Issue date: 10/24/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Bridget Jones Garbage bags of money in the quad call for peace. [Click to enlarge]

A call for peace began in the Library Quad today. Ten large garbage bags were laid out on the grass, overflowing with paper money. The bags were labeled with the names of 10 different major corporations that had contracts with the military in 2005.

Campus Progressive Alliance, a social awareness group, and M.E.Ch.A (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), a Chicano activist group, set up the demonstration.

The garbage bags hold names of companies, such as United Technologies and Lockheed Martin, and amounts showing how much they gained in military contracts in 2005. For instance, one bag states that Boeing, a commercial jetliner and military aircraft manufacturer, held an $18.3 billion contract with the United States military in 2005. Lockheed Martin, another military aircraft manufacturer, held the largest contract at $19.4 billion.

Senior child development major Mary Riordan said the display is supposed to represent the idea that soldiers are only fighting to supply money to these companies. These companies supply materials to the military and the soldiers use these materials to fight. The soldiers keep fighting and dying because these materials keep coming, and the companies keep gaining more money.

The display was set up in preparation for Thursday's National Peace Rally to Protest the US Invasion of Iraq, which will take place from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. in Serna Plaza. It is being used to show just how much money certain companies gained from military contracts, as a result of the Iraq War.

"(It's) kind of like people's lives are worth money, and there's all these dead people and this is why they're dead…because of money," she said.

A campus die-in, a demonstration where participants lay down to represent the fatalities of the war, will take place in the grass around the display Thursday at 11:30 a.m., just before the rally in Serna Plaza. Students are encouraged by CPA and M.E.Ch.A to participate in the die-in by also lying down in the quad grass to symbolize those who have died in the Iraq war.

"The die-in is a representation of what the result of making that money is," Riordan said.

Riordan said she wanted to make it clear that just because this display and its creators are for peace, CPA are not against the troops that are fighting in Iraq.

"People say, 'How can you do this? My brother is over there, and how can you be against them?'" she said. "But we're absolutely not. I'm anti-war, because I'm pro-soldier. I'm anti-war, because I don't want people to die."

The moneybag display will be in the Library Quad all day Thursday and probably through Friday, Riordan said.

Bridget Jones can be reached at bjones@statehornet.com

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