VETS’ OLD GUARD UNDER FIRE
After parade flap, some members want to ‘storm’ council
A new wave of Southie war veterans is looking to change the way the Allied War Veterans Council operates by pushing for new leadership and more transparency after a high-profile dispute led to gay veterans group OutVets getting a permanent place in the organization’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
“If the veterans community is going to be entrusted with running this parade, we owe the city with more than just an annual controversy,” said Dave Falvey, a major in the Army National Guard who served in Iraq and is the junior vice commander of the Thomas J. Fitzgerald VFW Post 561 in South Boston.
“We’re going to try to take it by storm,” Falvey said of the council, “and take it back to sanity.”
Falvey said he and a group of other vets, many whom completed their military service post-9/11, were the driving force behind an emergency meeting Friday night, where younger council members voted to reverse course and permanently allow OutVets to march in the parade, which will take place a week from today.
The decision, which contradicted an earlier decision preventing OutVets from marching, was applauded by city and state officials, many of whom joined sponsors in threatening to boycott the parade if OutVets members weren’t allowed to participate — as they have for the past two years.
“I think the actions by the veterans last night ended this conversation,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh said yesterday. “Now we can move on and put this in the rearview mirror.”
State Rep. Nick Collins, who represents South Boston, agreed, saying: “We’re confident, we don’t think we’re going to have this problem again in South Boston.”
And though he said he doesn’t expect any members to mount a legal challenge to the organization’s permanent place in the parade, the council’s attorney, Chester Darling, stressed that the group is well within their rights to decide who can and can’t participate in the festivities.
“If my clients want to discriminate on the basis of anything in their own parade, they’re entitled to do that,” Darling told the Herald yesterday. “I heard the attorney for OutVets mentioned something about discrimination — that wouldn’t last five minutes in front of a federal judge.”
The council’s right to turn away anyone it wants was upheld in a landmark 1995 unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
OutVets lawyer DeeDee Edmonson said parade organizers “finally found the solution to the problem” and “closed a dark chapter” in the history of the parade.
Falvey agreed, saying, “The allied war vets is not a reflection of the community; it’s not a reflection of the posts; they don’t reflect the veterans. We’re going to take it back.”