Disabled Veterans Research Articles

A Hunger Strike to Death: The Politics of Necroresistance in Ron Kovic’s Hurricane Street

Disabled Vietnam veteran activist Ron Kovic second memoir Hurricane Street (2016) has not garnered the same widespread recognition and readership as Born on the Fourth of July (1976) despite addressing a significant event in disabled veterans’ political history—namely, a hunger strike. The uneven popularity between the two memoirs underscores the existing gap between culturally normalized practices of doing politics among the disabled veterans’ community. While disabled veteran activists have a long history of weaponizing their bodies to express antiwar political statements, hunger strikes have not been a commonly utilized tactic in their activism or remain limited to isolated cases, resulting in a scattered and fragmented understanding of this form of protest. The paper aims to clarify the untapped potential of hunger strikes as a means of political expression for disabled veteran activists. Specifically, it aims to investigate the role of the hunger strike in Kovic’s Hurricane Street, exploring its potential and limitations in helping him navigate the complexities of his war disability. Drawing on Banu Bargu’s theories of necroresistance, this paper argues that Kovic’s protest is a life-affirming manifestation of defiance against the state injustice and an awakening of public consciousness. By delving into Kovic’s experiences and the impact of his hunger strike, this study sheds light on the intersection of disability, activism, and personal identity within the veteran community.

Disabled for England: Crip/Queer Veterans in Henry V

ABSTRACT This essay considers the unique challenges that would likely follow Shakespearean veterans like Falstaff and Henry V’s Agincourt soldiers after a life of military action. I explore the historical context of an increasing homeless population to argue that England’s treatment of veterans, as evidenced in national legislation, offers insights into early modern understandings of gender, disability, and vagrancy. In the martial rhetoric of Shakespeare’s Henry V, however, the promise of combat injury and the soldier’s willingness to accept a disability future ensures his present claims to martial masculinity on the battlefield. Paradoxically, however, in accepting this future, the disabled veteran becomes vulnerable to heteronormative characterizations of queerness associated with amputation and rogue sexualities, a likely reality for an overwhelming number of injured servicemen returning home to England after war abroad.

From corpus creation to formative discovery: the power of big-data-rhetoric teams and methods

ABSTRACT Rhetoric has been slow to adopt big-data techniques, but that is changing. In this article, we describe the formative work of our rhetoric-data science team on an ideographic analysis of state veteran laws. Our interdisciplinary approach enabled us to build a corpus of more than 7,000 files, segment that corpus into likely public and private laws, and develop dictionaries for discerning individual entitlements, such as waived fees for gun permits. Early results show state-level trends in the number of veteran laws, proportion of veteran laws concerning disabled veterans, and proportion of veteran/disability laws affording individual entitlements. While this article presents early findings, its broader purpose is to contribute to discussions of corpus building, data cleaning, formative analysis, and the value of big-data-rhetoric collaborations. Our experience provides five insights: (1) big-data collection methods can save a public rhetoric project when customary retrieval methods fail; (2) big-data-rhetoric work starts conceptually and becomes concretized; (3) formative big-data rhetoric work can problematize fundamental research assumptions, such as what should be included in a corpus; (4) big-data methods can produce interesting results early, yielding a roadmap for future work; and (5) big-data-rhetoric teams need more guidance from the field.

Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design—Bess Williamson (New York, NY, USA: New York Univ. Press, 2020, 279 pp.)

Curb-cuts by the streets, subway elevators, automatic door openers in buses and buildings—Bess Williamson’s Accessible America wonderfully unpacks the sociopolitical histories of designs that are now ubiquitous in the contemporary American society. The conception of the built environment as filled with physical barriers that can be removed through proactive design interventions, as Williamson argues, is a new consciousness emerging in the aftermath of the Second World War when myriad soldiers returned to the United States. Injured and newly disabled veterans’ demand for prostheses and accommodations in the built environment presented the immediacy of the issue to many stakeholders—military hospitals, prosthesis experts and manufacturers, state officials, and disabled veterans themselves.

