Suzanne Gordon • Michael Messner
Saturday, 12 October 2019 — 11 a.m.
In this panel, two authors of recent books about veterans, joined by local representatives of About Face and Veterans for Peace, will discuss issues affecting 20 million Americans who served in the military, plus current political organizing for healthcare reform and against U.S. intervention abroad. In 2016, veterans—who represent 13% of our national voting population–turned out in disproportionate numbers for Donald Trump.
Suzanne Gordon is a co-founder of the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, a member of the CWA NewsGuild, and author of Wounds of War: How the VA Delivers Health, Healing, and Hope to the Nation’s Veterans. She the author or co-author of 11 other books and a past contributor to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Washington Monthly, The American Prospect, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and other publications. She is the co-editor of a series on the Culture and Politics of Health Care Work at Cornell University Press.
Michael Messner, professor of sociology, University of Southern California, is the author of Guys Like Me: Five Wars, Five Veterans for Peace. In Guys Like Me, he profiles veterans of US military service in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the first and second Gulf Wars. Messner has taught sociology and gender studies courses since 1976—for the first decade at four community colleges, an Air Force base, three California State Universities, and a maximum security prison. His teaching and research at USC continues to be animated by the movements for social justice that erupted in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond, especially feminism.