Spirit in Action
Rachel Corrie - Witness In Palestine
I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep. No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep. I have no arms but yours with which to hold. The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old. I have no voice but yours with which to see. To let my children know that I am up and up is everything. I have no way to feed the hungry souls. No clothes to give and make you the ragged and the morn. So be my heart, my hand, my tongue, through you all will be done. Fingers, have I none to help, I'm done. Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands, being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. I have no way to open people's eyes, except that you will show them how to trust the inner world. Today for Spirit in Action, we'll be visiting the life, witness and memory of Rachel Corey. We'll hear many voices speak about Rachel. They'll share words that Rachel shared. We'll hear songs about Rachel, but Rachel won't be here to speak because she died in the Gaza Strip in 2003 at the age of 23 under the weight of a bulldozer cat biller made in the USA and operated by the Israeli military. The original impetus for this particular Spirit in Action program was the worship service held in Rachel Corey's memory at the Eau Claire Unitarian Universalist Congregation in October of 2006. That UU congregation is the religious home of Rachel's aunt, Kathy Pierce. In addition to a portion of the UU service, and words from Rachel's aunt, we'll hear from Ruth Otix, a prime mover in putting together the UU service, and we'll hear words from Rachel's mother available via YouTube and Google video. First, we'll hear Rachel's story as sung by British musician Billy Bragg, sung to an old Bob Dylan tune. The title of the song is "The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corey." Our compassion, trying to protect the poor people of Gaza, whose homes are destroyed by tank shells and bulldozers, and whose plight is exploited by suicide bombers who kill in the name of the people of Gaza, but Rachel Corey believed in nonviolent resistance, put herself in harm's white as a shield of the people, and paid with her life in a manner most brutal, but UU philosophized disgrace and criticized all fears. Take the rag away from your face, 'cause now ain't the time for your tears. Rachel Corey had 23 years, she was born in the town of Olympia, Washington, a skinny messy list-making chain smoker who volunteered to protect the Palestinian people who had become non-persons in the eyes of the media so that people were suffering, and no one was seen or hearing or talking or caring or acting and the horrible math of the awful equation that brought Rachel Corey into this confrontation is that the spill blood of a single American is worth more than the blood of a hundred Palestinians, but UU philosophized disgrace and criticized all fears. Take the rag away from your face, 'cause now ain't the time for your tears. The artistic director of a New York theater cancelled a play based on Rachel's writings, but she wasn't a bomber or a killer or a fighter, but one who acted in the spirit of the freedom writers is their no place for such a voice in America that doesn't conform to the Fox News agenda who believes in nonviolence instead of brute force, who is willing to confront the might of an army whose passionate beliefs were matched by a bravery and the question she asked brings out 'round the world if America is truly the beacon of freedom then how can it stand by while they bring down the curtain and turn Rachel Corey into a non-person. That was Billy Bragg and his song, "The Lonesome Death." With Rachel Corey, Rachel's life and witness are the subject of this edition of Spirit in Action. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. As I mentioned, the Eau Claire UU congregation held a service in Rachel's memory in October of 2006. In addition to the other things that Unitarians do as part of their worship service, several members of the congregation, shared words left behind by Rachel, who was, after all, somewhat of a prolific writer in her 23 short years. Let's listen to Rachel's words shared at Eau Claire's Unitarian Universalist service last October. Rachel Corey was the third of three children born to Cindy and Craig Corey. She grew up a daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, cousin, neighbor, friend, student, drop-ins coordinator, local and international community member. From early childhood, Rachel showed a deep enthusiasm for life and a deep concern for fairness and justice. As a child, when she saw trouble on the playground, she expected adults to take action and set things right. She had a passion for art, poetry, learning, and social justice. Rachel went beyond talking about things that were important to her. She was compelled to act. Whether it was speaking up, crafting a piece for the procession of the species or organizing an event, Rachel's actions in life flowed from her convictions. But she wasn't sure of herself, and she wasn't full of herself. Observation, the careful use of words and respect for individual decision-making, were precious to her. Although people spoke of Rachel as one destined to make a difference, she would not have wanted to have been set apart or held up as a heroine. Although she had some extraordinary talents, it was her ordinariness that held the power for her in life. It was the commonalities, the value she