The Difference?

I've been having a hard time getting my mind around what happened at Virginia Tech, how our Country has been collectively grieving, and how this all relates to what is happening, and what we have ignited in Iraq. On the one hand, my heart aches deeply for the families of the victims of this utterly disturbing individual. I know the pain of senselessly losing someone you love to an act of purposeless hatred and violence. I know that we all are in pain from what happened in that quiet town in Virginia. We feel deeply for what happened and collectively ask ourselves: "Why?"

 

But how do I link the outpouring of humanity and love and solidarity with the victims and their families, with the (for the most part) lack of that same thing for innocent lives lost en masse, daily, hourly, in Iraq? It could be said that we know Virginia, or places just like it. We could see that being ourselves, or our loved ones. That is not so easy to imagine when its people who live half way across the world. Someplace whose streets we have never roamed, whose universities we have never studied in, whose cafes and record stores we haven't perused. We tell ourselves: it is different. "I can't understand that, because it is so different from me. Everything about it is different. I don't know what its like to live in a war zone, I don't know what its like to lose 17 members of my family and be left orphaned. Therefore, it is different. The pain must be different, the feelings inside of the people experiencing this must be different."

 

But it is not.

 

I think many of us have imagined over the past few weeks what it must have been like for those terrified students in Virginia. Going about their daily grind, wiping sleep from their eyes, downing that first cup of coffee and settling in for another lecture, then........... I think we've imagined the fear, the panic, the confusion, the "Oh my God, this is happening" feeling that students must have been feeling.  But how many of us have thought of those in Iraq, that same day, getting up, eating breakfast, getting that first cup of coffee, jumping on the bus to get to work, or to the store, or to hang out with friends, or to go to school and then...........

 

It is not because we don't care. It is not because we just don't like brown people, or A-rabs. It's because we think it is different. How could we go on if we thought of it any other way? How could we function, and live our lives if we realized, fully and truly in our hearts, that what happens every day, and has been happening for years now, is the same. This pain, is the pain we would feel. No different. Just more tragic perhaps because the world isn't holding candle light vigils for the innocent civilians, just like you and me, who are caught in this awful, incomprehensible cross fire. What if no one mourned with us after 9/11? What if the world turned its back in indifference and numbness? But they didn't. So why should we? Can we do differently? I honestly don't know. I know that it is hard for me to function on a daily basis thinking about what is happening. If I truly let it in, I would be paralyzed. Then what? I'm still at a loss for what to say, how to react, how to make a difference. But all I know, is that a family's pain half way across the world, is no different from mine.

Buzzzz...First Ever US Malaria Day

Marking Malaria Awareness Day Did you know . . . In a phenomenon known as "airport malaria," infected mosquitoes can be transported to the U.S. by aircraft coming from malaria-endemic countries? Malaria is the single most infectious disease threat to U.S. troops worldwide? Malaria is the biggest killer of children under the age of five in Africa? Wednesday, April 25th, is the first ever U.S. Malaria Awareness Day. Health leaders around the country and the world are recognizing this day in conjunction with Africa Malaria Day . To learn more about the lesser-known aspects of malaria, see 26 Things You Probably Don't Know About Malaria and the Families USA press release on Malaria Day. Families USA has also just completed its Investing in Global Health Research publication series, including a fact sheet on malaria. The publications cover some of the major diseases affecting millions world-wide, and talk about why government investment in global health is crucial for humanitarian, diplomatic, economic, and military reasons. Sign up here to get updates on global health. Families USA's work on malaria is part of its Global Health Initiative (http://www.familiesusa.org/globalhealth ). Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.  Tell-a-friend! If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for Families USA. -------- Families USA | 1201 New York Ave., NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20005 www.familiesusa.org | info@familiesusa.org

Don't Mourn- Organize!

Today marks the two year anniversary of our loss of the Marla. Below are remarks I made a number of months ago at the book release of Jennifer Abrahamson's biography of Marla.

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The publication of a biography of slain aid-worker and civilian casualty campaigner Marla Ruzicka is a good occasion to reflect on her life, brutally cut short April last year by a suicide car-bomber on the Baghdad Airport road.

Marla and I went to college together. We lived together and studied human rights and social change in New York, Central America, East Africa, the Middle East – and spent some down time in Europe. Our senior year we spent our first semester in Jerusalem. After nearly 4 years of witnessing to the world’s pain, I was feeling hopeless, weary. Marla and I fought hard about this, with her constantly trying to pull me back from that place, that hopelessness. Jerusalem is where she infected me with the swimming bug. Every morning, laps for an hour -- ignoring the lascivious, attentive gaze of octogenarian Israeli men, if she didn't care, why should I? Besides, it always included a wonderful gossip fest in the sauna afterwards, and how can you turn that down?

After Jerusalem we went our separate ways: her to finish up her fieldwork in Southern Africa, me to finish up my fieldwork in Guatemala. My feelings of hopelessness grew during that time, while Marla continued to push forward, and eventually we met back up at college for our senior year presentations.

