Mourning Project hopes gathering to mourn the dead will give people strength to demand peace.

By Dave Mazza

Most people walk by, coffee and scone in hand, giving only a passing glance to the large cardboard panel covered in small type. They seem fearful that their pleasant morning stroll through the Vancouver Farmers’ Market will be spoiled if they show too much interest or speak with the handful of people who have set up this unusual display. The organizers of the Mourning Project are, however, used to people’s reluctance to take on more bad news.

“It’s a way of telling people ‘see what the costs of war are.’” —Eric Bagai, Director, The Mourning Project

“We gather because that’s what people have always done,” states Eric Bagai, Director of The Mourning Project. “We gather to reject this senseless and wholly unnecessary mass murder called war.”

Bagai and other members of the project have turned out this cool May morning to present people with the grim statistics of empire. The cardboard panel propped in front of a tree lists the names of all the American victims in George Bush’s “War on Terror.” The display also provides the number of coalition force members, Iraqi troops, noncombatant Iraqi and Afghan civilians lost since 9.11, as well as the number of victims of the Madrid train bombing. t is clearly having an effect. People who stop to look at the display are clearly moved. Some return to place flowers at the base of the display. Others walk away, their faces suggesting they have been changed by the experience.

“I feel pain when I look at these names. The government betrayed my son and the people.” —Tina Tierson Mother of a casualty of Operation Desert Shield

It’s a long process, Bagai notes, but a necessary one. What these people are struggling with is what to say to those who have lost someone in the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. How do we respond to the 20 U.S. families of those soldiers who have killed themselves? From these very visceral issues will eventually come questions and anger over how those young women and men ended up dying on these remote fields for even more remote reasons. That will lead, Bagai believes, people to demand peace.

Gatherings:7:00 first Thursdays at Japanese- American Memorial Plaza, Waterfront Park, just north of Burnside. www.themourningproject.org info@themourningproject.org

That certainly has been the case with Tina Tierson. She is the mother of U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Timothy Romei, a casualty of Operation Desert Shield. Her sense of loss was aggravated by her son’s death being lost in the subsequent bloodletting during Operation Desert Storm. After mourning and working through anger, Tierson felt moved to action. Since the outbreak of the Afghanistan war and the war in Iraq, Tierson has been speaking out about the horror and pain we are inflicting not just on people overseas but upon our own population. It has note been easy, even though 14 years have elapsed since her son’s death.

“A lot of women close up,” states Tierson. “They want to avoid the pain and the nagging question ‘for what’ when contemplating their son’s or daughter’s death.”

That has not kept Tierson from speaking truth to power. She continues to participate in events like The Mourning Project, speaks to college audiences, community groups and to anyone else who will listen. She hopes that in time her message will at least move one or two people. If so, she will consider it a success.

Like Tierson, Bagai is content to focus on creating that initial spark through mourning and let things follow their natural course. To accomplish that, he is holding regular mourning ceremonies in Portland on the first Thursday of every month (see sidebar). He is also taking the display on the road whenever invited and is willing to speak about its significance to any group that is interested. These are seeds that may not bear fruit immediately, but they hold the potential to create lasting peace if nurtured to maturity.

Dave Mazza is editor of The Portland Alliance.