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Chicago Homeless Standdown

By Meg Miner

It was a little surreal working the standdown this Memorial Day. In one half of the armory, older vets in a mixture of military and civilian clothes milled about or sat on cots as the sun came up. In the other half, across a waist-high barrier, an oval of Humvees ready for deployment stood inside the ring and young GIs in uniform passed in and out of rooms on the sides of the martialling bay.

I wonder what the two groups thought of each other. I'm sorry to say I didn't ask. I know other VVAW members talked to the new troops, and I hope to hear their thoughts on the scene.

I kept thinking about the politicians who were surely out distributing wreaths at the feet of impassive stone monuments for the benefit of photographers that day. I can't help but wonder what a different country we would be living in if the people who casually involve us in wars would spend a day now and then serving food to new and old troops, side by side.

Could our politicians even look these troops in the eye? Maybe. But I doubt we'll get a chance to know. They've got different priorities for their precious time: funding new cemeteries (like the newly-approved $8.7 million one in Oakland County, Michigan) or missile defense systems or nuclear weapons programs, to name a few. Funny how they can squeeze out money for all that and still claim there's nothing left for VA hospitals and services.

Everyone talks about peace but no one does anything constructive about it. We hear from every president that we are a peace-loving people, but we go right on sponsoring death and destruction and skimping on life-sustaining, constructive policies.

Peace lovers? Our war is supposed to secure peace, our occupation is billed as liberation, our justice is conducted in concentration camps, behind closed doors. Nope, I'm not buying the peace-loving angle anymore.

I think I'm going to start asking my elected representatives to go to standdown. Maybe we'll get a chance to talk to a few vets together and adjust our priorities.