Vets Against Bush

Veterans Climb Government Building,
Call for Arrest of Bush and Cheney
Impeachment movement challenges Bush at every turn.

The enormous banner hanging from the National Archive building

Tuesday, September 23, 2008 8:46 AM

Right now, five military veterans -- from Veterans for Peace -- are occupying a 35-foot high ledge at the National Archive Building and have raised a 22x8-foot banner reading, "DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION. ARREST BUSH AND CHENEY: WAR CRIMINALS!" The veterans currently risking arrest have declared their intention to stay on the ledge, fasting for 24 hours "in remembrance of those who have perished and those still suffering from the crimes of the Bush administration," according to a written statement.

On the ledge, the veterans have brought with them a portable PA system, and they are broadcasting recorded statements from prominent Americans for the impeachment and/or arrest of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. Other impeachment activists are at the entrance of the National Archives distributing "Citizens Arrest Warrants" to those waiting in line.

This is the type of boldness that activists have displayed across the country to bring much-needed attention to this movement.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 23, 2008
Contacts: Elliot Adams 518-441-2697, Ellen Barfield 410-948-8023, Tarak Kauff 845 249-9489

VETERANS OCCUPY NATIONAL ARCHIVES BUILDING

“Arresting Bush and Cheney for war crimes will honor our oath to the Constitution,” vets say.

On Tuesday morning, September 23, 7:30am, at the front of the National Archives Building on Constitution Ave. in Washington, D.C., five military veterans will risk arrest as they climb a 9-foot retaining fence and occupy a 35-foot high ledge to raise a 22x8 foot banner stating, “DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION. ARREST BUSH AND CHENEY: WAR CRIMINALS!”

The group has declared its intention to stay on the ledge, fasting for 24 hours “in remembrance of those who have perished and those still suffering from the crimes of the Bush administration,” according to a written statement. With a portable PA system, they will broadcast recorded statements from prominent Americans for the impeachment and/or arrest of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. “Citizens Arrest Warrants” will be distributed to people waiting in line to enter the National Archives.

The veterans emphasized they are taking this action because “Bush and Cheney’s serial abuse of the Law of the Land clearly marks them as domestic enemies of the Constitution…they have illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, deliberately destroyed civilian infrastructure, authorized torture, and unlawfully detained prisoners. These actions clearly mark them as war criminals…accountability extends beyond impeachment to prosecution for war crimes even after their terms of office expire.”

“We take this action as a last resort,” their statement added. “For years we have pursued every avenue open to good, vigilant citizens to bring these men to justice, to re-establish the rule of law, and to restore the balance of power described in our Constitution. We are not disturbing the peace; we are attempting to restore the peace. We are not conducting ourselves in a disorderly manner; our action is well-ordered and well-considered. We are not trespassing; we have come to the home of our Constitution to honor our oath to defend it.”
(more)

Those participating are all members of Veterans For Peace and include

Elliott Adams: 61, NY, VFP President and former Army paratrooper in Viet Nam
Ellen Barfield: 52, MD, former U.S. Army Sgt., full-time peace and justice advocate
Kim Carlyle: 61, NC, mountain homesteader, former Army Spec 5, 828-626-2572
Diane Wilson: 59, TX, shrimp boat captain, former Army medic, 361-785-4680
Doug Zachary: 58, TX, VFP staff, former USMC LCpl discharged as a conscientious objector, 512-791-9824
Tarak Kauff (ground support) 67, NY, painting contractor, former U.S. Army Airborn.

Founded in 1985, VFP has 120 chapters throughout the country and has actively protested the Afghanistan and Iraq wars since their inception. Membership includes men and women veterans of all eras and duty stations spanning the Spanish Civil War, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. VFP is an official Non Governmental Organization (NGO) represented at the UN.

Saturday, March 26, 2005 4:15 PM

The proposal by the Bush administration [in the upcoming budget] would result in an enrollment fee of $250 per veteran for Veterans Administration (VA) healthcare, would increase prescription drug co-payments from $7 to $15, would slash $351 million from veterans' nursing homes and would reduce state grants from $114 million to $12 million.

Congress is in recess and the press has gone berserk over the Terri Schiavo case. So very little attention is being paid to pending budget proposals that are scandalously unfair, but that pretty accurately reflect the kind of country the U.S. has become.

President Bush believes in an "ownership" society, which means that except for the wealthy, you're on your own. The president's budget would cut funding for Medicaid, food stamps, education, transportation, health care for veterans, law enforcement, medical research and safety inspections for food and drugs. And, of course, it contains big new tax cuts for the wealthy.

Hello friends:

I wanted to share a story.

A few weeks ago, I ran an all day, catered event for one of my clients at Game Developers Conference in downtown San Francisco. We were at a facility in the heart of the “Mission Distinct;” a very run down area bordering on areas of great history and beauty, with many of the city’s homeless. If you are familiar with San Fran, you know it can be shocking. You see hundreds on any day just walking from your hotel to the convention center. Like dark lumps of rags huddled in corners, or angry and yelling intelligibly. Sometime you wonder if some are just drug addicts, others are clearly handicapped or mentally ill, and you know they don’t deserve this.

It’s always hard for most of us to see the down and out being sad and angry and hungry, but in this case, I was in the heart of homeless country, and at the back door of a party facility letting catering and delivery trucks unload. Steaming pizzas, chicken wing, sub sandwiches on trays, cookies and cases of sodas… all arrived in a steady stream all day – huge amounts of food.

