Iraq Mortality blogs

Evanston, Illinois: five days of mourning

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 03:29:38 -0600

The 100,000 Rings Action in Evanston, Illinois reminded people from the North Shore how devastating their support of the war is to the Iraqi people. We vigiled at Fountain Square in downtown Evanston, where auto and pedestrian traffic converges from three sides, so we reached thousands of people. We read names and rang the bell for five days from 4:00 to 7:00 and over 100 people were active participants--ringing the bell, reading the names, handing out explanatory flyers, holding pictures of mourning Iraqis, and fighting the wind with a large banner that said " Operation Iraqi Freedom, 100,000 dead! When will it ever end?" Six of the volunteers joined us on the spot after they saw what we were doing and several read or rang for three hours or more.

Veterans for Peace-Santa Fe Chapter Report

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 03:18:52 -0600

Veterans for Peace, Santa Fe, had a very successful Bell Ringing Vigil outside our State Capitol Building. Over 60 volunteers rang 1,000 tolls of a small brass gong for 16 and a half hours, beginning at 6:00am and ending at 10:30pm. We posted the names of the participating cities.

In addition to memorializing the untold numbers of innocent Iraqi civilians murdered during the United States' illegal and immoral invasion of Irag, we also displayed our Memorial Banners which show the names and faces of the American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. These banners are 3 feet by six feet and now stretch for over 200 feet.

Mouths Wide Open Day 2, 3 & 4

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 11:38:04 -0600

Mouths Wide Open continued our 16 1/2 hour bell ringing of 1,000 names in Union Square in 2 two-hour shifts Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. There was a mean pelting rain the second day and it was very cold, but we stood with umbrellas and felt it was important to keep going. Be and I were the constant representatives of our group and formed the 2-pronged core energy -- Be standing still, ringing the first bell and in a strong clear voice, intoning: ”We honor and grieve for…” out into the cold air and bustling square: and then reading a name of an Iraqi civilian, with their age and cause of death. I stood on the side and sent my thoughts to those dead, but also walked around and interceded with the public -- I told them what we were doing, invited them to take a flyer with information re the mortality studies, and brought many people close up to the muslin cloth to take some petals from the basket and scatter them over the pictures of dead Iraqis with me.

Arrested for Remembering the Dead

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 11:20:29 -0600

On Tuesday 25th October I was arrested outside Downing Street for taking part in an unauthorized demonstration in a public area, namely Whitehall. As part of the 100,000 bells ceremony Milan Rai and I were reading the names of Iraqis and UK soldiers who have died in the war against Iraq. This was the third out of the four sessions we had planned.

We started just after 9 am and almost immediately attracted the attention of half a dozen police officers. A PC told me that I was protesting in a restricted area and would be arrested in the next 5 minutes unless I moved on.

My initial feelings of fear soon passed as I concentrated on the names of the UK soldiers who had been killed in action. I was fully aware that arrest was imminent, but standing outside Downing Street on a drizzly Tuesday morning seemed the least I could do.

Complete Coverage Campaign Bell Ceremony, Las Vegas, NV

Sat, 5 Nov 2005 12:49:03 -0600

On October 25, 2005, the Complete Coverage Campaign www.CompleteCoverageCampaign.org organized a bell ringing ceremony from 6 AM until 10:40 PM, ringing a bell once per minute for 1000 rings.

We felt that it was important for us to host the ceremony in one continuous period. Some of us stayed for the entire 16 hours and 40 minutes. Others joined us throughout the day, taking turns solemnly ringing the bell.

Our ceremony took place at an intersection of the Las Vegas Strip. There was an abundance of both vehicle and foot traffic to view our signs, and we had many good conversations with passersby. We experienced pounding rain and blistering sun over the course of the ceremony. Being outdoors in the elements brought us closer together as a community, and a small bit closer to an understanding of the plight of the Iraqi people.

Bellringing, Edinburgh

Fri, 4 Nov 2005 12:19:04 -0600

On Saturday 29th October around 50 students from Edinburgh and Stirling University People & Planet held a name-reading ceremony in memory of the thousands of Iraqis who have lost their lives due to the American and British-led occupation. As part of the '100,000 Rings for the People of Iraq' campaign, 100 names of Iraqis known to have died since the beginning of and as a direct result of the occupation were read out, accompanied by a ring of a bell for each name. The students were accompanied by a six metre long dummy missile with 'WMD' written on the side, serving as a reminder to the fact that none have been found in Iraq despite WMD being the primary reason for the invasion.

