Wednesday Afternoon, December 28, 2022 |
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MRFF VOLUNTEER PHOTOGRAPHERS
CAPTURE THIS YEAR’S VILE DESECRATION
OF NON-CHRISTIAN VETERANS’ GRAVES
BY “WREATHS ACROSS AMERICA"
"I received 52 extremely emotional communications from outraged family members from Dec. 16 through Dec. 18
regarding Wreaths Across America’s (WAA) malicious carpet bombing of veterans gravesites all over the USA with their shameless, sectarian Christmas wreaths. It is just so unbearably heartbreaking to speak with them about this travesty."
—MRFF Founder and President Mikey Weinstein
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MRFF OP-ED
ON DAILY KOS
Trending story on Daily Kos
Some repugnant photos of this year’s
veterans-of-the-wrong-religions
Christmas grave desecrations
By: MRFF Senior Research Director Chris Rodda
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
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A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say, and since not too many more words are necessary to describe the grifters and grave desecraters known as Wreaths Across America than what I wrote in my previous post, I’m just going to post some of the photos sent in to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) from this year’s “National Desecrate a Non-Christian Veteran’s Grave Day” — the day, as I expounded on in my last post, that the Worcester Wreath Co., with the sanction of the U.S. Senate and the Department of Veterans Affairs, cashes in to the tune of tens of millions of dollars by having their so-called “non-profit” Wreaths Across America carpet bomb every veterans cemetery across the country with millions of Christmas wreaths purchased from their own for-profit Christmas wreath company.
This wreath bombing of course includes the placing of these unwanted Christmas decorations on the graves of countless Jewish and other non-Christian veterans whose family members categorically do not want their non-Christian loved ones’ graves decorated for the Christian holiday of Christmas! It is a personal and extremely distressing affront to them, the memory of their loved one, and their religion, as MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein explains:
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“I received 52 extremely emotional communications from outraged family members from Dec. 16 through Dec. 18 regarding Wreaths Across America’s (WAA) malicious carpet bombing of veterans gravesites all over the USA with their shameless, sectarian Christmas wreaths. It is just so unbearably heartbreaking to speak with them about this travesty.
I also had to have extensive phone calls for days with the staff and even the head of the national veterans cemetery where my own father is buried to ensure that it would not be desecrated with a WAA Christmas wreath.
Forcing the families of America’s honored deceased veterans to go to all of the time and trouble to ‘opt out’ of this WAA wreath-spewing ahead of time is completely unconscionable and IT MUST BE STOPPED!
How effin' hard is it for WAA to make SURE that only graves with a Christian cross clearly marked on them should receive the unsolicited Christmas wreath unless otherwise directed?!
The answer is ‘not hard at all!’ So what the hell is going on here?!
Here’s the damn bottom line: WAA and many of its eagerly effusive Christmas-wreath-saturating mobs of supporters across the nation are DELIBERATELY using this abhorrent, money-making scheme of an event to proselytize their own parochial Christian faith. Further, they are perpetrating this bigotry and prejudice and hatred to hideously shame and denigrate those dead veterans, and their loving families, for not accepting their own perverted, fundamentalist Christian nationalist version of same!"
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Previous MRFF coverage of
Wreaths Across America's 2022 wreath bombing
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MRFF OP-ED
ON DAILY KOS
Trending story on Daily Kos
It’s time for this year’s “National Desecrate
a Non-Christian Veteran’s Grave Day”
By: MRFF Senior Research Director Chris Rodda
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
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It’s that time of the year again — the time when the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) is besieged with communications from family members of deceased veterans deeply worried that their loved ones’ graves will be most unwelcomely decorated for Christmas.
Yes, December 17 is the third Saturday in December, the day designated by a Senate resolution introduced by Maine’s senators each year as “National Wreaths Across America Day” — the day that the Maine “non-profit” Wreaths Across America indiscriminately carpet bombs the graves in veterans cemeteries across the country with Christmas wreaths, whether the families of the veterans interred in those cemeteries want an unquestionably Christian symbol on their loved one’s grave or not.
