Rachel’s Words

We thank those of you who have already responded to our appeal - especially since our site went down moments after our email was sent! So we’re asking again for help. Your generosity so far has put us well on the way to being able to buy the equipment Fida Qishta will need to continue and improve her work.

The Guardian posted two more of Fida’s videos documenting the use of white phosphorous on civilians in Gaza. Fida has been interviewed on CNN, NBC, Democracy Now!, and her videos used in mainstream and alternative news media.

Our mission is simply to help Fida continue documenting the stories that she has access to, and getting them out. We’re asking for small donations. We hope they’ll add up to what we need to purchase more tapes for Fida, video equipment and a new computer. The electrical outages destroyed her hard drive.

Please consider making a small donation of $5 through Paypal here. For tax deductible donations of any amount, send checks made out to our fiscal sponsor “The Brecht Forum,” and mail to: Rachel’s Words, PO Box 1125, New York, NY 10276. We will send you confirmation of receipt.

As Gaza is under horrific attack, Fida Qishta and other volunteers are working to send video, stories and pictures out to the world (see UK Guardian: Fresh evidence of Israeli phosphorus use in Gaza emerges.) Fida breaks the siege virtually, every day, as a citizen journalist. This is crucially important now while the international press is denied access to Gaza. Please help us support this important work. We will supply cameras, tapes, and equipment. Please consider making a $5 donation now to Rachel’s Words. (Tax deductible info below.)

March 16th will be the 6th anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death. Fida says the six-year-olds in Rafah have never experienced anything as terrifying as what is happening now. We’ll provide background information below, and additional links with many different ways to support Gaza. Please act now - but don’t forget Gaza when the current crisis is over.

Donate through Paypal here. Tax deductible checks of any amount can be made out to our fiscal sponsor, “The Brecht Forum,” earmarked “Rachel’s Words” and mailed to Rachel’s Words, PO Box 1125, New York, NY 10276. We will send you confirmation of receipt.

Sunday, March 16, 2008 is the fifth anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death. We mark the day with grief as people in Gaza struggle to survive. The international siege has left them without basic needs such as fuel, electricity, and potable water, and the recent Israeli military invasion killed 120 people - over 70 civilians and children. (Read more here.)

For people planning events, The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has put together an excellent vigil guide. Also, Rachel’s emails from Gaza can be found, in many languages, on our website. We hope that the anniversary will be used as a day to commemorate Rachel Corrie and and keep Gaza in the news. We encourage people to continue reading Rachel’s emails in public gatherings large or small, on March 16th and beyond.

In the last 5 years, Rachel’s Corrie’s voice has broken through barriers to reach a widening audience. Craig and Cindy Corrie are in Haifa. On March 16 they will attend the opening performance of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie in Arabic at the Al-Midan Theatre. Friends from the Royal Court Theatre, which originally premiered the play, are joining them. After Haifa, the play will travel to Nazareth, Jaffa and Ramallah. The play, whose cancellation in New York launched our own initiative, is now being produced in theaters all over the U.S. and internationally.

The play that was banned in New York City, Miami, and Toronto!

MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE
Compiled by Katherine Viner and Alan Rickman
Directed by Tim Klein
Starring Katie White as Rachel Corrie
For more info visit: www.subversivetheatre.org

What?
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE is a one-woman play produced in collaboration between Subversive Theatre and the Buffalo United Artists’ Theatre.

Who?
This production is directed by Tim Klein and stars Subversive Theatre’s own Katie White as Rachel Corrie.

Where?
All shows are at the Main Street Cabaret at 672 Main Street (in the same building as Alleyway Theatre) in between Studio Arena and Shea’s.

When?
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm March 7-29. Doors open at 7:30pm.

How Much?
Tickets are $22.00 general admission or $15.00 for students and seniors. To make a reservation, call the Buffalo United Artists Theatre’s Box Office at 886-9239.

A Painfully True Story…
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE is a one-woman play compiled entirely from the journal entries and e-mails of Rachel Corrie — the 23 year-old peace activist from Olympia, Washington who died after being run over by an Israeli Bulldozer while defending a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003.

She was a girl from small-town America with dreams of being a poet or a dancer. So how, at just 23, did Rachel Corrie become a Palestinian martyr? Five years on, her diaries are being released.

Louise France | The Observer, Sunday March 2 2008

Peace activist Rachel Corrie is shown at the Burning Man festival in a photo from September 2002, in Black Rock City, Nevada. Photograph: Denny Sternstein/AP

It is impossible to underestimate quite how much life for Rachel Corrie’s family has changed since she was killed by an Israeli army Caterpillar D9 bulldozer in the Gaza Strip on 16 March 2003. As Rachel’s elder sister Sarah puts it: ‘What was normal doesn’t exist for us now.’

‘After Rachel was killed.’

When I meet the Corries, it swiftly becomes clear that there is a great deal they want to speak out about, but it is these four words, heavy with loss, that they have repeated most over the past five years.

