So for social workers, it's a bi-polar almost manic life, believing the sh*t on TV, in movies, all the pomp and circumstance around Americans in uniform, and then, the reality of the majority of those who've served in uniform in front of them, as broken vassals of the broken society which then social workers must self-delude themselves into believing only applies to the truly down and out. Because in this social services control game, when you are not one of the masses, you then get that little badge, uniform and gun syndrome as a pleb.
My tenure at the Salvation Army has been briefly outlined here in this piece, and, then with a follow up here, in another piece. I am - as I write this - receiving more and more complaints about the place where I no longer work. I have repeated to the ones reaching out to me that there is evil there, and then there are the harbingers of evil there working against their success, and that they are in a broken system of the wrong checks and balances so they must subvert the system anyway possible.
Managers who treat veterans like children, and see people of color as ALL being druggies: That's the complaint I have gotten from veterans at this center. And what to do? I've encouraged veterans to seek restitution and to be wary of an environment they know is toxic and to seek other mentors to assist them out . . . to pave their their own pathway out and find a home in this obscene renters' market.
I've recommended them going to the VA and speaking with anyone overseeing the programs that get the Salvation Army paid from public tax coffers big bucks per veteran per night. I've recommended they see Oregon's political reps, Merkley and Wyden, and to contact their representative, Bonamici. Some have taken their plight up with the media, whatever is left of the hallowed out Portland "alternative" media more focused on hops, pot, lifestyles and pop culture than real issues.
I am not putting the entire Starvation Army bad nightmare to rest in this final installment, but it is somewhat rewarding that I got out alive, that there were not SWAT teams coming, and that I didn't do what any righteous revolutionary should do - get the bats out and start swinging at the evil-doers.
I'm still listening and hearing, and talking and caring, and while life is a militant process if you are cut from the social justice cloth, it also is the opening tides of the Pacific hitting air and light and atomized ancient people. Here, finally, an archetypal response from one veteran, and his answers are universal in most ways.
Basic questions to prevail, and I asked a couple of veterans the following:
Age, branch of service, years, most compelling thing in your military experience?
1. Toughest aspect of your current aspect of being "homeless veteran"?
2. What does the concept of social services/social worker mean to you in this current state of struggling?
3. How is it that when someone like yourself is "down" that the powers that be at the Salvation Army and VA seem to inflict a sort of controlling and dictatorial relationship with you as a demographic?
4. Why do veterans become homeless? This answer is for generals and politicos who have their own beliefs not so pleasant?
5. How better can you and other vets at this transitional center be served?
6. Any comments regarding my article, part one and/or two in my series?
Here's one respondent's answers, and again, anonymity is vital since these people living here at the Starvation Army Veterans and Family Center are afraid of retaliation and being kicked to the curb, most literally.
Currently 44 years old. Eight years in the Navy. Most compelling thing I saw was asking myself how people can kill, maim, and destroy other people in the name of religion. I cannot describe the horrors I have seen because I have spent year's telling myself I never saw them and by God I have come to believe it.
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