Paul Ortiz won’t turn on the TV or the radio on Veteran’s or Memorial Day. He doesn’t want to hear it.

“You’ll see it on Veteran’s day. Some politician will get up and speak about the meaning of military service,” Ortiz said. “Then you’ll look at his or her record, and they haven’t even been in the military. They have no idea what they’re talking about.”

A veteran who served in Central America in the Reagan era and a member of the Gainesville chapter of Veterans for Peace, Ortiz also directs the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at UF.

As part of his work with the program, Ortiz is gathering a collection of stories from Florida’s veterans, ranging from WWII to the present. His purpose is to shed light on the reality of war.

“With every veterans project that we’ve embarked on, we’ve emphasized the costs of war and the ways in which people do not normally think about those costs,” Oritz said. “These costs continue to resonate beyond the time that the war takes place.”

The project is part of a research collaboration with the US Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project, created in Oct. 2000.

The accounts Ortiz gathers will be available via the archives of the George A. Smathers Libraries at UF and presented amongst hundreds of others on the Veterans History Project website.

The national collection includes video interviews, photo memoirs and documents from service men and women like Frank Buckles, 109, the last known surviving American veteran of WWI.

“It’s best for anyone who’s been in the military service if he’s had some disagreeable experiences [...] to talk about it and get it out of his system and then forget it,” Buckles says in an audio interview.

However, it is unlikely that Vietnam veteran and local activist Scott Camil will forget.

“We would come into a village, and all the people would have fearful looks in their eyes,” Camil said. “They would bow their heads. They would put their hands in front of their faces in that praying position. Sometimes we would kill them and sometimes we wouldn’t.”

Camil threw away his war medals in 1971 during Dewey Canon 3, a protest by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Washington D.C.

“I would never want to see that look on the faces of my friends, my loved ones or my neighbors.”

Camil testified during the Winter Solider Investigation of ‘71, exposing US atrocities in Vietnam. At the 1971 UF homecoming parade, he was one of the “Gainesville Eight” who marched, rifles in hand, carrying coffins draped with American flags and waving signs calling for no more war. Camil now serves as president of the Gainesville chapter of Veterans for Peace.

As Ortiz continues to interview local veterans, he hopes that the project will serve as a microphone for those not as outspoken as Camil.

Ortiz is interviewing WWII veterans who kept quiet for 60 or 65 years because they wanted to protect their loved ones from the horrors of war.

“When they returned home in 1945 no one wanted to talk to them,” Ortiz said. “The media wanted to focus on the positive stories.”

Ortiz criticizes Hollywood for doing the same.

“It tends to glorify and to sanitize the experience that people have, both as soldiers and civilians, in wartime,” Ortiz said. “This is something that as historians we can work to correct.”

To Hell and Back: A Veteran’s Tale from Fine Print on Vimeo.

To learn more about the politics and implications of meal limits, read the original story that inspired this video.

130-Meal Limit Takes Its Toll on Gainesville’s Homeless

Steve Dennis has a slew of numbers floating in his head. When you ask him about poverty, they all come pouring out.

It took two years serving in the Vietnam War and one bag of feces thrown at him from an anti-war protester for Dennis to realize he wasn’t exactly welcomed back. It took three war-related health conditions (diabetes, peripheral neuropathy and post-traumatic stress disorder) and zero job opportunities during the 1970s recession to land him in debt. It took almost 40 years of homelessness for Dennis to call the woods his only home. And it takes 130 people arriving before him at the St. Francis House for Dennis to be turned away.

“Even when they have enough food for me, if I don’t get in line before the 131st person, then I just don’t eat that day,” he said, “unless I choose to go to the grocery store and shoplift something, but I’m trying to be a law-abiding citizen.”

A speaker for Alachua County’s chapter of the National Coalition for the Homeless, Dennis is most concerned about the number 131 now that he’s back on his feet with assistance from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Through a sturdy, 60-year-old former Marine’s frame, Dennis managed to project a soft-spoken voice from the steps of City Hall on the night of Thursday, Oct. 21, a voice that barely captures his frustration with the city’s 130-meal limit on soup kitchens.

He’s one of about 30 citizens who rallied at City Hall and told the Gainesville City Commission to get rid of the limit, an ordinance meant to disperse the homeless population currently concentrated downtown.

“It doesn’t work,” Dennis said. “If they get denied from St. Francis, the homeless are just going to panhandle around downtown until they collect enough money to eat something. You’re not dispersing them anywhere. You’re just starving them.”

