FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 18, 2005                                                       			

CONTACTS:
Scott Blackburn: 773-410-2673
Joel Gulledge: 773-878-3815						

100,000 RINGS:  In Remembrance of the Iraqi Dead

CHICAGO – Beginning at 8:00 a.m. on October 25, bells will toll in remembrance of the more than 100,000 Iraqis who have died as a consequence of the occupation of Iraq.  A bell will toll once each minute to memorialize the Iraqi fallen.  Participants will maintain a daily presence (from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on October 25 and 26), at the Federal Center plaza in Chicago (Dearborn and Adams).  Similar ceremonies will occur at this time in nearly 100 other communities around the United States and United Kingdom.  

“We reject the fantasies President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are constructing, claiming to increase security through military adventurism”, says Kathy Kelly, two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. “We are appalled by their disregard for the welfare of American and British citizens sent to fight in Iraq. We are appalled by the silence surrounding the suffering and death of the Iraqi people, caught on a battlefield without borders in the crossfire of a war they didn’t start or invite.”

“As people opposed to the US/UK war and occupation of Iraq, we act to end the silence about the suffering and death in Iraq and to publicly unlock the grief that it has caused in our communities,” says Scott Blackburn, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.  “To mark the anniversary of the release of the Lancet Study on 29 October 2004, we will act out our grief, our anger, and our solidarity by gathering in a public place for a simple and solemn ’Bell Ringing‘ ceremony.  “We will ring a bell every minute, 1,000 times, each solitary ring symbolizing the death of an Iraqi person as a result of the war and occupation. One hundred communities ringing a bell 1,000 times would equal 100,000 rings”.  

One year ago on October 29, 2004 the British medical journal “The Lancet” published the epidemiological study estimating that upwards of 100,000 Iraqis died as a consequence of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.  Further information on the 100,000 Rings campaign is located at the website, www.iraqmortality.org.

Voices for Creative Nonviolence seeks to build and strengthen active nonviolent resistance to the U.S. war against Iraq’s people; to foster international peace teams; and to challenge the United States’ “Global War on Terror”, which is a war OF terror far more than it is a “war ON terror”.  Several members have lived in Iraq before, during, and after the U.S. invasion in 2003. 

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