Memorial Day: Arlington West in Santa Barbara, California

This is a picture from Arlington West, in my hometown of Santa Barbara, California. This project is now under the auspices of the Santa Barbara chapter of Veterans for Peace. The introduction that follows is from the website of the Santa Barbara group.

“The first Sunday of November 2003, a group of local activists erected 340 wooden crosses on the beach immediately west of Stearns Wharf, marking the death of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen in Iraq.

Outraged that the Bush administration had barred U.S. media from photographing returning coffins containing the war dead from Iraq, founder Stephen Sherrill, along with a small group of local activists, erected the first installation of what has become widely known as the Arlington West memorial. ‘I didn’t feel that the American people were mindful of the terrible price we were paying – and were about to pay – for the invasion and occupation of Iraq,’ says Sherrill. ‘The statistics in the newspapers were just tiny little numbers, too easy to breeze over.’ Since the first installation of about 340 crosses in November of 2003, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq has grown beyond 4,500. Formerly held every Sunday morning, and now erected on a twice-a-month basis (first and third Sunday of each month), members of Veterans for Peace and volunteers from the community place crosses in the sand by Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara, CA, in remembrance of those whose lives have been sacrificed in Iraq. Hundreds of observers from across the nation and around the world visit Arlington West every week. To date, there have been approximately twenty duplications of the original Arlington West all across America, including their weekly ‘sister memorial’ in Santa Monica, CA. In the intervening years since the memorial started, Veterans for Peace members and volunteers have effectively transformed what began as an angry anti-war protest into a genuine memorial — somber, chilling, and irresistibly moving. The memorial has been deliberately de-politicized in an effort to make Arlington West a non-threatening experience for everyone, regardless of their political affiliation. Gone are the placards denouncing George W. Bush that were there in the beginning. In their place are flowers, flags, and the names of the dead attached to the crosses and posted on makeshift bulletin boards. The crosses are planted in straight, tight rows, covering over an acre of beach that every Sunday make a stunning visual statement. In the background, the sound of ‘Taps’ can be heard playing nonstop from a nearby recorder. At sunset, the music ends and the crosses are taken down, packed up, and stored away until the coming week.

Adjacent to one of the most heavily traveled intersections in Santa Barbara, Stearns Wharf has always been a favorite place for tourists to stroll. But now, it has also become a place where friends and relatives of the deceased can pay their last respects. ‘Until you’ve held a weeping mother in your arms who has lost her child – or worse, her only child – in Iraq, it’s difficult to grasp the enormity of the pain and the sorrow and the grief that has resulted from this war that WE started,’ says Sherrill. Everyone involved with Arlington West has a similar story to tell. Nearly a thousand of the crosses have been visited by friends, comrades, or loved ones. ‘We never realized it would get so gigantic,’ says Pat Chamberlin-Calamar. ‘Every time I place flowers by a cross, I say a little prayer.’”

 As the Wikipedia entry on Arlington West notes, “In August 2010, the members of the Santa Barbara chapter of Veterans for Peace decided to replace the traditional Arlington West memorial with one which focuses on the War in Afghanistan. The 3000+ crosses for the casualties in Iraq were removed and replaced with 1200+ plastic tombstones representing the fatalities in Afghanistan, ending the memorial dedicated specifically to the Iraq war.” It seems, however, that crosses are once again being used, and now for marking those who died in both wars.

Comments

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

One is perfectly free to refuse such things.

I've had my fill of Hitchens and the other "new atheists" who should have learned a thing or two from the atheists of another era, like J.J.C. ('Jack') Smart, or my late teacher and friend, Peter A. Angeles.

Here ends, on my part, the discussion (such as it is).

[Jimbino]

You need to reread my comment "Prayers, oaths, pledges, blue laws, and religious icons and monuments ARE imposed on freethinkers" and revise your comment that you have never been forced to pray, etc. Do you know what a blue law is?