1000 rings for peace

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 19:49:11 -0600

With the support of students and faculty at Nicolet Area Technical College, the Nicolet Peace Coalition started ringing our bell Wednesday morning at 7:30 AM and rang once a minute all day Wednesday until 4:00 PM. We then started again on Thursday morning and again rang all day. The overwhelming support we received from members of the student body and from members of the college faculty as they passed by and from those who volunteered for the half hour and one hour shifts were more than I had expected in this extremely conservative community. In all over the two days we had over twenty different bell ringers, including some that came up and asked for the opportunity to just take a partial shift between classes. My most memorable moment was on the first morning as I was standing there in 33 degree temperatures after about fifteen minutes and a veteran of this war asked me what I was doing. I explained our goal and he stuck out his hand and said he was glad to see that someone was willing to do it. I no longer felt the cold, and I remembered that those who gave up so much needed us to make others aware. I felt that if no one else showed up, that bell needed to keep ringing. During those two days, we only encountered a few negative comments concerning our presence and purpose.

Listen, Ring, Scream - 100,000 Bells Toll

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 12:15:15 -0600

Report on the event held October 26, 2005 in Palo Alto's Lytton Plaza, on the Fourth Anniversary of the PATRIOT Act, activists exercised their first amendment rights- to speak, to listen, ring bells, to scream on issues ignored and censored by the press.

Read on IndyMedia

LONDON: Edith Cavell Statue, St Martin's Place

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 09:05:11 -0600

PRESS RELEASE
Voices in the Wilderness UK [A]
Contact 0845 458 2564, 07791 486484
Wednesday 26 October 2005

INTERNATIONAL BELL TOLL PROTEST MARKS ANNIVERSARY OF IRAQI DEATHS SURVEY WITH 100,000 RINGS

LONDON: Edith Cavell Statue, St Martin's Place (just off Trafalgar Sq), 1-2pm, Saturday 29 October

A bell-tolling ceremony will take place this Saturday to mark the 1st anniversary of a survey that found that 100,000 Iraqis had died of war-related causes since the 2003 invasion.

The ceremony is one of over 70 such events taking place in the UK, US and Switzerland which aim to collectively toll 100,000 times - each ring symbolizing the death of an Iraqi person as a result of the war and occupation [B]. Saturday's event will also feature names and pictures of Iraqis killed over the past two and a half years.

Witness for the Iraqi Dead in Lexington, Kentucky

Sat, 29 Oct 2005 15:45:59 -0500

Yesterday, we held a witness for the 100,000 Iraqi dead on the corner of Triangle Park in downtown Lexington, Kentucky. At 9:40 a.m. we began to sound a Buddhist gong twice a minute until 6 p.m. to equal 1,000 rings. The gong rested on a small round table with a purple mourning tablecloth and a purple velvet runner with golden Autumn leaves. We placed signs on the lightposts which read: Mourn the Dead, Heal the Wounded, End the War and another one which explained the bell ringing witness in 100 communities across the world. We also held these signs up to motorists as they passed by. At 4 p.m. we were joined by other members of the community who were erecting a memorial in honor of the 2,000 American dead.

Rochester, NH

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 15:38:41 -0500

We will stay until we have rung our bells 1000 rings. How long depends on how many show up. We will hope for our usual 10 to 12.

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

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 05:46:11 -0500

This comes from Elisa in San Francisco...

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.

Continue Reading on Elisa's Website

Bell-ringing for People who Have Died in the War in Iraq

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 05:42:17 -0500

(Diane, Margaret, Nancy, Micki, Dorothy, Jan)

Every minute, for seventeen hours,
the thick, glass Buddha bell shudders
and sings its lamentation,
the axe blade of a solitary, anguished note cleaving the air
opening a space
into which a single voice among us
names a person killed in the war in Iraq.

Zaynab Haadei Jabar, twelve years old…
Kevin Clarke, twenty-one years old…

The Arabic mixing with the Anglo
entwined with the music
invokes the spirit of those named.
That mingling is more real than the diesel roar of trucks
here on Sonoma Avenue;
the redwood trees, oaks, and maples more real,
these spirits, above and about us, more real
than Homeland Security,
than holsters and flack jackets,
than Humvees and guns.

--David Smith-Ferri

Amnesty International

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:12:30 -0500

Has anyone contacted AI about the arrests in the UK? It sounds like a human rights violation to me. I don't know whom in AI to contact, though.

Ashley

Mouths Wide Open's first day

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 14:19:24 -0500

Mouths Wide Open's first day in Union Square -- 12-2 and 4-6 went smoothly. We handed out information flyers with the numbers of Iraqi dead and we read one name per minute for the four hours. Many people who stood silently and looked at our display with some photos of the dead (from Dahr Jamail's website.) The pictures were laid lovingly on a muslin sheet with rose petals and a dirt circle. Every minute we read a name, with age and cause of death, with bells accompanying it. Several people accepted the offer to put rose petals on the cloth as they offered thoughts to the dead. We had some beautiful responses: an Afghani man who sat for awhile and then said thank you so much for doing this.