On March 16th, My Name is Rachel Corrie will open in Haifa in Arabic. The Corries will attend, along with some members of the Royal Court Theatre. After that it will travel to Nazareth, Ramallah, Jaffa, and Jerusalem.

In the last few months there have been performances of the play in Montreal, Vancouver, B.C., Edmonton and Calgary in Canada, and it is scheduled for Toronto later this spring. The Denver production has recently been in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska, and in Des Moines, Iowa, and is this weekend (February 23/24 ‘08) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  

It has played in Lima, Athens, Stockholm and is headed to Germany, Spain, and more… there are plans for a performance in South Africa in 2009. The Corries will be stopping at performances in Madison, Wisconsin, and in Watertown, MA, on their way to Haifa. They have attended and done talkbacks, forums, etc. in Montreal, Vancouver, BC, and Des Moines, and did a taped phone message for Albuquerque.  (See review below.)

Actress embraces soul of the controversial Rachel Corrie

Adalah-NY Contact: justiceme@gmail.com

New York, NY, Dec. 10, 2007 – Oscar-winning actress and UNICEF goodwill ambassador Susan Sarandon has told a New York City activist group, Adalah-NY, that she is exploring Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev’s construction of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and exploitation of marginalized communities in other parts of the world. Sarandon was responding to a letter from Adalah-NY requesting that she boycott Leviev. According to The New York Post, Sarandon attended the November 13 gala opening of Leviev’s Madison Avenue jewelry boutique LEVIEV New York, as Adalah-NY protested Leviev’s illegal activities outside.

The November 20th letter to Ms. Sarandon requested that she “refrain from making any purchases from Leviev-owned businesses” and “join our campaign and add [her] prominent voice to the call for a boycott of Leviev’s products.” The letter was endorsed by a number of groups and individuals, including Jews against the Occupation-NYC, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee – New York Chapter, and representatives from the West Bank Palestinian villages of Jayyous and Bil’in, two communities that Leviev is destroying by building settlements on their land. Following discussions between representatives of Ms. Sarandon and Adalah-NY, Susan Sarandon’s Assistant Mark Edlitz responded in a December 7 email to Adalah-NY that, “We received the information you sent. Ms. Sarandon will do her own exploration on this topic before drawing any conclusions.”

By George S. Hishmeh, Special to Gulf News

She is described as “the most talked about playwright in America today” but because she had cast her dice in support of the Palestinians her play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, is the target of vicious attacks by pro-Israeli elements in the country.

Corrie did not actually write the play. She couldn’t because she was crushed to death in March 2003 while blocking a 60-tonne Israeli-driven Caterpillar bulldozer that was planning to demolish a Palestinian home she was protecting in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

The bulldozer passed over her body twice and the Israeli authorities unabashedly claimed that her death was an “accident”. Her colleagues in the International Solidarity Movement witnessed the incident and were able to retrieve her badly damaged body. The State Department has said that the investigation was neither transparent nor credible.

British actor/director Alan Rickman and journalist Katherine Viner (of The Guardian) composed the 90-minute monologue from Corrie’s letters home, e-mails and journal entries while living in the Gaza Strip with a Palestinian family.

by Eleanor Clift, Newsweek

A new play about the life of a young woman run down by Israeli forces in Gaza may be politically controversial, but it speaks to cross-cultural human truths that deserve an audience.

Maybe you’ve heard something about the play, “My Name Is Rachel Corrie.” You probably haven’t seen it; few people have. But you know it’s controversial, that it’s not balanced, that it’s too sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view and doesn’t fairly present the Israeli side.

That’s all true, and it was enough to get a scheduled production in New York City canceled. But the play is also a remarkable piece of art, and it’s not meant to be balanced. It’s based solely on the writings, journals and e-mails of a young woman volunteering for a peace organization who was run over by a bulldozer operated by the Israeli Defense Forces in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, on March 16, 2003.

By Mary Carole McCauley
published by Baltimore Sun, July 1, 2007

On March 16, 2003, a bulldozer powered by the Israeli Defense Forces on the Gaza Strip lowered its blades and rumbled into motion — and a young American protester named Rachel Corrie was crushed to death.

Four years later, the ground still has yet to settle back into place.

At least, that’s true metaphorically, if not literally. Consider the reaction when the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, W.Va., announced that one of four productions for its 2007 season would be My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a one-actor play based on the tragedy.

Within 48 hours of the announcement last December, H. Alan Young, a retired attorney and festival director, and his wife withdrew their pledge of $100,000 for the festival’s building campaign, Ed Herendeen, the festival’s artistic director says. Organizers anticipate that the programming decision will cost an additional $20,000 to $50,000 in lost box-office revenues.

Initially, the 27-member board was so split on the wisdom of mounting such a divisive show that the festival hired a mediator. At the end of a session in mid-February, the board, with one dissent, decided to move forward with the production.