Fletcher Announces Creation Of Foundation For Veterans

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: This is KPBS Midday Edition, I am Maureen Cavanaugh. The health and well-being of Americas returning veterans has been a big part of our conversation, and specifically important here in San Diego. Our region is home to the largest number of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Most veterans are doing well, but the number of returning veterans with problems is growing. Those problems can result in unemployment, substance abuse, and homelessness. Former State Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, who lost his bid to become San Diego mayor of last year, has returned to public life as chairman of the new foundation, The Three Wise Men. Nathan Fletcher joins me to talk about the new organization. Nathan, it is good to see you. Why do we need another veterans organization? NATHAN FLETCHER: I think what we are aiming to do is not to replicate what any of the great groups are doing out there, but to fill a void. I have spent the last year talking to leaders in the veterans community, talking to those that provide services and see what is needed. One of the things that has been pointed out time and again, we need to raise awareness of the problem. It surprises me when I tell people that between twenty-two and fifty veterans each day commit suicide in America. People are shocked, a lot of people do not know. When you tell them that the suicide rate of veterans is double that of what it was before a decade of war, they are shocked and surprised. So we're going to raise awareness of the problem. Secondly, we are going to reach veterans. Veterans are very hard to reach after they leave active duty. So we have got some innovative strategies utilizing technology an interesting events to reach veterans with love, hope and compassion. You fought for our country, you had the courage to fight, now we need you to have the courage to ask for help, and a lot of us out here care deeply that you do that. And then connect the veterans with the mission that puts them right with service providers providing the services that they need. A lot of them are doing great, but a lot of them say we do not have veterans coming to us. So we're going to highlight things, and this year we will focus on courage to call, a partnership with mental health systems, and the county 211, which is a twenty-four seven veterans staffed hotline that is doing great. We just have to get the reach to the veterans and tell them where to go. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Tell us about the three wise men, the namesake of this organization. NATHAN FLETCHER: When I was a little boy, were my closest friends with my cousin Jeremy Wise. He had to younger brothers, Ben and Bo, we called them the three wise men. We camped and slept over and did all of the things we did. There's an expectation when you are a child that you're going to do things together. We all graduated high school together, we joined the military together, we had kids together, and tragically at the end of 2009, we lost Jeremy in Afghanistan. He was killed by a suicide bomber. Two years later, we lost Ben in Afghanistan, he died in a firefight. Bo is the sole surviving son, and he remains on active duty in the Marine Corps. We spend a lot of time talking about it, and honoring those who gave their lives, which is what we should do. But the focus should be on Bo. The focus needs to be on that veteran who has come back, who is struggling, having difficulty, because it breaks my heart, all of my friends who died in combat. It is utterly senseless and tragic for those who survived combat to come back and take their own lives, because there were not enough people reaching out to help them. The point of the Three Wise Men Foundation is to say we lost a lot in combat, but we had a lot come back, and the ones that came back are the ones we will keep fighting for. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: You are serving as chairman of this group as a volunteer. So this is in addition to your duties at QUALCOMM and teaching at UC San Diego? NATHAN FLETCHER: It is. I always said after my legal career, there is a lot of ways to conserve and do good. Earlier in my life before I ran for office, he worked for NGO's doing human right's work around the world, in Cambodia, Serbia, and I felt I was doing good. I served in the Marines where I felt I was doing good. In elected office I bought the same approach. That is a spirit of service that I think should continue throughout your life regardless of what you do. I am thoroughly loving not being a politician, but does not mean that I cannot help causes I think are important. I think there are fewer more important than honoring our commitment to those who served our country. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: It was only last year you were running for San Diego mayor. Does it seem longer to you? NATHAN FLETCHER: I put that way in the past, it seems like it was decades ago. It is fun, I missed some of the people I would see, but I still see my friends and people writing out with, and I'm having a great time traveling all over the world, at QUALCOMM, doing fascinating work in the developing world and other places. I love my professor position at UCSD and teaching, and I still have the opportunity for things like Three Wise Men. It has been great. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: After losing in the primary, you bid public life goodbye. You grew a beard and climbed a mountain in south America. It sounds like it was a pivotal moment in your life, a moment of decision making for you. NATHAN FLETCHER: It was. I came back and wrote an essay about it, which got some attention, because of the way that I started it. It was genuine, it was the way I felt. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: It was the F word. NATHAN FLETCHER: It was. In so many ways, it was a period of time to reflect back. There are so many of things that we go through in life. I talked about a lot in that essay, I talked about the death of my cousins. And how that impacted me. I talked about the desire to do good, to be of service, I was candid about a lot of things that I could have done better, mistakes I've made and things I could have handled differently but also, understanding the amazing potential in life, there's so much out there yet you can do, there are so many different ways to do good. That is what I am seeing right now, I'm seeing it in students that I mentor and encourage into public service. I am still involved, I support folks like Scott Peters, and other folks I think that are good. But I do not have to be in elected office to leave that life of purpose and service, and do good. I have certainly seen that clearly in the last year. