A collection of more than 100 boots bearing the names, ages and hometowns of Virginia residents killed in the Iraq War are on display at the east end of the Downtown Mall, parallel to the Free Speech Wall. The exhibit is on display afternoons through Sunday, May 25, and is sponsored by a collection of local service groups, including the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church’s Peace Conversations group and the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice.
The exhibit, called "Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War," is organized by the American Friends Service Committee, which first showed a collection of 500 boots in Chicago in 2004. After a 2007 national exhibit of more than 3,400 boots, the collection separated into displays by state. The show on the Downtown Mall also draws on figures from multiple human rights watchdogs to approximate the number of Iraqi casualties per U.S. soldier (a representative on site put the ratio at 200 to 1). Photos below:
More than 100 boots bearing the names of dead Virginian soldiers illustrates the death toll of the Iraq War on the Downtown Mall.
The civilian shoes represent a rough estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths per U.S. soldier death—a number as high as 200 to 1.
