What a joyful day! I know Rachel is dancing somewhere in the heavens as she peers down upon all of us and celebrates with all of you who are graduating today. She will cheer loudly and lovingly when her colleagues cross this stage to collect their diplomas, and she will offer an especially triumphant salute to her dear, dear friend and ours Colin Reese. I know, too, that Rachel is out there somewhere impishly smiling at us-her poppy and her mama-- coming to pick up her diploma for her because she is busy elsewhere.

Rachel spent her lifetime in Olympia and a good deal of time here at Evergreen-in and out-finding her way, finding her voice, finding friends. One of the most powerfully healing pieces of these past three months without Rachel has been for us to enter a bit into her Evergreen community. We thank you for letting us in, for helping us to better understand Rachel's experience here, to better understand her journey. We thank, especially, those of you who continue tirelessly to help us pursue Rachel's dreams.

In evaluating some of her work at Evergreen, Rachel wrote, "I have developed confidence as a participant in a collaborative classroom setting, as an investigator of local history, and as an organizer of community events. I have worked to develop bridges between local history and current events, between art and social change work, between student activists and the broader community. The work that I did this year will continue beyond the end of the program and beyond my time at Evergreen."

And later, she wrote, "I developed a whole different modus operandi through the work I did in this program. I think giving up comforting habits and behavior patterns is one of the most radical things that can happen."

Rachel's interests and activism extended to many different areas-labor, the homeless, the delivery of mental health care, the cost of higher education, the environment, peace-- but now, she will always be connected to the Palestinian people whom she joined as she worked nonviolently to resist the cruel oppression of the thirty-six year Israeli Occupation. Rachel's decision to go to Palestine was an outgrowth of her discoveries here. She wrote, "Labor history in the Pacific Northwest has been particularly impacted by war, and the West has been deeply marked by racism. The brutal history drives home the importance of resistance and it makes national and international events relevant on a local level. So much of this has happened before. We can look at that history and then choose which side we want to be on now, and how willing we are to fight."

"Studying the history of this area roots me. It makes me more conscious of the land and more conscious of myself and of the people around me as actors in history. Studying local history is motivating. We've certainly waded in the same water and wandered on the same beaches as very brave people. It makes bravery seem more possible."

Rachel told us that going to Gaza was one of the most important things she had done in her life. With other activists, she spent nights sleeping at wells in Rafah to protect them from demolition. She stood between Palestinian municipal water workers who were trying to repair wells and the Israeli military towers from which shots rang down, harassing the workers and the internationals. She documented the destruction of Palestinian olive orchards, gardens, and greenhouses as well as harassment of Palestinians at checkpoints. She learned Arabic from Palestinian children and helped them with their English homework. She drank sweet tea with Palestinian grandmothers, held wiggling babies, and danced with children in the street. She wrote, "Know that I have a lot of very nice Palestinians looking after me. I have a small flu bug, and got some very nice lemony drinks to cure me. Also, the woman who keeps the key for the well where we sleep keeps asking me about you. She doesn't speak a word of English, but she asks about my mom pretty frequently--wants to make sure I'm calling you."

Rachel wrote, "I think about the fact that no amount of 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 is not at all the reality-what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed U.S. citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact 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. Ostensibly, it is still quite difficult for me to be held for months or years on end without a trial. When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting half way between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint-a soldier with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I'm done. So, if I feel outrage at arriving and entering briefly and incompletely into the world into which these children exist, I wonder conversely about how it would be for them to arrive in my world. They know that children in the United States don't usually have their parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken for granted and not stolen in the night, once you have experienced the reality of a world that isn't surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, armed settlements and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your childhood spent existing--just existing--in resistance to the constant stranglehold of the world's fourth largest military--backed by the world's only superpower--in its attempt to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew."

In her work, Rachel joined hands with Jewish-Americans and with Israelis who are working to end the occupation. Two of the co-founders of the International Solidarity Movement are Jewish-one American, one Israeli. At any given time, twenty to thirty per cent of the ISM activists are Jewish. Rachel worked with Israeli peace activists as she tried to better understand the destruction of the Palestinian water supply. She received guidance from a reservist in the Israeli military, a father of two teenage sons, who taught her Hebrew phrases to shout through her megaphone when she encountered bulldozer and tank operators. Rachel died on March 16, 2003, held and comforted by her ISM friends. One was Alice who is Jewish and has cousins in Israel whom she fears for whenever she hears of a suicide bombing.

