Sebastian Junger, bestselling author and co-director of the Afghanistan war documentary “Restrepo,” has launched a nonprofit organization — registered in Vermont — that aims to connect veterans and non-veterans through community events.
The organization, called Vets Town Hall, will provide resources for any person or organization who wants to host a gathering where attendees can listen to military veterans speak about their experiences, according to a press release announcing the new organization.
One such event will be held this Sunday at St. Michael’s College in Colchester.
The few rules for these events: Anyone in the community may attend, only veterans may speak for up to 10 minutes each, and politics have no place in the town hall.
Junger, president and founder of the nonprofit, said he based the concept of town hall events on ceremonies performed by many Native American tribes of the southern Great Plains. The events were a way to bring warriors back into the community after war, he said, and warriors had the opportunity to act out or retell their stories from the war.
“It’s a kind of cathartic experience,” Junger said. “But it also requires that the community participate morally in the violence, right? They’re part of it.”
One of Junger’s critiques of modern society is that everything is disconnected — for instance, an environmentalist driving around in an SUV with a bumper sticker that reads, “No Blood for Oil.”
“There’s just no connection between the life we’re living and the values we espouse,” he said.
By starting Vets Town Hall, Junger said, he hopes to reinforce the connection between veterans and their communities. “We are of one nation and we’re doing this together, and the people that actually pulled the triggers were sent there by us,” he said.
He registered the nonprofit in Vermont because two of the three board members live in the state.
One of them, Jon Turner, of Bristol, has been running town hall events since 2018. He was a Marine infantryman from 2003 to 2007, according to the Vets Town Hall press release.
Before hosting town halls, Turner said, he joined and led many other activities to help veterans, such as making paper from uniforms, writing poetry, farming and homesteading, and outdoor recreational activities.
“It’s been a wide range of things, but throughout all of these modalities, the storytelling is always a large part of it,” he said.
Turner said storytelling plays a central role in veterans’ events because many veterans experience isolation after leaving the service. Many communities don’t include a lot of people with military experience, and veterans can have difficulty finding an outlet to process what they went through.
At a Vets Town Hall, “you’re with your brother again, and so storytelling and being able to continue to process the experience, whether it’s good or bad, or lighthearted or tragic, is something that just continues to happen,” Turner said of the events.
Junger started putting on town hall events on Veterans Day in 2015, and now has organized dozens of events nationwide, according to the press release. But until the nonprofit organization was established, there was no “centralized way for people to learn more about how to organize them, or where to find the closest event,” according to the release.
On the Vets Town Hall website, people who want to organize their own event can find resources on how to set one up and the guidelines for conducting it. People who want to find a town hall event near them can also find the schedule on the website.
“Anyone can do it, and it costs hardly any money,” Junger said of the town hall events. “That is the sort of wonderful promise of this, is that it really could be nationwide.”
The goal of the organization, according to the press release, is to “establish annual Vets Town Halls in every state — and eventually every community — in the U.S.”
Turner, who will host Sunday’s event, said he doesn’t have any specific expectations for it, but he has the same hopes for every event he hosts.
“Just making sure that people walk away there feeling better,” he said. “Maybe a little weight is lifted, or maybe there’s a little bit more of an understanding on their own lives or the lives of their family members.”
Sunday’s event starts at 1 p.m. at the McCarthy Arts Center at St. Michael’s College in Colchester. People interested in attending are encouraged but not required to RSVP on the Vermont Vets Town Halls webpage.
