Producer stresses importance of leaving politics out of soldiers’ recovery

Film producer and actor Jeffrey Wright emphasized the importance of not conflating the politics of war with the treatment of servicemembers in an interview that aired Friday on “Rising.”

“We strip the politics out,” Wright, the producer of “We Are Not Done Yet,” told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball last week. 

“We made a mistake in Vietnam where we conflated the politics of the war with the warriors, and we made judgments that were detrimental, not only to them but also to society at large. We won’t make that mistake again, I hope,” he continued. 

The documentary, which airs Friday on HBO,  follows ten U.S. veterans who are dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder through poetry.   

Wright said working with the veterans taught him about the importance of community. 

“It was about community. It was about the loss of a close friend. And what many of the folks described and what they taught me about their sense of responsibilities to the military, and we hear this often, but it’s a sense of responsibility to one another above all else,” he said. 

“I think that translates now into this mission they find themselves on,” he said. “They talk about healing themselves, yes, but they talk more or so about healing one another.” 

The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that between eleven and twenty percent of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder.

— Julia Manchester