Listen, Ring, Scream - 100,000 Bells Toll

Listen, Ring, Scream - 100,000 Bells Toll

Wednesday, October 26, 2005, a light rain was falling when the bell began to toll. Barbara Deutsch opened the four hour ceremony. A small placard at her feet said simply:

IN MOURNING IN PROTEST IN RESISTANCE TO SILENCE

WORLD-WIDE OCTOBER 24-28 BELLS ARE RINGING 100,000 TIMES

1000 TIMES EACH in 100 PLACES to COMMEMORATE 100,000 LIVES*

WOMEN CHILDREN AND ME; HOMES FAMILIES AND DIGNITY-

VIOLENTLY TAKEN IN INVASION AND OCCUPATION,

WAR CRIMES COMMITTED AT GREAT COST TO OUR HOMES FAMILIES AND DIGNITY.

JUSTICE NOT VENGEANCE
VOICES FOR CREATIVE NON-VIOLENCE VCNV.org

*THE LANCET, OCTOBER 29, 2004
IRAQMORTALITY.ORG

On the fourth anniversary of the weekly Listening Project, just a few of us came, (generally I cancel when it rains) but we started early and stayed much longer than usual, and found time to listen. Samina Faheem Sundas, Executive Director of American Muslim Voice http://www.amuslimvoice.org, came. We set up the microphone, and began speaking, and reading Kathy Kelly’s “For Whom They Toll”-

“Today, in cities and towns throughout the U.S. and beyond, activists will gather to grieve and protest the carnage wrought by the unlawful and immoral war in Iraq. Thousands will gather to commemorate the 2,000 lives of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and call upon U.S. people to stop funding the war. Others will focus chiefly upon the well over 100,000 Iraqi lives lost, and, in a campaign launched some months ago, will ring bells 100,000 times –1,000 chimes each in 100 different locations - as names of Iraqi civilians killed since the start of Shock and Awe are read aloud.

“October 25th marked the 2,000th American service-member death in the Iraq war: October 29th will mark one year since The British Lancet, perhaps the world’s foremost medical journal, estimated from careful research that tens of thousands of Iraqi people had died due to this same horrific war. The demonstrations will overlap, but for once we can claim that separate demonstrations, held, simultaneously, can actually raise awareness and hopefully affect change. These protests are after all the same: One life, two thousand lives, one hundred thousand lives, or many, many more - are all too much to pay for the imperial ambitions of the few.

“Let me tell you about something I just learned. Eager to help promote the “100,000 Rings” campaign, I recently accepted an invitation - from a literature class at a Baltimore community college - to bring some experiences of injustice and war to the students’ literary pursuit – in this case, the ancient Greek drama, Antigone. It was a surprisingly good fit. Sophocles’ heroine dies utterly forsaken and alone in punishment for standing against Creon, her king, who decrees that her slain brother, declared an enemy of state, will rot, unburied, above ground. Antigone defies the king and adheres to her conscience. In front of witnesses, she pours dirt upon her brother’s corpse, and when the King’s guards undo her work, she returns openly to the scene of her “crime’ to repeat her act once again.

“After the King sentences her to be buried alive, the blind seer, Tiresias, denounces the unjust King, saying: “Thou hast thrust children of the sunlight to the shades, …but keepest in this world … a corpse unburied, unhonoured, all unhallowed,” entombing the living and refusing to honor the dead. When Creon relents, of course it is too late. Tiresias had warned him of his madness and as the Greeks and others echoing have said: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

The lesson for our time is painful.

“All over the world, people can see that the U.S. went to war against Iraq because the ruling elites in this country knew Iraq couldn’t fight back. Enough madness. We are mired in a war that could last ten years or more, one that is already intensifying other, perhaps even more dangerous conflicts. Now, whatever security we might establish, as U.S. people or as people of the world, rests in seeking fair trade relations and raising vigorous opposition to the warmongers who run this country. Any other behavior would be madness.

“We must not show Creon’s callous disregard to those slain by war. A few months ago, our friend Scott Blackburn went to downtown Chicago, alone, and rang a bell, once a minute, in memory of each U.S. soldier who had been killed in Iraq. The dreadful total then was still “only” 1594, and it kept him there for over 24 hours, ringing his bell once a minute. People who stopped to talk with him learned that honoring the other dead of this war would take months. A local reporter came by, and although Scott’s story of our troops made the paper, nothing he had told the reporter about the Iraqi casualties was considered news. For Scott, the 100,000 rings project was immediately apparent as a burning obligation.

