Chapter 207C

4/9/2009

Ch 207C Buzz                                                                                        Buzz Van Deusen story

BIO

military: navy reserve, active volunteer/not accepted to Vietnam, sent Iceland, Mediterranean

Work: fed psych hosp, Cape Vincent Correctional Facility substance abuse counselor,  Watertown Narcotics guidance counselor ,  CSW Jeff Co fam counselor ,  Buz peace activist , depleted uranium, PTSD,  retired 2 yrs

pertinent links: 8/19/09 Mr Vandeusen's report on Archbishop Tutu     Truthout

 9/30/10 Veterans: Get the Pay You Earned (video)      11/11/10 Vets rights  

 3/24/11 Wash. DC Protest- arrest

 10/30/2011 Occupy Watertown

married 35 yr, children 20 & 28

sports; decades involvement with Watertown Red and Black    semi pro football

living in Clayton, NY

Stories

Mouse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Terry,

How terrific to hear from you after 42 years! What a wonderful idea, a Co-op Web page. I'm too techno-incompetent to do that. The "sales pitch" below I had great success with at the Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence last weekend, effectively updates my biography since 1967 for any of those great guys we lived with to get on my case about. The Co-op was a great experience. Have had some contact since with Howie Walton, Jesse Rieber, Bruce Madonna, Tom Rogers, Jan Vickne's friend "Izzy", & Bob Vitello, have long lost contact. How the hell did you track me down? Can't wait to hear back from you and any other survivors out there. Thanks for starting this project and thinking of me. Only pieces missing below are retired 2 years, married 35, kids 30 & 28, one grandchild, live in the beautiful 1000 Islands. God bless you man. RSVP

Roland

Sent: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 8:07 am

old co-op stories: Don't forget:

There were signs on the back of our Co-op building left over from the famous 1963 march on Washington (whoever put them there was a house member who heard Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech in person). One sign said, "We demand decent housing now!" Oh, well...Larry Csonka visited the house once to look at a pickup truck Bruce Madonna had for sale; the Summer before, LBJ gave his first speech after the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident at SU and I heard the start of Vietnam; when George Wallace visited in '66, I was one of the ringleaders of the civil rights demonstration on campus covered by ABC, NBC, & CBS. No CNN back then. Some of us had Ski convinced for a few hours that he'd gotten married in a drunken blackout; the sprinkler system head atop the streetside front porch was a major weapon in the famous water fights. Still on M street's a clothing store owner (Dave Jacobs) who was an SU All-American, played for the Browns, Eagles & Vikings, & was a player/coach on the Red & Black with me in '90. It's all coming back in delightful flashbacks. Are we still in for Sept. 5 football game vs Minnesota? Anyone else from the house invited?

Buz

co-op contacts:

recent decade stories:

want to say:

Subject: My name is Roland Van Deusen and I'm here to ask your help and to recruit for Veterans For Peace (VFP), an 8000 member, 24 yr. old organization that shares part of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, has an NGO seat in the UN, helps 85,000 Iraqis get safe drinking water, delivered 54,000 free phone cards to patients in 148 VA hospitals, supports schools & hospitals in Afghanistan & Vietnam, and many other projects time won't allow to mention. Full membership requires proof of military service, associate membership does not; dues for either are $25/yr. You, your family members & friends may be veterans desiring our type of fellowship. I have business cards, examples of what membership's done for just one person, and other material here.

As the military recruiters use the new poverty draft, the No Child Left Behind Act to force schools to give contact information on every high school student, and a Supreme Court ruling requiring every college receiving federal funds to allow military recruiters on campus, VFP wants to network with you to counter-recruit, and to assist your group's efforts.

I'm an accomplice to the murder of 3 million Vietnamese, mostly women & children, for which I got a master's degree on the GI bill. I'm part of the overall team effort that put 5 million landmines and other ordnance in Southeast Asia, that to this day, kill or maim 2000 people each & every year. For that I get a tax break on my house. My Vietnam era service enabled others to spray Agent Orange that's produced 3 generations of birth defect victims, while I got an enhanced retirement package for being a veteran. I'll die before adequately making amends for this.

Almost 2 years ago the president of VFP & I came here seeking help, meeting w/Mr. Gandhi about my plan to help heal America after Iraq. That plan's still under development with a very rough draft here, along with documentation of the other blessings I'll mention, that my membership's allowed me to do.

The first is a spinoff from discussions about this plan with associates of several other Nobel Peace lauriates that led to ALLISON STOKES putting me in touch w/her fellow Gandhi department head at another university. This enabled me to contact Bishop Desmond Tutu, who offered to help Congressman John Conyers & Senator Patrick Leahy with their proposed "truth commissions" which I forwarded to them. Got thanks for pushing this by nationally syndicated, award-winning Chicago TRIBUNE writer Bob Koehler. You can help us convince Congress to accept Bishop Tutu's offer by emailing info@judiciary-dem.senate.gov . Bishop Tutu's not getting any younger, and all they have to do is ask him to help.

Syracuse University alumni magazine gave me a bigger writeup than Joe Biden - on the same page - last year for helping pass NY's depleted uranium (the "new Agent Orange") GI/vet health coverage bill and visiting VA national headquarters to inform them of 8000 free anonymous PTSD support groups available nationwide. We helped start 5 such groups back home near Fort Drum, home of the Army's most deployed division, helped lower property taxes for every veteran in NY's fastest growing county, wrote part of the VFP president's testimony to Congress, helped deliver 200 phone cards to the Syracuse VA hospital, got VFP's humanitarian work listed on the VA Mortgage Center website, the PTSD support groups listed on a program recognized by the VA & the Defense Department, we assisted w/PTSD training for police agencies near Fort Drum, lectured against the war and did counter-recruiting at a local college whose student body is a third veterans, Army, & military dependents, played a small role in the successful effort to pressure the VA to help patients at its hospitals register to vote, and last month helped prevent the re-deployment to combat of a soldier w/3 young children, one of whom she's still breast-feeding.

I'm 64. Way back in the Sixties I worked for James Farmer who led the Freedom Rides. That experience helped me later as Watertown City Human Rights Commission chair, help oversee this state's - the most racially segregated state - largest racial integration project, using nationally-applicable "selling points" praised by Harvard's leading race relations authority. Those ideas still apply. Watertown media quoted me this month praising the reform of the Rockefeller drug laws, based on my having retired from overseeing addiction treatment at the first US prison accredited for substance abuse, later overseeing the world's largest prison treatment program, with an initial 88% success rate. Treatment works, jail's addicting. Progressive liberal evangelical leader Tony Campolo, who's been on the Colbert Report & CBS news, kindly thanked me for my successful suggestion that he ask Jimmy Carter to join his "red-letter" Christian movement.

I need your help. I need you to think about joining VFP, to email the Senate Judiciary Committee to accept Bishop Tutu's offer. I need to network and work with as many of you who are interested. I'm geographically isolated, a hundred miles from all but one of my VFP chapter. Many VFP members have done much more than I have, and the more contacts I make, the more I can keep on keeping on. You may know someone for whom VFP would be a perfect fit.