These homeless appeared every time we were unloading, asking for something to eat, “since we had so much.” Oh my, that tore at me. I knew that we could not start handing out food; they would swarm to our door and I had my professional reality happening on the other side of the service kitchen wall. We had to say no, and close the door. For that entire day, I hurt for them. I always hurt for them, but it was really bad, and really hard to keep my eye on the ball at work.

At late morning I packed up all the breakfast leftovers into a couple of shopping bags, and sent them off with my friend Donny; working as a helper that day. At a safe distance away, he handed out Power bars, fruit cups, applesauce, and dried fruit – and if you know me, you know I included plastic spoons and napkins. It was gone in about three minutes, as fast as he could hand it out. While he was out there, he bought a hand-written and clumsily photocopied collection of poetry from a homeless vet. For $5, this vet sold Donny a worn and curled, fuzzy-edged paper photocopy of his soul.

Later, when our audience was settled in watching a presentation, we organizers all snuck back to the kitchen with our own beer and chicken wings so we could get out of the lights and sounds and happy chaos of our event for a minute. Donny picked up the poems and started reading out loud. He got about three pieces into the work and finally had to stop. We were all sitting there with tears running down our cheeks, the food on our plates not so appealing for that moment, the beer kind of flat. Donny read as far as he could before his embarrassment at his own emotions made him stop.

The purple-heart decorated Vietnam vet wrote of wanting be a hero and to have our view of him match the expectation he had of our view of him that he carried into battle. He wrote of his embarrassment at his condition, and his fear and pain and hunger, and the demons in his head that wouldn’t go away. I am at a loss to try to capture the intensity of sadness and betrayal and confusion. Rather than angry, he was betrayed. Betrayed. I thought only enemies betrayed you?

I don’t have that copy so that I can share any of that with you now. Donny went back to Ohio and promised to copy and send it to me. I will of course have to find that homeless poet to give him his royalties for my copy.

I’m happy to say that we had lots of pizzas to share later – not somebody’s leftovers, but at least a dozen untouched full boxes of gourmet pizza and some party subs on trays, and it was rare and totally selfish chance to have the pleasure of walking into a large crowd of homeless guys on a Thursday night and say – “Who wants pizza!” A short lived thrill that made only a sand speck of difference, but I really enjoyed the moment.

The next morning I was thinking about this man, and I wondered… homelessness in a land so wealthy is bad enough, but how could a single vet end up on the street? I’ll admit to being naïve enough that it didn’t occur to me that this was possible.

Don’t we OWE them something? Isn’t that a law written down somewhere? Some oath we have to take as a people and a grateful government when somebody decides to devote their life to our country’s needs? Like “we swear that if you are willing to leave your home and family and risk getting killed that if you manage to get home, we’ll make sure you HAVE A HOME.” Isn’t that what it’s all about? “You watch my back, I’ll watch yours?” If these people are coming home all messed up, WE HAVE to adopt them as brothers and sisters, uncles and grandfathers – and HELP THEM.

I had a brief fantasy about finding him and getting him published, but then my mind started to drift to the story line of “The Jerk,” and I imagined myself creating a monster.

So, I got on the internet and started checking the facts.

I’d like to ask all of you that slept in a warm bed last night to please continue to read this – thank you!!

Let’s get 529,000 homeless vets OFF THE STREETS OF AMERICA!!!!!

How many? No, say it isn’t true!

2.3M to 3.5M Americans per year experience being homeless, and 23% of them are vets, leaving between 529,000 to 840,000 vets homeless for some portion of every year.
On any single night 300,000 homeless veterans sleep on the streets of America
Homeless Iraq veterans are already showing up in shelters!
Of the general homeless vet population:

47% served in the Vietnam Era
17% served in post Vietnam conflicts
15% served in pre Vietnam wars
67% served three or more years
33% stationed in war zone
89% of these homeless veterans have received Honorable Discharges!

From: National Coalition for Homeless Veterans Click Here

1 – Click Here Washington, DC, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era. "When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough shelters to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."

Nearly 300,000 veterans are homeless on any given night, and almost half served during the Vietnam era, according to the Homeless Veterans coalition, a consortium of community-based homeless-veteran service providers. "This is what happened with the Vietnam vets" said John Keaveney, chief operating officer of New Directions, a shelter and drug-and-alcohol treatment program for veterans in Los Angeles. LA has an estimated 27,000 homeless veterans, the largest such population in the nation.

2 - Try to watch the testimony of Patrick Resta on CSPAN (it ran all day yesterday March 26, it’s running again a few times Mar 27). He is an Iraq vet that said that our soldiers are underfed, under watered, and not properly protected! He said that they had to ask the folks from home to send them things like walkie talkies, body amour. Yes, they all asked their Moms to send them walkie talkies for Xmas! I remember when I asked my mom for walkie talkies for Xmas. I was ten, and my parents took us to Kauai, and we ran all over the island playing with them.

3 - Check out how much we have spent on war as of right now: Click Here

4 –If you want to hear what recently returned soldiers and their families have to say, watch this brand new and very good video:

March 19 , 2005: Click Here to View

One mother in this video said her son sent her a list of what he needed but he did not get the armor he asked for and was killed in two weeks.
She knows moms of other others of soldiers that say they get rations of THREE BULLETS per week.

5 – HELP PLEASE! Let’s not let these good people end up on the streets when they get back.. IF they get back!

Donate: http://www.nchv.org/donate.cfm

How you can help: http://www.nchv.org/howtohelp.cfm

Volunteer at Stand Downs: http://www.nchv.org/standdownevents.cfm (local events to help the homeless vets)

6 - Please forward this to anyone that might care.