After Rachel was killed, our earliest e-mails included ads from the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz--ads placed by Israeli Jews who understood why Rachel had come to Gaza, who understood why she stood up to the bulldozer that day, who understood that in her compassionate heart there was love for all humanity. E-mail came from the Occupied Territories, too, from Palestinians who told us that because of Rachel they were making a commitment to work non-violently for justice.

Though there is no balance of power between the Israeli and Palestinian people, there is immense fear on both sides. We have spoken with an Israeli mother, who tells us that at times she has been paralyzed by fear when her two boys leave their Israeli home. Nevertheless, this woman opposes the occupation and works with others in the Israeli peace movement to harvest the olives from Palestinian orchards because Palestinian farmers will be fired upon if they do the picking. We have talked with a young Palestinian woman whose entire family was killed in 1982 in the Sabra and Shatila massacre while she, a four-year-old child, hid beneath a bed. We have personally heard the fear and anguish on both sides.

We in America see the horror of the suicide bombings. But most of us see much less the ongoing violence against the Palestinian people. Our blindness is an enormous contributing factor to this problem. Parents can be awakened by their children. Rachel helped to awaken our family to the cruelty of the thirty-six year occupation. We must all remember that as we have watched the deaths of some of the hundreds of Israelis who have died since September 2000, that there have also been well over two thousand Palestinian deaths, as well as daily assaults on the ability of people there to live-to have homes, gardens, education, jobs, and self-respect.

On January 19, Rachel wrote to me, "The scariest thing for non-Jewish Americans in talking about Palestinian self-determination is the fear of being or sounding anti-semitic. Reading Chomsky's book and talking to my non-zionist Jewish friends has helped me think about this. I just think we all have the right to be critical of government policies...any government policies...particularly government policies which we are funding."

How many Americans have walked in Gaza? How many of our elected officials who vote year after year to spend billions of our tax dollars to provide the apache helicopters, the tanks, the F-16s and, yes, the D-9 armored bulldozers that are used to terrorize and kill the Palestinian people-how many of them have walked in Gaza? I have reached inside Rachel's shoes, and I have run my fingers through the sand of Gaza that still remains in them. I know that this is a painful issue for many people. I think that what Rachel would hope is that we listen to what she had to report firsthand and that we think critically about this issue. She wrote, "I do believe pretty much above all else in the importance of independent critical thinking."

Rachel believed without a doubt that by joining the Palestinians in nonviolent resistance to the occupation that she was in fact working to make both Palestinians and Israelis safer. She dreamed of a day when all Palestinians and Israelis could live in freedom with security and dignity. I think that Rachel would hope that we could all agree not to behave in ways that prolong the violence but, instead, that we all engage in finding a just solution.

As all of you graduates move on from here today and choose your own battles with which to make the world whole, and as you struggle (as you will) it may help to recall that Rachel struggled, too. She said, "I really can't believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it. It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be."

But when things are difficult, remember, too, that Rachel also found hope. In her words, "I felt much better after this morning. I spent a lot of time writing about the disappointment of discovering, somewhat first-hand the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances.... I think the word is dignity."

In a paper for Local Knowledge, Rachel wrote, "I came from Perry creek and I would have liked to stay forever in the rushes but I couldn't. I look at this place now and I just want to do right by it. The salmon beneath downtown and the people who came to drop-ins group and the creeks and the inlets and the people who were here first and my elementary school teachers and my mom." I know that you will all draw your own meaning from Rachel's life and death. But wherever your journeys lead you, whatever your task or passion may become, I know Rachel would be honored and humbled if in remembering her, you remember, too, your roots-your community, your family, and Evergreen and that you decide to "just do right by them."

Cindie Corrie delivered these remarks on June 13, 2003 at the Evergreen State College Graduation in Olympia, Washington.
E-mail: rachelsmessage@the-corries.com

Copyright Cindy Corrie 2003

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