Haywood Fennell discusses the need to support veterans in the local community.
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The Other Page Radio
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Good afternoon everybody. It's time for the Altered Pays Radio Show, WBCALP102.9 FM Boston. The program is brought to you by Triad Veterans League and Association with BNN Media Services. My name is Haywood Finel Sr. And I am grateful to be here today to talk with you about so many things, but I just want to say to you we lost a good friend the other day by the name of law award and we want to dedicate this program and subsequent programs to law award who passed recently and will be well missed. He was designing a program called Building Black Better. Building Black Better was an idea that law had as a direct result of his past experiences as an ex-offender and as one who believed that he could make a contribution with a solution-driven strategy that involved changing his thinking. We're gonna miss you, Lord. We got all about love and we thank you for being with us for the time that you was with us. We have to thank the Lord 'cause this decision that was irrevocable. Law passed from COVID. Now, I know a lot of you guys out there know about COVID and know about what it does or what it can't do. And getting the vaccinations and everything like that, but let me tell you something, it ain't over. It is not over. Avoid the crowds, stay the distance. Don't listen to them people. They say you're doing the wrong thing. Like I said, my friend, Lord, passed a couple of days ago. We gonna miss him. We don't want to miss you. I don't want to miss you. I want you to take care of yourself. This program is brought to you by a triad veterans league. And we try to build capacity with this station around veterans' concerns and more inclusion. And, you know, just give us our respect. That's what we want. We want respect because we earned that respect. We've raised our hands and later put on a uniform of whatever branch you decided that you wanted to be a part of. And you said that you would follow orders. You would go where you were sent. And a lot of people were giving weapons. And a lot of people weren't giving weapons, but they were a part of the greatest military machine in the world. The United States armed forces. Those that have served, deserve to be served. I'm gonna repeat that. Those that have served, deserve to be served. Put a frog in boiling water and it'll jump right out. Let put a frog in cool water and slowly heat it up. That frog will boil. As veterans, we tell ourselves the lie that we can handle anything. We let the water boil. You are not a frog. If you or a veteran you know needs support, don't wait. Reach out. Find resources at va.gov/reach. That's va.gov/reach. Brought to you by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and the Ad Council. Are you a veteran or do you know a veteran who is struggling with housing due to COVID-19? Veterans Inc can help provide support services, including assistance with rent, deposits, utilities, as well as emergency housing, including hotel stays to eligible struggling veterans. If you or someone you know is in need of services, please call 1-800-482-2565 or go online to www.vettrensinc.org. I want to put an emphasis on veterans, because people think that veterans, when they find themselves in distressful situations and based on the trauma and the drama experienced in the military, they portray veterans as, you know, useless vagabonds and beggars and we're none of that. We come up short in understanding that the United States Defense Department at one time didn't want to enlist black veterans, but black veterans have been involved in defending the United States of America since the American Revolution and we became a nation. They didn't want to give us the guns or the uniforms, but we fought and we earned, we earned respect. They gave up medals and promotions, but not in the manner that they should have been given out. It's always been a struggle for African-American people and African-American veterans. And what we are doing, meaning triad veterans league, is that we have a national campaign, a petition drive using the images from the black veterans art exhibit to solicit support for the creation of a United States stamp showing black veterans from the American Revolution up to World War II, where we had the Tuskegee airman participating in winning. We think that this project will empower people to understand the depth of the patriotism of African-American veterans. This stamp project will show the people in the United States an often under-reported history of black patriotism would focus on the 54th volunteer brigade that fought in the Silver Wall. And we're also looking at Christmas attics, who was the first casualty of the American Revolution when he was slain in Boston, Massachusetts, downtown area, Christmas attics. They have quite a few places in Boston programs using his name, but we want to expand the knowledge of the African-American veterans' commitment so that others can understand and support the United States commemorated stamp series petition that we now are working on, and you can find out more information about the United States commemorated stamp series proposal presented by triad veterans league, by going to change.org, change.org and sign up. We want to thank some of our supporters who got quite a few of them. We can't name them all, but we can thank the community service representative engagement, community