“Like all war, this rotten folly creates victims on all sides. What it has done to our safety in this most precarious of times, by destroying most of what was left of our good faith with the world, by further fracturing international solidarity and understandings of rights and law, by escalating conflicts of both grave terror and war-making, has prevented U.S. people from seeing the greatest terrors we face, the disasters generated by our own degradation of the world’s resources and our planetary environment. And let us each consider also the small but real tragedy of not being able to look at ourselves in the mirror each day without wondering how much longer we’ll continue to make war against people for the sake of gluttonously controlling their precious and irreplaceable energy resources.

“Which is to say: if you see people gathered in your neighborhood this week, in anger or grief or guilt, with their bells or their candles, perhaps it’s best not to ask if it’s an observance for 2,000 Americans or for the well-over 100,000 Iraqi tragedies our government has not yet even seen fit to count. A life is a life, and the full tragedies of this cruel war are yet to be told. Advice I read in sixth grade remains true today: ‘send not to know for whom the bell tolls.’

It tolls for thee.”

I also read Edgar Allen Poe’s classic- The Bells.

I read- Umair Kahn’s essay- Scream-

“Spare a scream for the estimated 100,000 dead and 3 million homeless, muted out of world media.

“Unmourned by the news media, unmarked by the world, Saturday October 22 was the two week anniversary of the 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan, India, and Kashmir. An estimated 100,000 have been killed and, of the 3 million made homeless, at least another 100,000 are in high peril as winter rolls down from nearby K-2. If they perish, they would surely have been suffocated by the silent air waves. ”For the 3 million homeless the bell tolls noiselessly. Beyond Pakistan`s national news media, their coverage is a silent movie playing out on inside pages (if at all). Four more weeks of radio (and print and TV) silence and the region will become as quiet and stone cold as the news media. The news folks whose attention to the tragedy has declined as swiftly as the deaths have mounted, may finally get to report a "frozen" death toll. In four weeks, winter too will white-out the survivors. ”Intense and swift and whole-hearted as the response has been among the compassionate and the aware, it has been far too noiseless. For Pakistanis, for Kashmiris, for South Asians, for Asians, for humans and for humanity everywhere, this is not the time for whispered tears, silent if ardent prayers, mumbled grumblings, and soundless emails. ”This is the time to scream. ”Not in despair, or panic, or anger. But in recognition and in resonance. ”This is the time to broadcast the unbroadcasted. And this time expires in 4 weeks. There will be little point to being heard after that. ”There have been No vigils to mark the disaster: week 1, week 2, now week 3 - I keep counting. No silent, candlelight vigils at sunset. No minute of silence at 8:51am. No day of mourning. No protest march (silent or loud) against NATO`s refusal to airlift the injured. No sit-ins to demand of governments the desperately needed helicopters, tents, medicine, monetary aid. And no demonstrations in front of the oblivious offices of world media. ”3 million people have cried out, shouted, groaned, and screamed for 14 days. Cries of pain, of loss and mourning, out of deep rubble, for a sip of clean water, in despair, in panic, in anger. “That is a lot of noise muffled down by the media. ”These screams must make it through us into radio, TV, online editions and hard copies. Why? Because compassion and humanity do not stifle the cries of the helpless. Villainy and inhumanity do that. ”Why else? Because as long as these screams are unheard, they will keep multiplying. ”This is the time to scream. ”Why, I wonder, have we not screamed till now. Those for whom the quake struck close to home have responded with unimaginable emotion and effort. I have never seen anything like it within my community. But the din of our passion blocked out the silence around us. That must be why the even the most well-intentioned among us have not reached out to all colleagues, friends, family, schoolmates, neighbors, bystanders, celebrities, talk radio hosts, politicians, journalists. That must be why Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz who met with Angelina Jolie a few months back has not called upon her to raise awareness of the plight of these people. That may be why we have not plastered our local public spaces with flyers and posters. Or called our local TV stations and demanded that they cover the news. Or incessantly called and emailed world governments to send in helicopters. Or protested NATO`s refusal out in the streets. Or bombarded the detached media with voicemails. ”But there is still 4 weeks of time left to scream out to the what-you-never-hear-never-exists world. Not just a metaphorical scream but a real one: close your eyes, clasp your hands in font of you, focus on the unheard scream of a victim, then exhale a loud "Aaaaaaaaaah" till you have no breath left. Smile at the absurdity or cry in relief. ”Do this at home, at work, in public places, at non-silent vigils you hold, during commemorative moments of non-silence that you declare, and at rallies you help organize (preferably in front of news media offices). And when others (colleagues, friends, family, schoolmates, neighbors, bystanders, celebrities, talk radio hosts, politicians, journalists) see and hear this, and ask if you are feeling alright, tell them about the earthquake: about the helicopters, the tents, the winter, the 100,000 dead, the 100,000 to save, the 3 million homeless, the injured, the amputated, the NATO refusal, the silent media.

