A nonprofit group is lobbying for the Defense Department to provide data to service members on community safety, hate crimes and compassionate reassignments at prospective duty stations to help their decisions when accepting orders.
The Secure Families Initiative, a nonprofit founded in 2000 to provide military families a voice on national security and foreign policy matters, launched its “Campaign for PCS Safety” this week to advocate for the disclosure of information that may sway a family’s decision to move — especially households who belong to a racial minority.
Shalena Critchlow, the wife of a Marine veteran and mother of an active-duty Marine, said her family experienced racial discrimination when seeking housing in Birmingham, Alabama, where her husband was assigned to recruiting duty. Critchlow, who is of Mexican descent, and her husband, who is Black, were told not to stop on their drive from Alabama to Mississippi for a Marine Corps ball one year.
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“We weren’t from the South and only in the area because of military orders. But that moment was the first time that I feared we might be in harm’s way,” Critchlow wrote in a blog post on the organization’s website.
Roughly one-third of all active-duty service members identify themselves as members of a racial minority, and 18% say they are Latino or Hispanic. The Defense Department does not…
