Photo credit: Commondreams.org

What’s Memorial Day to a people disconnected from war? Travel to any local neighborhood and you’ll see a range of opinion. Mostly, it’s a day to party or rest. For some, like my waiter at Cafe Trieste told me last night: “It’s nothing at all. It’s just another day.”

But it’s not just another day – if we really consider how deeply the war has impacted our community at home. It’s certainly not another day for me.

This morning, I dig out my dog tags from under a pile of photos and begin the morning with sorrow, mind full of snapshots and sound. I think about the grieving military families I met while in Crawford, Texas protesting the war in 2005.  I remember the shocking and heartbreaking testimony during Winter Soldier in 2008 when I covered the conference for Pacifica Radio. I think about my nephew Andre who is a new Marine Corps boot camp graduate heading to his first duty station.

I pause to reflect on the 5,462 American soldiers dead from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the hundreds of thousands wounded – languishing in hospital beds or waiting in line for benefits or fighting their demons. I wonder why that number isn’t discussed or debated more in regular conversation, especially as more troops head to Afghanistan. I think about my own time in the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital as a member of the 347th General Hospital unit and my struggle to understand the homeless, desperate veterans there suffering from a war decades gone. I think about the warriors that tell the truth about war and the military at great personal sacrifice.

Memorial Day is also a time to remember the victims of war in other lands. Some come to US cities to begin again – or escape certain death at home. This is a local issue: Iraqi and Afghan refugees have even settled in East Oakland and other neighborhoods.

It’s also a time to reflect on the impact that war has had in Oakland. Today, take another look at the person with the bent cardboard sign on the corner of Broadway and 14^th, or International and 84^th, or High Street exit off 880 freeway. Locally, as is the national trend, fully one-third of the homeless on the streets are veterans from the Vietnam War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our local Vets Center serves some of the veterans that suffer from joblessness and mental illness and drug addition years after their tours. But for those not served, and there are 100,000 nationally that must seek help from local agencies and community and faith based organizations. We feature a discussion with one of the unsung heroes, a vet himself, that serves the local veteran community.

This Memorial Day, let’s remember that war has a dangerous impact on mental health as is shown in this recent PBS docmentary.  We’ll continue to deal with the long-term impacts of the suffering here at home.

And today, let’s expand the meaning of this holiday to include the war raging on Oakland streets today. There is great loss and suffering there too. Today, we remember Alvaro J. Ayala, 28 and the hundreds that have lost their lives on Oakland’s streets. These are our cousins, uncles, friends, husbands – killed on the street. Let us take a moment to honor victims of violence in Oakland this week as well.

On OaklandSeen this week, we will publish stories of loss and sadness from the war that continues abroad to violence in our streets everyday.  Perhaps if the long-term pain of loss is made plain, we will recommit to changing it.

I watched Jeff Lucey’s parents describe their son’s depression, alcohol abuse and suicide in front of an audience of veterans in 2008.

So this Memorial Day, let’s pause and consider who isn’t with us today. Who was lost too young, ignobly, and ignored? Let’s commit to finding meaning in the losses that touch us all.