VFP’s Michael Cervantes on Arlington West, Counter-Recruitment, and His Work for Peace from Pulse TV & Maverick Media on Vimeo.

The film features 105 interviews, mostly with young soldiers who have served in Iraq, talking about their experiences there. It also features members of Gold Star Families for Peace, whose sons or daughters died in Iraq. Among these parents are Cindy Sheehan, Fernando Suarez, Jane Bright, Bill Mitchell, Vickie Castro, Nadia McCaffrey, and Karen Meredith.

Endorsements

The film has been notably praised by historian Howard Zinn, U.S. Congressman John Murtha, author Chalmers Johnson, filmmaker Haskell Wexler, and anti-war activists Medea Benjamin and Frank Dorrel.

A Vivid Reminder of the “True Cost of War”

SANTA BARBARA — A vivid reminder of the true cost of war was displayed on a Central Coast beach.

As Veterans Day weekend is coming to a close, a passionate Santa Barbara group is reminding people that America is still at war.

On Sunday, Veterans for Peace resurrected its Arlington West display and also read the names of the fallen.

They spent hours reading the names, but each one was read with the same respect.

“These men and women have families that will grieve forever,” said Toni Wellen, a Carpinteria resident.

It is the 8th anniversary of Arlington West.

Community members and leaders gathered at Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara for a special tribute on Sunday.

“I hope people take away the sense of what the true cost of war is,” said Mary Johnston, a member of Veterans for Peace.

As they do twice a month, veterans for peace pounded hundreds of white crosses into the sand in honor of the men and women who died in Afghanistan, but this Sunday was a little different.

The crosses served as a dramatic backdrop, while the names of the fallen were read.

Veterans for Peace has also created a wall in memory of the troops killed in Iraq.

Thousands of names are engraved on it.

“I put together all the names on the Iraq wall — and for the list for Afghanistan — it’s really hard, it’s really hard,” said Ron Dexter, a member of Veterans for Peace.

President Obama has announced that all combat troops in Iraq will be home by the end of the year.

The group hopes Americans take that news to heart.

“We have troops coming back that need an incredible amount of help, PTSD, TBI — traumatic brain injury –are very big issues,” said Dexter.

Source: http://www.kcoy.com/story/16029898/a-vivid-reminder-of-the-true-cost-of-war

Arlington West

Arlington West will hold a commemorative installation in honor of its eighth year of existence here in Santa Barbara at Stearn’s Wharf on Sunday, November 13, 2011. A reading of names of soldiers and civilians killed in the long wars will be held from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm. Congresswoman Lois Capps and former mayor Marty Blum will be featured speakers. The public is invited to help read the names and to help with the set-up (7:30 am) and the take-down (3:30 pm). In case of rain the event will be rescheduled for another time. For more information contact info@vfpsb.org, or the media contact for our chapter, Tom Urban, at urbantj@cox.net.

The number is shocking and sobering. It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.

Who are the extremists?

Those who murder Christians angry over the burning of a holy book or the Christian minister who provokes the murder of other innocent Christians by burning another religion’s holy book? What if a bunch of Muslims publicly burned a bible as a statement that Christianity was a false religion? How would American religious extremists react?

We have anti-abortionists who believe that killing abortionists is justified. We have Americans recommending nuking whole nations whom we disagree with.

We have already caused the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and more than a million have been displaced, their futures lost and fighting against each other over religion.

Saddam Hussein was bad, but are things better after spending one trillion dollars in Iraq and over 5000 US lives who left grieving families?

There is no end in sight until we believe that all men, women and children everywhere are created equal and have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in ways of their own choosing.

Ron Dexter Santa Barbara

There is something in the air, it broke out in Tunisia, spread to Egypt and many other nations. This is a wake up call. We the people of the USA are feeling it. We are not happy with what our government is doing in our name. It’s time to speak out, time to reclaim our representative Republic, time to define the future of our country.

