Tuscaloosa, AL – Over a dozen students from the Tuscaloosa chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), wearing ‘bloody’ t-shirts, staged a die-in March 6, lying sprawled on concrete in the hot sun for over half an hour to draw attention to the massive number of casualties in the Iraq war. Students gave speeches over a megaphone, calling on their fellow students to stand up and speak out against the war.

“It was real blood, real bodies that made me rethink my point of view,” said Corbin Martin, a combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Martin was pro-war before he was sent to Iraq to fight and saw the brutality firsthand. He believes students have the responsibility to help get the U.S. out of Iraq. “Look at these students and realize you have power,” he said passionately to the growing crowd of onlookers. “You can back up your point of view with action.”

As the war drags on and as the four-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion draws near, students are becoming more determined to make their voices heard. For SDS-Tuscaloosa, the die-in was a way to put a human face to the death toll statistics and to interrupt business as usual – forcing the student body to remember the true cost of war.

“Spending 30 minutes in the sun is like a vacation when you think about what we’re fighting and the people who are losing lives every day,” said Alyse Deller, a junior who helped organize the protest. “We're privileged to be able to take a stand and make waves. And I think we – SDS – agree that we’ll keep making all the waves we can until this war has stopped.”

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