engagement representative out of the office of Governor Healy, Art Gordon. We want to thank Dr. Thomas Miller at the William Joiner Institute at UMass Boston. We want to thank the good folks over at the William Monroe Trotter Institute at UMass Boston. We want to thank the veterans' representatives to inner college, Augusto De Silva at UMass Boston. We want to thank the constituency representatives in the office of Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Ed Market, the two members of the United States Senate is endorsed in this program. We want to thank the people at the Massachusetts Archives. We want to thank everybody that's involved with this program. So many people to name, but we'll keep calling your names until we get everybody to mention on the other page radio. But to you by Triad Veterans League. The Oscar Michelle Family Theater Program is a Boston nonprofit. They hope to teach the importance of community service through the Art of Theater, looking to establish a year-round community-based family theater organization with full theater productions by people from the community. For more information, you can visit www.oskermachowrep.tripod.com. I'm going to tell you something, folks. Veterans are an overlooked and underused community resource. That's the truth. That promo that I just played regarding the Oscar Michelle Family Theater Program Company is about a theater company that started over 20 years ago. And for the last 20 years, we have been working to develop a community-based theater program teaching young people and others the history of the Black experience using theater as our mechanism to empower people to talk about the history through stage performance. Because there was a time not too long ago when we couldn't get on the stage. But there was a time not too long ago when there was a man who was a veteran by the name of Ed Bullens, a playwright, an international playwright, and a member of the North Eastern University Theater Department who passed about four years ago. But before he passed, he was phenomenal in that. He was an international winner of the Obie Awards, the Critics Award in New York. He won so many awards. He didn't have no place to put him on. His plays were well-performed. He worked in the Boston community with people that wanted to be playwrights. He helped them. He helped so many people. And he was a veteran. He was a veteran. United States Navy. We want to honor Mr. Bullens on July the 20th at 1544 Columbus Ave. For what he did, we want to pay tribute and honor him with a program sponsored by Triad Veterans League and T.R.S. Incorporated, which are the people that managed the site at 1544 where we will honor Ed Bullens, formerly of the North Eastern University Theater Department, a member of the Lafayette Theater Players. He did stuff in New York City, Joe Papp, Shakespeare Project. He did things with Amir Buraka, also known as Leroy Jones, whose turn is the mayor of Newark, New Jersey today. Ed Bullens, we want to honor you. We want to thank you, but you're not here to do that. But we hope that your spirit is in tune to us beginning to understand the importance of the Black experience by reading and performing some of the work that you wrote. Thank you, Ed Bullens. Remember, folks, July the 20th, from 2 to 4 p.m. You get an invitation because you've got to have an invitation. Come on by and listen to what we are going to do for you to know Ed Bullens, a veteran of the United States Navy and a member of the Black Panther Party and gifted artists. Let's not forget the work that he did so that we can recognize the work that we need to do, because veterans have a lot of experience and a lot of skills and they need help at certain points in their lives to deal with the trauma and the drama that it has to do with the United States Military Service. Moving right along, I was driving past the statue of General Edward O. Godin down near Illubian Square across the street in a little park across the street from the Boston Police Department Station, too. And I'm hoping that we began to have some activities there so that the community can come and sit and appreciate the work that's being done by the veterans and friends of the General Edward O. Godin Park. I was a former chairman, I'm just a member now, and I know that it has some activities to plan, but I think that when you can, grab up a bunch of kids and come down and sit in that park. The General Edward O. Godin African-American Veterans Memorial Park is a salute to African-American veterans and their service. Remember now, I said that their service started during the American Revolution, and we have been involved in the United States Military since that time, all the way up until the present. Well, that's something there. That's something to be honored. So our stamp project is to educate and to invigorate the memories so that it can be established in your mind that we were there, salute the veterans by supporting them and their efforts to get equitable treatment when they go to the VA hospital. You know, don't make them feel like they're a stranger when they go to the VA hospital. Have people there working to help them that are culturally sensitive and understand the importance of inclusion? I'm grateful. I'm really grateful because I'm involved as a co-designer of a project. And last week we talked about this project. We talked about black veterans with lung cancer survey. We're going to do a survey to find out how we can help you if you come up in that survey and have cancer. It's