"Eyes Wide Open" Boots of the Fallen on Display | Solemn Witness to the Cost of War

Eyes Wide Open about the Cost of War at Fellowship Congregational Church at 28th and Harvard on Saturday & Sunday, Oct. 17th-18th 2009

Since the Eyes Wide Open and the Cost of War exhibits embarked on their tour around the nation in June 2007, the exhibits have been shown in 44 states. The results have been remarkable as the message of the human cost of war has expanded to an ever wider audience.

"Eyes Wide Open: The Cost of War to Oklahoma" focuses on the specific costs of war to the state of Oklahoma. The exhibit includes approximately ninety pairs of boots representing fallen servicemen and women from Oklahoma, and a visual representation of the Iraqi civilian casualties.

The dollar cost of the war in Iraq to local municipalities has been extremely high* :

COST OF WAR TO CITIES/COUNTIES IN OK

Oklahoma City: $1,063,200,000
Tulsa: $834,400,000
Bartlesville: $74,800,000
Chickasha: $25,100,000

COST OF WAR TO OKLAHOMA AS A WHOLE:
total: $6,927,900,000

*Figures are only available through fiscal year 2007. The actual amounts may be twice as high.

source: http://www.nationalpriorities.org/publications/local_cost_of_the_iraq_war_through_fy2007

TOTAL COST OF WAR TO THE U.S.:
$940 billion, estimated cost through 2009
$3 trillion, estimated cost through 2023 (including interest on war debts accumulated 2003-2009)

A token number of civilian shoes will also be on display, to provide some representation of the estimated 1,350,000 civilians killed in Iraq, since the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The focus of this display is definitely on the fallen soldiers.

The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice, peace and humanitarian service. Its work is based on the belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice.

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship is the activist wing of the peace movement in Eastern Oklahoma. TPF offers citizens and community groups tools and resources to participate personally in our democracy, to help shape federal budget and policy priorities and to promote peace, social and economic justice, and human rights. TPF is a registered non-profit civic-sector organization, and a non-partisan group, loosely affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration, 1314 N. Greenwood Ave, Tulsa (close to Pine)