University of California Press hails Aaron Glantz's The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle Against American Veterans as the “the first book to systematically document the U.S. government's
neglect of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan,” confronting with gusto an America that deifies its soldiers for photo ops but casts them off as damaged goods when they return damaged from war.
Glantz is the keynote speaker at “Until We Are One,” Friday's first-ever fund-raising banquet for To Help And Keep Supporting Veterans and All Americans (THANKS Vet!), a Santa Ana-based nonprofit dedicated to listening to, educating, training, empowering and caring for the
health of veterans regardless of deployment or insurance status. Joining Glantz on the stage will be Fernando Suarez Del Solar, who will honor his son, Jesus Suarez, on the sixth anniversary of the lance corporal's death in Iraq as part of the disastrous “Global War on Terror.”
Pacifica journalist Glantz reported extensively from Iraq during the first three years of the
war and has followed the plight of returning veterans ever since. His book, which is based on interviews with more than 100 recent returnees, indicts the Bush administration for neglecting soldiers and reneging on promised health and education benefits. The author also weaves in haunting, first-person accounts from the scandal-ridden
Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
“Until We Are One” runs from 6:30-9:30 p.m. at Orange County Central Labor Council Hall, 2020 W. Chapman Ave., Orange. Make reservations by email. Call (714) 235-6083 for more information or visit here. If you can't go, send them something.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.