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  • 2021-05-05 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Joe Biden End 'Rolling to Remember' Memorial Day Parade? (en)
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  • For more than 30 years, thousands of military veterans have staged a motorcycle rally in the Pentagon’s parking lot for Memorial Day, followed by a drive past national monuments and through the National Mall over the weekend. The events are meant to bring awareness to veterans' issues, including suicide and missing-in-action service members. But the Department of Defense rejected a parking permit request at the Pentagon from American Veterans (AMVETS) — organizers of the annual veterans’ motorcycle rally — because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision resulted in anger and some misleading claims. The Daily Wire wrote, Biden Administration Blasted For Ending Vets’ 30-Year-Old Memorial Day ‘Rolling Thunder’ Motorcycle Parade. This is largely false. Firstly, U.S. President Joe Biden himself did not cancel the entire rally, but his administration’s Department of Defense did prohibit a gathering on Pentagon premises. The Pentagon released a statement on April 30 sharing why it did not permit the rally to take place there: The tradition of gathering there, while cancelled for this year, may still continue next year if pandemic restrictions loosen. So it is certainly not the end of a tradition, simply a pause. The Pentagon’s statement continued: While the Pentagon did not give AMVETS a parking permit to stage the rally, the rally will still go ahead elsewhere. The official Rolling to Remember Twitter account released a statement debunking claims that the whole event was being cancelled, and said it was going ahead with the rally elsewhere: AMVETS, however, was not too happy with the Pentagon’s decision. In a longer statement shared on May 3, the group said: They added that they had partnered with the Biden administration in their campaign to promote vaccine awareness: As of this writing, AMVETS says it wants to move its staging area to RFK Stadium. Given that the overall rally is just being moved to another location, and only the tradition of gathering at the Pentagon has been cancelled for this year, and may continue at another time, we rate this claim as Mostly False. (en)
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