military voters are being disenfranchised. So all of our outreach is to reach not just veterans, but also military families and communities to try to educate and engage them in the voting process.”At the rally, veterans told personal anecdotes rehashing futile searches for healthcare and fear of the current state of reproductive rights in the country in efforts to emphasize the importance of voting for the right leaders.Dallas native and Air Force veteran...