yes you know shirley chisholm was my congresswoman and for those who know shirley chisholm long before there was brock obama chose chisel as the first african american woman to run for president and so growing up as a child and being a picket lines with her my mom as a young mom i learned about community service at a very early age way before i even thought about joining the military i knew that you know we were required to serve because we could speak with other people's in our communities click ok but how did you go into the war deciding to be a veteran decided to be in the military i know i'm a child  three generations of military people decided to serve and i got into trouble with school i went over to europe to study i wanted to flunking out of my fellowship and my parents alike well you know the pay for school yourself s decided to join the military at that point and you know get what information and skills and travel and all the things that i was interested in doing at that young age you know out of the military  thing i can get to in the military was accounting and finance so i you know i scored very well in there on the armed forces aptitude vocational battery exam and i qualified to go in as an accountant however when the gulf war kicked  off people who are at men are given war time jobs and i have several wartime duties so when young people join during peace time or whenever you join you never know what you're going to be called up to do ok and we were put into frontline sometimes security police and in my case i did security policing for some of our fighter jets as well as hazardous materials for weapons of mass destruction so i was trained in both of  all the time and i never discourage anyone from joining because everyone joins for their own personal reasons however expect it do all the time what you came in to do and that's what makes military individual so unique is that we're excellent project managers we can be put in any given situation and we can project manage and develop and strategize and learn different skills and techniques that we often take into the totally agree with you in this is one of the things that i'm trying to do is you know there are very many veteran service organizations there's a disabled american veterans association the american legion vietnam veterans of america  and vets i can go on and on and on and there are several veteran service organizations that exists throughout the bay area in the united states many of them are what's called five a one c nineteen they're not five zero one c three zero have that designation so and some ways they have to often time partner with other organizations because many corporations rarely give to five zero one c nineteen's those are mainly member base am one of the first black woman commanders and one of the first black woman commanders of a veterans service organization in the bay area and a very long time i'm finding us in a unique situation where we are a five hundred one c three designation although we are also a veteran service organization so that puts us in a very unique opportunity in a situation to where we are able to compete for funds a bit differently this summer for mainstream veteran service organizations and of course our interests are minorities veterans of color and my particular focus on our families of veterans and veterans of color and also community who is off to marginalize they go through very similar discrimination and issues that women and often minorities have faced historically in the military i talk about this because i think you work very quickly i would not have understood what  vets stands for the national so she should know black veterans and they started right at the beginning of the vietnam war which as we know many people argue the fact that many people of color and poor people were pretty much drafted during this time and as many of our veterans returned home whether they were white black brown or what have you you know they were looked upon as baby killers and then there was like a double backlash even within the black community that these black men are soldiers or people who are called off left their communities at the time of the in the civil rights era so it was like a double backlash for them and you know to develop their own model in the way of delivering services for veterans of color and various communities and so we have been in effect in essence in operation since right about we can trace it but the question i have this more than just lack that but veterans in general right what i see in our communities and i've talked about this is the homeless yes  the mental illness of some of those vets that are walking in the street that are not with the mental illness and that's something that i think we talked about and we talked about not just mental illnesses but medical care is correct medical care i think and i only can speak more of his personal lives to me and maybe that's what makes me care more and i think that it's really important to get our audience to care more right support those efforts and can i when i returned home from the gulf war i was homeless myself and then i began to get ill and i actually wind up losing my home and being homeless the second time  veteran because of lack of resources and time is support of resources and things that are available to us oftentimes do not get that information until after unfortunately we have fallen through the cracks and currently because of the plethora of problems that are going on with the veteran the veterans regional offices for processing of claims there is a serious serious call for us to do more outreach in to make sure that these new one minute young men and women that are coming home don't fall through the same cracks and crevices as our vietnam veterans and veterans before this current war as i'm a gulf war veteran as well the research is showing that many of us gulf war veterans are we have a high level of unemployment as well as the current veterans that are returning home and i really believe that the veterans affairs system needs to be really looked at and restructured on how it deals and equipped to deal with our  is because of this current president why the vietnam veterans snail are starting to get their just due is taken almost forty years for agent orange veterans to finally get their claims reviewed so we have that going on along with veterans from the new war going on and so we have a very big backlog of claims and issues that are perplexing our veterans communities across the country and it is calling many of us to  action and that's why i feel that it is important for nab it to take a proactive role and not so much of a member base role as a veteran service organization and we