Государственная и общественная поддержка семей военнослужащих, инвалидов Великой отечественной войны и детей-сирот (на примере Кабардино-Балкарии)

This work analyzes for the first time, based on new archival documents and other sources, the problems of material and domestic arrangement of military personnel families; World War II dis-abled veterans, demobilized military personnel and orphans on the materials of Kabardino-Balkarian Republic. The activities of state and party bodies in organizing employment, social se-curity and help to families of front-line soldiers, disabled, demobilized military personnel. This article established the number of beneficiaries who received benefits and pensions, as well as em-ployed families of military personnel disabled during the war years. It also revealed the omissions and shortcomings in the organization of material and household arrangements, the normalized provision of food and industrial goods to the families of military personnel and war invalids. This paper considered activities of state bodies and the public in organizing the help of orphans and children who have become homeless. The experience of labor collectives of factories, factories, collective farms, state farms, public organizations, and citizens in providing patronage help, fami-lies of front-line soldiers, disabled people and orphans is summarized.We concluded that the main areas of state and public support for the families of military personnel, war invalids, orphans and demobilized children in Kabardino-Balkarian Republic were state benefits, pensions, targeted material help, tax exemptions, provision of food and industrial goods, solving housing problems, employment and restoration of orphanages.

Kendra Allen’s Learning & Unlearning

Kendra Allen’s Learning & Unlearning Jalen Eutsey (bio) When You Learn the Alphabet, by Kendra Allen (University of Iowa Press, 2019), 160 pp. Kendra Allen’s literary debut, the essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet, is a relatively short but densely packed portrait of a Black life, a raw rendering of familial relationships inflected by race, gender, trauma, and disability. The book explores grown folks’ business in great detail, business that Allen is caught precariously in the middle of as a child. Allen’s parents’ relationship, her childhood in Dallas, Texas, and the fallout of their coming together, burning out, and pulling apart are the central events that the book orbits. The second essay in the collection, titled “About American Marriages,” details her parents’ seven-year separation and eventual divorce: “This is what happened: What I’ve been told: Which is what always happens: Your husband begins having sex with a woman, who isn’t you and he doesn’t even care enough to hide it well.” The essay goes on to describe the separation that allows her mother to keep hope alive and allows her father to come and go as he pleases, often without seeing Allen. Allen painfully draws out the rising tension as her father builds a life with the other woman and her child in Houston, unbeknownst to her mother, and mandates that she participate in the cover-up. It leads to this heartbreaking culmination: “When my mama finally files for divorce, it feels like she not only divorces my daddy, but every once in a while, when the subject is brought up, it feels like she’s divorced me too.” As the book develops, we learn more and more about this triumvirate. We see moments of physical violence and manifestations of post-traumatic stress disorder—both of Allen’s parents have been diagnosed as disabled veterans, although her father’s diagnosis is “100% disabled veteran” while her mother’s is “90% disabled veteran.” It’s clear that even this diagnosis is not free of the influence of race and gender: “She’s been shooting for 100% for a couple of years now, but even after working at the VA for 28 years, and even after all her apparent symptoms of forcefulness, forgetfulness, and injury, they just won’t let her have it. Her wounds ain’t physical enough. She ain’t pale enough. She ain’t male enough.” We’re never quite on settled ground in When You Learn the Alphabet. [End Page 128] Allen makes all the beautiful and painful contradictions of humanity, of the individual, plain in her essays. One of my favorite examples comes in the titular essay, “When You Learn the Alphabet,” which is presented as an abecedarian, with each new vignette beginning with a subsequent letter of the alphabet. H begins this way: “Horror story: Your childhood friend goes to jail for not snitching.” The section continues by detailing the conditioning, from childhood, that puts the highest priority on not snitching. Yet, the most compelling part of the section is how Allen feels about this life- altering decision: “He was just doing what he was told. But part of you blames him he’s still in a small cell years later for a crime he didn’t commit. Part of you blames him for committing to be loyal only.” But even as Allen makes this point, there is this honest admission: “Part of you that follows the impossible expectations of the hood praises him for being some obscured version of a real nigga.” Allen slips in and out of genres in this collection, from the abecedarian essay to a short section, “Boy Is a White Racist Word,” organized as a contrapuntal poem. All the while, she mixes personal narrative with cultural critique, placing her work invariably in conversation with the work of writers like Hanif Abdurraqib and Kiese Laymon. Allen often references pop culture, most notably music and film. True Blood, Moonlight, Monster’s Ball, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Behind the Music, Jay-Z, Boyz n the Hood, and Everybody Hates Chris (among others), all get a mention. This familiarity with popular media allows her to...

