Yesterday on Father's Day I went into the public space in the Beantown area, and read all 3500+ names of the Americans killed in Iraq, their age, rank, and date of death.
It took more than 7 hours to finish--it was one of the most intense experiences of my life. And somewhere in the middle of all that death, the idea came into my head:
IF GEORGE BUSH HAD TO READ THESE NAMES, HE WOULD WITHDRAW THE TROOPS TOMORROW. (Props again to Meteor Blades for his example on this front.)
http://www.dailykos.com/...
More below the flip...
A few observations:
- The stunningly disproportionate number of Latin-American names among the dead.
- Certain days, for example January 26, 2005, go on and on--it was impossible not to start weeping, at the sheer length of the list of dead on one day--37 by my count. And to the notion that 37 dead is not so much in war, when you read the names one-by-one-- feeling the age of the victim, knowing their rank, seeing who they died with, you experience each as an individual. It may sound crazy, but you begin to feel like you know this person, or might know them. And in any given day, (and there are dead on virtually every single day) there may be a few or six or eight dead. But then to encounter 37...a sense of the HELL they must have experienced comes through.
- I got almost NO NEGATIVE RESPONSE. Because it wasn't a protest, but an honoring of the dead, it was received either with curiosity, mild approval or passing interest. OK, I live in a very blue area, but I would be willing to do this kind of thing in the middle of friggin' Texas...
- I felt that I was UNDER THE RADAR of POLITICS--it felt so good to be honoring those who sacrificed for the rights my daughters have to be basically free from fear on the streets. No f*ing Republican was gonna tell me to stop. In fact, I felt great rage at those soulless assholes for stealing and owning this issue nationally. In that moment I was fearless; in some wierd way, I felt that the dead were protecting me because I was not forgetting them, not letting them slide into oblivion; I was rendering their deaths meaningful because they were not for nothing, at least to me in that moment.
- I got the crazy idea to challenge George Bush to read the names of the dead in a single day, out loud--to CALL HIM OUT, PERSONALLY. I would even offer to read WITH the asshole, if he would take my dare. I know it sounds crazy, but there is no way he would be able to stay in his Republican armor-plated hole of denial if he went through the experience, the labor, the effort of encountering each one of the names of the one's he had sent to die (the question of WHAT THEY DIED FOR is another matter altogether).
- I felt VERY EMPOWERED in this event, as if the proper approach to the souls of the dead gave me authority, at least in that moment, that was irreproachable. At some moment I had the sense that 'If a gang of hostile Harley-Davidson's rode up, I could not be deterred.'
My closing thoughts: maybe I'll do it again on the 4th of July. A substantial number of folks from my church community came out to support, and were deeply moved. THERE IS AN INCREDIBLE POWER IN FACING THE DEATHS OF OUR TROOPS, of standing right there with them, whole-heartedly, especially when the inhuman, absolutely demonic-in-their-calculatingness thugs of the Republican Kakistocracy are doing everything in their power to cover over the horrible reality of the human cost of the war. (Please forgive my hopeless love of capitals).
Meteor Blades, I'm eagerly awaiting your post on your event!