I wasn't prepared. I had no idea what I was going to say -- no notes, no outline and after about 30 minutes or so of haltingly talking about the history of land rights in Guatemala and the situation on the ground at that time, I finally sputtered to a stop.

Marla's hand immediately shot up "What can we do about this? Like, what can we, sitting here in this auditorium right here, today, do to make things different for Guatemalans?" she asked.


That was Marla: cut to the chase. What could we, personally, do RIGHT NOW.

I was dumbfounded by her question because I simply did not know. I couldn't see a way, a path, right then, and I was immobilized by it.

After graduation, I went back to Ohio to do odd jobs, she to San Francisco to hit the activist circuit and eventually I became unemployed and once again, depressed.

Marla offered to fly me out to San Francisco for my birthday: we would eat burritos in the Mission, go thrifting (a shared passion), have long night chats in the hot tub while drinking red wine, (talking about boys and how the pretty girls got everything handed to them), go salsa dancing with Philip at the clubs. In need of some serious girlfriend time, I took her up on her offer. And we did every single one of those things she promised.

But, I was with Marla -- which meant I also ended up at 3 protests, got arrested, made the local news, volunteered at the office of the non-profit Global Exchange, attended impromptu fundraisers and a million other things. And Marla did even more -- being on east coast time, I would awake at 5 am, and she would have already slipped out to do whatever else she did. I remember her being very excited about finding a gym open 24 hours a day.

During one of those late night chats in the hot tub she gave me some career advice: "just go down to your local peace and justice center and get work."

"Marla," I replied. "It's Ohio, we don't have a peace and justice center to just go down to."

Her response? "Great! You can start one!"

I rolled my eyes, "Marla, this is Ohio. Get real." But I can see now, I was the one who needed to get real. If she had not been Marla, if she had not been so sweet, she would have simply said: "Get over yourself -- all hands to task!"

It wasn't long afterwards that she departed to Afghanistan with a sleeping bag, a few hundred dollars, and a mandate from Global Exchange to survey the impact of the U.S. war to topple the Taliban on the country's long-suffering civilians.

She ended up making history by successfully lobbying for compensation for the innocent victims of U.S. military action -- first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.

It was a path that became her life's work and which also led her to its bitter, premature end.

When we were in El Salvador, Dean Brackley, a Jesuit priest we met with told us: "You must open your heart to the pain of the world and let that pain break your heart. It may feel as if you are losing your grip on the world, but in reality the world is losing its grip on you. When you can let go and lose control of your world, then you begin to fall in love, then you can truly begin to heal."

I know that Marla and I both felt that way -- we had those kinds of hearts.

But we went different ways with it. Like many people, I fell into a selfish, defensive shell of cynicism. You try to protect your heart. You try to keep the pain out by convincing yourself that there's nothing you can do. I was indulging in that cynicism. Marla saw that, and fought me on it, but she never indulged in it herself. She battled cynicism in herself as well as others, but never indulged it.

She battled fear, loneliness, pain, depression, doubt, herself. But she never let it stop her. She never stopped going. Because she had this underlying motivation: see suffering, do what you can to make it stop -- whether it was her family, her friends, or anyone else in the world -- that is what drove her.

Even if you can't see a way right then, it does not matter: if you keep going, the way will show itself.

Even now, more than a year after she died, I still meet people whose lives Marla changed.

I feel blessed to be able to have witnessed her transformation from a bubbly revolutionary teenager, tripping over her own words so you could barely understand her, into an effective woman who was eventually able to channel all of that revolutionary love and personal love and pain into truly changing the world --

Please visit the website of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), the organization that Marla founded, to learn more about the important work that the organization is carrying on. www.civicworldwide.org

A biography of Marla's life "Sweet Relief: The Marla Ruzicka story" written by Jennifer Abrahamson was published by Simon Spotlight Entertainment, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. A movie about her life is being produced by Paramount Pictures, with Kirsten Dunst slated to play the lead.

US Government Releases Documents on Civilian Casualties

Important Announcement From CIVIC:

 

The US government released the first ever documents on civilian casualties through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made in June 2006 by the ACLU.  CIVIC has also requested this information but until now the government had denied its release.  After years of being kept in the dark about civilian casualties caused by US forces, we now have two thousand documents detailing the human cost of war and a snapshot of what the United States does – and still fails to do – after bullets and bombs harm Iraqi and Afghan civilians.

Through a special arrangement with the ACLU, CIVIC was able to preview the documents before their release this morning.  We noted that there are several serious problems with the US military's handling of the claims, including inconsistent administration of condolence payments to innocent civilians and poor record keeping of injuries and deaths.  Click here to visit the homepage where you can read our press release, the NY Times article published this morning and visit the ACLU's searchable document database to take a look for yourself.

Sincerely,

Sarah & Marla B

Here it Comes

I was just introduced to the best site ever. EVER. oooooooo. If you are a cat person, just click here. Don't sue me if your head explodes or anything.