Yet More Thoughts on Marla Ruzicka and Rachel Corrie

I’ve had a few interesting conversations about my Marla/Rachel writing over the past several days, often touching upon perceived ways in which my piece drew parallels between the two of them. 

If you have read what I wrote, you will recall that it all come out of a conversation with my daughter, Rosie.  It touched upon my on-going thoughts about parenting, activism, and my hopes for myself and others as both models/examples for my children.  It was also just kind of a wondering aloud about what drives people to develop and act upon moral commitments to the world.

As I wrote, both Rachel and Marla seemed to embody the qualities that I would like my children to take out into the world with them:  courage, empathy, love, spirit, determination.  In that sense, I think it is very fair to equate them.

I was writing more from the place of a mother than from a place of political analysis of their work.  But, their work can’t be ignored, and many people have justly been raising questions about important differences between the two.  Here is one example from Alexander Cockburn’s CounterPunch Diary:

Marla Ruzicka decided to work within the system, as they say. Maybe, given the aims of her organization, CIVIC, that was an appropriate choice. I'm not inclined to pass judgment on that. The "system" duly mourned and honored her. Rachel Corrie saw that the "system", with all its innumerable and fraudulent roadmaps, negotiated solutions, Oslo frameworks, processes of peace and so forth had not stopped, nay, was encouraging the daily outrages of demolitions of Palestinian homes and kindred barbarities. Corrie stood in the path of that system and died, and her murder was covered up by Israel and by the government of her own country.

In choosing to work within the system, Marla apparently also made a conscious decision not to take a stand on the war, but simply to help the victims.  In this sense, I do question the ultimate effectiveness of her work in creating change.  This is not to say that the work she did was not important, and needed, and did not touch the lives of many individual people.  But, war and occupation cannot come to an end if we are not willing to take a moral stand against injustice.   

I think that perhaps a parallel can be drawn with teachers, who work within the system because of their desire to help children.  In my work I have heard teachers say again and again that they just want to be able to close their classroom doors and do the best that they can for their students.  Again, this is important, and needed -- but not enough if we hope to truly educate and honor all children. 

Within any system there are cracks, fissures, spaces that with the right kind of action can be opened, bringing to light inadequacies, creating possibilities for change.  So, like Cockburn, I am not inclined to pass judgment on working within the system -- especially since I, in many senses, work within the system and struggle daily with that reality.  But, I do believe that it is crucial to consider what you do with that work -- that you must take a stand, and that you cannot remain neutral -- if you hope to bust open some of those cracks make a difference from within.