You might want to reread Thomas Paine, bestselling American author, to get an idea of rage. I guess you didn't know Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins.

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

Indeed, since the age of reason I've never been forced to pray, take an oath or pledge, or compelled to view a religious icon or monument. I've always felt free to "be religious" or be free of religion, as I was for a time as a young adult; and I suspect that is a feeling with which most folks are intimately familiar. I've known (and continue to know) quite a few atheists, freethinkers, and agnostics, and none of them have evidenced the sort of "rage" you attribute to them. To return to the subject matter of the post: I fail to see how viewing the crosses at Arlington West has harmed the non-religious: if one fears such things it betrays a kind of emotional and intellectual insecurity.

[Jimbino]

It seems that you must not have experienced Amerika yet. Prayers, oaths, pledges, blue laws, and religious icons and monuments ARE imposed on freethinkers. If freedom from religion didn't "truly matter," it might have been relegated to the 10th Amendment instead of occupying a privileged position in the 1st Amendment.

What is it that "truly matters" to you?--Quartering of soldiers?

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

While I'm reluctant to descend into the ad hominem space you appear to relish, I do think you might want to reflect on the dark sources and true meaning of your crudely expressed fears and rage. I'm not too fond of liquor stores, porno shops, or reality television, but it's hardly "imposed" on me, as I'm free to direct my attention to what truly matters. Your obsession with "religious and superstitious nuts" has apparently knocked you off balance, in which case what the ancient Greeks called sophrosyne and what today falls partly under the rubric of good sense will, alas, remain elusive.

[Jimbino]

Lots of big words for small ideas here, Patrick. Anyone who uses "gratuitous" or "needlessly" is suspect from the beginning.

Imagine, if you can, your anger at awaking to see all the Christian crosses turned into a field of purple phalli overnight. That might help you to imagine the rage we atheists and freethinkers feel at awaking every day to see all those crosses, crucifixes in hospitals, Ten Commandment Monuments on our Capitol lawns, moments of prayer, Star-spangled banners and pledges of allegiance.

Here's how I hope to communicate with you religious and superstitious nuts who keep insisting on imposing your stupidities on the rest of us: demands, lawsuits and high explosives, if necessary. Live (or die) with it!

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

Attempts to disturb or shock others in a gratuitous manner or needlessly test the limits of free speech would seem to interfere with the broader and more important goal of prompting individuals of diverse backgrounds and interests to think about our country’s penchant for undeclared and unjustifiable wars. This is not an endeavor to draw the lines between the “religious” and non-religious or “anti-religious” or test the doctrines of toleration and free speech, even if such things might, on occasion, arise as an incidental or spillover effect. If one is hoping to communicate with others who are members of a set large enough to include many individuals with whom one might otherwise be at odds ideologically or politically or culturally, what have you, then it seems prudent if not wise to act in the first instance in a way that invites them to take a step in one’s direction, that inclines them to keep a somewhat open mind, rather than so as to deliberately sabotage one’s efforts, to foreclose even the possibility of further communication, to assure failure. A little or incremental change (e.g., with regard to one’s ignorance, capacity for sympathy or compassion, or motivation to act so as to change an unethical or unjust status quo) is often better than none at all.

[Jimbino]

How about, instead of crosses, purple phalli? How about crosses in urine bottles? How about upside-down flags?

Somehow, I don't think the religious and superstitious PC forces would tolerate such free speech.

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

The crosses here might be said to symbolize something on the order of what sociologists have described as "civil religion." I'm pretty confident of the fact that if someone wanted to replace one of the crosses with some other symbol they believed appropriate by way of memorialization, local members of the Veterans for Peace would not in any way object.

Which reminds me: I've seen pictures of a small circle of Buddhists who burned incense and chanted Buddhist mantras or prayers within the field of crosses.

[Jimbino]

It looks like all the atheists and lapsed Catholics got crosses too.