By Justin Mauger
On Monday March 2nd, 7:00 pm, the award-winning play “My Name is Rachel Corrie” will be shown at the Magnuson Theater on the campus of Gonzaga University. This play is brought to the Gonzaga Campus by PJALS’ Palestine-Israel Human Rights Committee in collaboration with Gonzaga student Forrest Potter and featuring actress Erin Fitzgerald. This play is presented free of charge and open to the public. We hope that PJALS members will join us in attendance at this important event.
Rachel Corrie was a gifted writer and peace activist from Olympia, Washington. As a student at The Evergreen State College, she proposed an independent-study program and went to the Gaza Strip, Palestine, to create a Rafah-Olympia Sister City relationship, where, in her work as a peace and human rights activist she helped protect Palestinian homes from illegal demolition. While practicing Gandhian nonviolence, clad in fluorescent orange and shouting over a bullhorn, she was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer as she attempted to stop the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home in the city of Rafah.
Following her death, Rachel Corrie’s emails from Palestine received global attention. In 2005, her emails and earlier writings were presented as the play “My Name is Rachel Corrie.” The award-winning play, edited by Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner, was initially shown at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and now, despite attempts at censorship, protests and much controversy, has traveled the world. The play has been shown in cities as varied as Dublin and Dallas, and Jerusalem and New York City, and now Spokane for a single showing.
The New Yorker magazine said, “The play shrewdly does not show Corrie dying; it shows her living, in all her funny, lively, melancholy and manipulative immediacy… Her words bear witness to the deracinating madness of war, a hysteria that infects not only those doing the fighting but also those ambitious to do the saving.”
This play is a project of PJALS’ Palestine-Israel Human Rights Committee, a group that creates opportunities for the Spokane community to engage and learn about the situation in Palestine-Israel. We support equal human rights for all in Palestine and Israel and see justice as a requisite for peace. “Hearing her story and studying her words in print have shown me that Palestinians are people, just like me and you, and they deserve human rights, too.” says Jennifer Calvert, the committee’s co-chair.
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