Video: Wisconsin Soldier Fights On

February 25, 2011

Sgt. First Class Chet Millard, a platoon sergeant with the Wisconsin National Guard's 951st Engineer Company, is a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. In September 2009, as he led a platoon of soldiers disarming roadside bombs in Eastern Afghanistan, an explosion ripped through his vehicle and he was seriously injured.

Time Magazine wrote about his heroism in an Oct. 12, 2009 story on the war in Afghanistan, and his photo was featured on the magazine's cover.

On Thursday, Millard, who is employed as a corrections officer at the Jackson Correctional Institution in Black River Falls and a member of Local 219 (Council 24), joined other veterans in Madison, Wisc., to speak out for public service workers.

"If freedom is worth dying for overseas," said Millard, "then it's definitely worth rallying and fighting for here in Wisconsin. All workers deserve the freedom to be in a union and collectively bargain."

For Millard, the attack on workers' rights in Wisconsin is an attack on the freedoms he fought to protect as a member of our armed services. "I will continue to fight for my country, it's the greatest country in the world," he said. "But I will also continue to fight for my union, and my state, so that we can all live with the freedoms that we have come to know, and that I have fought for." Read more about Millard in this AFSCME WORKS online story.