ГОСУДАРСТВЕННАЯ ПОДДЕРЖКА КАК ОДИН ИЗ ЭЛЕМЕНТОВ ПОВСЕДНЕВНОЙ ЖИЗНИ СЕМЕЙ ФРОНТОВИКОВ В УСЛОВИЯХ ВЕЛИКОЙ ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОЙ ВОЙНЫ 1941–1945 ГОДОВ (НА МАТЕРИАЛАХ ДАГЕСТАНСКОЙ АССР)

The work, written on the basis of diverse sources, literature and memoirs of contemporaries, shows the state of families of front-line soldiers in the conditions of the Great Patriotic War, as well as measures taken by party and state structures of various levels in Dagestan to provide normal living conditions for them. The article concludes that, despite the objective difficulties faced by many families of Red Army soldiers who found themselves in difficult living conditions, they were sympathetic to the problems characteristic of the war period. According to the author, the main forms of social assistance to the relatives of front-line soldiers in Dagestan during the war years were the payment of benefits, the provision of various benefits to disabled veterans and families of front-line soldiers, as well as the adoption of measures for their employment. Of no small importance was the help from enterprises and public organizations of Dagestan, which assumed part of the responsibility for the family members of the front-line soldiers, thereby solving everyday problems. The material used in the study shows that despite the existence of objective problems, support for military families was among the priorities of the country's leadership, thereby strengthening the faith of the Red Army soldiers in the victory over Nazism, and becoming one of the sources of the manifestation of the heroism of the people in the Great Patriotic War.

In-between military and civilian: ongoing conflict, disability, and masculinity

ABSTRACT This article deals with the construction of militarised masculinity of disabled veterans in the interplay of official identity and embodied everyday experience in the context of an ongoing internal armed conflict. It explores a militarised masculinity with shifting meanings and interpretations in response to different phases of the ongoing Kurdish conflict in Turkey, with reference to the everyday, disability, and vulnerability, complicating the boundaries between making and unmaking of militarised masculinity. Drawing on empirical data, this article focuses on two key historical moments to explain the shifting meanings of gendered militarisation – the Kurdish peace process between 2009–2015 and the aftermath of the 15th July 2016 coup attempt. Both moments are significant to explore the militarised masculinity of the disabled veterans as they both appear in veterans’ narratives as moments of loss of masculine privilege, reflecting their shifting relations with the state and broader society. This article explores how instability caused by the transformation of official military identity leads disabled veterans to renegotiate the boundaries along the gender and military-civilian divides in their efforts to reclaim their lost masculine privileges. It also demonstrates how proximity to a particular form of violence becomes significant in reclaiming distinctiveness of their veteran identity.

The Third Angle in Israel Studies

Relying on theoretical foundations and conceptualizations in the literature on government–Third Sector relations, this article examines the motives and outcomes that impacted the relations between voluntary non-governmental entities and government organs after the State of Israel was established. Using the typology primarily of Jennifer Coston, in addition to those of Dennis Young and Adil Nagam, the article concentrates on three case studies reflecting those relations: disabled veterans and demobilized soldiers, immigrant associations, and the Israel Education Fund. All three cases show that additional actors lay claim to matters undisputedly under the state’s responsibility. The relationships between these parties, we maintain, provide another angle to an understanding of mamlakhtiyut, the Israeli version of republicanism.

Do Veterans with Disabilities Respond Differently to the Post-9/11 GI Bill?

ABSTRACT Veterans exit military service with varying degrees of service-connected disabilities (SCD). The GI Bill provides educational benefits, which increased substantially in 2009 (‘Post-9/11 GI Bill’). Exploiting the exogeneity of SCD and using a difference-in-difference approach, we find that SCD veterans are 16.2 percent more likely to attend college than non-SCD veterans due to the Post-9/11 GI Bill, an effect driven by lower-level SCD veterans attending public colleges. After the benefit increase many lower-level SCD veterans switch from being employed to attending college. We provide insights into the disabled veterans’ college-employment tradeoffs and find that the benefit likely helps disabled veterans improve their labor market outcomes. Future changes in the distribution of SCD levels among veterans will translate into changes in the demand for higher education. Also, the high responsiveness to a more generous financial aid for higher education among disabled veterans may provide useful insights into the effective design of similar subsidies for civilian disabled populations.

