The Combat Veterans for Congress PAC has joined with the Vietnam Veterans of America in supporting the action by multiple claimants in requesting the unauthorized transfer of 387 acres of the National Veterans Home in West Los Angeles be returned to the benefit of disabled and homeless Veterans.
The 387 acres of land, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, originally deeded to Veterans in 1888, borders Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood. It was transferred with no consideration or benefit for Veterans by the Executive Director of the VA in Los Angeles to business entities in Los Angeles County.
The unauthorized transfer of land, deeded by the original owner for the benefit of Veterans, amounts to grand theft.
The elderly disabled and homeless Veterans have been peacefully protesting the unauthorized transfer of their land every Sunday for over three years. One of their peaceful acts of distress has been to fly the American flag upside down — a recognized international signal of distress used on the high seas by seamen in trouble.
The Sunday peaceful demonstration continue to be held on Wilshire Boulevard adjacent to the land taken away from them; the Executive Director of the VA in Los Angeles, Donna Beiter, regularly sent VA police officers to give those elderly and disabled Veterans (World War II and Vietnam disabled Veterans, some in wheelchairs) tickets for flying the American flag upside down.
Those citations were opposed by the cited Veterans in court, and those citations were thrown out by the federal judge in the court hearings.
Beiter should be fired for trying to prevent Veterans from exercising their right of free speech, and trying to cover up the illegal transfer of their land.
A descendant of the family that donated the land to the VA for the benefit of Veterans, the Harvard Professor for Constitutional Law (Laurence Tribe, Esq.), Gary Blasi, Esq., a UCLA attorney, Maj. Gen. Paul Monroe (former Adjutant General of the California National Guard), the city of Santa Monica, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, the Vietnam Veterans of America, Massey & Gall, LLP, the Inner City Law Center of Los Angeles, Ron Olson of Munger, Tolles & Olson, LLP, Arnold & Porter, LLP, and others have joined in a lawsuit filed to void the transfer of the 387 acres of land.
The unauthorized transfer of of prime real estate in the heart of Westwood is backroom politics at its worst, an action that disenfranchised disabled and homeless Veterans.
Capt. John (USN Ret.), Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress, may be contacted at www.combatveteransforcongress.org
