WEBVTT

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And up next,

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we have another good friend of mine.

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He's a former combat veteran
of the United States Marine Corps.

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He's passionate about
helping veterans in distress.

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Ladies and gentlemen,
my good friend, Mr. Ron Self.

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(Applause)

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Hello. Thank you.

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I've got to say,

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I just got to pet a dog
for the first time in 19 years,

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and I'm feeling some kind
of way about that.

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Okay, here we go.

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November 9, 2011.

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A regular day just like any other day.

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I walked into my cell.

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Stepped up on the toilet seat.

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Put a rope around my neck.

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Attached it to the locker,
and stepped off.

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About an hour and a half later,

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I woke up on the floor.

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The rope had broke, which surprised me,

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because I made the rope
out of a sheet.

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A four-grade rope

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Soaked in water,
real good tensile strength.

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Probably made 100 of those
in the Marine Corps,

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towed Humvees with them.

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But this one broke. Okay.

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Initially what I felt was two-fold:

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Shame for having attempted to kill myself,

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and shame for having not succeeded.

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And while I'm not a religious man,

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at some level I felt the rope
broke for a reason.

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Or maybe I just wanted
to believe it broke.

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Okay, so I figured
I'd sit with that for a while.

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About two weeks later,

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I was in a prison university project
English 204 research class,

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the end result being to produce

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a 15 to 25 page paper 
on the topic of your choice.

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It was the beginning of the semester
and someone handed me a document.

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Keep in mind, I didn't tell anyone
tried to kill myself, nobody knew that.

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And so someone handed me this document.

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And what it was was a legal opinion,

NOTE Paragraph

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filed by Judge Reinhart
of the Ninth Circuit Court

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September 2009, in response to a lawsuit

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filed by the family of a veteran
who committed suicide.

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In his response, he cited
a Katz suicide study,

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which indicated that 18 veterans a day
were committing suicide at that time.

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Throughout the course of the semester,
and in months to follow,

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I went on to discover something
that I found incomprehensible.

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And that is, in the 14 years,

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from the start of the Iraqi War
to include the Afghanistan War,

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6,855 American personnel
were killed in action.

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In that same period of time,
73,000 veterans committed suicide.

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Now when I share these statistics,
these numbers, with people,

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they think I must be mistaken.

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I'm in prison, we don't have
access to good information.

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But we actually, in the college program,

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we have real good access to a lot
of literature to do the research,

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and that's an accurate number.

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And I went on to discover
a few other things.

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And that is that I don't know why
that number's so high.

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I can only speak
for a small percentage of it.

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So that's what I'm going
to talk about right now.

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And when I explain that to people,
what I ask them to understand,

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is that the relationship forged
between men in combat

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is similar to that
between a parent and a child.

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And for a veteran, there's no greater loss
than than that of a brother in combat.

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To actually see him fall.

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And the biggest lie of your life, you tell
to yourself the rest of your life;

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that being, you could have done
something different to alter that outcome

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And you simply couldn't.

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And while you saw them fall,
you know they're gone;

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they're not really gone.

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Because every night
when you close your eyes,

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you see their faces
in the shadows of your dreams,

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constant reminders of the brotherhood,

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of the camaraderie, of the family
you search for the rest of your life

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but intuitively know you will never find.

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Now friends and family,

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they try to span that emotional divide.

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They try to bridge the gap.

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But it's pointless.

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I mean, they may as well look
to the stars and try and talk to people

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in a distant galaxy as talk to you.

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And that's because serving with men

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that died by your side,

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sometimes in your arms,

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proving their worth to you

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has rendered pre-war family and friends

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untrustworthy, undependable.

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Translation: there's a stranger among us.
That stranger's the veteran. Its me.

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So, clearly the seeds of suicide,

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in my opinion,
are planted on the battlefield.

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And they remain dormant for the most part
while you're on the battlefield.

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Only now your tour of duty's up
and it's time to rotate back home,

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or you get injured.

NOTE Paragraph

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Either way you're coming back home,
and that's where they start to grow.

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From the second
you step foot on that plane

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and arrive at the very same airports

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that our brothers and sisters
from Vietnam arrived at

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and were greeted by people


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calling them names, like, "Baby killer,"
"Murderer," "War criminal,"

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"Go away," "We don't want you
in our country."

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I've got to say, America gave itself
a good ass-kicking

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in how it treated Vietnam veterans.

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Only now it's 45 years later,
and this generation of veterans

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from the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan,

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and a dozen other places
you've never heard of

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are returning home and they're arriving
at those very same airports.

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And it's become an opportunity

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for those people that gave
the Vietnam veterans

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such a hard time to redeem themselves.

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It's become an opportunity
for America to redeem itself

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in relation to how
it treats its veterans.

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And so, we step off the plane.

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People are waving flags.

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"Welcome home, you're a hero,
we love you, we're so proud of you."

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And while many of the Vietnam veterans

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would have appreciated 
that type of reception,

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they, and this is the hard part,


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as this generation of veterans knows,
there's some truth to those insults.

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You see many of the things 
that happen in combat

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simply do not translate
into being a hero.

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Yet you come back, and everybody's saying,
"You're a hero. We're so proud of you."