Despite their claims that Wreaths Across America’s wreath-laying volunteers are instructed to not place wreaths on graves marked with the Jewish Star of David or the symbols of other non-christian religions, every year MRFF receives a slew of photos, like those at the end of this post from last year’s wreath-bombing, showing Wreaths Across America’s Christmas wreaths on the graves of numerous Jewish, Muslim, and atheist veterans.
Wreaths Across America was created in 2007 by Morrill Worcester, the owner of the Worcester Wreath Co. Morrill Worcester’s wife, Karen Worcester, is the executive director of Wreaths Across America. In other words, the Worcester’s for-profit Christmas wreath company created a non-profit organization with a need for millions of Christmas wreaths every year, and then their non-profit gave the contract for these millions of Christmas wreaths to none other than their own for-profit business.
How much money are we talking about here? Well, according to their latest available tax return, the Worcester’s non-profit Wreaths Across America took in nearly $25 million in donations in 2019 and then paid nearly $17 million of that to their for-profit wreath company to supply the wreaths.
The Worcester’s have faced much criticism over the years for the profitably incestuous relationship between their non-profit organization and their for-profit Christmas wreath company. In 2015, The Wall Street Journal came out with an article titled “Wreaths Across America Has Family Ties to Its Supplier,” and in 2018, an article from Nonprofit Quarterly magazine titled “Wreaths Across America: Is a Nonprofit Built on Conflict of Interest Still a Nonprofit?” revealed more details, such as that when the Worcester Wreath Co. lost its long-time contract with L.L. Bean, which had provided 90% of its business for decades, the Worcester’s non-profit Wreaths Across America suddenly expanded, and as of 2018 was providing between 75 and 80 percent of the Worcester Wreath Co.’s revenue.
More locally, also in 2018, The Portland Press Herald reported in an article titled “As Wreaths Across America has grown, so has scrutiny about its practices that “In five years the company has nearly tripled its business from the nonprofit.” The article also noted that “CharityWatch listed Wreaths Across America among three ‘outrageous’ examples of nonprofits operating with clear conflicts of interest.”
In 2016, apparently for show, Wreath Across America instituted a bidding process to quell all the criticism it was getting after a 2015 Money Talks News article titled “Should You Donate to Wreaths Across America? A Lesson in Charitable Giving” was widely distributed by outlets such as Yahoo! News, but the Worcester Wreath Co. provided the only bid in this bidding process, and now has its role as the sole wreath supplier for Wreaths Across America locked in until 2023.
Not surprisingly, Wreaths Across America gets a failing grade from Charity Navigator on its finances and accountability. (MRFF, by the way, enjoys a 100% “Give with Confidence” rating.)
But while all of this information about the incestuous money-making relationship between Wreaths Across America and the Worcester Wreath Co. certainly deserves much scrutiny, it is not the primary concern that MRFF or its clients have with Wreaths Across America.
[...]
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MRFF Matters – 12/13/22 – MRFF Founder and President Mikey Weinstein harshly condemns the Christian supremacy of "Wreaths Across America" placing its Christmas wreaths on Jewish and
other non-Christian veterans' graves
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
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MRFF's 2021 exposés of Wreaths Across America |
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“Huge thanks to you and the MRFF!”
From: (Name & Email Address withheld)
Date: December 27, 2022 at 12:11:16 PM MST
Subject: Huge thanks to you and the MRFF!
Dear Mikey,
I wanted to express my profound appreciation for you, Chris Rodda, and others at MRFF, and for your efforts to ensure that the US DoD honors the letter and spirit of the Constitution when it comes to religious expression. As you have so consistently documented, there is a well-funded, organized, dedicated, and systemic movement among military and civilian members to turn our military into a Christian Nationalist force, in direct contradiction to the letter and spirit of the Constitution they pretend to uphold. Nobody is addressing this problem as effectively and consistently as MRFF.
I am a civilian employee of the Department of the Air Force. Earlier this year, I attended a retirement ceremony, widely attended by civilians and military and the local Junior ROTC, during which the United States was frankly described as “a Christian nation.” This was during a flag-folding ceremony, which Air Force regulations permit to be customized individually, I assume with the expectation that the personalizations not directly contradict the Constitution.