always good to know your health status so you can know how to deal with it. Don't wait until it gets so bad that you need treatment when you could have gotten prevention. That's what we're working on now. Making sure with this survey that we're going to be bringing out to the community that you get involved with this survey so that you know your status. They got a veteran's new sponsor or director at the Veterans Center on the corner of Blue Hill Blue Hill and Harvard Street as you're going towards Madder Pan. The bus stops right in front of the Veterans Center with a new director of Sister King. Stop in. Stop in. They have services there for veterans. We're going to invite her to be a part of our discussion about veterans and what we can do to improve our status because you can't get to a good place by yourself. Veterans have served all over the world all over the world. And now we need help. Are you a veteran or do you know a veteran who is struggling with housing due to COVID-19? Veterans Inc can help provide support services, including assistance with rent, deposits, utilities, as well as emergency housing, including hotel stays to eligible struggling veterans. If you or someone you know is in need of services, please call 1-800-482-2565 or go online to www.veteransinc.org. We want to thank those people that show up. But we got something coming up in August about their veterans and lung cancer. We're going to do an outreach project and we hope that you'll be able to come and participate in the survey. We kind of find the people that need the help. And a lot of you need help and you don't know it. That's why we're doing this survey project. It's very, very important that you come and get the information so that if you need to go further, you'll be prepared. You don't need to wait until you get real, real ill when you could prevent a lot of the things that may be painful to you in a treatment process. And we don't want to scare you. We want to allay your anxieties by having you participate in the survey that we will be bringing about our colleagues in the CODI design project. They were on last week. We're going to work on creating a PSA and getting it on the radio station to remind you about this lung cancer situation. Nothing to play with, meeting your health. I just want to say a few words about COVID-19. Everybody seems to think that it's over. But it's not. I bear witness that COVID is alive and well and is claiming lives when we thought it was over. We got to get ourselves checked out. We got to get ourselves masked up. We got to have that distance. And we got to have understanding that COVID is not over with. People are still getting infected. People are dying. It's not over with. And it doesn't care who it kills. But I want to live. As I know, my friend had passed. The other day wanted to live. Folks take care of yourselves. Especially you veterans. A lot of you don't go over to the VA hospital because of the lack of cultural sensitivity and the need for it. And the need for cultural sensitivity spreads beyond the veteran situation. But that's another story. As you can see, our Commander-in-Chief, President Joe Biden is going through some things that we don't need to hear. We got to respect our veterans. We got to provide the things that they need for themselves and their families. For instance, housing. Housing seems to be an elusive thing when you look at the housing that's going up, being built in our community. And they say low income is a part of that. What about building something for veterans and their families, for veterans only? What about building more single room occupancies, also known as SROs? What about talking to all elected officials in a manner that they'll get it? Because elections come and elections go. Elected officials come and elected officials go. Once you become a veteran and serve your country, you're not a common goal. You're a veteran. And we need to understand that we need to be very clear about how you treat veterans and their families. Because right now, you're not treating us too good. Right now, veterans need you just as you needed the veterans during the time of war and threats of war. There's nothing to be played with. I'm willing to bet you, and I'm a betting person, by the way, that some of these houses of worship have at least ten veterans in there. And so let's just say it's 30 churches, small, medium, or otherwise. And each one of those churches with a population of, let's say, 200 people. 30 churches with 200 people gives you about 6,000 members. And then you take the 6,000 members. And let's just say you take and say that 10% of the 6,000 of veterans, including females, so 10% of 6,000 is 600. And if you say 20%, that's 1200 veterans in these churches, and the minister is not saying anything about helping the veterans. If you get a 6,000, it's 1200. Not no great mathematician. Take those 1200 veterans. They could help decide an election. 