On the beach: Peace Art-- "Arlington West"

[Hekate]

Every Sunday since just before Veterans' Day the Santa Barbara CA Town Hall Activists and SB Veterans for Peace have set up hundreds of white crosses in the sand near Stearns Wharf, an area popular with both tourists and locals. The number of crosses is equal to the number of Americans who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and grows larger each week. The response from the public has been overwhelmingly positive.

We encourage other communities to copy this idea!

This is a quiet protest, aside from the sound of Taps coming from the tape recorder or played by passing street musicians. There are half-staffed US flags at the corners of the "cemetry" -- I like to say that the US flag is not the corporate logo of Bush-Cheney, Inc., and the vets have their own strong feelings about its symbolism.

This project draws people in and they want to talk about it. There's a low "Wall" with the names of the fallen, unit, hometown, where they died, and age. We offer people the opportunity to write someone's name on a card and affix it to one of the crosses with rubberbands. (We used to use thumbtacks, but they were hard to handle and a hazard if dropped.) One of our volunteers collects flowers from behind florist shops, so people can also make a small bouquet for "their" cross.

Some of the passersby also want to donate money, so we take it and apply it toward our expenses: the cost of the wood, the cost of the permit from the Parks Dept., and so on. We've applied for a small grant so we can start reimbursing some of the volunteers who have donated so much time and materials -- at least for the materials.

One of the VFP members has created black and white postcards of the site; he has generously refused reimbursement for their production -- it's his donation and we give them away free, already stamped.

It's put up early in the morning, and has to be gone by sunset, flowers and all. The carpenter's truck is just about overflowing with crosses by now, and we are hoping an old van will come into our lives, one that can stay loaded all week.(Incidentally, we've had some fruitful discussions about whether other religions should be symbolically represented, and have come down on the side of letting whoever wants to produce something of equal dimensions to the existing crosses do so.)

I'm not a morning person, so I show up when it's time to break it down. Reading each name as I put the cards away until the next time becomes a meditation in itself. The vast majority of the US fallen are young enough to be my children; I found someone from Samoa; a couple of people wrote the names of coalition soldiers.

Arlington Cemetary West is a beautiful, moving, production and protest. We hope to have some of the photos available on the national VFP website soon (http://www.veteransforpeace.org). The link to the photo and story in one of the local papers is http://news.newspress.com/topsports/120803wall.htm?now=8379&tref=1 but I am not sure if you can access it without being a subscriber, so if you are interested just keep checking the VFP site.

Please spread the word -- we hope that other communities will start similar projects.

Hekate

~~~On the whole, I prefer not to be lectured on patriotism by those who keep offshore maildrops in order to avoid paying their taxes. ~Molly Ivins~