Community

More than 800 military vets attended the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs first ever “Stand Down” in Southeast Alaska last week.

“Stand Down” events are designed to give veterans access to health care and housing services, both from the VA and local nonprofits.

A new agreement between the VA and Alaska Native health care providers should make it easier for vets in rural Alaska to access those services.

Alaska VA Spokeswoman Marcia Hoffman-DeVoe says the agreement, signed in May, allows Native health providers to directly bill the VA for care provided to veterans.

“Even though we have probably the largest geographic area of any state, our veterans in Alaska will probably have the best access to either directly provided VA health care or care that we purchase from a community or Alaska Native provider,” says Hoffman-DeVoe.

Lincoln Bean, Sr. of Kake is a board member for the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium and Alaska Native Health Systems. He’s not a veteran himself, but he helped negotiate the agreement, because when he was growing up, those who served were among the most respected members of his community.

“World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan. And I kept hearing they’re not getting the benefits they should be getting,” Bean says. “And that’s why this is happening today.”

While Anchorage and Fairbanks have hosted “Stand Downs” for years, the event at Centennial Hall Friday and Saturday was the first one held in Southeast Alaska. It’s part of the VA’s effort to expand its presence in the state. The Southeast Native Veterans group opened the event with the Presentation of Colors.

Tony Mills is an Army vet from Hoonah, who served during Vietnam. He says he’s had issues with the VA in the past. During a visit to a VA clinic in Anchorage in 1998, Mills says the doctor didn’t even know what branch of the service he’d been in.

“He said, ‘How long were you in the Marine Corp?’ I told him, ‘Marine Corp? I never was in that Marine Corp,'” Mills says. “I told him I got drafted into the Army.”

Mills says he’s glad to hear about the new sharing agreement, which he plans to take advantage of at the SEARHC clinic in Hoonah. He also says the two-year-old VA clinic in Juneau’s Federal Building should make it easier to access the medical tests he needs.

“I’ll be coming back this coming Wednesday for the hearing test over here. I guess they’re gonna have it up on the sixth floor,” he says. “And the Coast Guard doctor from Mt. Edgecumbe [Hospital], he came over, and he’s the one who got me going on this.”

“Stand Down” events date back to Vietnam, when frontline soldiers would rotate to a safe and secure area for hot meals, medical treatment, and new uniforms. Traditionally, non-combat “Stand Downs” focus on homeless vets and vets in need.

The VA brought two semi-truck loads of military surplus gear to Juneau for the Southeast “Stand Down.” Socks, underwear, jackets, backpacks and other supplies filled one of the ballrooms at Centennial Hall, available to any vet who needed something.

Ex-Marine Dan Roberts came looking for a new sleeping bag.

“I sleep on my boat and it gets kind of chilly now, because I don’t use my heater at night,” Roberts says.

As he collected his new sleeping bag from a volunteer, Roberts talked about how much it and all the other supplies mean to him.

“Shoes, bag, sleeping bag deluxe, and other clothing, socks and underwear, you name it,” he says. “I’m overwhelmed.”

For those veterans who couldn’t make it to the “Stand Down” in Juneau, the VA arranged for gear to be shipped to smaller communities throughout Southeast. The VA’s Marcia Hoffman-DeVoe says the agency would like to see a local nonprofit organize it into an annual event.

Juneau’s Fourth of July Committee has named KTOO’s Jeff Brown as one of two Grand Marshals for the 2013 parade. Jerry Harmon, of Kensington Gold Mine, is also a Grand Marshal.

The theme for next year’s parade is “Music and Mining Memories.”

Jeff Brown
As KTOO/KRNN Program Director, Brown has been much more than music programmer, especially now that Juneau public broadcasting has three radio stations. Brown has been the host of KTOO’s annual parade coverage, the syndicated “We Like Kids”, and most recently “Juneau Afternoon.” He organizes and trains radio station volunteers and has too many other jobs to list. He’s often been called KTOO’s “glue.”

Here are some excerpts from the Committee’s biography of Brown, written by Paul Wescott:

“Master of Cheerful Smiles,” “Humorist Laureate” and “Master of Merriment” are but a few of the titles bestowed on self-described funaholic Jeff Brown, our 2013 4th of July Parade Grand Marshal.

Anyone who has crossed paths with Jeff, either in person or over the air, has come away with a laugh or a smile and a lilt in the step. Jeff has been working that magic on us for more than 37 years, ever since he first arrived in Juneau as a medic with the Coast Guard. In short order, he hooked up with KTOO and launched into his multi-media, multi-talented mission to inform us, inspire us, brighten our rainy days and especially exercise our funny bones. He is a radio and TV talent, musician, organizer, artist, writer, friend, sage, magician and former gorilla.