On March 19th we will mark the eighth year of the invasion and occupation of Iraq with a march and rally. We will gather at 11:00 a.m. in De La Guerra Plaza, march at 11:45, south along State Street to Arlington West, the memorial at the beach that commemorates the thousands of US soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We want governance of, for and by the people – not the politicians, war profiteers and multi-national corporations. We want to foreclose these wars, not our homes. We want to rebuild our America. We want schools, jobs and a safe infrastructure. We’ve had enough of these multi-trillion dollar wars, and reckless foreign policy. We the people can do it together!

Will you join us?

I was talking to my neighbor
He said, “When I get to heaven, if it’s not like this,
I’ll just hop a cloud and I’m coming right back down here
Back to this heavenly bliss.”

“This Place” by Joni Mitchell
Watch on YouTube

In 2004, I first met Bob Potter when my volunteering began with the Veterans For Peace project envisioned by Steve Sherrill and called “Arlington West,” whereby crosses were set up each Sunday for U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq so as to bring home to the public the terrible cost of war. Back then when I helped with take-down of the crosses each Sunday, I initially knew Bob mostly as Chair of the monthly VFP Chapter 54 meetings which he was excellent at presiding over; always respectful and seamless flow that made the business pleasant, orderly, and productive. In 2007, after hospitalization precluded my heavy lifting at AW, I instead began greeting the public there. Since then, I had the pleasure of working Sundays with Bob Potter at Arlington West. Along with respective chores, always lively dialogue on movies to musicals, books to politics, travels to cuisine, and issues far and near and about everything between. Away from AW, I loved Bob’s marvelous plays, so timelessly creative, whose content always moved and freshness always amazed. It never ceased to amaze me how someone so gifted and extraordinarily accomplished could be so wonderfully ordinary and funny and caring. That someone so remarkable and marvelously talented and vital as Bob Potter should now be gone from us is heartbreaking. My deepest condolences to his family and friends and profound gratitude for having enjoyed the pleasure of his company. With Bob Potter, may we have the courage and the grace and the genius to make this a better place.

Elizabeth Colon
15 July 2010

Exactly three thousand white crosses
Symmetrically fixed in rows of forty-eight
Aligned at attention across a sandy beach
Vastly understate the reality.

Fleeting symbols of a Sunday afternoon,
Garnished with California seagulls, and a soft breeze
Coaxing tiny sailboats from the yacht harbor,
They shine in the sunlight, astonishing the tourists.

Bypasers from LA and the Valley, gawking New Yorkers,
Aussies and Londoners, Dutchmen and Turks,
Gabblers in Farsi, Japanese, Hindi
And all varieties of Spanish pause to contemplate
The irresistible photo opportunity of Death.

As the digital cameras whiz, zip and flash,
Catching the poignant sight, disposing of its brief shock,
Children wonder if there are bodies in the sand,
Then, reassured and disappointed, are led off for an ice cream.

If there were three thousand deaths here
Instead of these chaste memorial place markers,
Three thousand rotted blood-soaked dismembered corpses
Of former American boys and girls from the small towns and barrios,
The squandered assets of bemedaled Generals
Riddled with bullets, blown to pieces, mouths agape,
Strewn chaotically, catastrophically across an invasion beach
Of reality, crashed in our midst in a terrible tsunami
Flooding the beaches and the streets, dashed
Across our suburban lawns, stinking up the schoolyards,
Polluting the supermarkets, poisoning the churches,
Assaulting our ears, offending our nostrils, raping our eyes
With an obscene actuality not seen on TV -
This atrocity dutifully unleashed on our orders – well then,
Something would have to be done about it.

But as it is, the crosses and the grizzled veterans
Who tend them like a flowered garden of regret
Are the matter of a brief moment
For onlookers with other destinations,
And the ignorant carnage grinds on,
Eleven time zones away, receding
Into the forgetful future of a careless empire.

Bob Potter
Arlington West, Santa Barbara
October, 2007