The commission passed the ordinance in 1992 but never enforced it until last year, which long-term homeless advocate and social worker Pat Fitzpatrick says coincided with the August 2009 opening of downtown’s Hampton Inn.

“Some of these older men are giving up their place in line so kids and pregnant women can eat,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s just bizarre. When is the city going to put people before profits?”

But City Commissioner Jack Donovan said prioritizing is a balancing act. He said the ordinance is the best compromise among the city’s varying interest groups, and “sometimes that includes the neighborhood businesses.”

The businesses complained of homeless people urinating in their bushes and panhandling around customers. Donovan said much of the damage downtown, however, is done by students but blamed on homeless people.

He said residents and businesses support the ordinance because of people using the homeless as a cover for criminal activity. A 2008 report on Gainesville’s homeless conditions stated 45 percent of respondents said unemployment and job loss caused their homelessness, and the majority of respondents said this was their first homeless episode.

“Unfortunately, what most of us have as an image of homelessness is what we periodically encounter downtown: the chronically homeless,” he said. “As opposed to the temporarily homeless, these people tend to have a lot more problems and can sometimes even be dangerous. But for the most part, homeless people aren’t any more likely to misbehave than the rest of the community.”

Donovan favored lifting the 130-meal limit until the city eventually completes its construction of a one-stop homeless center five miles north of St. Francis, which will feature about 60 beds, showers, telephones, healthcare services and counseling services. The commission, however, rejected the moratorium. Donovan said they’re doing their best, but he’s seen commissioners influenced by the funding they depend upon for re-election.

“Sometimes economic interests and getting campaign funding weigh more heavily than some of us would wish,” Donovan said of other commissioners. “But it’s a matter of balancing and asking yourself, ‘Will I get campaign money from wealthier business owners or not?’ We’re at a temporary stalemate until we see what happens with the one-stop center.”

But the issue isn’t completely dead in the water. Joseph S. Jackson, a UF legal skills professor and long-term homeless advocate, said the Bo Diddley Community Plaza has become even more concentrated with people hoping to beat the 131st rejection, and the best alternative is to grant the St. Francis House longer hours of operation.

“It makes so much more sense to provide meals only during certain hours,” Jackson said. “Then people wouldn’t have to crowd downtown during its opening hours. It would allow for food to be given in an orderly fashion with fewer external impacts on the downtown community.”

On Oct. 21, the commission allowed the St. Francis House to begin petitioning to extend its hours of operation, feeding more people throughout the day but keeping a 130-person capacity.

Jackson said opening more soup kitchens would also ameliorate the crowding, but zoning restrictions “make it impossible for other soup kitchens to be established.” The effect, he said, has been to prevent services from being provided instead of dispersing the homeless population.

Fitzpatrick said despite all the legislation tangled in the issue, it boils down to a simple question: “Are these people going to eat or are they not going to eat?”

Fitzpatrick will host a fast on the steps of City Hall during the three days before Thanksgiving to raise awareness that food sharing is not a handout but a basic human necessity.

Dennis says he prefers calling it a leg up. Of all the homeless people he’s met in the past 40 years, he said most are more than willing to work their way out of poverty if given the chance, and the only thing the city can disperse is the act of one homeless person helping another.

“It multiplies,” he said. “I got mine, so why can’t I help others now? These commissioners think when they look at us that they’re looking at crap, but what they don’t see is that with a little help, a pile of crap turns into a garden.”

To learn about Steve Dennis and his personal struggle with PTSD, watch our documentary video.

For most veterans, there is no option to supplement the extra costs of college life that the pre 9/11 GI Bill doesn’t cover, and many veterans are forced to choose between college and working. There are three common choices veterans face when leaving active duty: stay in the military and continue to deploy to war, leave the military and try to secure full-time employment with comparable benefits, or leave the military and attend college while trying to live off the GI Bill.

In order to give veterans the proper opportunity to pursue education in our modern world, a new version of the GI Bill is being implemented.  The Post 9/11 GI Bill, as it is being called, has drawn mixed reviews from some of Washington’s top leaders. Most opponents argue that the $78 billion price tag the new GI Bill requires for the next 10 years is too much. Never the less, Senator Jim Webb (D- Va), who originally drafted the new bill, and other supporters celebrated its implementation on August 1.

Since the creation of the GI Bill after WWII, we have seen this money well spent. Some experts credit the economic success of the nation after WWII to the availability of higher education to returning soldiers. After WWII the GI Bill was what facilitated an educated middle class and strengthened the social fabric of our communities and universities.