The Impact of Civic Service on Disability Identity Outcomes in United States Veterans Who Served in Iraq and Afghanistan

For many veterans, reintegrating into civilian life is complicated by an acquired or exacerbated physical disability. Veteran-directed services that are inclusive of and impactful for disabled veterans are limited. Pre-and post-data on 6 psychosocial outcomes resulting from a 26-week stipend-supported civic service and leadership program for post-9/11 era Veterans (N = 346) were analyzed. Veterans with physical disabilities (n = 181) reported significant increases in all measured outcomes. Women had significantly greater increases in purpose in life (b = 3.60, p < 0.05) and decreases in depressive symptoms (b = –.53, p < 0.04) than men. Civic service has a positive impact on post-9/11 veterans with physical disabilities reintegrating into civilian life.

"Don't nobody wanna be locked up": The Black Disabled Veteran in Toni Morrison's Sula and August Wilson's Fences

"Don't nobody wanna be locked up": The Black Disabled Veteran in Toni Morrison's Sula and August Wilson's Fences

Sustainable Society 2020: The case of ethnic preferences

Sustainable Society 2020: The case of ethnic preferences

Examination of potential disparities in suicide risk identification and follow-up care within the Veterans Health Administration.

To improve the identification and intervention of suicide risk, the Veterans Health Administration implemented the use of electronic patient record flags (PRF) to indicate when a veteran is identified as high risk for suicide and to increase the clinical contacts made with the veteran. The current study utilized an intersectional approach to assess potential disparities in the likelihood of receiving a PRF and the likelihood of receiving post-PRF follow-up care among veterans with substance use disorders (SUDs). Among 458,092 veterans who received a SUD diagnosis in 2012, Black veterans were less likely to receive a PRF, although Black-disabled veterans and Black-female veterans were more likely to receive a PRF. Homelessness was related to greater likelihood of receiving a PRF and post-PRF care. Hispanic/Latinx veterans who experienced homelessness were more likely to receive post-PRF care, while disabled veterans who experienced homelessness were less likely. Hispanic/Latinx, female veterans, and Black-disabled veterans were significantly less likely to receive post-PRF care. Overall, few marginalized or intersecting identities were associated with decreased PRF or decreased follow-up care. There are opportunities for specific strategies that promote engagement in VA follow-up services for veterans identifying as Hispanic/Latinx women, disabled Black veterans, and disabled homeless veterans.

640-P: Clinical Video Telehealth: An Effective Approach to Comprehensive Group Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support for Rural and Disabled Veterans

Veterans are three times more likely to have diabetes than the general population. Diabetes self-management education and support (DSMES) is a critical component of diabetes care that galvanizes more informed and engaged patients. Many Veterans are disabled or reside in rural areas and have limited access to comprehensive DSMES. Clinical Video Telehealth (CVT) extends access to specialty services from regional Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare Centers to Community-Based Outpatient Clinics where many Veterans receive healthcare. The purpose of this study was to examine and compare proximal (3-6 month) and distal (12 and 18 month) metabolic outcomes (A1C, lipids, BMI and blood pressure) of Veterans who received comprehensive group DSMES via CVT vs. in-person . Veterans who received DSMES from 2012 to 2017 by CVT (n=197) and in-person (n=359) were identified in the VA computerized medical record. The CVT group was similar to those that attended in-person, but were less racially diverse. A linear mixed model was used to compare changes in metabolic outcomes within and between groups over time. A1C improved at 3 months and was sustained for 12-18 months in both groups. Neither group showed changes in lipids, BMI, or blood pressure. In conclusion, CVT is an effective means of improving A1C by expanding DSMES access to Veterans who receive community care. Disclosure M. DiNardo: None. A.O. Youk: None. N. Beyer: None. J.N. Beattie: None. D. Obrosky: None.

