Brittany Ramos DeBarros

In a 2018 speech in Washington D.C. for the Poor Peoples Campaign’s “Call For Moral Revival,” U.S. Army Captain Brittany Ramos DeBarros declared, “I am a woman. I am White, I’m Latina, I’m Black, I’m queer, and I’m a combat veteran. As a person existing at the intersection of these identities, I carry a grave conviction in my core that there can be no true economic, racial, or gender liberation without addressing the militarism that is strangling the morality and empathy out of our society.”

A few months later, DeBarros was arrested with fellow About Face member Wendy Barranco while protesting the U.S. mistreatment of migrants at the increasingly militarized U.S.-Mexico border. Following a tense period when it appeared she may be court-martialed, DeBarros received her discharge.

Over the next two years, DeBarros rose to leadership in About Face, and helped the organization dive into a wide range of actions and coalitional partnerships during a time of exploding social justice activism driven by the #MeToo movement, migrant justice activism, and the 2020 racial justice uprisings.  Drawing on her experience as a military officer, DeBarros is among a younger, diverse cohort of leaders in the veterans’ peace movement.  She is optimistic about the future of veterans’ contributions to growing social justice coalitions: “We now have unprecedented movement momentum in an unprecedently intersectional way.”

Brittany Ramos DeBarros is currently running for the Congressional seat in New York’s District 11 (Staten Island). Find out more about her campaign here.