Below is an email exchange with a VA official.
I have no interest in going to this urban master plan “kickoff” meeting on Tuesday. There is much more to all of this, and I have zero confidence that Veterans will be the ultimate beneficiary.
The fact that the VA and politicians have refused to declare a state of emergency for the current situation, and further refuse to provide crisis humanitarian relief for thousands of homeless Veterans, underscores that this is not a serious or honorable agenda.
Rest assured, for $1.5 million, the architect firm is listening to the self-serving fat-cat opposition and not to the legitimate and moral proposition that the Old Veterans Guard offers.
To Charles Green
Interim Chief of Communications & External Affairs
VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System
Dear Charles,
I received your personal invite an hour after the mass email already had been sent to every Tom, Dick and Mary.
Let me be perfectly clear: I have absolutely no interest in attending any urban planning “kickoff” propaganda while thousands upon thousands of homeless Veterans continue to be kicked off this land and denied emergency housing and care.
I have paid a big price over the last seven years. None of this would be happening today had that price not been paid. This included being falsely arrested, having my Constitutional rights trampled, been lied to and lied about, insulted and assaulted. You name it. The VA has done it to me. Everything except for being honorable, honest and forthright.
To be even clearer, what has happened to me and the Old Veterans Guard is tolerable.
What the VA has done against us, they have done to all our disabled and homeless Veterans. The Old Veterans Guard is the only group that is the honest and trusted voice of thousands of homeless Veterans. The VA has tried to silence us in order to silence these voiceless Veterans and keep them homeless while falsely claiming its mission is to end Veteran homelessness. The lies never end.
Now, the VA is paying a high-powered architectural firm $1.5 million to follow the dictates of the wealth and power that already have determined what this land will become. It will not be to permanently house war-injured and homeless Veterans.
Tuesday is a mockery against those who need to be housed and cared on this land now, not years after they have died an inhumane death in back-alley squalor.
Tuesday is just more phony tokenism to try and deceive Veterans that they have a say in the planning, while a small elite inner-circle of (VA Secretary) Bob McDonald’s non-Veteran wealthy friends already have dictated what these sacred grounds will be converted into for their own benefit.
We have been calling for emergency housing on the Grand Lawn long before Bob McDonald or Eric Shinseki were ever appointed Secretaries of the VA. Both adamantly have opposed such humanitarian relief and falsely denied that any state of emergency even exists. Instead, they dole out welfare rent vouchers, contrary to the promise of this land.
Vince Kane, McDonald’s “homeless expert,” is a joke. Tens of thousands of disabled homeless Veterans have become his punch line.
He is hell bent on warehousing homeless Veterans in ramshackle tenement housing far from the VA. What supposedly worked for him in Philadelphia and New Orleans will not remotely work here in Los Angeles. Vince is clueless about solving the homeless problem here, as is Bob McDonald. Only nationally recognized homeless activist Ted Hayes should be named the expert for helping solve the homeless Veteran problem here in L.A.
For the record, in spite of bringing the ACLU into this fray, I was not consulted in advance nor invited to Bob McDonald’s “press conference” when he announced his bogus “settlement agreement.” Nor was I invited to his private ceremony to falsely open the front gates. For that, I am grateful.
Going forward, I will remain on the “outside” and will continue to fight the good fight until righteous justice is finally served on behalf of tens of thousands of abandoned homeless Veterans. They depend on the Old Veterans Guard and American citizen soldiers to be their voice and bring them home.
In spite of a federal judgment that actually proved why we hung the American flag in distress — that the lives and property of our disabled homeless Veterans are in extreme danger — Bob McDonald egregiously aborted this legal victory to protect his powerful cronies.
With our legal hopes immorally banished by such ingrates, we must now prove to the world that these are crimes against humanity, committed by our own government against war-injured Veterans who defended freedom around the world. Shame on every person who has denied these Veterans their right to be immediately housed and cared for on this land deeded exclusively in their behalf.
Lastly, while the powerful continue to put themselves and their priorities first, we will not betray our fellow Veterans who are forced to live alone, homeless and hungry in deplorable conditions. We will not be silenced with some sham urban planning propaganda. We will continue to speak out until all homeless Veterans are housed and cared for at the Los Angeles National Veterans Home.
Sincerely,
Robert L. Rosebrock
Director, Old Veterans Guard
God Bless America and the Veterans Revolution!
Mr. Green responds:
Mr. Rosebrock,
I would like to personally invite you to the upcoming Urban Planning Kickoff meeting. This meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 23, 2015 at the Wadsworth Theater. The scheduled time is from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Thanks,
Charles
Mr. Rosebrock may be contacted at RRosebrock1@aol.com