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Vets and V.A. Workers Unite To Fight V.A. Repression

By VVAW

In Detroit, the VA hospital big shots are running scared. They have every reason to be afraid since angry vets and VA workers are uniting to fight against the bad conditions and poor care and bureaucratic shuffling which goes on at the Allen Park VA hospital which is supposed to be 'serving' Detroit area veterans. Like administrators everywhere, when their little kingdoms are threatened, the try to bring down increased repression on the people.

On September 6, 45 vets, patients and hospital workers along with other workers along with other workers put on a spirited demonstration right in front of the hospital entrance. VA bigwigs had threatened to move the demonstrators off what they called "their property," but hundreds of patients and workers knew about the planned picket line and supported it, so the VA had to back off.

Vets and VA workers in Detroit, have plenty to fight about. Sanitary conditions in the hospital are so bad that one ward went three days without a bar of soap. One vet, bleeding from the mouth and rectum, was told to go home because there were no beds (in fact, there were); when he said he didn't have carfare home, the VA said he could sleep in the lobby. Another patient, after waiting 8 hours for an insulin prescription, was told he would have to wait another two hours for it to be filled. All of this is the result of cutbacks in staff -- one floor with 42 patients now has one nurse and one aide to take care of them. Trading the lives and health of vets to save dollars is VA policy. If they cutback people they save money. If they can make one person do two people's work, they save money. And we're the ones who pay the price.

On August 11, a demonstration organized by the VVAW/WSO chapter in Detroit, attacked these conditions; growing out of the demonstration was the Committee for Better Health Care and Decent Benefits, made up of VVAW/WSO members, hospital patients and workers. Their first meeting, held in the hospital canteen, created such panic among VA brass that all security personnel were called out, the doors to the hospital were locked, and the local police and FBI alerted. In the next several days, bulletin board notices warned people not to take leaflets and "to report anyone passing them out" to security guards. Four members of the Committee were suddenly released from the hospital.

One patient, Eugene Harvell, who was passing out a lot of leaflets was visited by Dr. Bissell, chief of medicine, accompanied by six security guards, and told he would have to leave the hospital. When he refused to leave and refused to stop organizing among patients and workers, this chief doctor/warden told him he would be restricted to his ward. The Committee immediately added the demand "Stop Solitary Confinement of Eugene Harvell -- Stop All Harassment and Intimidation of Patients and Employees!"

Like thousands of vets around the country, Eugene has special reasons for fighting against the VA. A Vietnam vet, still carrying shrapnel in his face, chest, arms and legs, with one leg fused and limited use of one hand, he has never been able to work. Long periods in VA hospitals led to morphine addiction, and then the VA dumped him on the streets with a hospital-created drug habit. So, the VA threats didn't stop Eugene, nor did they stop other patients and VA workers.

Petitions were on every floor: in one week over 200 vets and workers had signed them. Workers not only passed out leaflets, but began talking about organizing in their own ranks around the demands of vets as well as the particular ways the hospital was coming down on them. When vets and workers began to unite, all the old VA tactics of 'divide and conquer' didn't work any longer?the VA couldn't say it was "lazy nurses or aides" responsible for the bad conditions, and couldn't turn around and tell the employees that vets are all drug addicts and alcoholics. People were uniting to point their fingers at the source of the problem -- the VA itself and the system which stands behind it.

On the day of the demonstration the VA tried every dirty trick to stop it. They threatened to fire any employee on the picket line; they restricted patients to their wards. Methadone patients were told they would be kicked out of the programs.

But none of this harassment and threatening could stop people from joining the picket line. One employee showed up saying that he had to protest the rotten conditions even if he got fired. Many patients joined in -- one carrying his intravenous stand. There were patients in wheelchairs, and the family of one vet who had died in the hospital. One patient yelled for us to come up to his ward since they wouldn't let him come down.

The chants on the picket line and the raps at the rally pointed toward the cause of the problems and what people are doing about them -- "VA Bosses Pass the Word, We're here to Fight and We're going to be heard," and "Patients and Workers Unite -- Organize to Fight". As one speaker put it, "We're going to keep fighting until we get to the cause of the rotten conditions in the hospital" -- the VA big shots and the millionaire class behind them who call the shots. The same speaker pointed out that this class has the whole working class against it, not just vets alone.