found in all forms of life that inspired and awed her. In 2003 at the age of 23, Rachel Corey, an American peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was crushed to death by a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the Israeli army from destroying Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip. What turns people to activism? What turns people away from activism? With the help of Kathy Pierce, Rachel's aunt, I have woven together a short series of Rachel's writings, from the time she was a child, two words shortly written before her death, poems, personal observations and emails to her family. It is our hope that these readings might provide some insight for Rachel's reasons for risking her life and calling upon others to join her in action. Melissa Brenstad Burns and Wendy Schmock will read these words of Rachel's. In the summer, the rushes grow so tall you can hide in them and be completely invisible. This is where I came from, tunnels through rushes. I could spend all the light hours of all the days and tunnels through rushes in the middle of the estuary at the mouth of the Perry Creek. This is where I came from and this is where I would have liked to stay, sunburned and hidden and close to water, making up whole pretend stories about shipwrecks and Swiss family Robinson. At the age of two while writing on her father's shoulders, Rachel announced, "This is the wide world and I'm coming to it." Verse 10, recorded at her school's 5th grade press conference at the State Capitol on World Hunger. "I'm here for other children, I'm here because I care, I'm here because children everywhere are suffering and because 40,000 people die each day from hunger. I'm here because those people are mostly children. We have got to understand that the poor are all around us and we are ignoring them. We have got to understand that these deaths are preventable. We have got to understand that people in third world countries think and care and smile and cry just like us. We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs. We have got to understand that they are us, we are them. My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000. My dream is to give the poor a chance. My dream is to save the 40,000 people who die each day. My dream can and will come true if we look into the future and see the light that shines there. If we ignore hunger, that light will go out. If we all help and work together, it will grow and burn free with the potential of tomorrow." Next April, Rachel, age 11. Last April came about rather slowly. She tiptoeed on moss like wind in the trees. We had almost missed her holy when the trees began to toss in an Aprilish breeze. Last April stayed on with maidenly grace. In the places she left, she left not a trace of her barefoot chamomile tea of her pleasant scent of the sea. Last April departed with impossible ease. She tiptoeed on moss like wind in the trees. She reached out her hand to May coming grand and slipped through my fingers like glistening sand. In her fifth grade year book, Rachel wrote, "I want to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actress, a mother, a wife, a children's author, a distance runner, a poet, a pianist, a pet store owner, an astronaut, an environmental and humanitarian activist, a psychiatrist, a ballet teacher, and the first woman present." Rachel, age 19. Love is a function of community, and by community, I mean the interwoven lives of the people our love and kindness have touched. However big your community is, to that degree, you are loved and capable of loving. At age 20, in a letter to her grandmother, Rachel wrote, "Do you know that in a lot of preliterate societies, people were given names that delineated their roles like Joe Fence Builder or Bob Tiger Hunter, and they just identified completely with their job and did it well? Sometimes I think I'd be much more productive if my name was Rachel Soupmaker, and all I had to do was make the tastiest darn soups ever for my village. I wouldn't spend so much time racing back and forth between creative writing and teaching and journalism and psychology and film and sociology and ecology and ethnobotany and international relations and the list goes on and on. I remember when I graduated fifth grade we had a list of questions for our yearbook. One of them was, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Everyone wrote something like Doctor or Astronaut or Spiderman, and then you turned the page and there was my five paragraph manifest on the million things I wanted to be from wandering poet to first woman president. That was cute in the fifth grade, but when it's ten years later, I'm going to be a junior in college and I still don't have the conviction to cross Spiderman off my list. Well, you can imagine it gets a little nerve-wracking. I walked with Colin to Puget Pantry to get cigarettes and a few last-minute prizes for a bingo game. I was coordinating at work. It was late morning. We were having a bingo party because it was my last day as drop-ins coordinator. I was drop-ins coordinator for a year. I drove people around in the company car. We went for walks in the woods and watched them pile-drive bridge posts into the muck beneath Fourth Avenue. We always joked about stealing the company car and going to Mexico. I convinced Colin to walk with me because Puget Pantry had the Who's Tommy pinball. On the radio, the announcers were talking about giving a lot of blood fast. It was the quantity of