maniac said:
As Dogger says, the Legion itself doesn't welcome constructive change. Is it possible to force constructive change from the inside? Maybe.
Is it possible for a group of veterans to storm in, hold a coup, and take over a branch? Yes. Systematically do that in branches in Edmonton, Ottawa, Quebec City, Winnipeg, Victoria, and Halifax? Probably. Do it in all the little "old boys' clubs" across the country? I don't think so.
Even with getting a mass of converts from towns with reservists, you could maybe pull it off in a branch or two in places like Red Deer.
Where the Legion's in a small town away from a base and has carved a niche for itself, I don't think you've got a prayer. And if you've only subverted a minority of the branches, what have you accomplished?
You're going to have a handful of "combined messes for veterans", serving some guys who took over from the previous executive and their friends, with a great mass of dead weight clogging up the schedule with events that have no interest to the veterans - meat draws and so forth. They'll have to serve the needs of the dead weight at least in the middle term.
What's the objective in terms of an end state? To get the Legion to actually do some effective lobbying on things that matter? I don't see a way to subvert anywhere near a majority of the legions, and negotiations with an old guard that you've slashed and burned at your own branch might be... less than friendly. You could certainly get some credentials like "President of the Edmonton Kingsway Branch Legion" for quotes in the paper, and the national executive might have difficulty damning you. For a united organization directly lobbying the government, I don't see it.
To keep things from fizzling, you'd have to effectively take over a private club, run it, appeal to any veterans in the local area to support it, negotiate with the dead weight, actually provide something to the veterans of various demographics, and groom replacements to eventually take over your position in pulling off the balancing act.
The existing culture has more than just "not stepped up to advocate"; it was hostile towards anybody after WW2 and certainly post-Korea. My dad's not going to suddenly start showing up at the legion fifteen years after retirement, nor are a lot of cold war guys. You're going to be herding cats to change legion culture at a local level, and if its just you and and a handful of friends, you've got to expand through friends of friends like crazy to keep control after the coup.
All that work just to have a bar, a title, and a little piece of a brand name. Is soaking up your time and effort into a bar that may not be of interest to the folks you're trying to indirectly serve, isn't there a better use for our time?
I don't want a bar. I'm getting married, I'm starting a new job, and I want a life. Would I support a veteran's advocacy group by doing a discrete, manageable amount of legwork? Sure. Would I invest every waking minute spending my credit with family and friends to try to subvert an organization that I know that veterans working together across the country couldn't take over half of? No.