6,000 people going to churches, 30 churches. And we came up with 1200 veterans, a 20% or the 6,000. And those 6,000, I mean 1200, are all voters. They all vote. What are you going to tell them about getting services? You can't keep promising veteran stuff because they don't believe you. You got to take action now because veterans are now beginning to plan for action. By removing some of these elected officials that run around and smile at me when they see me in the street, and tell me what a good job I'm doing, and they haven't provided us anything. CDC, CDCs, boy, boy, you know, CDCs is a term they use as an acronym for community development corporations. CDCs, community development corporations that don't know how to build housing for veterans. They say that they have space for veterans, but veterans come and they don't get those spaces in those places. I wish we could sit down with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Secretary of Veterans Services for the city of Boston, both of them have the same last name, Santiago, and then take Governor Healy and Mayor Wu and put them all in the room with veterans that don't have homes or places to live, but try and let them explain what the community development corporations are all about, because if you ride up Washington Street and see this community development agency by the name of Newestra Community Dot, and you go in the back of those buildings that they're building, and you'll see a big, big space, almost like a football field. I don't know what they're going to put there, but what I'd like for them to put there would be a building with wraparound services for our veterans. Now is that, is that, is that hard? Am I asking for too much for our veterans? I don't think so. Put a frog in boiling water and it'll jump right out, but put a frog in cool water and slowly heat it up, that frog will boil. As veterans, we tell ourselves the lie that we can handle anything. We let the water boil. You are not a frog. If you or a veteran you know need support, don't wait. Reach out. Find resources at va.gov/reach. That's va.gov/reach. Brought to you by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and the Ad Council. Hey, everything okay? Yes, I'm fine. Honey, hey, I'm here for you. Tell me about school today. When kids can't find the right words, music can help them sound it out. Talk to the kids in your life about their emotional well-being. Find tools and resources at soundedouttogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal Ventures. Back again with the other page radio program brought to you by Triad Veterans League and supported by the BN in Media Service. This is an opportunity to hear the veteran's perspective and trying to solve some of the issues that are confronting our veterans. You know, right there on the corner of Mass Avenue that Marlena Cast is a large amount of people standing there as the traffic goes by going to the expressway. Now, those are the same people, the same people, some of them are no longer with us. And so somebody come in to take their places, or you can't take their places, but got some more people, different people standing along in this hot sun are addicted. And in that process, these were the same ones that were in those tents in the neighborhood of the Suffolk County House of Corrections. So now they have moved from over on Mass Ave to standing along Marlena Cast and do what they do. All the stuff that the mayor was talking about, housing and treatment, that didn't happen. And we got some veterans in there. I know we do. You got some people in there in the 60s, you got some people there in their 40s that looked like they're in their 60s, male, female, white, black, I mean they're there. And we don't seem to get it. They went from having these lean tools and these tents and things in the cold weather. And now it's the warm weather, exceptionally warm weather because of the climate change, and they're standing out there in that heat. Come on, Mayor Wu. You know what to do. Come on, nice sheriff. Steve Thompson, Tomkins. You know what to do. Lady over there just running the Boston Public Health Department. You know what to do. Get them veterans out of there. Get them over to the VA so they can be processed. You can do something for the immigrants and put them up there in Norfolk County in a form of medium prison facility where you can't do the same thing for our veterans. We count. We count. No way to treat a veteran. No sir. No way to treat a veteran. When we understand the dilemmas that veterans are having and you can't learn that by sitting in the office or reading a data sheet, talking about people didn't use as much this year. And that they would last just this year. You know, that's something that you read, but you're still living around it. You see them every day. They see you. I haven't seen anybody that stepped up to the plate in the manner that Triad Veterans League has done. The sponsor of this show, advocating for veterans, I don't see anything in the newspapers, including the Bay State banner that talks about helping veterans. I mean, really helping them with a sustained coverage of veterans and the plight of veterans and the need to come together as a collective, whether you're a veteran or not, and create a strategy for healing to better deal. If you're going to ask somebody to raise their hand and wear you uniform and go someplace and not know if you're going to come back or not, and you don't want to do nothing for them. You want to do nothing. How do you feel about that? I don't want to do anything but ask them to vote for you. Talk about the politicians now. Veterans needs your help because they helped you. You can't have anybody that never served in the United States military, being the president of the United States, and call a veteran Suckus. That's what he did. He wasn't in the military. It's quite a few of them. Bill Clinton didn't go in. The Republican nominee sure didn't go in. Stand up for the veteran. Stand up for the veteran and his family or her family. Women were the uniform and got disrespected big time. Physical abuse. Got