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The 9/11 remembered at a politically tinged art installation and performance at Westlake Park on Monday wasn't just about the fifth anniversary of the attacks on the United States.
It also was intended to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of Mohandas Gandhi's non-violent resistance movement.
The art installation included dozens of tombstone-shaped weeping faces, painted gray to not reflect any race or nationality, that surrounded a circle in which Buddhists and others sat in meditation.
The painted faces represented civilians slain on 9/11 and ones who have died since then in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Gaza.
"We're trying to honor the sadness of the day and the tragedy and anger that led up to it, and what has come after it," said Seattle playwright Ed Mast, who directed the performance titled "Without End."
At the same time, "we're happy to celebrate Gandhi's campaigns in South Africa and elsewhere" to counter injustice through peaceful means, he said.
A century ago, Gandhi, then a lawyer working in South Africa, joined his countrymen in India in protesting a proposed law that would force Indians to carry identification documents and be fingerprinted.
On Sept. 11, 1906, he called on his compatriots to use non-violent means to disobey the law. Thousands of Indians, including Gandhi, were jailed for refusing to cooperate and for burning their identity booklets. The government eventually relented and compromised with Gandhi.
Gandhi called his doctrine of using non-violent methods to strive for justice Satyagraha -- which means "insistence on truth" -- and it eventually inspired Indians to throw off British colonial rule in 1947. The next year, Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist after campaigning for a reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims.
Gandhi's use of non-violent methods inspired the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his civil rights efforts for black Americans and South Africans in their largely peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy.
Mast marked 9/11 a year ago by directing a performance at Green Lake that memorialized not only the American victims, but also those who died 60 years ago in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II and civilians dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He reused many of the props and part of the poetry of that day for Monday's performance, which included about 20 performers.
"We fear that the government is creating a war without end," Mast said, referring both to U.S. involvement in Iraq and the title of his performance.
In addition, the centennial of the start of Gandhi's non-violence movement "says to me that resistance and progressive actions also happen without end."
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