AGE- AND ETHNICITY-RELATED DISPARITIES IN TECHNOLOGY USE AMONG HIGH-RISK VETERANS

Using predictive analytic modelling, the Veterans Affairs has identified Veterans considered to be High Need High Risk (HNHR) requiring increased support. This pilot study sent needs assessment questionnaires to 1112 HNHR Veterans to better understand gaps regarding technology use, access, physical function, and mobility. There were 341(30.7%) respondents: 270(80.4%) Non-Hispanic, 64(18.8%) Hispanic/Latino; 210(61.6%) White, 119(34.9%) Black/African Americans; and 310(90.4%) had ≥high school education. Average Barthel(ADL) score was 81.5±22.8 and Lawton(IADL) score was 5.8±2.2. Younger Veterans (age<70) were more likely able to use Internet ((117(65%) vs 74(46%)),(p≤0.01) and email (106(58.9%) vs 67(41.6%),( p≤0.01). They were also more likely enrolled in MyHealtheVet (87(48.3%) vs 58(36%),(p=0.043). Secure messaging was used by 62(34.3%) younger and 37(23%) older Veterans,(p=0.026). More higher functioning Veterans (140(55.1%)) used email than lower functioning (33(37.9%)),(p=0.018). Among higher functioning Veterans, 148(58.3%) were willing to use videoconference for care coordination and 116(45.7%) owned a smartphone or computer with camera for this; more than lower functioning Veterans (33(37.9%) and 28(32.2%)), (p≤0.01 for both). Less dependent Veterans preferred to be contacted via cellphone (88(62.4%)) or Internet (10(7.1%)) compared to the more dependent (96(48%) and 6(3%)) respectively (p=0.01). Only 71(44.1%) of older Veterans were willing to use videoconference (p≤0.01) and 54(33.5%) owned a smartphone or computer with camera,(p≤0.01). There are significant variations in technology use by age and ethnicity. However, although there are differences by functional ability, a significant number of disabled veterans are willing and able to use technology, and this may provide a way to address access barriers in this population.

Reforming the veteran: propaganda and agency in the First World War Reconstruction hospitals.

The United States’ entry into the First World War prompted progressives to reform veterans’ entitlements in the hopes of creating a system insulated from corruption and capable of rehabilitating disabled veterans into productive members of society. The replacement of pensions with medical care for wounded and disabled soldiers through the Reconstruction Hospital System was originally intended as a temporary measure but resulted in establishing the foundations of the modern veterans’ health care system. Yet, these reforms would not have been possible without the support from the community of war veterans to which these reforms applied. By examining the communal values expressed in publications produced by and for soldiers, this paper explores the ways in which the Great War’s veteran community expressed agency in the process of reforming the US veteran entitlements.

Recovering Disabled Veterans in Civil War Newspapers: Creating Heroic Disability

ABSTRACTThis article recovers the largely untold story of newspaper coverage of disabled veterans during the American Civil War, through the case of Massachusetts sergeant Thomas Plunkett, who lost both arms in Dec. 1862 at Fredericksburg, Virginia. News clips about him, along with comparative evidence of earlier coverage of people called “armless” or having “lost both arms,” are drawn from 528 relevant articles appearing in the United States between 1830 and 1865, with supplementary information regarding the postbellum years. We argue that Northern newspaper editors’ desire to make Plunkett a symbol of the Union cause led them to create the persona of the Armless Hero, a then-singular construction in the divided nation. In so doing, they forged a new discourse of heroic disability scarcely seen in prior coverage. That new discourse, through its eventual application to similarly disabled veterans, altered newspapers’ representations of disability in the war’s remaining years and afterward.

The Dynamic Synergy of Family and Team Member Caregiving for Veterans in Home Based Primary Care

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Home-Based Primary Care (HBPC) Program provides in-home interdisciplinary, comprehensive, longitudinal primary care for frail, chronically ill, or disabled veterans with complex medical, social, and behavioral conditions. This research describes the role relationships between HBPC team members and HBPC Veterans’ caregivers play in delivering care, from the perspective of HBPC team members.

«Гастролерство» инвалидов как социальная проблема 1920-х годов: поиски решения (на материалах Сибири)

The relevance of the study is due to the need to study the historical features of such a phenomenon as “fraud of the disabled,” which arose in the first decade of Soviet power in the territory of the RSFSR and was called “touring,” when persons who did not have the right to receive social security, received it, attributing the merits of a disabled worker, disabled veteran or disabled old-age. The article analyzes the characteristics of “touring,” allowing to consider the specifics of this phenomenon, familiarity with which leads to the conclusion that it was not only a social problem of the NEP period, but also to a certain extent the way of life of many citizens excluded from society. There are cases of “touring,” helping the reader to understand whether it was a conscious fraud or a way of survival. Attention is paid to the activities of social security bodies and committees for the disabled and the red army soldiers to identify cases of “touring” and the implementation of measures to prevent it, among which there were both legislative attempts to limit the right of the disabled to move within the country, and the systematization, ordering of one-time social payments, as well as other non-standard ways to combat.