Real Alaskan Magazine is one of his more widely-known creative endeavors… Curiously, you may come away knowing more in-depth about Alaska than you would with more serious works…

If you see someone walking around in a ridiculous balloon hat, that may be evidence that Jeff Brown is in the vicinity. Laughing.

Jerry Harmon
As the other Grand Marshal for the 2013 parade, Jerry Harmon is the master of mining memories. For 18 years he was chairman of the Juneau Gold Rush Committee. He’s helped restore many mining artifacts on display throughout Juneau, and participates every year in the design and building of July 4th parade floats for Kensington and Greens Creek mines. He and his wife Beverly opened the AJ Mine/Gastineau Mill tour in 2000.

Harmon came to Juneau in 1985 when Echo Bay was considering reopening the AJ Mine. He currently works for Coeur Alaska at the Kensington Gold Mine.

The Juneau Chamber of Commerce named him Citizen of the Year in 2000 for his many contributions to the community.

Alaska abuse shelters throughout the state took in more victims last year, according to the Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

The number of nights spent in a shelter between Fiscal Year 2010 and FY 2011 increased by 5 percent.

Places like Juneau’s AWARE shelter provide protection and intervention for victims as well as education and outreach.

AWARE, which stands for Aiding Women in Abuse and Rape Emergencies, has helped battered women and children in Juneau and nine other rural communities for more than 30 years.

Next week it will offer 40 hours of training about the scourge of abuse.

The class is for community members who want to help family or friends who may have been victims of abuse as well as people who work in health care and other agencies that deal with victims.

AWARE’s Swarupa Toth says the two-part 40-hour training begins by exploring the basic history and foundation of domestic violence, adult and child sexual abuse, taught by experts who work in the field.

But she says the real experts are the victims with whom they work.

“The people who really teach us about what’s going on and what works are the women and children and the men themselves, the victims. They’re the ones who let us know what works for them and what doesn’t; what the real concern is and what will help them and what we can do to help other people,” Toth says. “Often times after a trauma, the best medicine for someone who’s trying to survive one of these experiences is someone who has survived.”

Toth says the first 25 hours of training are Sept. 10th through the 20th on evenings and weekends. She says people also can sign up for fewer hours.

Toth describes the last 15 hours as more “hands-on.” It will be taught by AWARE staff and volunteers, emergency room nurses, and staff from other agencies who work with assault victims. She says many of the people who take the second part of the training are interested in volunteering or working in the field.

Alaska has one of the highest rates of domestic violence and sexual assault in the country. The 2010 Alaska Victimization Survey estimates that nearly 60 percent of Alaskan women have or will experience some sort of sexual violence in their lifetime.

Toth says the Parnell administration’s Choose Respect campaign has helped raise awareness of domestic and sexual violence in Alaska.

A group of Juneau residents continue to explore the possibility of starting a cooperative grocery store, despite last week’s announcement that Myers Group IGA will soon be anchor tenant in Foodland Shopping Center.

The Capital City Market Cooperative formed in a bid to take over the space, currently occupied by Alaskan & Proud. Organizers now say they’ll focus on other locations in a feasibility study.

It came as no surprise to Capital City Market organizer Evelyn Rousso that Myers Group and Foodland, Inc. had reached a deal for downtown Juneau’s only full service grocery store. And it doesn’t change the group’s plans to do a market study.

“It just takes one option off the table,” Rousso says. “The person who’s doing our study is looking at a variety of options, and replacing the A&P store was to be one of them and now it won’t be.”

Seattle area grocery consultant Hambleton Resources will conduct the study. The firm will look at Juneau’s demographics and existing grocery store options, then analyze whether a co-op would work in the Capital City. Rousso says possible locations will be just one aspect of the report.

“For the sake of the study we identified some specific intersections, but with the understanding that it’s not really that important to pinpoint a location,” she says. “It’s more for general areas. So, we’ll look in the Willoughby District downtown, Douglas, and potentially one out the road somewhere.”

Capital City Market has raised nearly $18,000 for the study through a founding member drive. If the report says a co-op is feasible, Rousso says the group would probably need to raise at least a couple million more to cover startup costs. By comparison, a group in Fairbanks that plans to open Alaska’s first food co-op this fall has raised nearly $1.5 million.

[box type=”shadow”]“It would attract people from all over the community. We are looking at doing something that would be organic and natural, but also have conventional. It would feature local products, especially local seafood. Our marketing study will tell us the mix that could work here.” – Evelyn Rousso, organizer Capital City Market Cooperative[/box]

The market study will determine whether to move forward. But Rousso says her personal feeling is that Juneau would welcome a grocery co-op.

“I think it’s a great business model for Juneau, and I think we could have one of the best stores in Juneau,” Rousso says. “It would attract people from all over the community. We are looking at doing something that would be organic and natural, but also have conventional. It would feature local products, especially local seafood. Our marketing study will tell us the mix that could work here.”

