Scores of our friends from DFAM (Democracy for America-Miami) and Veterans for Peace put up 2,500 tombstone replicas in downtown Miami Saturday, starting before dawn. Among the early birds was Dave Patlak, Democratic challenger for the U.S. House in Florida District 18, who worked for two hours before dashing off to canvass in his congressional race. The memorial event is in his district.
The white tablets inscribed with name, rank and age of the U.S. fallen in Iraq stopped many people in their tracks. The thought of that many U.S. soldiers dead in Iraq -- no, more than that, that's all we had the energy to produce -- hit many people like a brick. We go along in our activist mindsets counting the casualties daily. I make a point of looking at the PBS evening news and staring at the screen at the end of the hour when they silently show the names and photos of the daily dead. But a lot of our countrymen do not pay attention. So when they see a couple acres of tombstone replicas they are stunned. "They are not telling us the truth," one woman wailed after I told her what the field of white represented.
One somber young man with a buzzcut, Manuel Valdez, walked into our shaded HQ and asked if the names were in any order, because he wanted to look for the name of his buddy, Spc. Kevin A. Cuming, who died in Iraq. We hadn't been able to keep alphabetical order throughout, but we had left some blank tablets, and we gave him a marking pen so he could write his friend's name and memorialize him. I could hardly speak to him, my throat was so full. For me, a Vietnam vet, this brings back the agony of my dead buddies from 40 years ago, the names I look for on the Wall when I visit Washington. It took about 10 years to get that Vietnam memorial organized. They say it grew out of a need to heal the nation's wounds from Vietnam. Sorry, the wounds are not healed. Your friends' dying in vain is not something you get over in a generation or two. I wonder when we'll be doing this for the Iraq dead.
A brilliant documentary crew is filming this. A trailer is up on YouTube, slugged Arlington Miami. It can also be seen at Dave Patlak's blog, www.VoteBigDave.org.
The tablets will be taken up Monday evening after a 5 p.m. rally at Bayfront Park.