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Oregon flags represent the fallen in Iraq
It looks like snow...but it is flags
February 2007 | Written By Jim Starowicz | Photos by Susan Cundiff

Oregon WAND contributed to the purchase of flags and members worked to set up the exhibit. The Iraq Body Count Exhibit is set up on the U. of Oregon campus. From a distance, it looks as if an early thaw has arrived on the University of Oregon campus, as hundreds of thousands of red and white flecks stand out brilliantly like new tulips against the green grass.

Hundreds of volunteers stoop, planting bright colors like nymphs creating a spring landscape. Some passers-by on Sunday smiled as they came upon the vivid scene, stretching between Alder and University streets, and from the Knight Library to East 13th Avenue. But their smiles evaporated as they learned that each of the 120,000 white flags symbolizes six or seven dead civilians since the start of the war in Iraq in 2003. And that the patch of 3,000 red flags represents the 3,055 U.S. soldiers killed as of Saturday.

The flags are the Iraq Body Count Memorial, started in October at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in an attempt to make abstract death toll numbers more real to the public, said Monica Vaughan, a 24-year-old graduate student who helped bring the weeklong exhibit to the UO.

"We're trying to drive home the impact of the real cost of war, which is human lives," Vaughan said. "It's not necessarily a protest, it's a memorial."

Volunteers from the university and community began planting the markers at 9:30 a.m. Sunday, neatly placing them in the wet dirt in tidy rows. They finished just before 5 p.m.

As she planted flag after flag, Eugene resident Rachel Jordan said knowing that each represented at least six dead Iraqis was mind-boggling.

"I feel so sorry, it's hard to put it into words - it's just overwhelming," she said. "The war is so far removed from our daily lives. I just think it's a highly effective way to bring it home to people." Nearly every person strolling through the area immediately began to read the many signs posted explaining the purpose of the memorial.

A mother explained to her two young sons that there were almost as many flags as the population of Eugene. A group of students snapped pictures on their camera phones. Many others took handfuls of flags and began sticking them into the ground.
"There's just so much, it's hard to even believe," UO freshman Jon Duppre said as he left the library, heading for his dorm. "I don't know what to feel. Those are human beings we're talking about, who had lives and families."

Vaughan said several student and community groups worked together to bring the exhibit to Eugene after some had seen the display in Colorado.

Creators hope to take the memorial on a national tour - with Lane Community College, Reed College in Portland and the University of California, Berkeley, already having expressed interest in hosting the flags, she said.

Along with raising consciousness and providing information, Vaughan said each site would also work to raise money to buy more flags in order to keep up with the rising death toll.

"I think it's important to come together in the community and mourn together," she said. "Even for people who are pro-war, it's a chance for them to mourn the dead."