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V.V.L.P: Patronage Vs. Vets

By VVAW

Just when you thought that 15 or more years of progressive peoples' interactivity might evolve into something with national significance and value, the Reagan Administration has come up with the well financed "Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program" VVLP). Just when many of us were getting to understand that we were all into something together, this elitist, officer-dominated and community ignorant program surfaces.

In case you don't know of this latest effort to suppress any and all community-based vets organizations, here's the basics—as fare as the Administration will let them seep out.

VVLP is a parcel of patronage that begins in the White House and "trickles down" through the Private Industry Council, the Disabled American Veterans and finally, ACTION who will sign the checks. VVLP is based on material well-being; in fact, that seems to be the criteria for being "readjusted." Simply, it's the Reagan version of the rich getting richer, financed by a myriad of agencies that are hell-bent on sweeping under the rug Vietnam and Vietnam vets who still give a damn.

Consider, if you will, these positions and structures on which VVLP will be built:

VVLP "volunteers" will work at the senior levels of the communities' business and government structures to help the communities build and maintain a coordinated, community-wide effort to help the Vietnam veteran. The "eyes and ears" of the volunteers will be the paid project directors. The program will, as a result, according to its own propaganda be able to stimulate a flow of new and able volunteers to compliment and reinforce existing government (read Vets Outreach Centers) and veterans' organization programs (read DAV programs, individual programs (read DAV programs, individual programs such as the "Swords Into Plowshares", or the Madison, Wisconsin Vets House, or hundreds of other community-based programs around the country). You can already see the scenario: Sir! Private Citizen requests to speak to the pro-director, sir! It's for damn sure the program director isn't going to be asking the vets for any kind of input; his job description mandates that all vets "go away" with any community concerns that might exist; the VVLP will take care of all such items.

A second more offensive, yet enlightening piece of VVLP propaganda says that the VVLP "will affect national defense in a perhaps modes, but direct way. By affirming the integrity of military service during the Vietnam era, the program will help serve to restore a national perception that military service is an honorable calling." It may start a whole new trend—jobs for Vietnam vets on recruiting posters helping to persuade our younger brothers and sisters to get used the way we did. For those of us who found the Vietnam experience something we are not likely to advertise to anyone, the whole approach is hard to believe.

It's a new wave of Vietnam veterans. No longer are Vietnam vets those with problems like unemployment, or post-traumatic stress, or inability to readjust to a society which was out of step with what the vet had experienced. According to the VVLP the Vietnam vet is a successful surgeon, the state treasurer, banker, or some equally acceptable position. And, presumably, those "few" Vietnam vets who don't all into these august categories, will have the good grace to disappear. Or at least be quiet.

Hogwash! VVAW has no way of knowing exactly how many Vietnam vets have been successful in the terms that these turkies use, but we know that VVAW is proud to speak for one hell of a lot of vets who are working like hell and barely getting by, or a lot more who can't find jobs at all, or a hell of a lot more who are stuck away in some hospital or another or drugged away on the street and who aren't asked questions in any poll. And we can see that the VVLP has absolutely nothing to offer these people.

VVLP looks to us like one slick attempt to pave the way for the current efforts to downplay and then eliminate the Vets Outreach Centers. The "new wave" Vietnam vets, armed with their titular distinction as "Directors" will have the push and the bucks to usurp the credentials—long established and hard-earned—of many of the Vet Center personnel and community-based organizational personnel. There will then come the move from person to person concern to the more calculated approach of "big business." In short, the needs of vets who now make up the clientele of the Vets Outreach Centers will be met not at all.

The bureaucratic dismissal of "Operation Outreach" cannot make the hardships nor the continued discomforts of the Vietnam vet disappear. The Vets Centers certainly have not been successful in keeping every disturbed Vietnam vet off the streets and protected from his own well-taught reactions, but it seems likely that having the Vets Centers to turn to has helped keep the number of crazy vets down—at least a little."

Nothing will be done until the fire in the fight is renewed in earnest. We've come a long way with much more distance yet to cover. Let's renew our collective efforts to awaken the conscience of all those vets who are willing to set quietly by while the government shoves the remnants of the last war under a corporate carpet and hurries along to the next war.