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Vets Push: V.A. Acts

By VVAW

Among the demands when the Detroit chapter of VVAW picketed the VA Regional Office on August 11th were two individual cases of vets facing VA mistreatment.

Ali, a Vietnam vet with a wife and child has been in and out of VA hospitals many times since his discharge five years ago. Due to a respiratory illness which he got in the army, he can't work. The VA, dealing with him like the VA deals with thousands of vets around the country, gives him a 10% disability, though his condition leaves him 100% disabled on the job market.

Doug is a vet going to school full time on the GI Bill; at the time of the picket line, he was just finishing his first semester, but had yet to receive any of his benefits. In order to live, he was in dept up to his ears and was facing the need to drop out of school.

During the August picket, not only these vets but several other vets who were in the VA office at the time joined in the demonstration. One vet pointed out to the rest of the picketers that it was only fitting he should be outside the VA building walking circles in a picket line--the VA has had him going around in circles for months. The director called out all the security guards, the Detroit police and US Marshalls while he hid in his seventh floor office, scared to meet with the vets he--and the whole VA--is supposed to be serving. Though the director continued to cower in his office throughout the demo, the effect of the action was clear.

A VA flunky scurried out after the demonstration to get the names of these two vets. Both Ali and Doug received phone calls within two hours of the end of the action. Suddenly, the VA was working hard on their cases. Doug got his check two days after the demonstration--by special delivery--after having gotten no action at all for four months. Ali was called into the hospital and treated with kid gloves, with the kind of treatment that all vets deserve.

The VA, of course, hoped that these concessions--which are no more than the VA doing the job that the US taxpayers pay them to do--would quiet the growing movement of angry vets. No Way! These vets were two among thousands, in Detroit and across the land. These victories will help to build the movement of vets fighting the VA, the red tape, the harassment, the bad conditions, and all the rest.