Veterans protest VA failures in Washington

There are things in this article that I am not sure about. There is reference to the number of homeless veterans that seems way out of whack, so please take that into consideration when you read the following. I thought it was important that there are veterans protesting what has been happening to them along with what happens with the Suicide Prevention Hotline. This part I do not doubt since I have heard many stories just like it when veterans call and are told to call back or someone will get back to them.

The Veterans Affairs Department Gets Occupied But Still Ignores
By William Boardman
11/24/2012

On October 4, a small group of American veterans went to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in Washington, D.C., to talk to officials there about veteran suicides, veteran homelessness, veteran joblessness, and other veteran struggles. No one from the department would talk to them then.

Even the contingent of Homeland Security guards blocking the door on October 4 wouldn’t explain to the veterans why they couldn’t come in. So, they stayed on the sidewalk in front of 810 Vermont Avenue, a few hundred yards from the White House, where they established Occupy Dep’t of Veterans Affairs. They’ve been there ever since, even through Hurricane Sandy.

After more than a month, Veterans Affairs officials still have not talked to any of the diverse group. Instead, the VA has continued low level police harassment and frequent power washing of the sidewalk, threatening to arrest anyone who interfered with the activity. Trinity Church in New York City used similar tactics against Occupy Wall Street in 2011.

Medic in Vietnam, Still Trying to Heal People

In a USTREAM video by Occupy Eye on Common Dreams that was primarily about the Tar Sands Blockade in East Texas, the coverage gets to the Veterans Affairs about 40 minutes in. There, a man who calls himself “Frosty,” a Vietnam veteran and former medic, with a bushy white beard, describes what it’s been like spending a month on the sidewalk trying to talk to the administration charged with looking after his welfare and that of his fellow vets from half a dozen American wars.

Articulate and friendly in demeanor, Frosty has intense things to say – for example, that the VA has only 19 suicide hotlines in the whole country, and that a caller reaches only a recording and is promised a callback within 24 hours. “The VA doesn’t care,” he says, noting that the suicide rate among veterans is currently estimated at 18 a day, and likely under-reported. This is demonstrated by an October report by the Department of Defense which cites 20 active-duty and 13 non-active-duty suicides in that month.

Like the other vets sharing the sidewalk in front of the VA, the first thing Frosty wants is to establish a veterans’ council that will have direct access to the VA, and to which the VA will have to be responsive. Some of the veterans are trying to work with Congress to make this happen, to improve VA response to all veterans’ issues, but especially suicides, homelessness, and joblessness.
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