have historically been known to go into the communities and cultivate and find ways to delivering these services and programs to where the v a and certain other entities within the v a cannot reach those veterans and i think that's what makes veterans service organizations a bit more impactful in the fact that we can go into our communities and reach those veterans that are often left by the way sorry that often need to know about their rights and benefits because it can't be done along you know we're we're  job different while they signed up for yes and we definitely have that going on but we also have military sexual trauma you know what i've done a lot of advocates see last year here in the bay area with the universal cow berkeley gender equity program which i thank them for their support and the forces alumni for equity inclusion which is in the limelight group which has recognized the niece of minority veterans and the need to reeducate the community i am a military sexual trauma survivor not very many women veterans come out and speak and so i feel like i have a door wall not just as a disabled veteran and as a woman but as a military sexual trauma survivor to come out and be able to be a help to letting them know that it's ok to come out and speak out about what they've gone through so that they may help another sister or brother veteran who have been traumatized by military sexual trauma women placed in sexual situations having to go through the trauma of being abused and not having that we experience but also hope to build support systems around that so that we can be healthy and we do have very several organizations that are working we like to use the word military sexual trauma survivors the victims because many of us feel like we're survivors and a lot of us are empowered and we are wonderful organizations like swords to plowshares which is a very eminent nonprofit organization based out of san francisco and what we have here in alameda county star laura was a woman's veterans court nater who does a lot of outreach in helping empowering women veterans like me and others who are out in the community who are making a difference and are definitely you know one want viewers to know that there are several veteran organizations like ours as well a source to plow shares and others who are making that effort to include women and having them have a seat at the table and given them a platform to speak so i want to go back to african americans what your hat stands for black vets so we live in a world as we know that says we could be successful in whatever we want to do as individuals but we also know that we've been very marginal lives in a lot of ways the military as we look at red tails we see that  i know my father but thinking about him being a sergeant at that time and all the other things accolades he had that was difficult and today things are still difficult when we look at  i totally agree what you're saying in the fact of the matter is because many of us and many of our chapter members and people who are warm and con's chronicon a constant contact because we've lived through these we are able to some wonderful program development on issues and ways that we feel that we can reach minority veterans and make more of an impact and some of those organised some of those programs deal with healing local projects and programs that many veterans are not qualified or have an honorable discharge that can access many resources and so we feel that nevitt says maybe have a little bit of a different edge and we have very specific programs on how to engage and find those for trends we are partnering with some of the african american churches i'm proud to say that allen temple have reached out to now vets and we are looking at ways that we can work with the churches within our communities to make sure that we're following finding those veterans that are falling through the cracks and what works and so i'm really proud to say that there is a lot of work to be done we don't have all the answers but awful that with some of the projects that we have someone holistic programs that we're looking at and some of the outreach programs that we're looking at working with america corps on a development program to have several outreach specialists work alongside of us and other veteran service organizations and going into areas some places that we don't often go or other veteran government entities don't go so find those veterans and find out and make sure that we that they find out about their resources and their benefits so we're hoping to go war many other veterans service organizations and agencies haven't gone before ok you're here in the grass your grass roots go on in those crevices and you're fired people are not really veterans our focus our black friends primarily because if you go darryl san pablo ave on any given day i want to say and we're going to be producing research shortly at least maybe two out of five people that you see on the street abner are african american or minority veterans and so we're hoping to shed some light and research in energy on what we can do but the way you can find us is snap vets spay and press you can building from eleven to one o'clock p m we would love to walk on family members people who are relatives of veterans we have been on still or a group that are working with family members and we have veterans whether you're honorably discharged whether you're dishonorably discharged there's a seat at the table for you at our now vets chapter so we walk them in anyone to come and join us for the other thing is we want to invite funders we want we want some of the veterans out there that are really for our families our families are heroes to yes and so i want to definitely give them and some of our gold star in blue star moms who have lost men and women in the war they all must be celebrated too because the family starker feiss as w my family my mother and currently my husband he has to sacrifice on many days when i'm ill and i can't get up and i can't do things that i need to do but this is why many of our veterans we fight for free quality and for justice for and but i miss that knowing that all of those entities are what is needed to support you to be out there fighting for our own it takes a village it takes a village in all of us and  in every way are finding a way to to see you as individuals but there's a big body of people so thank you for reminding us of that but also again to speak to donors because someone from the caliph california endowment i'll be definitely letting them know to keep an air out for the syndication and definitely i would love to drop in you know any time you'd have me bring other organizations that are doing wonderful