Category: Veterans

Every Saturday at 10:30 am. San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition Meetings April 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th

Every Saturday 10 am – 12 pm Peace Vigil for Palestine:

The San Diego River Park Foundation has volunteer opportunities in Ocean Beach:

Every Sunday 1:30 pm – 4 pm Otay Mesa Vigil

League of Women Voters EMPOWERING VOTERS & DEFENDING DEMOCRACY Information on upcoming forums for City Council Primary Races:

April 1st, 8th and 15th Wednesdays 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm Resist Trump Flash Banner Action –

April 2nd Thursday 6 pm – 7:30 pm Surfrider Open House

April 4th Saturday 4pm -7 pm Jewish Voice for Peace San Diego Passover Seder

April 4th Saturday 4 pm – 6 pm Spring GBM with Green New Deal

April 5th Sunday 11 am – 2 pm EASTER SUNDAY OUTREACH — Factory Farms Awareness Action

April 6th Monday 6 pm – 8 pm Friends of Famosa Slough 40th Anniversary

The San Diego Veterans For Peace, Hugh Thompson Memorial Chapter #91, is very pleased to announce that a billboard reminding Active Duty Troops that they have a duty to disobey illegal orders, has been installed on the NE side of Harbor Drive going north, between 32nd and 28th Streets in San Diego.  This billboard is part of a national program by Veterans For Peace, with many similar billboards now being posted across the United States.

The San Diego billboard will be up for one month ending in early April.

Please see the VFP website: https://www.veteransforpeace.org/take-action/service-member-support

Background

Veterans For Peace has launched a campaign to remind our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters and grandchildren, who have joined the military, that they have the right and the responsibility to refuse illegal orders, and that we will support them when they do.

by Debbie L. Sklar / Times of San Diego / Jan. 16, 2026

High above San Diego Bay, Fort Rosecrans occupies one of the most commanding pieces of land in the city. Long before it became a national cemetery, the Point Loma military reservation played a central role in coastal defense, guarding the harbor entrance from the late 19th century through World War II. Today, Fort Rosecrans is best known as a place of remembrance — but it has also, briefly and intentionally, become part of San Diego’s film history.

Hollywood Backlot

What Fort Rosecrans is not is a forgotten Hollywood backlot. Unlike larger, active Southern California military installations, there is no documented evidence that Fort Rosecrans served as a regular filming site during Hollywood’s Golden Age. From the 1930s through the 1950s, studios making war films typically relied on expansive Army and Navy bases that could support large-scale productions, complete with troops, equipment, and training grounds. Fort Rosecrans, originally developed as a coastal artillery post and formally designated a fort in 1899, never functioned as that kind of production hub.

By the end of World War II, advances in military technology had reduced the importance of fixed coastal defenses, and the site’s military role diminished. Portions of the reservation had already been set aside as a cemetery decades earlier, beginning in the 1880s. Over time, Fort Rosecrans’ identity shifted decisively from active defense to commemoration.

That context makes its on-screen appearance far more meaningful.

By Pam Kragen / San Diego Union-Tribune / Jan. 14 -15, 2026

Stan Levin, a Korean War veteran who spent the later years of his life as a passionate anti-war activist and helping San Diego’s homeless population, passed away Jan. 8 at a local hospital. He was 96.

The longtime San Diegan worked as an acrobat, in airplane manufacturing, as a schoolteacher and in the real estate industry. But he became best known for his volunteer work with San Diego Veterans for Peace, a vocation that began around his 80th birthday in 2010. He participated in demonstrations, protested at the Miramar air shows, spoke at public events and wrote many essays and letters to the editor that were published in this and other local newspapers and on news sites.

Levin’s daughter Annie Revel said her father loved talking to people on virtually any topic, but over the past 20 years he increasingly became an outspoken anti-war activist.

“He was opinionated and very engaged in life,” Revel said. “He always had a twinkle in his eye and he had a great sense of fun. He was very curious and inquisitive and always learning.”