loose. No. Can't vote for them. They come and ask you to vote for them. You got to tell them no. We find our own candidates to vote for them. They don't even got treatment on the man going anymore for them. People are leaning on the fences over there on the mask and my lane of cash. You see them? People driving home going to work and look out the wind and see if relative, because most of those people don't come from this area code. Now, they live in Gloucester. They already heard that they can come to Boston and have a vacation using drugs. You know that's something. All the stuff that's going on health wise, you know, we don't have enough information to know that we lose some situation. That we got to stop using them and being abused. We abuse ourselves by allowing people to stand in the areas that they shouldn't be standing. We allowed that. Clearly, these people can't help themselves. Some of them are veterans, but they won't admit it because they know that veterans aren't supposed to be doing this stuff. We got to do better than we're doing for our veterans. Veterans are an oversource, overlooked, and underused community resource. I'm a veteran. I struggle for a long time. But once I put it together, I wasn't trying to be better. I was just grateful to have a better plan than to just be sitting around doing nothing. We need you veterans. We need you today. We need people that's going to advocate for veterans and don't look at veterans as the golden calf where they can get money. That's what I'm talking about today. Veterans are not the golden calf for you to say we're going to provide some superficial service and not deal with the mental health challenges and the stress and the mess that veterans go through. What can we do? We can do a lot more than we're doing, and we must do a lot more than we're doing. Try Veterans League is available 8572045312. That's for you to give a call if you feel like you need help. If you feel like you need help, call. If you want to put your place where you're going to give what you need, put you on the right road. Try the politicians, you know, when they see you and they know you and they know what you're about. They try to identify with the struggle verbally, but when they come to action planning, nothing. You don't get no help, you don't get no help. We're the same ones that've reached our hands, went to boot camps and came back with the uniform on. Some went away and came back all dramatized and traumatized. Some didn't come back as they were when they went and came back in a box. After the body bag, then they put you in the box and fly you in. At that time, I was in two Delaware. You gave your family a flag and people shoot over you with a gun doing a gun salute. And your kids don't get no problems because politicians are dragging their feet. They ain't seeing a minute of danger. And the danger is right in their mouth by not speaking up for the right things. Come on, folks. Come on now. Be grateful that you had these men and women. They went over there and got separated from their families and didn't come back the same way that they was when they went over there. Mental health is a big thing in the VA, suicide ideations. And we walked by like they didn't do nothing. They did everything. They put their life in jeopardy. They put their life on the line for this country of mine. You just can't overlook that. You just can't let people come up to you and tell you that you're going to do something and don't do it. We are Americans. We did what we were supposed to do when you asked us and coming back to this country, we shouldn't have to ask you for anything. You should be there giving it out. Now, you want to call them all kind of things but what they were, what they are. Veterans, soldiers wearing the uniform gives them some respect. No act like you're doing anybody in a favor. They did you a favor when they raised their hand and took that oath. What did you take? You took them for granted. That's what you did. And now we got a mess on our hands and you were part of the blame. That you're in difference to veterans and their plights. And all they did was fight for this country's freedom. You asked them to go to them places and they went. What you going to do now? You got to do something. No more talk. Put some programs in place. You know what? I'm going to tell you something, right? About two months ago, maybe a little longer they made this announcement. Secretary of Veterans Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Dr. John San Diego. He's a medical doctor, you know. And they had this big fanfare. I'll talk about the Governor Healy, giving $20 million to create housing for veterans. $20 million. You know they got some houses in Massachusetts that cost $20 million? They're living in houses that cost $20 million. Let's listen to that. $20 million. And that was a couple of months ago. So they already planning how to spend that money. You know, $20 million is dropping the bucket if that. They don't spend the money even though we haven't seen anything. They got a kind of system that you got to question it. They're not doing the right thing by our veterans. And we're supposed to take that, you know, don't say nothing. Overgiving $20 million, $20 million. And the people down the street, some of these counties like Norfolk County, where they now got these immigrants in the base, what used to be base state prison. Got people in Norfolk County, people in Brooklyn and they got houses called $10 million. You talking about $20 million? Mmm...