It has become a standard part of marches and actions to protest the Iraq war. Since the U.S. government under President Bush avoids any television images of the coffins of slain U.S. soldiers, and pointedly keeps no tally of Iraqi citizens killed since the U.S. invasion, peace organizations find a way to display their symbolic coffins in public.
When 500,000 marched against the war in New York City Sunday, Aug. 29, the eve of the Republican National Convention, hundreds of flag-draped caskets were carried in the procession. Again Oct. 2, some of the same peace organizations coalesced in Washington for the "National Memorial Procession: A Trail of Mourning and Truth from Iraq to the White House." Some 2,000 peace advocates walked in the solemn cortege from Arlington National Cemetery to a grassy expanse south of the White House, carrying cardboard coffins and laying them in rows on the lawn. The majority were black, representing the Iraqi dead. An occasional casket bore the Stars and Stripes, representing fallen U.S. personnel.
How many have died — really? Visit www.IraqBodyCount.net, whose organizers scan hundreds of online media outlets each day for reports of deaths in Iraq, crosscheck their facts, and keep a running tally. Where sources disagree, IBC reports a range — a minimum and a maximum estimate. At press time, we checked IBC online. The number of "Civilians Reported Killed by Military Intervention in Iraq" had reached between 13,086 (minimum) and 15,149 (maximum).
Spread across several thousand square feet of the exhibition hall at the CTA National Conference in Milwaukee Nov. 5-7 will be "Eyes Wide Open: Beyond Fear — Towards Hope. An Exhibition of the Iraq War." The traveling exhibit, created by the American Friends Service Committee in the Quaker tradition, is a memorial drawing public attention to both military and civilian lives lost in the Iraq war. The exhibit includes hundreds of U.S. military boots tagged with the names of U.S. soldiers killed; a Wall of Names eight feet high with thousands of names of Iraqi dead; a timeline of U.S.-Iraq relations leading to the war; and multimedia screens projecting images of the war not seen on U.S. newscasts.
Eyes Wide Open is moving from city to city across the U.S. During October the display will appear in Kansas City, Mo.; Atlanta, Macon and Athens, Ga.; Jacksonville and Orlando, Fla. Learn more on the web: http://afsc.org/eyes/
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