Bibb, a U.S. Air Force veteran who served overseas on Okinawa Island in Japan, said he is staying on the plaza until he hears from either U.S. senator or the president. Bibb said he is also on a hunger strike, having avoided all food and water since Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ve got about three days (before I will die) out here with no water,\u201d Bibb said Monday afternoon. \u201cI\u2019m not afraid of dying. If it takes me dying to get the attention this deserves, I\u2019m willing to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bibb joined the Air Force in 1965 out of high school. He was trained as an inertial navigation repairman and serviced B-52 bombers and KC-135 tanker planes in Okinawa.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was working on the planes that were fighting in the war,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve had other veterans tell me, \u2018If it wasn\u2019t for your work, we would have lost more boys over there.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
He recently discovered that he is considered by the federal government to be a Vietnam-era veteran and not a Vietnam War veteran, a distinction determined by where he served during the war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Bibb says that he won’t move from his protest until his Senator or President Trump contact him.<\/p>\n
Bibb said his protest was not about himself, but about the Vietnam-era veterans being recognized as actual war veterans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of us left,\u201d he said. \u201cThe government won\u2019t do it because of money, because of the additional benefits they would have to give out. We can give tax breaks to the rich, but we can\u2019t give these benefits to our veterans?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’m not sure what benefits he thinks that he’ll get, that he doesn’t already get. It looks like he has been stocking up on calories, so Bibb will last longer than a few days. <\/p>\n
Thanks to one of our ninjas for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to the Baxter Bulletin, Mountain Home, Arkansas veteran 71-year-old Jerry Bibb has begun a hunger … Jerry Bibb’s hunger strike<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/79301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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