Category: Veterans

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.

By Diane Bell / San Diego Union-Tribune 

When Stan Levin encountered a homeless man in a wheelchair behind a Denny’s last month, he did what he always does. He started a conversation. As they chatted, he asked the fellow if he was sleeping on the ground and needed a sleeping bag. What he wanted at that moment, though, was a meal.

“Go in and tell the cashier what you want for breakfast and I’ll pick up the tab,” Levin replied. While the stranger was ordering, Levin walked to his car and came back with a sleeping bag to give to him.

From the Peninsula Alliance

Ocean Beach draws hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, including many military families from all over San Diego. To honor those who have served our country throughout the years, a group of community organizations that include the nonprofit Ocean Beach Community Development Corp. (OBCDC), the Ocean Beach Town Council, OB Mainstreet Association, OB Planning Board, OB Woman’s Club, and The Peninsula Alliance have set out to build a brand-new Veterans Plaza that will
last as a place of respect and reverence for our military veterans.

The current Veteran’s Memorial Plaza at the foot of Newport Avenue and Abbott Street in Ocean Beach is in great disrepair.

The San Diego Veterans For Peace, along with 16 other local environmental, social, and religious groups, will be again demonstrating at the Carroll Canyon Road overpass to the I-15, this Thursday, Sept 22nd between 4 and 6 PM, asking that the upcoming Miramar Air Show be cancelled, as an unnecessarily dangerous and environmental disaster. (Come inside for more.)

By Mike James

Twenty five years ago on April 1, 1997, legislation became effective that would rip families apart, disregard fundamental human rights and send once honored individuals into exile.

After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, there was an uproar for new immigration laws. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 was the result. Signed into law by President Bill Clinton, he, like many other politicians, wanted to pass immigration legislation that emphasized enforcement prior to the run-up of the 1998 national elections.

Soldiers Also Built a Peace Movement Within the U.S. Military

Timely Stories as World Watches Russian Invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking at the University of San Diego’s Copley Library *

March 16 – the 54th anniversary of the My Ly Massacre:

Ronald L. Haeberle, the Army photographer whose color pictures of the My Ly Massacre published in the December 5, 1968, issue of LIFE Magazine, galvanized American public opinion against the war.

by Jill Castellano / inewscource / February 12, 2021

For the second time, a federal watchdog agency found that the Department of Veterans Affairs’ investigation into unethical liver research performed on San Diego veterans was “not reasonable.”

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel published new reports on Tuesday, Feb. 8, revealing more details about the mistakes and violations that occurred during the research and its dissatisfaction with the VA’s investigation into what happened. inewsource broke the story about the unethical study in 2018 as the first article in its Risky Research series.

The study at the San Diego VA was part of a $6 million international project to find new therapies for people with alcoholic hepatitis. Researchers around the world were supposed to collect these patients’ leftover liver tissue after they received biopsies and look for patterns.

But that’s not what happened in San Diego.

by Brad Racino / inewsource / June 17, 2020

Following an inewsource report that the VA San Diego Healthcare System has stopped paying for a drug treatment that helps suicidal veterans, a panel of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs has begun investigating the decision.

El Cajon veteran AJ Williams, featured this month in the inewsource investigation, was interviewed Monday by a staff member from the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. A representative from San Diego Congressman Scott Peters’ office also participated.

Williams is one of several veterans pulled from ketamine treatments at a private clinic and ordered back to the VA to be treated with a controversial nasal spray President Donald Trump has touted as “incredible.”

By Nicole Ueno / November 11, 2019

As state lawmakers rush to increase housing density in California, demographers estimate that our population will continue to increase by 300,000 to 400,000 people annually.

Essential infrastructure like roads, bridges, water pipelines and dams are already in disrepair, and increased strains from additional projected use are causing concern over the long-term sustainability of resident population growth.

A recent report from the League of California Cities states that “Numerous studies suggest that not only is the state unprepared for future growth, its current condition does not adequately support today’s population. Quite simply, California’s infrastructure is crumbling.”