blood that made me pay attention, like something out of that hell-raiser movie. What would make the radio announcers ask the whole country for blood a surreal amount of blood? I asked the man behind the counter what happened. I had trouble understanding what he said, two towers, someone bomb, someone bomb the World Trade Center, airplanes, he gestured with his hands. Someone crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center. He nodded at me. I asked him for matches. The people on the radio continued to talk about all that blood. Colin and I sat on the sidewalk beneath the payphone and smoked cigarettes. We thought it might be World War III. We went home and set my boombox up in the living room and listened to the radio. I was supposed to fly to Boston to see my parents the next day. I called my dad. Then I walked to work. I still thought it might be World War III. On the way to work I had for maybe the third or fourth time in my life, no doubts about whether I was in the right place doing the right thing. I figured if it was World War III, being a drop-ins coordinator was a damn fine situation to go out in. I liked the people I drove around in the company car. I couldn't think of something I'd rather be doing. I felt overwhelmed with joy and gratitude all the way to work, where we decided not to play bingo. I don't know what the feeling is called, a right moment. April 2002, the procession of the species, a parade to honor all life, Rachel led the effort to create a flock of peace doves for Olympia's Earth Day tribute. Afterwards she wrote, "I've danced down the street with 40 people from the ages of 7 to 70 dressed as doves. I think peace doves will happen again next year and hopefully they'll be a procession institution. It's a community building opportunity for people who do peace work. It's intergenerational. It gives people in the evergreen community a chance to work with people in the broader progressive community. In a lot of ways, I think the procession is a value statement. I'm happy to see a peace message included in that. I think it's important for people who oppose war and repression to speak out about who we are as a community in addition to speaking about war and racism and injustice. We are not outside. I think it's important that human rights and resistance to oppression be included in the way we define ourselves as a community. Ignoring all other factors, I would choose to spend eight hours a day for the rest of my life making things in a giant room full of other people." Upon leaving Olympia, Rachel wrote, "We are all born and someday we'll all die." Most likely to some degree alone. What if our aloneness isn't a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure, to experience the world as a dynamic presence, as a changeable interactive thing? If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda, or who knows where else, needless death wouldn't be a distant symbol to me. It wouldn't be a metaphor. It would be a reality. And I have no right to this metaphor, but I use it to console myself, to give a fraction of meaning to something enormous and needless. This realization, this realization that I will live my life in this world where I have privileges, I can't cool boiling waters in Russia, I can't be Picasso, I can't be Jesus, I can't save the planet single-handedly, I can wash dishes. The words you're listening to were part of a worship service, held at Eau Claire's Unitarian Universalist Congregation last October, in memory of Rachel Corrie. I'm Mark Helpsmeet, host of this Northern Spirit Radio program called Spirit in Action. And I'm sharing them with you today, along with other voices, remembering Rachel and her life. You've heard a bit of what Rachel Corrie had to say up to the time she headed to the Gaza Strip. And who she was, let's listen to Rachel's encounter with the people of Palestine. In mid-January 2003, Rachel left Olympia and traveled to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. She chose to go to Rafa at the southernmost hip because she believed this place had been forsaken. She joined other internationals to witness for the world the conditions experienced by the Palestinians. She wrote February 7, 2003, "Hi friends and family and others. I am in Rafa City of about 140,000 people, approximately 60% of whom are refugees, many of whom are twice or three times refugees. I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to right back to the United States. Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. No amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it. And even then, you are always well aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality. What with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells. And the fact, of course, that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot driving in their car by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. When I leave for school or work, I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting halfway between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint with the power to decide whether I can go about my business and whether I can get home again when I'm done. Today as I walked on top of the rubble where Holmes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border. Go! Go! Because a tank was coming and then waving in. What's your name? Being disturbing about this friendly curiosity, it reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids. Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peek out from behind walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners, Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously, occasionally shouting and occasionally waving. Many forced to be here and many just aggressive, shooting into the houses as we wander away. February 20th, 2003. Now the Israeli army has actually dug up the road to Gaza and both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at the university can't. People can't get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can't get home. And internationals who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank won't make it. We could probably make it through if we made serious use of our international white person privileges, but that would mean some risk of arrest and deportation, even though none of us has done anything illegal. I am staying put in Rafa for now. No plans to head nor. I still feel like I'm relatively safe and think that my most likely risk is arrest. February 27th, 2003, to her mother. When I see orchards and greenhouses and fruit trees destroyed, just years of care and cultivation, I think about you and how long it takes to make things grow and what a labor of love it is. I really think in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could. I think Uncle Craig would. I think probably grandma would. I think I would. I'm having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole. Honestly, a lot of the time, the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the willful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me. I really can't believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don't think it's an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my co-workers, but I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I'm disappointed that this is the base reality of our world that we in fact participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capitol Lake and said, "This is the wide world and I'm coming to it." I continue to believe that my home, Olympia, could gain a lot and offer a lot by deciding to make a commitment to Rafa in the form of a sister community relationship. Some teachers and children's groups have expressed interest in email exchanges, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of solidarity work that might be done. Many people want their voices to be heard and I think we need to use some of our privilege as internationals to get those voices heard directly in the U.S. rather than through the filter of well-meaning internationals such as myself. I am just beginning to learn from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage about the ability of people to organize against all odds and to resist against all odds. Please Olympia, please watch Rafa, please watch Rafa and talk about Rafa and continue to find your ways of changing things. This is what we pay for here, the strangulation and erasure of lives. The single most frequent request I hear over and over again is to be seen to avoid falling victim to this violence and intentional forgetting. We all want our lives to mean something. These people are living next to death on a daily basis and telling me over and over again this is not life. I think I could see a Palestinian state or a democratic Israeli-Palestinian state within my lifetime. I think freedom for Palestine could be an incredible source of hope to people struggling all over the world. I think it could also be an incredible inspiration to Arab people in the Middle East who are struggling under undemocratic regimes which the U.S. supports. I look forward to more moments when civil society wakes up en masse and issues massive and resonant evidence of its conscience, its unwillingness to be repressed and its compassion for the suffering of others. I look forward to the international resistance that's occurring now fertilizing analysis on all kinds of issues with dialogue between diverse groups of people. I look forward to all of us who are new at this developing better skills for working in democratic structures and healing our own racism and classism and sexism and heterosexism and ageism and ableism and becoming more effective. Just hearing about what you are doing makes me feel less alone, less useless, less invisible. The international media and our government are not going to tell us that we are effective, important, justified in our work, courageous, intelligent, valuable. We have to do that for each other and one way we can do that is by continuing our work visibly. I also think it's important for people in the United States in relative privilege to realize that people without privilege will be doing this work no matter what because they are working for their lives. We can work with them and they know that we work with them or we can leave them to do this work themselves and curse us for our complicity in killing them. I really don't get the sense that anyone here curses us. Rachel's last email to her father, "Don't worry about me too much. Right now I am most concerned that we are not being effective. I still don't feel particularly at risk. Still can't say how this will change if and when the war with Iraq comes. I would like to leave Rafa with a viable plan to return. I think it is valuable to make commitments to places so I would like to be able to plan on coming back here within a year or so." On March 16th, 2003 Rachel Corey was run over by an Israeli bulldozer as she stood to protect