While it is appropriate that the language is tailored to the values and experiences of retirees, there was something extremely unnerving about seeing a stage full of senior military officers and civilian staff taking part in a ceremony, in front of Junior ROTC, that declared the US to be a Christian nation and the American people to be a Christian people. This is, to state the very obvious, completely false and in direct contradiction to the language of the Constitution and every bit of training we receive on this topic. No thoughts given to the Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, or people of other faiths and beliefs who attended, who entered that room believing we were one fighting force under the Constitution and who left it an hour later knowing that some senior leaders believe that we are not.
What’s truly impressive about MRFF is that you get results – every week, the results of your efforts are made clear. This is a sign of how uninhibited some military members and civilian leaders feel about promoting Christian nationalism, but also a sign of how effective your organization is at combatting this sickness. I know that you also provide assistance to military members facing personal crises, and that your results here – by necessity – cannot be as widely shared, but are just as important.
I wanted to say thanks to you, Chris, and the rest of the MRFF staff for your incredible contributions and have a wonderful holiday season!
Best regards,
(Name, base, and email withheld)
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"ICYMI: 'Think America is a ‘Christian nation’?
George Washington didn’t.'”
From: (name withheld)
Date: December 21, 2022 at 8:22:30 AM MST
Subject: ICYMI: “Think America is a ‘Christian nation’? George Washington didn’t.”
Happy holidays, Mikey, to you and all your loved ones. As this year draws to a close, I want to again thank you for standing up to tyranny against our democratic republic by Christian nationalists who don’t give a damn about it. You really are an American hero.
(name withheld)
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“MRFF Demands Air Force Base Gate Guards Immediately Cease Wearing ‘In God We Trust’ Tab on Uniform”
From: (MRFF Client Name & Email Address withheld)
Subject: MRFF Demands Air Force Base Gate Guards Immediately Cease Wearing “In God We Trust” Tab on Uniform
Date: December 19, 2022 at 5:27:44 PM MST
Thanks so much Mikey and team for such swift action.
I have been concerned that as a society we are not very good at calling out balls and strikes, therefore allowing violations of protocols and civility to be normalized. It seems that more and more in this political environment; that we have to stand up fast and loud when we see something that we know is not right. In the case of religion being allowed to invade our military, I recall an observation I made while being deployed to the Middle East. I am a psychiatric nurse and had the privilege of working in the detainment facility. I came to understand that the detainees there were much like us, but the one difference was that their allegiance was for their tribe, not for their country. They explained to me that their government did not have any compunction or responsibility for the care of the regular citizen and therefore the onus fell to their tribe of affiliation. It then followed that getting the society to act as a unit was like herding cats as there was no unity as a citizenry. They did not think of themselves as citizens of their country, they identified with their tribe. Their tribes were based in their religion, and therefore their religious affiliation was a part of their identity that separated them from another tribe.
This observation about the government in this decaying country made me think about my own country. I asked myself, what has made America such a strong democracy? Pondering on this question led me to the following conclusion: it was the profound revelation of our Founding Fathers to ensure division between Church and State. Without having a legal boundary, so many countries in history have risen to then fall when division has been sown in the ranks of those elected or appointed by something as simple as a personal choice known as ‘religion’. Religious choice should only affect the person holding that belief, but down through the ages, example after example has demonstrated it is this ONE tenet of society that has caused the most conflict and therefore lead to the fall of nations and civilizations.
At that time, I thought to myself, at least my country, the United States of America, is impervious to strife because our Constitution; in its brilliance; foresaw the problems that could befall a nation. Our forefathers, in writing this founding document; ensured the success of our nation with guidelines and rules that seemed to have an answer to all the potential pitfalls of the flaws of man.
In the last few years, my American smugness has come home to roost as they say; as America is being insidiously besieged by division, much of which has its seeds in ‘religion’. I see how important it is to stand up and educate about the importance of the Separation of Church and State due to my observations of how a country can so easily fall into decay if religion is allowed to dictate the direction and laws. Our military represents our Constitution, and therefore any religious affiliation of our military has no place in a representative democracy. The extremism of ISIS seemed outlandish when we first heard their brutality that was sanctioned by their dogma, but I now realize that it is not far from what we could see in our country if religion is allowed to be weaponized in the same manner.
Thank you so MRFF for standing in the breech!
(MRFF Client Name & Rank withheld)
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