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So, we come back, and that's all
we we ever wanted was to make it back.

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And now that you are back,
you've never felt so alone.

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You never felt so much
guilt and shame in your life.

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Now you just want to go back.

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And you won't have to worry
about thanking people

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for thanking you for your service.

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You won't have to worry about
feeling like you're alienating people,

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and that's just what you do,
you alienate everybody around you.

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And there's a reason for that

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because if you let anybody in,
if you let anybody get close,

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you might lose them.

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And the thought of losing anyone else

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just brings you back to losing 
your brothers in combat.

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And for many veterans,

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it's just that you can't go back to war.

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And you can't go forward,
or you feel like you can't go forward.

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The easiest solution for many
is just to chamber around.

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And drop the hammer.

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That's what many do.

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Another option, clearly my option,
is I came to prison.

NOTE Paragraph

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Coming to prison is a different path
to the same destination: death.

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It's just a slower path.

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Only for me, as you know, the rope broke.

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And when the rope broke,
a solution appeared to me.

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And in 2012, I founded "Veterans
Healing Veterans From the Inside Out."

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And in it what I believe

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is the solution to the problem
of the high rate of suicides.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, it's really simple.

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As some things in life are.

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When you join the military,

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it's understood that you
have to graduate boot camp

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to go on to be a member
of that branch of service.

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If you think of society
as a branch of service, which it is,

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before you can return to it
from the military,

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you have to complete Boot Camp Out.

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To not implement Boot Camp Out,

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and have veterans complete it, 
in my opinion,

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is the equivalent of bringing
a 60-ton Abrams tank back from war,

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painting it yellow,

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slapping some stickers on it,
and calling it a school bus.

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That's not going to work out too well.

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Can you imagine a big yellow Abrams tank,
cruising down the street,

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leaving a wake of torn-up asphalt,
crushed cars behind it?

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It's not trying to do that,
it's not trying to be destructive.

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But it's a tank. It's a weapon of war.

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When the veteran comes back
from war,it's the same thing.

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For that tank to be a school bus,
clearly some changes have to be made.

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And that's what Boot Camp Out's about;
it's about making those changes.

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Now, Boot Camp In,

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first thing you do in the morning
is strap on your combat boots,

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put your rucksack on, check your weapon,
make sure it's sighted and good to go.

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Boot Camp Out's the opposite of that.

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First thing you do in the morning
is you put on your flip-flops,

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your board shorts, baseball cap.

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Daily exercise begins with yoga, meditation,
maybe a few laps in the pool,

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mountain bike riding.

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Definitely not a backpack carrying an M16.

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The heart of the program would revolve 
around narration therapy.

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Now, most veterans,
myself included, will tell you,

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"I don't need to write
my experiences of war down.

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I lived them.

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They're forever burned into my memories,
etched into my soul."

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But there's something
about writing them down.

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They're tangible now.

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You can hold them, look at them,

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relate to them in a different way
than just thinking about them.

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And when you share those experiences

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with other veterans
that have similar experiences,

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something starts to happen.

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Something unexpected, something 
you didn't think could ever happen again.

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You start to feel a connection.
You start to feel alive.

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And you learn that it's okay

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to take one step out of the shadows
of denial and depression.

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And that it's okay to share
those repressed and subdued memories.

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And every time you do that,

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every time you share that
with another group of veterans,

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it gets easier.

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It has for me.

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Now the program I speak of
will be unprecedented in military history

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because it doesn't exist yet.

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There is no Boot Camp Out.
There never has been.

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Now the powers that be will say,
"We're doing plenty.

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We're addressing the problem.
We have programs in place."

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And I would say, as evidenced
by the high rate of suicide, the 73,000,

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that those programs are ineffective.

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Now in the military,
it's all about the chain of command.

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So, the orders come from the top down.

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Being here in prison, San Quentin,

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I couldn't be any farther away
from that chain of command.

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And that's why I need your help.

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We need people of power and influence
to help make this program happen.

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Without people of power and influence,
this program won't exist.

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Now America claims
to love and support its veterans.

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I say, prove it.

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We ask that you use your power,
your influence,

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to advocate for a change
in how veterans re-enter society.

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Advocate for this change.

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I would ask you to contact "Veterans
Healing Veterans From the Inside Out"

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to find out what you can do,
what more you can do,

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to help us save our brothers and sisters,

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your brothers and sisters,
your sons and daughters,

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from a fate that's undeserving of them
and their service to this country.

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And one other thing.

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It's not often that people
from all walks of life

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can actually make history.

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And this is what this is; an opportunity
for everybody here, everybody in blue,

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everybody that's come in from the street,
everybody that hears this message,

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to get involved and make
Boot Camp Out happen.

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We already have a version of it
here at San Quentin Prison.

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Of course, it's a smaller,
scaled-down version.

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I don't think I can convince
the Warden to put a pool in.

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(Laughter)

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But it's a very successful program
that we have here.

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And we have several veterans

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that have paroled from San Quentin
and they're thriving.

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So, we have a good idea
of what to do and how to do it.

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We just need your help to do it.

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So, before I leave,
all I'm going to say is,

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I'm just asking for your help.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)