the home of a Palestinian doctor, his wife and small children from demolition. This is a family that she visited, she ate with, slept in their home and played with their children. Within a few weeks following Rachel's death, several other international peacekeepers who were in Palestine to witness and document the situation there were also killed. A friend of Rachel said, "Many believe that Rachel sided completely and naively with the Palestinian government. It is very important to note that Rachel Corey didn't support any government or a systematic structure that denied the needs of those most needy and benefited those most privileged. It must also be said that there are Rachel's on all sides of the Middle East conflict. They are young and old, blonde blue-eyed and dark-conflected. The death toll in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, combatants and noncombatants continues to rise seemingly without hope for an end to it all. There are too many senseless deaths and deep pain that comes from such loss as hard to bear. There has never been an easy time to speak for peace. To be soft yet strong in our conviction that there is not a way to peace, but that peace itself is the way. As Rachel said at the age of 10, "We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs. We have got to understand that they are us and we are them." We're listening to a northern spirit radio production called Spirit in Action, and I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeat. You've just heard a presentation that was part of the worship service held at Eau Claire's UU congregation last October in memory of slain peace worker Rachel Corey. The last speaker you heard was Ruth Otix, and I asked Ruth about how the decision to hold this particular worship service came about. The decision came as a result of being aware of Rachel's efforts as a peacemaker and also her untimely death, and Rachel's aunt has been a part of our church for a very long time. Awareness of the fact that we had her family member, I think, heightened our own congregational awareness of Rachel's efforts for peace and her death. So as a result of that, we began to talk about this in worship committee of which I'm a member decided that we wanted to do something to honor her peace work. In many churches, what Rachel Corey was involved in would be seen as a political issue and not a religious topic. How is it that this fits as a religious topic within Unitarian Universalism? The core aspect of the UU, Unitarian Universalist belief structure is that of love and the power of love, and that very much connects to peace work as those people who do that as a result of wanting to promote understanding, appreciation, and love amongst all people. So this was a natural for us in terms of looking at what Rachel had done, and we very purposefully stayed away from the political aspects of this, although certainly that can be hard to do, but I think we were quite successful in being able to look at Rachel's work, Rachel's life, to heighten our awareness of some of the situations there, but to do that without becoming political in our efforts. I also spoke with Rachel Corey's aunt, Kathy Pierce, who is part of Eau Claire's UU congregation. She told me how the family had its center in Iowa, the home of Rachel's 93-year-old grandmother, and they all gathered each summer at their family cabin up in Minnesota. Kathy followed mostly from afar Rachel's life over in Olympia, Washington, including all of her creativity, and including the poetry that Rachel began writing at the age of four. I asked Kathy about Rachel's home life. Was it a religious upbringing, were her parents liberal fire brands or into social justice? I would almost say none of the above. The education was the focus in our family, that all my grandparents were college educated, and that was a goal of all the children. I was expected it wasn't a goal, it was just part of life. This is what you did. My mother was a teacher, once it was time for her children to be educated. She had to earn extra money to send us through school, which she did. She was busy and other things. So was my father. He was politically active to a very limited extent. When my brother Craig married Cindy, they moved out west after he served for two years in Vietnam. So he was not a draft card burner, though he thought about it. He did not feel inappropriate to leave for Canada, though he seriously thought about it. He did serve his two years, then started his family in Olympia. By the time Rachel came along, she was their third child. They realized, after a couple of years, that she was very much the individual. Very creative, very outspoken, even at a very tender age. I don't believe that the family was socially active, except that in education, they wanted all things best. I've heard examples of Rachel's intense interest in justice of having things done right from a really very young age. Is this the kind of thing that you witnessed as her aunt? We heard about them, but our whole family pretty much felt the same way. We just didn't see it at the microcosm level like she did. When she saw a problem on the playground, she insisted someone go out and resolve the problem. If the teacher wasn't going to do it, she was going to call her mother and have her come. When she was in junior high, she told her dad that she was going to be out of class the next day, that he shouldn't be worried if they got a call from the school. He said, "Well, you can't leave