Just before rush hour, four youth laid down on the sidewalk wrapped in white sheets as visualization of the now infamous picture representing the massacre. As people began to gather around the disturbing scene, the
The imagery brought the intolerable and entirely criminal nature of the occupation home to each passerby, making it impossible to continue to overlook the human costs of war. The majority of people that engaged with the organizers agreed that the illegal occupation of Iraq, and especially the brutal war crimes being carried out in our names absolutely have to stop, and were eager to discuss just what could be done to make this happen.
Debates broke out with people who were supportive of Bush’s “war on terrorism” and professed to want the government to do ‘whatever they have to do’ in order to protect United States citizens. Several fundamentalist Christians engaged with organizers, on the grounds that they refused to place any blame on the Bush regime for what happened in Haditha(they claimed that these crimes against humanity could only, in fact, be the fault of humans who have strayed from God’s plan, and that the only solution to ridding the world of crimes like torture was to return to that plan.
These heated debates sparked pedestrian interest, and subsequently many other discussions between individuals as to the violent realities of the present occupation and the possibilities for a very different future. Most importantly, each person who passed by the action continued their day thinking more deeply about just how intolerable this war is, and many left with a desire to act to end the atrocities perpetrated by the Bush Regime.
Get a few friends together and try this yourself. All you need is at least four white sheets and people to lay in them. In our case, the visual effect was quite strong, and could have been even stronger had all 24 people massacred in Haditha been represented by a corpse. The more bodies on the ground, the more people will have to pay attention to the action. As it was, each ‘body’ was representing six Iraqi civilian victims. The action can also benefit from a larger sign. While a posterboard sign is sufficient–in this case, the organizers had one sign with ‘The World Can’t Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime’ and another stating ‘