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: From that essay, from what you wrote there, it seemed like you really felt dragged through the coals in the last campaign. As time know that feeling, or is that part of American politics now? NATHAN FLETCHER: I think it is a part of politics. I accept it, I always would say that it was the price of admission. I remind my students all the time that the US Senate had situations where the US Senator hit another one with a cane on the floor. I remember US Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was shot and killed by the sitting vice president over a duel. I can't say that politics is rougher today than it ever has been. But the media is changing. Particularly, when you have it newspaper owned by someone who has an ideological agenda who endorses candidates, you see that spillover. And the stakes are high, and when the stakes are high, you have opponents, that is part of it. I don't have any lingering resentment towards it. It was part of the process, I had a wonderful experience in be simply, and I was honored to be considered as a candidate twice, to have a tremendous support and, really close, and I'm having a lot of fun now with the things that I do now. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: The man who founded QUALCOMM, Irwin Jacobs, is now donating to the cause of increasing the city minimum wage. Is that something you would have pursued, if you were elected as mayor? NATHAN FLETCHER: I took a position on that, I absolutely support the raising of the minimum wage. I think it is the morally right thing to do in a period of time where we have greater income inequality, greater disparity of wealth, and more people working harder and longer for less money than any point in our country. The minimum we can do is raise the minimum wage. I think there are other things out there that are happening, and I applaud with the council did. I think they could've put it a little higher, but I think it's a good thing to do. I'm also in addition to the morally right thing to do with low-wage workers, it is also good for business. There have been countless academic studies, setting aside the ideology of it, that have quantified why raising the minimum wage is good for business, because those folks spend every penny they make, and it gets reinvested back into the economy. It seems like a common sense thing. If we pegged it to inflation where it was use ago, it would be higher than what is being proposed. I think it is great, I applaud the members of the council who are doing it, and I hope they have success. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: When people remember your political career in San Diego, they will remember you started out Republican, became independent, and then switched to the Democratic party. It sounds as if you are still a Democrat. NATHAN FLETCHER: I'm a proud Democrat. I support Democrats, and I financially support them. I go out and walk precincts for them, as a citizen now, not as a candidate for elected office. I'm absolutely comfortable in the Democratic party. It's where I believe I belong. Ironically, is where most of the Republicans believed I belonged, most of the time that I was Republican. That was the funniest thing when I left, I said you guys hated me for years when I was Republican, you were saying I was a Democrat, and I said finally you are right, we should be happy. It is the place I am comfortable, and where I will remain. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: With the Three Wise Men Foundation, you have, in a sense, reentered public life. Won't that bring back some of the same problems you encountered in your political career? NATHAN FLETCHER: People are always going to question the motives of everyone. That is a reflection of them more than it is me. I have always had a commitment to service. That began before I was in elected office, and it will continue now that I'm out of elected office. I don't worry about that. You can sit back and have 1 million reasons why you should do nothing, and there's always a reason not to do this or that. At the end of the day, if we save just one veteran from committing suicide, or one mother does not get the call that her child just blew his brains out because he could not handle surviving the peace after combat, I am willing to take any criticism that comes with it. It does not bother me. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: As an Iraq war veteran, do you feel you have a connection to the returning veterans the organization wants to serve? NATHAN FLETCHER: I'm one of them. I feel not only a connection, but one of the things I talked about in the essay was a tremendous survivor's guilt that you have when you go to war and you survive and they don't. They didn't do anything wrong. My cousins and friends didn't do anything wrong, they were just in the wrong place. Had I been in that Humvee, or had I run that way, where had I stood up two seconds earlier, it would have been me. There were firefights I was in where my backpack was shot, let's put it between my legs, where Humvee was blown up, that could have been me. When you come back, you struggle with that, and it is very hard. You feel a sense of obligation. The only thing I can take back from that is an obligation to live a life of purpose that does good. I love that my friends that did not come back, and I think this is one way I can help do that. This is one way I can continue to give back, this is one way I can help veterans who are struggling in having a bad time. I can honor the memory of Jeremy and Ben, by making sure we are always looking out for Bo. That is really the point of the Three Wise Men. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What might tempt you back into politics? NATHAN FLETCHER: Nothing. I don't see it. Like I said, at QUALCOMM, I'm working on global strategic initiatives around the world. I'm a part of the peace process in Colombia, where they are trying to and fifty years of conflict. We're looking at the power of connected communities. We are looking at the power of social media to help people through the process of reconciliation and peace. I serve on a global affairs council in the world economic forum on human rights. We are looking at this area of globalization, protecting worker dignity, and doing veterans projects with the global initiative. I'm doing fascinating, big ideas around the world. UCSD is great, I continue to do that. I had my time, there are a lot of other great folks who are running, and I am happy to support them, and lend advice, and whatever support I can and let them do it. I will continue to help in my way. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: I want to let everyone know the first big event for the Three Wise Men Foundation will take place in October on the USS Midway Museum.