‘We ought to do what we promise’: A Veteran forum on care, democracy, and cost of inaction

What began as panels on care and civic trust became a night of stories—about sacrifices, survival, and what’s still broken.

When workers at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) crisis line try to prevent veterans from killing themselves, they “can’t fail,” said Army veteran Scott Peoples. 

That service, however, is already fraying from critical staffing cuts—-even as the veteran suicide rate remains 57% higher than the general population.

“Everyone who served has known someone that has reached that point in their life, or they’ve reached their low moments,” said Peoples, a board member of Veterans for Responsible Leadership. “That’s why having those dedicated staff, and making sure they are 100% staffed, 100% trained, is critically vital.”

Peoples’ urgency set the tone for “Voices for Veterans,” a community forum hosted by Cardinal & Pine on Tuesday night in Fayetteville. The two panels—“Human Cost of Gutting the VA” and “Defending Democracy”—examined the state of key aspects of veterans’ lives, as well as those of their family members.

RELATED: Cardinal & Pine hosts ‘Voices for Veterans’ event to highlight the devastating effects of proposed VA cuts

But what emerged through the night was not just outrage, but heartbreak: Veterans describing waitlists that stretched for months, nurses forced to chase down supplies, and spouses sitting through hour-long hold music to correct one missing referral.

When help comes too late

Michael McElroy, Cardinal & Pine’s political correspondent, moderated the first panel with speakers including VA nurse Ann Marie Patterson-Powell; Dr. Kyle Horton, founder of On Your Side Health; NC Rep. Eric Ager, a Democrat and Navy veteran representing Buncombe County; Grier Martin, an army veteran, attorney, and chair of the Veterans Affairs Commission (VAC); and Peoples.

In March, the Trump administration proposed eliminating more than 80,000 jobs at the VA, the department that is the main source of health care and urgent care for more than 400,000 North Carolina veterans.

Speaker after speaker said that funding the VA was a moral issue, dismantling arguments from the Trump administration that the cuts were about efficiency.

“We made a commitment to people,” Patterson-Powell said. “We promised those who signed up and left their families, their homes, everything behind to serve a country who says, ‘If you do this for me, we’re going to take care of you when you come back.’ So we ought to do what we promise.”

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As part of President Donald Trump’s agenda, Republicans are working to pass a bill that would cut $2 trillion in spending and provide trillions of dollars in tax cuts primarily for big corporations and the wealthiest Americans. On Thursday, the US House voted to pass that bill, which cuts about $700 billion from Medicaid, a program 3 million North Carolinians rely on. 

The scale of that proposal—and those to make cuts to the VA—stand in direct contrast to the growing needs of the veteran population.

More than 3.5 million service members across the country were exposed to toxic burn pits, according to the US Department of Defense, and over 14,000 North Carolina veterans rely on Medicaid.

If the Republicans-backed budget passes and is signed into law by Trump, many of those veterans could lose their access to health care, potentially putting more pressure on the crisis line, which is already strained. 

RELATED: House GOP fast-tracks budget bill that would cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood

Firing VA crisis line staff would further create a feedback loop of harm, panelists warned. Horton said that the VA is meant to be the agency best equipped to deliver veteran-specific care.

“Every single one of my patients knew someone in their immediate sphere that they had lost to suicide,” she said. “And so you see this generational trauma that happens that’s costing veterans lives.”

Kathy Greggs, an Army veteran, who stayed seated in the back of the room, had been pinching the bridge of her nose, rubbing her hands together, and breathing heavily, throughout the night—gathering herself before stepping to the microphone in the center of the room.

She described surviving military sexual assault, being deployed with an undiagnosed traumatic brain injury, and receiving a cancer diagnosis months after discharge—by a civilian doctor, not the VA.

“When we’re talking about ‘Let’s not cut the VA, what we need to have is oversight of the VA,’” Greggs said. “And I say this because they did hire people that was not trained. They did hire people that was not medical physicians. They did hire people and gave us wrong diagnoses, as well as prognosis.”

