100,000 + 2,000 Rings, Candles, Lives

Today's SF Chronicle had a short piece that talked about the high numbers of Iraqi civilians that have been "war casualties."  They get their high estimate of 30,000 from Iraq Body Count, and didn't even mention the study by the journal Lancet that calculated Iraqi deaths as around 100,000.  They didn't even mention it, though I guess that should not come as a surprise.

Last May, I wrote about an anti-war vigil held by Scott Blackburn of Voices in the Wilderness (now Voices of Creative Nonviolence), to recognize the deaths of the then 1.594 American troops.  In his vigil, Scott rang a bell once a minute to mark each death.  He was ringing the bell from 8 am on a Friday morning until 10:34 Saturday.  I commented that you would need more than 70 days of bell ringing to reach the numbers in the Lancet study, plus those American deaths. 

This week, in a way, both have happened. 

As you all know, there are many vigils being held around the country tonight to mark the death of the 2000th American in Iraq.  Go here to watch a film that gives a sense of the magnitude of 2,000.  Watch all of it.

Then, you can read about the week-long and transatlantic vigil, 100,000 Rings (1,000 chimes in 100 different locations), which Scott organized as a remembrance to those Iraqis who have been killed.  He scheduled it to coincide with the one year anniversary of the publication of the Lancet study, and perhaps it is a twist that the these different vigils coincide -- hopefully a twist that, as Kathy Kelly wrote today, may raise awareness:

The demonstrations will overlap, but for once we can claim that separate demonstrations, held, simultaneously, can actually raise awareness and hopefully affect change. These protests are after all the same: One life, two thousand lives, one hundred thousand lives, or many, many more - are all too much to pay for the imperial ambitions of the few.

Here's what Milan Rai, of Britain's Justice Not Vengeance, wrote about his participation in the bell ringing ceremony:

There is some deep human need not to be forgotten. We want to be remembered by those who come after us; we want to be remembered and respected.
Those who have died in this war, Iraq and Western, will be forgotten, and their memory not respected, if the leaders of this war have their way.
Reading the names of the dead, marking their passing with each ring of a bell, has been a meditation on the reason why we campaign about Iraq.
It has been a way of insisting that these people matter, that they have not blown away in the wind, that they deserve and will receive respect from those of us who come after.
These hours spent remembering, by the side of a busy city road, outside a military base, opposite the centre of government, have been immensely energising, much to my surprise.
Beforehand, despite being an enthusiastic supporter of the project in principle, I had quailed at the monotony of hours of reading and bell-ringing in practice.
I was a doubter.
As it turned out, this has been one of the finest experiences of my activist career, and one that I would not trade for anything.

Apparently, however, it is not okay to publicly grieve near Downing Street without a permit, as Rai and his comrade Maya Evans, were arrested for their actions.

In his correspondence with me, Scott wrote that "the thing about inspiration, it never comes from one place, it is a two way street--no actually it is more like a roundabout, a great circle."  Hopefully, these various remembrances and actions will widen and strengthen that circle so that all of our voices not only express outrage about this shared loss of humanity, but also bring an end to the lack of humanity that is evident in the imperial ambitions of the few.