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The Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee

By mid-April the situation on the Spinal Cord Injury ward has become intolerable and it is during this period that I decide to start organizing a group called the Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee. We begin holding meetings every Thursday night in back of the wards. Most of our discussions have to do with the poor treatment we are receiving at the hospital and what we, as a group, can do to change it.

At first we have only a few patients, but soon our numbers begin to grow until there are over a hundred patients coming to every Thursday-night gathering. Many of those who show up are from the SCI ward, but quite a few come from other parts of the hospital. There are the World War II vets, the guys with tuberculosis wearing those yellow masks over their faces, a few Korean War vets, and several aides and nurses who have their own reasons to complain and protest. Even one of the SCI doctors shows up one night, telling us he sympathizes with us and supports what we’re trying to do, but he has to be careful.

The larger we grow as a group each week, the more anxious and uncomfortable the powers-that-be at the hospital seem to become, not to mention quite a few of the more irate WWII veterans. Some despise me, calling me names as I wheel past them in the hallway: hippie, radical, fucking Communist. But I say nothing. The country, and even the hospital, feels terribly divided between those who still support the war and those who oppose it. Arguments often break out and emotions are raw. Many have seen me on TV or read about my previous activities as an antiwar protester in the newspapers.

Joe Hayward, who will become one of my closest allies, only to later betray me, shows up at one of our meetings, telling me that he was recently hired by the VA as a “chaplain’s assistant,” giving him access to many of the hospital wards. He will be helping the chaplain to write a weekly report pertaining to patients’ needs, attitudes, and behaviors. He promises to share his information with us and soon he is taking an active roll in our organization.

* * *

Late that spring, we decide to hold a press conference and invite everyone from the media to attend. I even invite the actress Jane Fonda, having heard that she would be speaking next door at Long Beach State University later that same day. I am thrilled when I’m told by her representative that she can attend, and I begin making plans to let everyone in the hospital know she’s coming. Jane and I had already shared the stage at several antiwar demonstrations and I know that her presence at our press conference will create quite a stir, not to mention all the additional media attention it will bring.

With an old mimeograph machine loaned to us by one of the volunteers, we set up our own printing press on one of the empty hospital beds in the back of the ward. We churn out nearly five hundred copies of a flier inviting everyone in the hospital to a press conference with Jane Fonda and the Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee, to be held the following week on the grass behind the SCI ward, where we will present our complaints gathered over the last several months.

On the pay phone down the hall, we call every local newspaper and network, alerting them to our press conference, which we say will expose the scandalous conditions at the Long Beach VA and VA hospitals all over the country.

We are surprised at the response we receive. The press seems to be interested. Some reporters want to come down right away but we tell them to hold off and wait for the press conference when we can fill them all in at once. Everyone on the committee seems excited. I plan to play some of the cassette tapes of the interviews I have done with dissenting patients to any reporters who are willing to listen. Other patients and a few aides have also volunteered to be interviewed. Nick, Woody, Bobby Mays, and I begin handing out leaflets to everyone we meet in the hospital. By the end of the week everyone at the Long Beach VA seems to be talking about Jane Fonda’s impending visit and the Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee’s press conference in back of the SCI ward. A small group of disgruntled World War II and Korean War veterans, incensed that Fonda is coming, make it clear that they plan to stage a counterprotest.

* * *

When the day of the press conference finally arrives, we are stunned at the number of media that turn out. They seem fascinated by it all: Actress Jane Fonda attending a press conference with severely disabled Vietnam veterans. Men who have sacrificed nearly their entire bodies, being abused and neglected at a VA hospital. What a story!

The place is packed. Everyone in the hospital seems to have shown up that day, including the small group of World War II and Korean War veterans in wheelchairs determined to disrupt the press conference. At around eleven fifteen a.m., with the press in full attendance and members of the Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee by my side, I announce that Jane Fonda is running a little late. “Miss Fonda should be here in a few minutes, and as soon as she arrives we’ll begin the press conference,” I say, sounding very confident.

When she finally does arrive, it’s a mob scene with reporters and news camera crews rushing toward her. The World War II and Korea vets, along with their wives, immediately start shouting at Fonda: “Communist! Traitor!” Then, suddenly, almost as if on cue, they begin singing “God Bless America.” For a moment it seems as if the whole thing is about to disintegrate into chaos.

Somehow, though, I am able to speak, thanking Jane Fonda for coming, and then inviting some of our Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee members to share their stories. Fonda is visibly moved and several times I notice tears running down her cheek. When it’s finally her turn to speak, everyone is listening, with the exception of the counterdemonstrators, who continue to attempt to drown out our event by singing patriotic songs. Fonda starts by telling everyone how grateful she is to have been invited to attend our press conference.

“I can’t begin to tell you how much respect I have for all of you and how deeply moved I am today after listening to your stories,” she says, her voice beginning to crack as more tears stream down her face. “This is very wrong!” She sighs deeply and shakes her head. “This shouldn’t be happening in America, not to our veterans . . . You have sacrificed so much . . . I had no idea our veterans were being treated this way.” She goes on to say that she will do everything she can to get the word out concerning the crisis regarding paralyzed veterans at the VA.

When she finishes we lead her and the press onto the SCI ward where we introduce her to several bedridden patients, who because of their medical conditions could not attend the press conference but nonetheless had agreed to testify. With news cameras and reporters surrounding their bedsides and with tears in their eyes, they bravely share the harrowing ordeals they have suffered at the hands of the VA; Fonda listens intently, seeming almost in a state of shock.

* * *

Not long after Jane Fonda has left and the press conference has ended, we are all over the news. Patients everywhere in the hospital, including paraplegics and quadriplegics on the SCI ward, watch the six o’clock news from their beds as the media report, in their lead stories, that there is trouble down at the Long Beach VA.

The next morning the powers-that-be at the hospital are visibly upset. Several representatives of the hospital administration come down to our ward and start asking questions in a not-too-friendly manner. “Who started this thing?” I remember one guy in a suit and tie asking, sounding very frustrated. “What’s going on down here?”