Welcome to the Los Angeles Chapter of veterans for peace!
Veterans For Peace is a national organization founded in 1985. It is structured around a national office in Saint Louis, MO and comprised of members across the country organized in chapters or as at-large members. There is an annual convention in August for members from across the nation. Members receive periodic VFP publications. The organization includes men and women veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, other conflicts and peacetime veterans. Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary.
Veterans For Peace is an official Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) represented at the UN. Whether or not you wish to participate in chapter activities, please consider becoming a member of Veteran For Peace. As an organization, we are what our members make us. You can be part of that effort. Help us put an end to war. We draw on our personal experiences and perspectives gained as veterans to raise public awareness of the true costs and consequences of militarism and war - and to seek peaceful, effective alternatives. See our membership information page for details here: JOIN VFP
Some major areas of concern and involvement are:
WAR IN IRAQ:
When our government threatened invasion, we conducted public forums, met with elected representatives and participated in marches to express our opposition. As the war began, we gathered in Washington, DC, with other veterans groups for Operation Dire Distress. Since then, we joined together with Military Families Speak Out and others in the Bring Them Home Now campaign and supported recently returned vets who formed the Iraq Veterans Against the War. Local chapters continue to conduct educational forums, demonstrations and ongoing Iraq memorial displays, such as Arlington West, to remember the growing human cost of the war, to end the occupation and to bring our troops hone now!
AND AT HOME:
Members and chapters actively participate in efforts to save VA healthcare and defend of veterans’ rights; to protect our civil liberties threatened by the "Patriot Act" and other repressive legislation; to provide counseling through the GI Rights Hotline to active duty military needing assistance; and providing alternative information to counter military recruiters in the schools.
VIETNAM:
VFP has worked with other Vietnam veterans to bring medical supplies, help build clinics, hospitals, and schools, advocate for Agent Orange victims and promote reconciliation and friendship between our two countries and peoples.
SOA WATCH:
Each year VFP members from across the country go to Fort Benning, Georgia, to demonstrate for the closing of the Army's infamous School of the Americas, a training center for thousands of soldiers from repressive regimes in Latin America with long records of human rights abuses. More information here: www.soaw.org
KOREA:
After revelations of the massacres of civilians by American soldiers during the Korean War, we sent several fact-finding delegations to investigate these allegations and bring the hidden history of that war before the public. Today we continue to work for an end to that conflict through our Korea Peace Campaign.
VIEQUES:
Along with other veteran and community groups, we actively supported the people of Puerto Rico in their struggle to end the US Navy's six decades of bombing and shelling on the island municipality of Vieques. We continue to support current efforts for cleaning up the environment and return of the land to the people of Vieques.
COLOMBIA:
VFP sent fact-finding delegations to this violence-torn land and educated U.S. citizens to the US military involvement, the murder of union leaders by para-militaries and other human rights abuses, including the harmful effects of chemical defoliants used in the "war on drugs".
CENTRAL AMERICA:
In the 1980s, we opposed US sponsored wars and continue to support people struggling for their rights and dignity. We regularly send election observers to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador in support of justice and peace.
Veterans For Peace was founded in 1985, as a non-profit 501c3 educational organization and recognized as a United Nations Non-Governmental Organization in 1990. Chapters and members are active in communities throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. National conventions are held annually and members communicate through quarterly newsletters as well as daily list-serve news, on line discussions groups and the national and many chapter websites.
the Los Angeles Chapter of Veterans for Peace is also engaged in these projects:
Outreach to high schools
Our chapter focus since the first Gulf War "Desert Storm" has been to reach out to students in high schools through class presentations and assemblies by veterans. Veterans of all eras provide a perspective on war that is rarely heard from recruiters in their sales pitch for recruitment. As part of our presentation we'll often show the Arlington West Film, which Thousands of students have seen the Arlington West FilmWe have spoken in over 50 high schools and colleges, and given hundreds of presentations since its inception in September of 1994. An extension of this project has now evolved in to the Arlington West Film and Speakers Project.
Arlington West Memorial
We established the "Arlington West Memorial" at Santa Monica Beach on February 15, 2004, and have maintained this weekly memorial, honoring those killed and wounded in Iraq, with thousands of white crosses, pictures of those killed, flowers, and hundreds of memorabilia left by family and friends representing the loss of their loved ones. This memorial has been featured in news stories around the world.
Arlington West Memorial Road Trip
We built a second memorial and with the help of our members, Marcus Eriksen, April Fitzsimmons, Steve Brown and David Troy, and in 2005, we took the memorial on the road. Our journey took us through the southern states to numerous universities, up to Kent State for the anniversary of the Kent State Massacre, which occured in May 1970, and ended the tour by setting up next to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC.
This was met with much gratitude by the students and professors and we were invited into many classrooms to show several documentaries and talk about this war and its effects on those that have served and those now deployed.
For more information, see our page here:
Arlington West On The Road