Veterans are rising up coast to coast. Got questions about veterans? We’ve got a book for that!

The Veterans Administration has become a flashpoint for cuts in the federal government. Have you seen the headlines popping up this week across newspapers, TV stations and online magazines nationwide? 

Just this weekend alone there was coverage of veteran protests all the way from Oregon (check out this Statesman story) to Maine (here’s a WGME-13 story) and from Washington state (here’s a KING-5-TV story) to New Mexico (Santa Fe New Mexican story) and Texas (a KBTX-3 story) and Washington D.C. (a Military.com story). If you search Google-News you’ll almost certainly find news of protests in your part of the country.

So, what’s at issue for veterans and their families?

The VA is a big target. On March 5, the Associated Press reported on a memo by its chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, which called for cutting 80,000 of 480,000 positions.

There are a lot of veterans: 18 million. The VA provides physical and mental health care to about half of them and has about 200 medical centers.

Veterans are organized and networked—products of their military training.

Wherever the federal budget ax falls, it is more likely to cut veterans because they are more likely to get re-hired. According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, “Veterans who are disabled, who served on active duty in the Armed Forces during certain specified time periods or in military campaigns are entitled to preference over others in hiring for virtually all federal government jobs.”

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the federal government is the largest employer of veterans. They comprise about 30% of the federal workforce compared to 5% of the civilian labor force. About 900,000 civilian federal employees are veterans, spouses of veterans or spouses of active military.

And like all groups within American society—veterans face stereotypes

We address stereotyping in a series of more than 20 guides from the Michigan State University School of Journalism. For a quick read, get 100 Questions and Answers About Veterans: A Guide for Civilians.

Get it soon and you won’t awkwardly wish a veteran a “happy Memorial Day.” That’s one of the common mistakes we clear up in this helpful book. And, as the title says, there are 99 more!