class." She said, "Well, I have to. The teachers are picketing, and there's going to be reporters there." He said, "You can't leave class. How do you know this is going to happen?" She said, "Because I called the reporters," and they said they would come. I can just imagine the look on your brother's face, probably mixed in credulity at his daughter's hoodspa, and probably some pride at her drive and her vision. Of course, it's the same kind of drive and vision that led Rachel Corey to volunteer to serve as a human shield for the Palestinians in Gaza back in 2003, which led to her death. What has been your family's response to all that happened with Rachel? How have they worked to make some sense out of what happened to her? Well, there's several sides from which they have tried to make some progress. One of the issues was the legal responsibilities of her death, and they have had almost no backing from our government as far as learning what really happened, or we feel we know what really happened, but getting the rest of the world to see what happened and getting the Israeli government to give some sort of an explanation for why this happened. My brother ended up suing the Israeli government. That has not actually come into the court system yet in Israel, but it is a work in progress. The whole family has often been in Washington, D.C., still looking for some support through our government in getting clear and transparent investigation into the whole situation and what happened at that point in time. They are not making too much progress there. They have been to Israel twice. They have been into Palestine. They have met the family who lived in the home that she was trying to protect at the moment of her death. They have learned to love the same people that she loved and lived with while she was there for only the few weeks when she was actually there. Since recently they had a huge success. A new home has been built. The home that Rachel was trying to protect was destroyed probably a year after she was destroyed. My family has helped that family to raise funds to rebuild. Two brothers, a doctor and his brother, lived with their extended family in that house. One of the brothers came with his wife and one of their children and they toured with my brother and his wife in the United States raising funds to rebuild and they have been successful just within the last few days that family moved in. I have a picture of their daughter who was only five years old when Rachel stayed with them. They shared a bed together and the daughter is now eight I believe and read in English a poem she had written about the occasion and in honor of Rachel and their new home. Maybe you can explain something to me. Just what is the reason for the whole Palestinian home demolition program of the Israelis? This looked to me like they were just being tyrannical and vindictive arbitrarily destroying homes of so many defenseless people. Do you know why they destroyed the home that Rachel died defending? This home was destroyed along with 1600 other homes in that same general vicinity and several reasons were given. The immediate reason that Craig was told was that it might be hiding a tunnel that went under the border. This was not true when the house was destroyed. They found no tunnels anywhere in the area and my brother has been to that home. He had lunch in that home when Rachel had been dead just a few months. They went over to Israel and went into Palestine. They visited that home and within moments of their arrival there was a tank outside the front door of that home. Craig because of his connections with the embassy was able to get through to the Israeli soldiers and have them back off. I've also read that there's been a foundation set up in Rachel's memory to carry on her work. I happen to know that its web address is rachelchoryfoundation.org or rachelsfoundation.org. Both work but I've got the links to them on my website in any case so people can just go to northernspiritradio.org and find those links. Is this foundation, the rachelchoryfoundation, mainly the fruit of your brother Craig's work? My brother's doing a lot of work. His wife is doing even more work and now they have opened an office. They have a real person there. They are trying to carry forward many of her ideals and ideas in global communication. They're trying to build bridges between the US and Palestine between the people in Israel and Palestine and people in a global setting where Rachel might have seen injustice. They are doing this through education, through youth groups, through art, through performing arts, across borders trying to encourage children's art, that kind of thing. You've been quite accommodating Kathy, really gracious about arranging for us to get together and talk about your niece Rachel. I feel like I have some strange connection to the whole event given that you and I met more or less on that very day, didn't we? It's true that you were speaking at the Unitarian Church as a Quaker talking about simplicity on the morning that Rachel was killed. I was at church and then went out to the parking lot and turned on my cell phone before I started the trip home. Craig called me while I was still in the church parking lot, that he had just heard a rumor that something awful had happened to Rachel and he had not been able to confirm it. He was not able to get ahold of anybody and could I find a phone number and try and call Palestine and see if it was true and could I please