By snoadmin
Every Sunday around 4:30 a.m., hundreds of volunteers help set up over 2,849 crosses just north of the pier at Santa Monica State Beach for the organization Veterans for Peace. The group came to campus Thursday and set up a small gravesite memorial dedicated to the soldiers who have died in the Iraq War.
In the temporary cemetery memorial in the University Central Quad, 600 crosses were erected. Vietnam veteran Ed Ellis, president of Veterans for Peace, explained the organization was on campus to explain the project known as Arlington West. The project began in February of 2004.
“It’s a very emotional experience,” Ellis said. “Family members and close loved ones have come. Young people are crying because they recognize their buddies they fought with.” Ellis also said”many use the site to grieve, dedicate words and place mementos on the empty white wooden crosses.
“This is a living organic memorial, changing every day,” Ellis said. He said it takes almost six hours to set it up.
Veterans for Peace, along with a chapter of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), set up the smaller campus memorial at about 8:30 a.m. Thursday. Ellis said the geometry of the site didn’t work on the campus the way they expected. The campus memorial, set up in the resemblance of a military gravesite, was originally planned to be a thousand crosses, but the volunteers could only fit 600.
Along with crosses, there were moons and the Star of David, representing the Muslim and Jewish-American soldiers who died in Iraq.
A passerby would have seen signs that tallied up the number of soldiers who died that day, the total number of American soldiers who have died and a large poster of the faces of the first thousand American soldiers who died fighting in Iraq.
There were Veterans for Peace and MFSO members on site to answer questions. Joanne Tortorici Luna, a Veterans for Peace volunteer and a Cal State Long Beach educational psychology assistant professor, said the students were “respectful and happy to see someone showing this on campus.” Luna also said there was only one passerby throughout the whole day who had a negative comment about the site.
She said two years ago, there were many people who were against the Arlington West memorial in Santa Monica. She also said that the numbers have become a lot smaller over the years, and that people are “moved by the visual impact and sheer numbers.”
The CSULB memorial stayed through the night and was taken down Friday afternoon.
David Troy, a Veterans for Peace representative, said they also took the memorial down south to different universities.
“We will take the memorial wherever people ask us to go,” Troy said.
Veterans for Peace have been all over the United States and even set up the memorial adjacent to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.
“We want people to feel,” Ellis said. “A lot of men get upset.”
Ellis also said on behalf of past men who do not like the memorial, that it is giving them feelings and according to him, the men don’t like these feelings.
The memorial stirred up emotions, but it is also trying to show people that this is the time for the American troops to come home, Ellis said.
In reference to what the war always comes down to, Ellis said it is all about “money, power and the ego.”
For more information about Arlington West or the MFSO, visit veteransforpeacela.org or mfsooc.org
