'Needs to stop': In Kansas City, dozens protest alleged racism, working conditions at VA

Aug. 12—Sometimes, Harold Lampley said, he would wake up in the middle of the night and feel like someone was stabbing his ears. His eardrums would burst and he'd lose his hearing.

His eardrums have burst two or three times since he's worked for the VA hospital in West Plains, Missouri, he said. Lampley, 36, said the facility where he worked was filled with mold and formaldehyde.

Lampley would often get sick with sinus infections, he said, that became ear infections and later ruptured eardrums. His ear, nose and throat provider has told him to stop working there. He can't.

Lampley was a speaker at a protest Wednesday afternoon outside the VA Heartland Network offices in downtown Kansas City. Around three dozen VA workers from across Missouri and Kansas, including Kansas City, Poplar Bluff, Leavenworth and St. Louis, showed up to protest working conditions and racism. They were joined by U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II. Cleaver, whose father and two uncles are veterans, expressed his disappointment in the VA, addressing the allegations lodged against it.

"My job is to try to make sure that the government of the United States functions at the highest level possible. And that's not going on here," Cleaver said. "When we're talking about mold, it's not some serious mosquito bite. It can do enormous and irreversible damage to the human body. And so that's something that we need to concentrate on."

Cleaver said the VA has also created and sustained a discriminatory culture.

"I don't believe that all the people that are in positions of administration are bigoted," he said. "But something is going on if 78%, based on a survey that was taken by the employees, believe that there is a serious cultural problem as it relates to race. Something needs to stop and something needs to begin."

The federal VA office said in a statement it does not tolerate discrimination from any employees, but did not address the allegations of poor working conditions. The Kansas City branch offered the following statement:

"The Kansas City VA Medical Center is proud of its diverse and inclusive culture, and the facility does not tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind," a Miles Brown, a VA spokesperson, said in an emailed statement. "The KCVA also encourages every employee to identify unsafe or hazardous work conditions so those issues can be address (sic) and corrected immediately. The safety of our employees and facilities is a top priority at KCVA."

For several years, lawsuits have been filed against the Kansas City VA alleging racial discrimination and racist incidents against Black workers. More than 50 Black current and former employees in Kansas City have come forward since last year saying they have experienced racial discrimination while working at the hospital.

"We've found numerous, probably hundreds, of (Equal Employment Opportunity) cases because employees have faced discrimination, whether it was against their disability, whether it was against their race, and management does the same thing: They downplay the situation," said Keena Smith, a legislative political organizer for the American Federation of Government Employees. "Their management covers for each other all of the time and we're just tired."

Smith said she's tired of seeing employees who have been punished for doing less. People are also tired and stressed out of having to go work in a place where they will experience racism and nothing will be done, she said.

"So again, we're asking them to hold them accountable," Smith said. "It's unfair to us to have to give so much on the front end and then on the back end that's the things we get?"

The Star's Cortlynn Stark contributed reporting.

___

(c)2021 The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Mo.)

Visit The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Mo.) at www.kansascity.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.