UPTOWN GROUP LEADS WORLDWIDE EVENT
By Maya Schenwar
Special to Inside
The tolling of bells echoed down Dearborn St. once every minute last Thursday and Friday, reverberating off the orange Calder sculpture, causing the business people and shop-goers scurrying past Federal Plaza to take a second look. No, no new churches had been suddenly erected in the middle of downtown, and it was too early in the year for Christmas handbell-ers. The solemn bell-ringing ceremony, entitled "100,000 Rings," was the work of the Uptown group called Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCN).
In nearly 100 communities worldwide—including Chicago—anti-war groups gathered on Oct. 24-28, ringing a bell once a minute, 1,000 times per group, symbolizing the more than 100,000 deaths of Iraqi civilians since 2003 when the war began. Though casualty estimates vary, this number was published in a study by the British medical journal The Lancet, on Oct. 29, a year ago.
VCN co-coordinator Scott Blackburn, who initiated the project, estimates that the death toll is now well over 100,000. The intent of 100,000 Rings, he says, was to bring public attention back to hard numbers, numbers that vividly portray the gravity of the United States' impact on Iraq's population.
Chicago-area bell-ringers were not alone: last week's reverberations echoed from London, England, to Geneva, Switzerland, to Pittsburgh, PA, to Munster, IN, with each group taking responsibility for 1,000 rings of the bell. VCN members hope that the bell-ringing ceremonies will cause wide-ranging populations to question the U. S. and U. K.'s military policies, said Kathy Kelly, co-founder of VCN and two-time Nobel Prize Nominee. "We're ringing the bells to express alarm and grief over the horrific waste and carnage caused by this war," Kelly said. Vigils were held nationwide last week as U. S. casualties reached the 2,000 mark.
100,000 Rings began as a smaller project of Blackburn's. In May, he carried out a solo mini-version, heading down to Water Tower at 8 a.m. on May 8 and staying there over 26 hours, ringing a bell once a minute for each U.S. troop that had perished in Iraq. Staying up all night was an act of solidarity with the troops who were required to keep 24 hour vigil, he explained. The one-minute separation between rings was intended to let the sound resonate, slowly diminishing to nothing, fading like death.
"I wanted to do something that didn't include barking, carrying big signs, or being part of a crowd," Blackburn said. "I wanted to be able to talk to people."
Talk to people he did: he even conversed with an Iraqi family that wondered why he was not holding vigil for the fallen Iraqis, who were far more numerous than the U. S. dead. Blackburn agreed, and began to organize 100,000 Rings, keeping in mind the goal of a serious, quiet ceremony despite the larger scale.
Indeed, Milan Rai, one of the event organizers, described the Rings project as just as much of a private endeavor as a public display. "Reading the names of the dead and listening to the bell ringing is a form of meditation on the war and the reasons why we're active," Rai said. "Beforehand I was afraid I might be bored or numbed by four-hour bell-ringing sessions. Instead I've come out of our process [over three days] with more energy and more determination."
Kelly points to the simple sound of the tolling bell as a reminder of personal responsibility. "This project is a chance to raise John Donne's line, 'Do not ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee,'" she said.
100,000 Rings is just one of the many projects emerging from Voices for Creative Nonviolence's small, apartment-based office in Uptown. Several members lived in Iraq before, during, and after the U. S. invasion in 2003. In September, VCN and the U. K. group Justice Not Vengeance held a two-week fast in Washington, DC, in response to the IMF and World Bank Meetings. They called for the cancellation of Iraq's remaining debt, incurred under the notorious Saddam Hussein and now left to the Iraqi people.
In the coming months, Voices will organize a team to travel to Jordan to learn Arabic, while living among Iraqi refugees and documenting their experiences. Like 100,000 Rings, the language immersion program aims to find new ways to communicate the message of peace, Kelly said. |
