For Fetterman, Campaign Trail Doubles as Road to Recovery
A former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence sergeant who is the executive director of an organization that helps homeless veterans has been named a national and regional winner for his campaign to end what he believes is a “culture of shame” on the roadways of the country’s roads.
Fetterman’s organization, The Truth About Stops (TATS), is a national nonprofit that works with homeless veterans, providing resources and training related to what it calls the “stops and traps” that homeless vets go through on the roads.
As part of his campaign, Fetterman ran four months last year through the California State Senate to get a ban on the practice of “stopping and frisking” homeless vets on the road, which he said unfairly targets homeless veterans of color and has led to their arrests on “stops and traps.”
Fetterman’s efforts are part of a larger conversation about how to keep the nation safe as a nation of immigrants, and particularly immigrants with ties to the military. As part of that conversation, Fetterman said he and his organization have been able to open the eyes of state and federal officials to both the issue of the “stops and traps,” which he said was an effort by the Department of Homeland Security to target and arrest homeless vets, who are overwhelmingly of immigrant background.
“I had a conversation with a state senator. I told him that, after reading the press release that DHS issued to announce its new policy, he asked me a question that led him to be the first state senator in the United States to ask for a statewide ban on’stops and frisks’ on the state highways,” Fetterman said. “I told him that while I’m happy that more of the public is paying attention to the issue, this is just one of many issues that need to be addressed, and this is an issue that is very specific to the military, and the people that come