The goal of our speaker’s bureau is to provide a valuable resource to Long Island educators who recognize the importance and educational value of augmenting their history, social studies, literature, etc., curricula with relevant oral histories of those who have personally experienced war. Through this collaborative effort, we hope to educate young people to understand the realities of war, a lesson that has been tragically neglected. While our ultimate goal is to create a world in which conflict and war can be replaced with understanding and non-violence, our agenda is not political. Our aim is only to inform and enlighten.

Our veterans are knowledgeable and proficient speakers with many years of experience working in a variety of classroom settings. Should you desire our veterans to speak in your classrooms, assemblies, athletic events, homecomings, etc., please feel free to contact me.
Karen Sackett
Program Coordinator
631-875-8647
rksrc@optonline.net

Short bios of two of our speakers are included below.
Veterans For Peace Long Island Speakers Bureau
Camillo “Mac” Bica, Ph.D
Mac is the Chapter Coordinator and a professor of philosophy at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. His primary area of specialization is in social and political philosophy and ethics, specifically in the relation of war and morality. While recovering from his experiences as a United States Marine Corps Officer during the Vietnam War, he founded, and for five years coordinated, the Veteran Self Help Initiative, AKA the HOOTCH  Program (a therapeutic community of war veterans suffering with
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Brooklyn. Dr. Bica has presented numerous papers dealing with such topics as Just War Theory, the effects of war on the participants, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, ethics and war, and political and social responsibility..Dr. Bica’s forthcoming book Meditations on War is scheduled for release in the spring of 2007.

Thomas Brinson, LCSW
    Thomas has been a veterans advocate since he returned from his year’s service in Vietnam in 1967-68, flying into Washington, DC’s National Airport in Washington, DC, early in the evening of April 4, 1968, being puzzled as to why Washington was burning in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s assassination.
An ROTC-commissioned US Army officer, he served in the Central Highlands of Vietnam as a Combat Support Platoon Leader, escorting convoys throughout II Corps.
    A New York State licensed social worker, specializing in addictions and trauma, he and a colleague, Vince Treanor, wrote seminal literature and did initial trainings nationwide on the correlation of addiction and PTSD among combat veterans.
From September 2003 until June 2005, he served as a peace worker with the Nonviolent Peaceforce near Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, in one of the most conflicted areas of that brutal 25-year civil war, surviving the devastating Tsunami of December 26, 2004.