PHOTO/LARRY TIMMONS
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — For several decades now, American citizens have shamefully and quietly passed by thousands of homeless and needy veterans living on the streets of our small towns, the steam grates of our teeming cities, and in the canyons and wilds of suburbia from Washington DC to the shores of California. And all too infrequently have we as a nation stopped to ponder the reasons for this gross negligence of our children. For too long our communities have suffered; not only from budget cuts and a crumbling infrastructure, mass-shootings and increasing police brutality, but from monolithic case loads and the shrinking availability of affordable space.
It is time for the men and women who have returned home from the military to think about the role they played by supporting US militarism, and the opportunities to heal themselves from the damage they have done and suffered.
As veterans, we are uniquely qualified to determine whether or not our government is acting in the best interests of the people.. We have witnessed the deaths of our friends, the mutilations of children, and the horrible environmental destruction of our planet. We were a part of that continuum of violence and the wasteful spending of billions of dollars on the “war effort”.
Today we will not spend ANY effort on warmaking, nor will we support a regime hell-bent on the domination of the earth’s people and the annihilation of our environment. As veterans we need to reclaim our lives on our own terms. Some of us have nothing left. Some of us live check to benefit check, lost in the thick fog of addictions and PTSD. Some of us, the so-called lucky ones, are okay. We survived the war, came home to our families, got government jobs , or retired out of the service.
There is never peace, anywhere, with the US government running amok from the sands of the Middle East to the cities of our own nation. With violent police crackdowns on peaceful antiwar demonstrations and movements, with unending racism and poverty, the only peace we can hope to achieve is within our selves, and we can turn this inner peace into outward expressions of love and beauty, and POLITICAL POWER.
Through the techniques of Direct Action and community organizing we can participate in the struggle to get our nation back on track domestically, and reduce the hellish footprint we leave wherever our abused and abusive military might has planted a flag in our name.
‘Pirate’ Michael Clift of Occupy Veterans San Francisco and Veterans for Peace is on a March Across America, from San Francisco to San Diego (with fellow vet James Cartmill) and across the US, “challenging the homeless veteran to stand up for their rights as human beings by taking our bodies and voices to Washington DC”. ‘Pirate’ Mike describes himself as “an army veteran who served during the Cold war. Radicalized by his experience with the military, he has been an artist and activist since 1989.”.
Good piece, damn shame. Our Vets are treated like our garbage…taken out and forgotten.
There are hundreds of vacant homes that should be taken over, if you can live in it and are willing to do some repairs then its yours. I realize there are legal issues, more importantly there are human-issues, moral-issues, I care about other people more than financial profit-issues.
The City is about to spend more taxpayer $$ on demolitions and clearing land, some houses should go but maybe if they had been offered sooner they could have been saved.