There’s been a spike in detentions of Afghans living in San Diego recently and it’s being condemned by the local chapter of America’s largest Muslim civil rights group, CAIR, which stands for Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In a statement issued Dec. 3, the Executive Director, Tazheen Nizam of San Diego’s CAIR said:

“This past week, our office has seen a spike in calls from Afghan community members suddenly facing new threats to their status and safety. This morning, I accompanied an Afghan evacuee to what ICE claimed was a routine check-in in San Jose; despite full cooperation, he was detained immediately. We’re hearing the same fear from long-time green card holders, already-vetted refugees, and families who have waited years to reunite with loved ones now trapped in limbo.

San Diego Veterans For Peace, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 7420, and supporters and friends will be hosting a rally and press conference in front of the LaJolla VA Hospital, 3350 LaJolla Village Drive, SD, CA 92161 from 3 to 4 PM on Friday, Sept 5th.

Over the weekend, I spent some time watching documentaries about the Civil War and was reminded that Memorial Day remembrances began with that conflict that took the lives of 600,000 Americans and almost took American democracy with it. It was an appropriate lesson for these days in 2025 when the fate of American democracy is again in the balance because of the authoritarian want-to-be dictator in the White House.

The program spoke of how as late as 1864, the war and America’s future hung in the balance. The war had grown unpopular with some in the North and President Lincoln was being challenged in that year’s election by General George McClellan, running as a Democrat. McClellan had been Commanding General of the United States Army from November 1861 to March 1862 until he was fired by Lincoln for not pressuring the Confederate army enough, prolonging the war.

McClellan became a severe critic of Lincoln and the war — and if he had won, the Emancipation Declaration would have been torn up and McClellan would have sought an agreement with the Southern states to end the war — allowing them to keep millions of Americans in bondage. The country would have looked much differently and it would have been the end of democracy here.

A miracle happened, however, and General Tecumseh Sherman won the battle of Atlanta, guaranteeing the end was in sight. Lincoln was re-elected in a landslide — the slaves were freed and democracy was saved. For a while at least. Reconstruction and freedom was only temporary for African-Americans and by 1877, Jim Crow and a new type of slavery had returned — which existed for another 90 years until the modern Civil Rights Movement.

By JW August

From the trenches

“Federal agencies have been told they need to change their ‘reasonable accommodation’ policy for employees with disabilities who are now working at home”, according to “S,” a longtime source who works in a management position within the federal government.

The policy currently in place, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, was a precursor to the American With Disabilities Act. Telework and remote work were considered reasonable accommodations that could be offered to employees with disabilities. Trump wants to change this arrangement

Relief Received After TV Station Intervenes

Michael Mudurian served in the Air Force and then settled into his Point Loma home with an ocean view 50 years ago.

For decades, the lifelong bachelor said he had a pretty high water bill because he loved to water his garden and nourish the lush, green grass in his front yard. However, the grass became dead and brown because Mudurian couldn’t afford his water bill; it was a stunning $28,500 in August after the city’s Public Utilities Department had held his bill for over a year.

“Ceasefire in Gaza” rally this Saturday, August 24th, 2024 from 10 AM to Noon in the Ocean Beach area !!

UNTIL THERE IS A CEASEFIRE, WE ARE STILL NEEDED ON THE CORNER !!

Please note: Rally time is now an earlier two-hour period — come any time between 10 AM and Noon.

Come join a growing number of your friends and neighbors, at least 30 folks last Saturday, standing out on a busy corner in Ocean Beach, demanding a CEASEFIRE in Gaza, and demanding that the U.S. stop providing Israel with weapons that have already killed over 40,000 Gazans, most of these deaths women and children.

Remembering the Vietnamese Wars

The San Diego Hugh Thompson Chapter of Veterans for Peace will be participating in a wonderful program on “Remembering  the Vietnamese Wars.”

It will be held at the University of San Diego’s Copley Library on Thursday, April 27, 2023 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30 p.m.

It is sponsored by the Department of History and Copley Library of the University of San Diego.

A tent is a tent, but for many it’s the safest, most private space someone may have while experiencing homelessness.

By Amy Denhart / SD Union-Tribune Op-Ed / Feb. 21, 2023

Imagine having everything you own taken from you at a moment’s notice and being forced to scramble to find a place to sleep night after night, week after week.

More and more of our unsheltered neighbors are subjected to this life as homelessness increases and housing costs skyrocket across San Diego. Our officials respond by ordering homeless residents to take down tents during daylight hours, a misguided policy intended to prevent encampments from forming.