go to Iowa immediately to be with his mother, my mother, in case the reporters tried to find out what had happened and would start past during her. Of course, he was almost hysterical. We went home, found the phone number that Rachel had last given us that was friends of hers in Palestine, called, talked to somebody from the IMS who said yes, they had actually been there. They knew that it was true. They were horrified to find out that her family didn't know if it was true or not, would try to call Craig to let them know what had happened. I'm sorry, Kathy, for all the pain that Rachel's death has meant for you and your family but I'm also thankful for you sharing your memories of Rachel with us. It doesn't go nearly far enough to offer my condolences but I hope that through getting the word out about Rachel, I'm helping keep Rachel's dreams alive in your family's hearts. We've just been talking with Kathy Pierce, Rachel Corey's aunt and also a member of Eau Claire's UU congregation. There's been a lot of follow-up to Rachel's work in death in the Gaza Strip. You've heard about the rebuilding of the house that Rachel died protecting. That's just a first step in terms of rebuilding efforts. In fact, you can check out this continuing effort at rebuildingalliance.org and there is the continuing work, of course, of the international solidarity movement, the ISM, the group with which Rachel was working to shield Palestinians and their homes. Something else you might want to check out is the play about Rachel that's been performed in London, New York, Seattle and Olympia, Rachel's hometown. It's called "My Name is Rachel Corey" and it's a one-woman play built out of the many words, speeches, emails, poems and writings that Rachel left behind. You can see it in segments on YouTube as well. But I'd also note that Rachel's witness has powerfully changed the lives of her family. Her aunt, Kathy, said that Rachel's parents, Craig and Cindy Corey, were not notably activist before, but they certainly are now speaking out passionately for peace and justice. I'd like to bring in one more voice out of Rachel's mom, Cindy Corey. You'll find her speaking out via YouTube and Google video in several recordings, but I thought there was one that particularly deserved your attention today about an upcoming action in Washington, D.C. I'll let Cindy Corey tell you about that. Hello. My name is Cindy Corey. In March 2003, in the Gaza Strip, my daughter Rachel Corey was crushed by Israeli soldiers driving a U.S. built caterpillar bulldozer as she stood to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. When Rachel learned of a friend who was interested in coming to Gaza, she had written, "Come here, come here, come here, come here." This June 10th and 11th, I hope that you will come to Washington, D.C. and join Craig and me and thousands of others to mark and protest the 40th anniversary of Israel's illegal military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the Syrian Golan Heights. With people who will gather around the world in global days of action, we will send the message that the world says no to Israeli occupation. In Washington, D.C., we will call for an end to U.S. military, economic, diplomatic and corporate support for the Israeli occupation, and for a change in U.S. policy to one that supports a just peace, based on equality, human rights, international law, and relevant U.N. resolutions. Please join Craig and me, the U.S. campaign to end the Israeli occupation and united for peace and justice to help change the course. Many years is long enough. Come here to Washington, D.C. on June 10th and 11th for a massive rally, march, teach-in, and grassroots lobbying day. Come and help us change the tide. As we build to this momentous and tragic anniversary, let me echo Rachel's words. Come here, come here, come here, come here, come here. When she sat down in the dirt, in front of your machine, a lovely woman dressed in red, you, in military green, if you had met her in Jerusalem, you might have asked her on a date. But here you were in Gaza, rolling towards the gate. As your foot went to the floor, did you recall her eyes, did her gaze remind you that you've become what you despise, as you rolled on towards this woman, and ignored all shouts to stop, did you feel a shred of doubt, as you watched her body drop, as your caterpillar tracks. Upon her body pressed with sixty tons of deadly force, crushed the bones with thinner chest. Could you feel the contours of her face as you took her life away? Did you serve your country well on that cold spring day? When you went back across the green line, back to the open shore, was this just another day, in a dirty war? When you looked out on the water, did you feel an empty void? Or was it just one more life you've taken, one more home destroyed, one more home destroyed? That was David Rovicks and his song, The Death of Rachel Corey. Rachel Corey's life and death and her enduring witness have been the subject of this spirit in action program. We've heard a portion of the service held in Rachel's honor last October at Eau Claire's Unitarian Universalist Church. We've spoken with Rachel's aunt, Kathy Pierce, and we listened to a call to action in Washington, D.C. on June 10th and 11th by Rachel's mom, Cindy Corey. The theme music for spirit in action is "I Have No Hands But Yours" by Carol Johnson. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is "Spirit In Action." Thanks for watching! [Music]