REMEMBERING - ARLINGTON WEST

ARLINGTON WEST memorial at Santa Monica Beach

I was totally stunned and left without words when I walked up the pier in Santa Monica Beach (California).
Just north of the pier the beach was filled with white crosses, perfectly lined, each with its own motionless shadow on the sand.

Each and every Sunday since February 15th 2004, this memorial is set up on the sand at Santa Monica Beach by the local chapter of Veterans for Peace and other volunteers as a way to acknowledge the costs and consequences of war as an instrument of international policy.

Volunteers start setup at 7:30am on Sunday mornings - rain or shine - and take down starts just before sunset Sunday evenings.

Also erected in the sand is a "wall" now about 45 feet in length similar to the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C., listing all the fallen American military personnel since the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq to the present day.

Visitors can read any of the many names, ages, rank, hometown and circumstance of death, and are invited to select and write the name of a fallen military person on a piece of paper along with any thoughts or sentiments and attach this to a cross along with a flower. Many family members and close loved ones have come and dedicated their own words and mementos of their loved one.

Arlington West offers a place to mourn, to contemplate, grieve, and to honor and acknowledge those who've lost their lives and to reflect upon the true cost of war. A sign nearby calls attention to the number of Iraqi's killed, now numbering by some estimates to be well over 100,000, that the number of crosses required to acknowledge them would fill the entire beach.

Watch Carly Sheehan read her poem "A Nation Rocked to Sleep".

Also featured on my photoblog www.hk-pix.blogspot.com

This image is copyrighted
Credit: Veterans for Peace, Santa Monica Chapter
( http://www.addictedtowar.com/mfso.htm )