The flags are small. A foot-long metal dowel holds a two-inch square of limp mylar. They’re cheap. A box of 5,000 costs about 40 bucks. They’re used primarily by utility companies to mark underground cables or gas lines so they don’t get cut in a dig.
But the more than 100,000 of them that grid the football-field sized lawn from the Knight Library and Prince Lucien Campbell Hall, past the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and Johnson Hall, up to Hendricks Hall and Collier House, sprawling all the way to the Erb Memorial Union, are more than just flags; they’re symbols.
They represent those who have died in our nation’s war in Iraq.
Each of the 112,000 white flags stands for about 6 of the estimated 655,000 Iraqis who have died in the War. Each of the 3,000 red flags stands for each dead American soldier.
“It’s our opportunity to mourn,” said University student and event organizer Peter Kass. “We’re not trying to blame, it’s just ‘this is what happened’”
“We’re the two countries involved, but it’s over there… We don’t have to deal with (it) on a daily basis,” Kass said. “There’s so much death… I’ve had the chills all day. They won’t go away… I’ll be talking with someone and I’ll just have to stop.”
The Iraqis who have died are “not just al-Qaida; they’re women and children too,” Kass said.
Looking past the field of white toward the corner for Americans, Kass went distant. “We’ve both lost,” he said.
The project started at the University of Colorado at Boulder this past fall, Kass said, and came here after fundraising and organizing from different groups. It will stay on campus for one week and will feature speakers and musicians Thursday in the EMU Amphitheater. The University administration was supportive in bringing the project, Kass said, and said it could take up as much space as it needed. The groups that helped to bring the project include the Survival Center, the ASUO Multicultural Center, the Cultural Forum and the Eugene Friends, a Quaker church.
On Sunday, more than 100 volunteers from a myriad of community and campus groups came to help. Some volunteers just happened by and, seeing the project, grabbed a handful to help, Kass said. He said people showed up with their kids, and elderly folks who had trouble bending down walked behind other volunteers handing them flags to plant.
A couple planters stood behind the Collier House cracking jokes about President Bush. On the far west edge of the flags, University student Hailey Sheldon walked past PLC, eyes red.
“It makes me sick,” she said. “It’s fucking terrifying.”
Kass said volunteers will staff a booth all week in the quad “to discuss, to be there for a hug, to listen.”
Kass said that though many people came out to help, planting 120,000 flags was a long and tiring project.
“You think you’re almost done,” he said, but “the flags keep coming.”
“When’s it gonna end?” Kass asked. “How many flags are we gonna have to put down before it’s enough?”
The sign above the small corner of red flags documents the number of American soldiers who have died at 3,027. The 27, however, has been crossed out, and next to it the number 55 is written in dark, black script. This weekend, roadside bombs, gun battles and a Black Hawk helicopter crash claimed the lives of 27 more American soldiers. Saturday, The New York Times reported, was third-deadliest day for American service members in Iraq since the beginning of the war.