As of August 1, all service members who have served at least 90 days on active duty after Sept. 10, 2001, or 30 days on active duty and have been discharged with a service-connected disability, will be eligible for education benefits under the new GI Bill plan.

The new plan makes it significantly easier to focus completely on learning and preparing for a new career and not on making ends meet to stay enrolled.  Up until 2009, transitioning from fatigues and M-16’s to flip flops and number two pencils was mostly about personal risk.

When I was discharged from the Marine Corps, I knew that I was going to struggle financially because my income was significantly reduced. The old GI Bill was only enough for me to get by with proper budgeting and a scholarship. The new GI Bill addresses this common reason veterans are discouraged from going to school, which is the cost of living.

Most military members on their first enlistment are discharged at a base salary rate of about $2,500 a month, with most expenses like housing and food covered. The most I ever took home from the old GI Bill as a full-time student was about $1,300 a month, which leaves a substantial amount of lost income to worry about.

Without a supplement like scholarships, many veterans like myself could not adjust our lifestyles enough to survive on the old GI Bill alone. The new plan gives veteran students a monthly housing allowance based on the average housing costs in the town you live. This was the deciding factor for where I was going to go to college when I got out of the Marines. It wasn’t about the best school I could get into; it was about where I could afford to live and go to school at the same time.

The biggest change, however, may be that tuition payments will now be made to the academic institutions themselves and not the veteran. Up until now, I received a check every month in my bank account. Now the institutions will be paid directly by the VA based on the average cost per credit hour for each state, not to exceed each state’s individual cap. For Florida, the maximum amount the new GI Bill will cover per credit hour is $295, and the maximum amount of fees that will be paid per term is $62,000.

What the new GI Bill legislation facilitates is an actual chance to successfully attend a state university after discharged from the service, and the ability to transfer those hard-earned benefits to dependants if they choose not to use them. For most of our military today, being in harm’s way is commonplace.

In my opinion, if you served your country you ought to at least have the chance to attend a state university without having to worry about keeping the lights on and the dog fed. The Post 9/11 GI Bill does just that. It gives veterans the resources needed to compete inside a modern academic system and an incentive to further develop their already selfless character with valuable post secondary education. The GI Bill has been a valuable asset to my entire college experience.

This fall I will have completed a Bachelor in Psychology and will be moving on to law school next year, and I would not have been able to accomplish this without the benefits I earned by serving in the Marine Corps and in combat. The Post 9/11 GI Bill is our country’s guarantee to future generations that there is always a place for veterans in our universities and our educated workforce.

Serving your country is not an alternative to higher education.

At the same time we allow the corporations and businesses that supply the needs of our military to make huge profits while our kids are maimed and killed.

Why shouldn’t  these  corporations and businesses have to make a sacrifice the same way our young do?

How about a constitutional amendment that says anytime our military is fighting that the  corporations and businesses

that supply their needs must do so at cost.

Sharing the sacrifices would seem to me to be more honorable and patriotic.

Of course the  corporations and businesses would only be giving up profit while many of our young are giving up

their lives, their futures, their physical and mental health.

It’s still a comparatively good deal for corporations and businesses unless war profiteering is their only game.

Since it is considered patriotic to sacrifice for ones country lets have shared sacrifice when our troopsare fighting.

This Memorial Day, Veterans for Peace will remember the fallen service members by displaying more than 4,900 tombstones from dawn on May 23 to dusk on Memorial Day. The tombstones will line the street along Eighth Avenue just east of 34th Street, where the Solar System Walk is located.

This is the third year Veterans for Peace has set up the display, but it is the first time that the tombstones will have to line both the north and south sides of Eight Avenue because of the increased number of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last year, the display, which is also known as Memorial Mile, was made up of 4,500 tombstones. This year more than 400 will be added, each one representing an American service member whose life was lost. But this year, there are more deaths from the war in Afghanistan than the first three years of the war combine.

Veterans for Peace feels that these losses cannot be adequately understood with facts and figures alone. The visual impact of the tombstones contains the reality of these numbers.

Each tombstone will include the soldier’s name, date of death, age, branch of service, rank and hometown. They will be arranged by date of death.

Soldiers with local ties will have American flags placed on their tombstones so that they may be located more easily. Veterans for Peace will have a list available at an information table to direct the public to specific tombstones. Last year, people came to the Memorial Mile to place flowers and other expressions of love at the tombstones.

In addition, the group will have posters depicting the cost of war, as well as the Peace Ribbon, a collection of panels sewn by loved ones of those who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan on the north side of the street.

For more information on the Memorial Mile or Veterans for Peace, visit the group’s web site at www.afn.org/~vetpeace.