April 23, 2012
This spring, Abdullah aka “Papa Bear” came to the PNN Community Newsroom with some deeply disturbing news.
Papa Bear is a double vet who volunteered for the Vietnam War, he reports, “because my country said, 'fight for freedom.' At 17 years old, I was very proud of my country[...]. I felt that I should fight for my country and freedom.”
Papa Bear's tour ended when he nearly bled to death in combat. He says, “I was legally toe-tagged in the morgue for a day and a half. When they made their first cut for my autopsy, I woke up.” He says, “I bled to death. But it wasn't my time.”
Now he is a disabled Vietnam veteran in San Francisco. He's been houseless since Bush implemented a policy to “re-evaluate” vets and has been struggling to survive.
On top of all this, “I got Homeland Security checking me out cause of my name, Abdullah. My dad is Arabic, he's Saudi. They don't look at my record, they don't look at my life.”
“Why am I being hassled because of my name and my family? It's like, I gave my life for this country, seriously,” says Papa Bear.
After Papa Bear came back from the dead, the doctors held him for research for two and a half years. In addition to the time served training, fighting, and as a research specimen, Papa Bear now struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a host of physical problems relating to his injuries.
Homeland Security agents appeared at Papa Bear's place of work, on the corner of Van Ness and Geary, where he panhandles. Papa Bear reports, “They showed up and talked to me: 'We're homeland security. We just wanna know what you're doing.' I'm homeless, I fought for this country. I'm like, why are you guys bothering me?”
It is absurd that Homeland Security is going after this person and many others with “high threat” names. Folks, even including veterans like Papa Bear, are getting criminalized because their names are connected with racist, colonial fears of “terror.” It is especially notable that the US touts its dignifying treatment of veterans with one hand, while criminalizing the poverty that many veterans experience with the other. The double-standard of "terror" is turned against people like Papa Bear in this case, whose services were used in a national campaign of terror against the Vietnamese. Lots of vets like Papa Bear were compelled to participate in these acts, to demonstrate allegiance to the country in dehumanizing massacres... and now suspected of not being patriotic enough? After all the things Papa Bear did that he was assured were patriotic, he's still a suspected terrorist at the most basic level. What must a person of color do to be free of criminalization in this country? Was "patriotic" participation in mass-killing not enough?
Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia of POOR Magazine commented, “There is this bullshit lie of the War On Terror, which is obviously full of so much mess that it's not even funny, cause I know [Papa Bear] was born here, for whatever that means—I think this is just a new level of insanity.”
Papa Bear is also getting hassled by local police forces. This month alone his blankets were taken from him, the police were called on him for pan-handling, and he got power-hosed in one of the city's nightly attempts to “clean up” the streets of San Francisco.
Papa Bear thankfully has a good chance of getting off the streets in the next six months. “I have a new agency working on my veterans benefits, and it looks good. It looks like I might be receiving my pension again.”