American Legion’s national leader visits Minnesota in veteran suicide prevention efforts

NINA MOINI: A note for our listeners-- this next story touches on mental health crises. If this is a topic that's triggering to you, please take care as you listen. The head of a national veterans' group is on tour in Minnesota this week to talk about preventing suicide. Suicide rates are consistently higher for those who have served in the military compared to non-veterans.

The American Legion's Be the One campaign aims to get veterans in their communities talking more openly about mental health. James LaCoursiere, Jr. is the group's national commander. He's promoting the initiative all over the country. And we are very happy to have you on the line with us today, Commander. Thank you.

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: Well, thank you very much. I'm honored to be here.

NINA MOINI: I'd like to know a little bit about the American Legion's approach in the continuum of everybody that it takes to help prevent veteran suicides. Where does the American Legion fit in?

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: Well, the American Legion, we actually coined the mission. And it truly is a mission. It's not a program, a campaign, or something that sounds and looks nice on a billboard. It's actually a mission, mission to be the one. Be the one to save the life of a veteran, their child, their spouse, even that stranger in your community you have not yet met.

It's all about being committed to the individual at that time, destigmatizing mental health, to let them know that it's OK to not be OK, as long as we stay right there with them during the whole duration that they need us, or be prepared to make the necessary phone calls. We must be committed to them. What I mean by committed to them-- and that's showing true compassion, using our senses, letting them know that we truly are there for them, and that we're not just going through the motions, that we do care about them as an individual, and we care about their well-being.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Tell me a little more, if you would, about Be the One. So I understand that you work together with Columbia University, and it's an app. How would somebody use it?

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: Well, if you sit back, if you go on to Google Play store or one of the other-- iPhone or Android stores and everything, and you go punch in American Legion or punch in Be the One, you can go ahead and download the app.

And the app, basically, it walks you through step by step and questions if you're dealing with somebody who is potentially in crisis or may not be in crisis, but if they're just having the all-around bad day, it takes you on a step-by-step process of which questions to ask and what actions to take. And if need be, then you would go ahead and call 988 and press 1 to get help, which would put you in direct contact with the crisis line.

NINA MOINI: So it's a tool to help people to be helpful in moments where they may not know what to do, but they want to reach out to someone. And that seems very important because it might mean more people being the one, like you said, and looking out for each other.

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: That's it--

NINA MOINI: Go ahead.

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: I'm sorry.

NINA MOINI: No, no, no. Go ahead.

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: Oh, I was going to say, really, what we're trying to do is, we're trying to educate everybody in one community, one community at a time, and hoping to spread that throughout every state. So here in Minnesota, if we can start in one corner and keep utilizing our American Legion post to take it beyond the four walls of their post home and share it with the community, then the community can go ahead and share it. And next thing you know, you have every community in the state of Minnesota taking part in our Be the One mission, which is all about saving the life.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, it's like one place at a time, one person at a time. One of the things in Minnesota that the state has been working really hard toward is ending veteran homelessness. And from what we hear, it's going well in a lot of different areas of the state that obviously can't serve everyone all the time. But homelessness makes me think about sort of all of the different areas of life that there could be struggles for veterans that might contribute to mental health struggles. Would you tell me a little bit about some of the different challenges veterans do face that kind of puts them down that path?

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: Yeah, like you mentioned, homelessness is one of them. We actually had a meeting today about that and everything, and we discussed it. And like you said, yes, Minnesota is doing very well with housing the homeless and everything and taking care of them. It'd be nice to see if we can get every state in this great country to reduce the number of homelessness.

But like you mentioned, as far as other things, a lot of times, I'll open up my talks with just throwing out keywords such as PTSD, TBI, depression, bullying-- because even our kids, they deal with bullying-- lack of education, unemployment, homelessness, and the list goes on. There's so many factors that can bring somebody to that dark place. The hidden wounds are so vague. We just can't pinpoint it to just one thing.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. And as you're wanting to have more resources and community for veterans, we've been reading about struggles with American Legion's just declining membership and recruiting of younger members. The VFW seems to have been going through this as well. What are you concerned about when it pertains to membership and younger generations? How are you feeling about that in the organization's future?

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: Well, I'm going to put a small spin on that and say, we haven't reached our 100% goal nationally for a while. But I don't see us as declining to the point where we're going to disappear. You know what I mean? With all due respect to our younger soldiers coming home and everything, it's all about family. They want to spend the time with their families, including our guard and reservists, because they've had so many deployments over the course of the years. They just want to be with family.

They don't understand that joining the American Legion or the VFW, or whatever the case may be, that they can just go ahead and pay their dues and be a number that means everything. It's another voice with Congress without having to attend meetings or anything like that, you know? They think they have to attend meetings on time and all the time and take time away from family. But that is not the case at all. Just like our Be the One mission, every life matters. And every voice in our membership matters.

NINA MOINI: So you're saying there's different levels of involvement and to not be intimidated by being a part of something. There's different ways that you can contribute.

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: Absolutely correct. With the American Legion being the world's largest veteran service organization, we do carry a very strong voice with Congress. And that's what we tried to let people know, that even your membership, that's a number that we can show Congress that we're 1.6 million members strong.

NINA MOINI: And since you brought up Congress and the federal government's involvement, there has been confusion in Minnesota and nationwide, really, about staffing cuts pertaining to veterans' affairs, the VA, different workers that have been laid off at different levels of the federal government. Are you concerned about that from your vantage point with the American Legion? What do you think about that?

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: Well-- [CLEARS THROAT] excuse me-- we do have our concerns and everything. I just testified before Congress a couple of weeks ago in DC and everything. But we're not hitting the panic button yet. We want to keep the doors open so that we can sit at the table with Congress and try to work with Congress and everything. Yes, Congress has thrown out this number of 83,000. And they haven't fully acted on it as of yet.

In other words, that's the number that they placed out there, which it could be detrimental because that could turn it around and bring us back to the number of personnel we had when the VA, prior to 2019 and prior to the passage of the PACT Act, which can go ahead and cause delays, and I mean massive delays, and also reduction in some of the care and benefits.

So we do care about that, but we're trying to meet with them. We're trying to hold positive discussions with them and give our positive input and everything. But we're also being realistic about it, is, basically, Congress is saying that there's a three-point plan by mid-April to submit a report, their recommendations. By May, the recommendations would be reviewed. And by June, decisions will be made. So we feel we have ample time to get all the right parties to the table and have a open, positive dialogue.

NINA MOINI: OK. Well, bringing it back to just the importance of veterans' mental health, you're going to be in the Twin Cities today, I understand. You're going to be at Forest Lakes American Legion post this evening. What other places are you wanting to hit this weekend? And what are you hoping people take away from it?

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: Oh, yeah, I'm just trying to share my primary focus this year, which is on the quality of life for our veterans and their families, and also keeping our number one mission in the forefront of everybody's minds and thoughts. And that's Be the One.

NINA MOINI: All right. Commander LaCoursiere, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

JAMES LACOURSIERE, JR.: Well, thank you very much. And thank you for everything you do.

NINA MOINI: Thank you. That's James LaCoursiere, Jr., National Commander of the American Legion. And if you or someone you know is struggling, please know trained help is available. You just heard about the Be the One app. You can also call or text 988, Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or text MN to 741741.