Rousso and other co-op organizers had preliminary talks with Foodland, Inc. President Gary Rosenberger about the Alaskan & Proud space. Rosenberger says he liked what he heard, but the Myers Group was able to move more quickly.

“It was a really good second option. Probably it might have been a good first option. But they needed a lot more time in order to get in there,” Rosenberger says. “Maybe we might have been dark for months before they could move in.”

Foodland and the Myers Group announced a 10-year lease agreement for the space on Friday. The Myers Group operates five IGA stores in western Washington.

The next step for the Capital City Market is a membership meeting on September 21st, where a board of directors will be elected from among the more than 40 founding members. Rousso expects the market study to be done in the next month or so.

“Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.” Those words come from the 18th Century French Moralist, Joseph Joubert.

You could say it this way:

“While they have the ideas, those ideas don’t translate into action unless there’s skilled labor to help them do it.”

That’s Alaska Public Employees Association business agent Pete Ford, one of several members of Juneau’s Central Labor Council that puts on the annual community picnic each Labor Day.

Monday’s was the sixth since the Council got the idea and it’s grown every year. Ford says they planned on food for four hundred people, but that wasn’t enough to feed all those who came.

Union signs hang outside the Sandy Beach shelter; inside, political candidates line up to thank Juneau workers and remind them to vote in the upcoming fall elections.

This Labor Day picnic is not just the last hurrah of summer, which the federal holiday seems to have become in many places. Labor Day was born out of the union movement and the effort to improve workers’ conditions in the 19th century.

To the guys flipping burgers at Juneau’s picnic in 2012, that should not be forgotten.

“Labor Day is a celebration of the people who built this fine county,” says Local 71 business agent Tom Brice, and Central Labor Council member. “Not Democrat or Republican, but the working people of America and the working people, in this case, of Alaska and Juneau.”

Around the country, the labor movement has lost strength over the last four decades. Union membership and union influence have decreased. Twenty-three states are now considered “right to work,” with laws that prohibit union security agreements.

Alaska has strong labor laws and Brice says it’s important the young state remains pro-union, especially because of the “seasonality of the work that we have. The cost associated with health care, the cost of living. Those very factors that Alaska’s working people face require that we have good health care, benefits and pensions,”. Brice says.

Right to work legislation was filed in the Alaska Legislature last year and though it made little progress, Ford is concerned that labor union strength in Alaska may be waning.

“The state has shifted to a more conservative mentality as construction has died down. Construction is what usually drives labor unions and involvement in labor unions. And after the plant, if you will, is built and things are humming along, people seem to forget how they got there,” Ford says. “We need to recreate a situation where there is better balance and equality when we go to the bargaining table and that the rights of both the workers as well as the owner are being observed.”

In Alaska, the AFL-CIO – an umbrella federation — represents about 60,000 members in some 50 affiliated unions statewide, including state workers. More than 15,000 employees of the state of Alaska are represented by unions.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 14.8 million workers in the country were represented by labor unions last year, about 11.8 percent of the workforce.

The Thunder Mountain Falcons football team has raised about $3,500 dollars for a former Juneau resident severely wounded in Afghanistan.

All of the proceeds from Saturday’s game against the Kodiak Bears have been donated to help build a “smart home” for Staff Sgt. Tom McRae, a U.S. Marine who was injured January 16th when an explosive device detonated under him. McRae lost an arm, both his legs and an eye in the accident.

Peregrine Booster Club member Jenny Smith says all sales from the gate, concession stand, Falcon clothing and gear, and a silent auction have been donated to the home project for McRae and his family. They live in North Carolina.

McRae was in the stands for the game, which the Falcons won by a score of 14 to 13. He and his family remained dry under a special tent, as a steady rain – sometimes heavy – drenched the fans and players, and made it hard to hang onto the football.

During halftime, Juneau Rep. Cathy Munoz and Haines Rep. Bill Thomas – a Vietnam veteran — introduced McRae and presented him with a Falcons football jersey sporting the number one. Then the Falcons football team saluted McRae before stepping back onto the field for the second half.

McRae was born and raised in Juneau and played youth football. He graduated from Juneau-Douglas High School in 2001 and enlisted in the Marine Corps right after graduation. He served three tours of duty in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.

Donations can still be made to the smart home project. A Smart Home is a custom designed, fully accessible home built to address the individual needs of severely injured members of the U.S. military.

The program is through Building for America’s Bravest, a charity of the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation. Donations can be made online by clicking on McRae’s name.

Checks also can be made out and mailed to Tunnel to Towers Foundation, 2361 Hylan Blvd., Staten Island, New York 10306. Write Staff Sgt. Thomas McRae in the memo line.

Other football scores
In other football news over the weekend, the Juneau-Douglas Crimson Bears beat the Colony Knights also by one point. The score from the game played in Palmer was 21 to 20.