Please call & write you MoCs about S. 1789: Military Justice Improvement Act of 2019. Please help to change the culture. Demand justice.

Gillibrand: The Military Justice Improvement Act would give service members a justice system that works. https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2019/06/30/gillibrand-the-military-justice-improvement-act-would-give-service-members-a-justice-system-that-works/#.XwhYtC0h0HE.twitter

2/ Military sexual trauma affects an estimated one in four women veterans and one in one-hundred male veterans, according to VA.

S. 1789: Military Justice Improvement Act of 2019:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1789/all-info

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1789/text

3/ Nearly 30 years ago, when George H. W. Bush was president and Dick Cheney was the secretary of defense, the Pentagon made a promise to our service members.

America’s military leadership affirmed a “zero tolerance” policy toward sexual assault within their ranks.

4/ The military had a sexual assault problem, and pledged to solve it.

It’s painfully clear that the military has now failed at this mission by almost any metric. For years, survivor after survivor has told us the change in the system we needed to make to end this scourge —

5/ the same change that a number of our allies around the world have already made: take the adjudication of these crimes outside of the chain of command and allow trained military prosecutors to prosecute them.

6/ We heard excuse after excuse from the Defense Department, and despite a majority of the Senate listening to the voices of survivors, my bipartisan bill to solve this problem could not overcome a 60-vote filibuster threshold on the Senate floor.

7/ “Give us more time” is essentially what the Pentagon said. We heard it all: They told us to let them make other reforms first, that things were under control, that they would do better, and more.

8/ When the debate ended, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, said the military was “on the clock” to fix it — and indicated we would be right to bring a bill back to the floor in a year if they hadn’t solved the problem.

9/ It’s now been five years. In the fight against military sexual assault, the Pentagon, by retired Chairman Dempsey’s own admission, is out of time — and should now be out of excuses.

10/ Let’s make a different choice. Let’s honor, respect and protect our men and women in uniform; let’s finally fix our broken military justice system once and for all; and let’s solve our military sexual assault crisis.

11/ The Military Justice Improvement Act would take the prosecution of sexual assault and other serious crimes, such as murder, out of the chain of command. It would keep those crimes in the military justice system, but put the decision to prosecute them into the hands of actual

12/ military prosecutors who are trained to deal with complex legal issues.

This change would ensure that survivors of sexual assault — and the alleged perpetrators of those crimes — are both afforded the due process that they are entitled to under our Constitution.