”Tell them about the screams and how to stop them.”

Chuck Millar joined us, bringing with him a copy of Dave McGowan’s latest newsletters- (http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr73.html and http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr74.html ) entitled “Katrina, Eugenics and Peak Oil.” I asked him to read it aloud, and he did.

I listened, and so did Barbara, and I began to notice other people pausing, stopping, coming to listen. The rain stopped. The sun began to shine. People began to gather in Lytton Plaza and ask questions.

The bell continued to ring, punctuating the text. When Chuck finished reading, we turned off the microphone. Rich conversations flowed. We were all glad to have come.

Barbara continued the bell ceremony in San Francisco on October 29th. Other Bay Area communities also participated.

On Saturday night, Barbara’s bell will be part of an altar to the victims of the Iraq War in the annual Spiral Dance, which draws over a thousand people.I received this in an email from Starhawk today, thinking about the ritual, before us-

“There are so many dead this year. So many large scale tragedies. The great wave last winter that swept tens of thousands to their death in Asia. The hurricanes and floods in the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean. The earthquake in Pakistan, the mudslides in Guatemala, the simmering volcanoes in El Salvador. Natural disasters—compounded by official neglect, intensified by global warming and the destruction of wetlands and mangrove swamps and all of nature’s protective systems.

”And the dead of war. Two thousand American soldiers, tens of thousands of Iraquis. A constant attrition of Palestinians and Israelis. The countless war dead of Africa who have dropped out of the news. Each death a loss to someone, a huge well of grief.

”My mother, who died thirteen years ago, was an expert on loss and grief. A psychotherapist, she wrote a book, 'A Time to Grieve', which is still a classic in the field of bereavement. She taught me that grief is not something to fear. If we let ourselves feel our pain and loss, if we truly mourn and rage, grief has a healing, transformative power.

”Cindy Sheehan, the mother of one of those dead soldiers, is taking her grief to the gates of the White House, chaining herself to the fence like the suffragists who demanded votes for women, long ago. I met her earlier this year, at Crawford, Texas, where she encamped before Bush’s ranch demanding to meet him face to face, to confront him with the reality of her loss, to ask him what was the noble cause her son died for. Her vigil there was like the small waves of the sea, eating away at the buttresses of his power, a harbinger of the storm surge to come.

”If compassion is the ability to feel and imagine someone else’s grief, Bush and his cabal of ultra-right advisors have long seemed lacking. Moreover, they have fed on death, used death and fear and horror to buttress their power. They used the deaths of September 11 to extend their power. They used fear and ruthlessness to stun their opposition into silence and complicity as they unleashed a brutal and criminal war. Like vampires, they have maintained their unnatural life with blood.

”But the counter to this ghoulish power is real grief, real loss. True grief has the power to open the heart. It strips away lies, dissolves false differences, and reminds us that we are all vulnerable, all mortal, all clinging for our lives to those fragile cords of love that bind us to those we care about. True grief casts out fear.

“’There’s nothing they can do to me,’ Cindy Sheehan said to me at Camp Casey. ‘There’s nothing more than can take from me. I’ve already lost my son.’

”Standing among the pictures of the dead, at Camp Casey, I imagined the spirits of those soldiers rising up, a tidal wave of rage and anguish turning against those who caused and misuse their deaths. I see Cindy, fearless in her grief, strong in her mother-right, bringing that spectral army to the gates of the White House itself. I see them enter in, cleansing, rooting out lies, overturning every false foundation. I feel a fresh wind blowing, awakening courage, integrity, and compassion in all of our hearts.

”This is the spell I would shape this Samhain season. We are in a time of great loss, facing more before the world comes back into balance. The gifts of grief are painful, but if we open to them, allow our hearts to break and in breaking, expand, then grief and compassion may save our lives.

http://www.starhawk.org (Starhawk is the author of ten books on earth-based spirituality and activism, including The Earth Path, The Spiral Dance, and together with M. Macha Nightmare, The Pagan Book of Living and Dying. She teaches and creates ritual with the Reclaiming network that links earth-based spirituality and activism. http://www.reclaiming.org )

If we open our hearts, all rituals, public or private can be moving, transformative experiences that help us give meaning to our lives and the lives of those whom we have loved or feel a connection to because their stories have touched us, and placed us on a new path. May we, together, save lives, and save ourselves.