the amazing group of people who made Camp Casey on the Quad a reality: sarah, laura, me, dan, jim (foreground, in the red hat), eric
the two CCQ organizers not in the group photo are adrian (left) and james. this was taken at the rally on sunday.
oh, I just found out today that the Denver Post article about us was linked through www.michaelmoore.com -- on his "must read" page from Sunday, March 19, 2006. pretty freakin' cool, huh?
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at the time that we began CCQ, there were 2,309 confirmed U.S. soliders killed in Iraq. (as of this posting, 10 days later, there are 2,322) we printed out the Dept of Defense list of names, and worked on putting a name on each cross. when we pulled the 2,309 memorials from the ground on Saturday, we could not bear to shut them up in a box. our entire purpose had been to open the boxes of lives destroyed by this war. and so we decided that we would hand out these crosses to people at the March 19th rally to End This War Now!
on Sunday, when I reached into the box that Eric held to choose the cross that I would carry with me, that day and forever, I was stunned to see that it was a name that I had written. and it was a name that, when I wrote it, I honestly paused and wondered "who was this person who died?" not that such a question shouldn't come to mind regardless. but this was a Tibetan name. Tenzin Dengkhim. and I wondered who Tenzin was, that he, a Tibetan, died fighting in the U.S. military, fighting a war that shared uncomfortable parallels with China's illegal occupation of Tibet.
tonight, I looked up Tenzin Dengkhim. he died April 2, 2005. he had been in Iraq less than one month. he was a Marine. he and his family had come to the U.S. in the 1990s. he enlisted in the Marines to earn money for college, and to learn skills that he could bring to the Tibetan struggle for independance. Tenzin was 19 years old. according to one source, before he left for Iraq, he prayed. not for his own life. he prayed that he would not take any lives. [which makes me wonder -- what does george w. bush pray for?]
Tenzin Dengkhim's story is why I will fight this war, and every other war, until I take my last breath. Tenzin wanted to be a freedom fighter. may his dream come in his next life.