Later, she said the forum felt like the right place to share her story—because any story that can be told from beginning to end should be.

Veterans like Greggs weren’t asking for pity. They were asking for prevention efforts and for promises to be kept.

Veterans deserve better

When the second panel began, moderator Billy Ball, Cardinal & Pine’s newsletter editor, turned the focus to democracy, and what it meant to defend it. Not just in theory or abstracts, but in practice.

Panelists included NC Rep. Terry Brown, a Democrat representing Mecklenburg County; Jay Carey, Army veteran, and founder of Resist & Persist; Bobby Jones, a Navy veteran and president of Veterans for Responsible Leadership; Sean Wright, a former Army medic; and Kellie Artis, a military spouse.

Ball initially explored the “elephant in the room” regarding the legal case involving Jefferson Griffin and state Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs.

“Frankly, I’ve covered a lot of elections in North Carolina,” Ball said. “I’ve never seen anything like that. It was new territory for a lot of people, and that included the several thousand veterans whose votes were a part of those challenged votes.”

READ MORE: Jefferson Griffin’s effort to steal a seat on the NC Supreme Court now hinges on throwing out military votes

After the highly contested state Supreme Court race between Griffin and Riggs last year, Griffin lost the election by 734 votes. For six months after Riggs claimed victory, he filed several lawsuits aimed at throwing out more than 65,000 ballots from voters—including more than 5,000 overseas military voters and their families for not including a copy of a Voter ID.

Wright, who served for over 14 years, said the Griffin case showed how state Supreme Courts and red states have become very politicized, and to protect military and veterans families, pressure has to come from the voters.

“[It] really has to come from political pressure,” Wright said. “We have to make it, as voters, unacceptable to take away the right to vote on the Supreme Court level. It’s up to voters. It’s up to the grassroots to protect those rights to vote.”

Earlier in May, a federal judge ruled that Griffin violated federal voting protections in his challenges and ordered state election officials to certify Riggs as the winner.

RELATED: Federal judge issues scathing rebuke of Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to steal an election

This election showed how little many elected officials cared about veterans, Brown said. He said that Griffin’s efforts t will be seen time and time again moving forward. So, as a people, he said it’s important to hold those officials accountable.

“When it comes down to trying to make sure you can win an election, you’re looking for the path of least resistance,” Brown said. “It goes directly and antithetical to the work that you’re already saying when you’re saying, ‘We’re going to support our troops.”

Outside the uniform

Artis, who has been a military spouse for 25 years, said she identifies as “a civilian by design”—a role she views as both a privilege and responsibility.

Over the years, Artis has served on the advisory board of the Military Family Advisor Network, a nonprofit that researches and elevates the needs of military families nationwide.

“There is this military community thing that exists, and most people don’t have a touch point,” Artis said. “So being able to elucidate on what our lifestyle actually is, what it entails, what we give up and what we proudly sacrifice in order to support our service members in this country is, I think, really meaningful in and of its own way, and can be its own form of political activism.”

While Artis’ perspective singled out the weight of a life lived in service—not in uniform, but beside it, Alysan Buchanan, an audience member who is also married to a veteran, wondered what happens when that sense of duty fades.

Buchanan pointed to what she saw as a shift in the motivations behind military service. After 9/11, she said, many enlisted out of a deep sense of patriotism. But the generations that followed often joined seeking health care, job security, or stability, but now face uncertainty. 

The question rippled through the panel. 

“It’s always been a hard question,” Bobby Jones said. “Always. It’s not just now—that has always been the case. Think about it, less than 1% of America defends the other 99%. There’s your math.”

Jay Carey called it “the question they’ve been asking for decades.”

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“If anybody had that answer to how to get people into the military today, man, there’s people that pay you a lot of money for that answer,” he said. “There’s no answer. There’s no good answer.”

By the end of the night, the message was clear: the battle doesn’t end when veterans come home—and neither should their country’s commitment to them.