Saturday May 3

Exhibit to honor fallen soldiers of Iraq war

By Laila Kearney / Bay Area News Group

More troops from California have been killed or injured in the war in Iraq than any other state in the United States. With 433 casualties to date, Californians have had to grapple with ways to represent their loss.

"Eyes Wide Open," an exhibit sponsored by American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker peace organization that works with various faiths to promote social justice, will be set up today in Palo Alto's King Plaza as a testament to the fallen soldiers of the Iraq war.

"When we created the exhibit, we wanted to have something that would "open peoples' eyes about the reality of the war," said Erin Polley, a program associate for the display. "The point of the exhibit is to show the human and the economic price of the war; what we have lost in five years of war."

The memorial features black boots lined in tidy rows, some meticulously polished and some faded and worn, serving as a reminder of those who no longer fill them. The boots do not come from actual troops killed in the war, although some families have donated their son's or daughter's boots, which are held in a separate exhibit, Polley said.

The memorial also holds a small collection of shoes that represent the many thousands of Iraqi civilians killed since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

"Eyes Wide Open" premiered in Chicago in January 2004, with 504 pairs of boots. As the number of U.S. casualties grew, the exhibit expanded and split up among 48 states. The number of boots in each city represents the number of casualties from that state. Polley said the cities "are chosen because there are a constituency of people that want the exhibit."

"We usually don't go there without being invited," she said.

Diana Gibson, coordinator for Voices for Peace and Justice, a sponsor of the Palo Alto exhibit, said that the memorial puts "a human face on the war," which is why her organization wanted to get involved.

Palo Alto is the second city in the Bay Area to house the exhibit, which was displayed in 2005 at San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza.

"Eyes Wide Open" in Palo Alto is sponsored by a number of peace and interfaith organizations, including Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice; Peninsula Peace and Justice Center; American Muslim Voice; South Bay Jewish Voice for Peace; Council on American-Islamic Relations of the San Francisco Bay Area; and Declaration of Peace-San Mateo County.

The event will be held at King Plaza at 10 a.m. today and 6 p.m. Sunday. It also will be on display at Santa Clara University's Alameda Mall on Monday and Tuesday.