A mentor of mine called me the other day and answered the phone with, “Katie’s a radical.”
I laughed and said, “Yeah, I guess I am.”
But after we hung up, I sat there thinking about it, because the truth is: I haven’t changed nearly as much as people think I have. The core of who I am has always been the same. What changed was what I was willing to ignore.
When this mentor first met me, I was angry. Fresh off active duty, deeply conservative, deeply defensive, and carrying around a lot of resentment and unresolved pain. She used to call me her “pistol” because I was willing to say the things others wouldn’t. I didn’t care about rank, titles, status, or political convenience.
Right was right.
Wrong was wrong.
And honestly, I still believe that.
After leaving the military, I got heavily involved in conservative grassroots organizing and veteran advocacy. I trained with Americans for Prosperity, worked in Republican spaces, and poured myself into causes I believed in. I genuinely believed the Republican Party stood for individual liberty, personal responsibility, strong communities, limited government, and defending constitutional rights.
Then I started working directly with homeless veterans.
And that work changed me.
Not because someone “brainwashed” me.
Not because I suddenly became weak.
But because advocacy forced me to stop arguing in theory and start looking at outcomes.
I started paying attention to policy instead of slogans.
I noticed Republicans often spoke passionately about supporting troops, but Democrats were frequently the ones funding veteran programs and expanding services. I started researching legislation. Watching votes. Following bills. Looking at what actually happened after the speeches ended.
And once you start asking hard questions, you can’t unsee the answers.
At the same time, I was navigating political spaces as an openly gay conservative woman. For a while, that identity made me useful. I was the veteran. The lesbian Republican. The proof that the party was “inclusive.”
Until I wasn’t useful anymore.
Someone said something to me recently that hit me hard:
“Even the tokens get spent eventually.”
That was exactly what happened.
I started realizing many of the people I stood beside politically did not actually respect people like me. They tolerated us when it was convenient. They showcased us when it benefited them. But underneath it all was growing hostility toward LGBTQ people, women, minorities, and anyone who challenged the hierarchy they were comfortable protecting.
Then 2020 happened.
And honestly, that was the breaking point.
Two names changed the trajectory of my life forever:
George Floyd and Vanessa Guillén.
When George Floyd was murdered, I watched people I knew, people in my own political circles, people I had organized beside, immediately jump to defending the system instead of confronting the humanity of what happened. The cruelty of the rhetoric shocked me. The lack of empathy shocked me. The immediate instinct to dehumanize instead of reflect broke something in me.
Enough was enough.
And then came Vanessa Guillén.
As a veteran, that hit especially hard.
I started lobbying aggressively for stronger protections against sexual assault and harassment in the military. I was calling legislators, pushing policy, trying to get people to care about service members being abused inside the institution they swore to serve.
And I will never forget the responses I got from Republican offices.
Over and over again, I was told:
“That’s not really in our wheelhouse.”
Not our wheelhouse.
Sexual assault in the military.
Women being harmed inside the ranks.
Service members being failed by the system.
Not their wheelhouse.
That was the moment I knew I couldn’t keep pretending this was still the party I believed in.
Because at some point, politics stops being theoretical. It stops being about slogans, campaign ads, or partisan loyalty. It becomes about what you are willing to tolerate happening to other human beings.
And I realized I couldn’t tolerate it anymore.
Over time, I watched the Republican Party become increasingly driven by outrage, grievance, fear, and cruelty instead of conservative principles.
Not fiscal responsibility.
Not liberty.
Not limited government.
Just anger.
You can call me a libtard.
You can call me Antifa.
You can call me whatever makes you feel better.
What I call myself is a decent human being.
Someone who believes children should be safe.
Women should have rights.
Veterans should be cared for after war instead of abandoned while the VA gets gutted.
People who work full-time should be able to afford to live.
And if that’s considered “radical” now, then maybe we need to ask ourselves what the hell happened to normal.
Because kindness should not be controversial.
Human decency should not be political.
Empathy should not be treated like weakness.
If you had asked me 13 years ago whether I’d be organizing large-scale No Kings actions against the government, I would’ve laughed in your face. Especially under a Republican administration. That was never on my bingo card.
Neither was organizing veterans “just in case things get weird.”
I already helped build one veteran movement in my lifetime. I never imagined we’d be here again. But here we are.
And what breaks my heart the most is watching people scream hateful things one minute and quote scripture the next. Watching people talk about God while cheering cruelty, mocking vulnerable people, and treating basic human rights like some kind of political inconvenience.
What are we doing?
Seriously. What are we doing?
And to my Republican friends, because I know some of you quietly read my posts and DM me instead of commenting publicly, talk to me. Get outside the bubble for five minutes.
Everyone assumes I’ve been “brainwashed by CNN” or MSNBC. I don’t even watch cable news. I’m not obsessed with culture war nonsense. I watch policy.
I literally track legislation alerts on my phone. I monitor what gets introduced in Congress. I pay attention to how policies affect veterans, working families, women, LGBTQ people, and marginalized communities at the local, state, and federal level.
That’s what changed me: paying attention.
Not propaganda.
Not social media.
Not some sudden personality shift.
Reality.
I took my oath to the Constitution seriously. My family took it seriously. A lot of us did.
People died for that oath. Others came home carrying things they could never escape because of that oath.
And now I watch people shrug while democratic norms, constitutional protections, and fundamental rights are openly challenged, and I genuinely do not understand the indifference.
You don’t have to become a Democrat to see what’s happening.
You don’t have to abandon conservatism.
But at some point, we have to ask ourselves what exactly is being “conserved.”
Because from where I’m standing, it no longer looks like freedom, liberty, or constitutional values.
It looks like fear.
It looks like exclusion.
It looks like protecting power for a very specific kind of person while everyone else is told to stay quiet and be grateful.
And that should alarm every single one of us.
I never imagined I would spend part of my life organizing against my own party. I never imagined I’d be leading No Kings protests or helping organize veterans in resistance movements.
That was not the plan for my life.
But life has a way of forcing you to choose between comfort and conscience.
And I chose conscience.
So maybe my mentor was right. Maybe I am a radical.
But what radicalized me was not hate.
It was proximity to suffering.
It was working with veterans.
It was listening to marginalized people instead of talking over them.
It was seeing how policy affects real human beings.
It was realizing that equality and justice are not weaknesses.
What radicalized me was kindness.
And if kindness, dignity, accountability, and justice for all people are considered radical now, then maybe the real problem isn’t me.
_________
Katie Chorbak is the President of 50501 Veterans, a Jacksonville native, Bishop Kenny graduate and a retired U.S. Army Staff Sergeant (74 D). A fifth-generation combat veteran, she now works in the construction industry, with projects including Ribault High School. For over a decade, she has led veteran advocacy efforts, helping drive a 2021 federal policy change protecting sexual assault survivors in the military. Katie has received multiple awards for her work, most proudly being named a Woman Veteran Trailblazer by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs