Hi. Three remarkable progressives have died within the past week. I will
send you obituaries of John McTernan and Rodolfo 'Corky' Gonzales over the
next two days. And I sadly add a personal friend and member of this list,
Marla Ruzicka, who
might have contributed on the level of the titans. The death of one so
young, vibrant and engaged is shocking and I keep imagining it's a bad
dream. I hope it doesn't distract from Mackinnon's important statement
about Adrea Dworkin. I was not only very moved by the essay, but really
thought about, learned from and changed my understanding of a great woman.
What a world. -Ed
NYTimes
Who Was Afraid of Andrea Dworkin?
By CATHARINE A. MacKINNON
Published: April 16, 2005
ANDREA DWORKIN, an inspiration to so many women, died last week at
the age of 58. Over the course of her incandescent literary and political
career, she also became a symbol of views she did not hold. For her lucid
work opposing men's violence against women, she lived the stigma of being
identified with women, especially sexually abused women.
Instead of being lionized and admired for her genius, instead of being able
to earn a decent living as a writer, Andrea Dworkin was misrepresented and
demonized. In the words of John Berger, she was "perhaps the most
misrepresented writer in the Western world."
The range of her literary contribution alone - 13 books spanning fiction,
literary criticism, journalism, speeches (no one could move a room like she
could), essays, history, political analysis - is exceptional. But there was
no Nobel Prize nomination. Her voice was fresh, her ideas original and
powerful, her perceptions and moral principles fearless, her eloquence
oracular, direct and riveting.
"Men have asked over the centuries a question that, in their hands,
ironically becomes abstract: 'What is reality?' " she wrote in an essay
titled "A Battered Wife Survives." "They have written complicated volumes on
this question. The woman who was a battered wife and has escaped knows
the answer: reality is when something is happening to you and you know it
and can say it and when you say it other people understand what you mean
and believe you. That is reality, and the battered wife, imprisoned alone in
a
nightmare that is happening to her, has lost it and cannot find it
anywhere." Her profound abilities only made publishing a constant struggle.
She would not be silenced, but her speech was not free.
Lies about her views on sexuality (that she believed intercourse was rape)
and her political alliances (that she was in bed with the right) were
published and republished without attempts at verification, corrective
letters
almost always refused. Where the physical appearance of male writers
is regarded as irrelevant or cherished as a charming eccentricity, Andrea's
was reviled and mocked and turned into pornography. When she sued for
libel, courts trivialized the pornographic lies as fantasy and dignified
them as
satire.
Andrea Dworkin exposed the ugliest realities of women's lives and said what
they mean. For trusting the knowledge of her own experiences of battering,
rape and prostitution, for listening to harmed women, for standing up for
women with humor - "now the problem with telling you what it means for me,
bertha schneider, to be in an existential position is that I don't have
Sartres credibility," she wrote in a short story - lyricism and brilliance,
she was shunned. Critics and reporters often talked about her ideas without
reading them. She was tortured by editors, some of whom she considered
censors ("police work for liberals").
Only power did not underestimate Andrea Dworkin. Threatened by this Jewish
girl from Camden, N.J., the minions of the status quo moved to destroy her
credibility and bury her work alive.
Andrea Dworkin saw through male power as a political system - "while the
system of gender polarity is real, it is not true," she said - and exposed
the sexual core of male supremacy, the heart of the male darkness.
She stood with, and therefore for, sexually abused women. So she was
treated as they are treated, denigrated as they are denigrated. She was the
intellectual shock troops, the artistic heavy artillery of the women's
movement
in our time. She took its heaviest hits.
And she wanted to change the face of this earth. Our idea of empowering
harmed women to sue pornographers for civil rights violations they could
prove were done to them would stop the pornography industry in its tracks.
"Pornographers use our bodies as their language," she said. "Anything they
say, they have to use us to say. They do not have that right. They must not
have that right." She concluded: "They do benefit from it; and we do have to
stop them." Such work is risky to do at all. It costs a woman's life to do
it well.
Because of her subject, because of the substance of her ideas, and most of
all because of her effectiveness at expressing them, Andrea Dworkin faced
especially naked misogyny: "woman hating," which is the title of her first
book. How she was treated is how women are treated who tell the truth about
male power without compromise or apology. It is why few do.
This warrior for women was gentle, sweet, loving, raging and deeply
vulnerable. "Being stigmatized by sex," she wrote, "is being marked by its
meaning in a human life of loneliness and imperfection, where some pain is
indelible." She was well named Andrea. It means "courage."
Catharine A. MacKinnon, a law professor at the University of Michigan, is
the author of "Women's Lives, Men's Laws." She was an editor, with Andrea
Dworkin, of "In Harm's Way."
***
FROM ANDREA BUFFA OF GLOBAL EXCHANGE:
Dear friends,
If you haven't already heard the terrible news, I'm writing to let you
know that Marla Ruzicka was killed today in Iraq. Marla was a Bay Area
activist for many years, and I'm sure many of you knew her. Marla's
funeral will be on Saturday, April 23, at St. Mary's Catholic Church, in
Lakeport, California. People in the Bay Area are also planning a
memorial, and I'll let you know as soon as I know when it will be.
Below is something that Medea Benjamin and Kevin Danaher of Global
Exchange wrote about Marla early this morning. Marla was a bright light
in what sometimes seems like a dark world, and I know we'll all try our
best to make something positive come from this tragedy.
Much love and with wishes for a better world,
Andrea Buffa
Global Exchange
*************************************************************
Remembering a friend killed in Iraq, Marla Ruzicka
From Kevin Danaher and Medea Benjamin
Just about every day we hear of bombs going off in Iraq, and perhaps we
pause for a moment and think what a tragedy it is, and then we go back
to our daily routine. But when someone close to you is killed by one of
those bombs, the world stops spinning.
On Saturday April 16, our colleague and friend, 28-year-old Marla
Ruzicka of Lakeport, California, was killed when a car bomb exploded on
the streets of Baghdad. We still don't know the exact details of her
death, which makes it all that much harder to deal with the utter shock
of losing this bright, shining light whose work focused on trying to
bring some compassion into the middle of a war zone.
Marla was working for a humanitarian organization she founded called
CIVIC (Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict), which documents cases
of innocent civilians hurt by war. Marla and numerous other volunteers
would go door-to-door interviewing families who had lost loved ones or
had their property destroyed by the fighting. She would then take this
information back to Washington and lobby for reparations for these families.
A case in point, taken from Marla's own journal, as published November
6, 2003 on AlterNet:
On the 24th of October, former teacher Mohammad Kadhum Mansoor, 59,
and his wife, Hamdia Radhi Kadhum, 45, were traveling with their three
daughters -- Beraa, 21, Fatima, 8, and Ayat, 5 years old -- when they
were tragically run over by an American tank.
A grenade was thrown at the tank, causing it to loose control and veer
onto the highway, over the family's small Volkswagen. Mohammad and
Hamdia were killed instantly, orphaning the three girls in the backseat.
The girls survived, but with broken and fractured bodies. We are not
sure of Ayat's fate; her backbone is broken.
CIVIC staff member Faiz Al Salaam monitors the girl's condition each
day. Nobody in the military or the U.S. Army has visited them, nor has
anyone offered to help this very poor family.
Marla first came to the Global Exchange office when she was still in
high school in Lakeport. She had heard a talk by one of staff members
about Global Exchange's work building people-to-people ties around the
world-and she wanted to do something to help. She was a quick study
and took to the work with a passion and energy that were inspiring to us
older activists. She later chose a college (Friends World College) that
allowed her to travel to many countries and learn from diverse cultures.
She quickly developed love of the human race, in all its joy, frailties and
exotic permutations.
Marla worked with AIDS victims in Zimbabwe, refugees in Palestine,
campesinos in Nicaragua. Following the US invasion of Afghanistan, Marla
traveled to Afghanistan with a Global Exchange delegation and she was so
moved by the plight of the civilian victims that she dedicated the rest
of her too short life to helping innocent victims of war. She was on a
similar mission in Iraq when she met with her untimely death.
Marla was once asked by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter if she would
ever consider doing work that was safer. Marla answered: To have a job
where you can make things better for people? That's a blessing. Why
would I do anything else?
We are somewhat consoled by the fact that Marla died doing what she
really wanted to do: help people less fortunate than herself. Many of us
believe that character trait to be the most beautiful quality a human
being can possess. And Marla had an abundance of it.
It is so difficult to think of this lively young woman as not being
alive any more. Marla seemed to have one speed: all-ahead-full. She had
more courage than most people we know. She loved big challenges and
she took them on with a radiant smile that could melt the coldest heart.
One of the things we can do to honor Marla Ruzicka is to carry on her
heartfelt work to build a world without hunger, war and needless
suffering. And every time we start to get depressed about the state of
the world, we should take inspiration from Marla's boundless energy and
throw ourselves back into the work of global justice with the same kind
of passion that was Marla's most endearing quality.
======================================================
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/18/RUZICKA.TMP
San Francisco Chronicle
Bay Area tragedy in Baghdad
Marla Ruzicka, who led humanitarian aid movement in Iraq, dies in
car-bombing
- Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, April 18, 2005
A car bomb attack near Baghdad has killed a well-known activist from
Northern California who entered war zones to record civilian deaths in
Iraq and Afghanistan and secure aid for those caught in the crossfire.
Marla Ruzicka, 28, of Lakeport (Lake County), founder of CIVIC --
Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict -- died with her driver on the
Baghdad Airport road Saturday when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy
of security contractors that was passing next to her vehicle, according to
her family and news reports quoting U.S. Embassy officials in Iraq.
The target of the attack apparently was not Ruzicka's vehicle, said her
mother, who received the account from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
She was killed while traveling "to visit an Iraqi child injured by a
bomb, part of her daily work of identifying and supporting innocent
victims of this war," said CIVIC representative April Pedersen in a
statement on the group's Web site.
Given the U.S. military's policy of not accounting for civilian
casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ruzicka's work played a key role in
drawing attention to the human tragedy of the war and giving the world a
well-researched accounting of the cost in innocent lives.
Ruzicka grew up in Lakeport and made New York City her base for her
frequent trips to the war areas. She continued going into the
increasingly violent Iraqi conflict areas even after most international
aid organizations and relief agencies had bailed out.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, she worked 15-hour days going out to scenes of
civilian carnage and painstakingly documenting the toll. She also
struggled to obtain relief for the families of the victims. Among those
calling the distraught family Sunday was U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy D-Vt.
"I just feel terrible," Leahy told The Chronicle in a telephone
interview from his home outside Washington, D.C. "I told her father that
most people in a lifetime would never accomplish what she has. She was
only 28."
Ruzicka, in an irrepressible one-woman campaign, got Leahy's office
involved in winning Congressional approval of civilian aid worth $10
million in Afghanistan and $20 million in Iraq, said Leahy aide Tim Rieser.
"Marla was really the inspiration behind these programs," Rieser said.
"On the surface, she doesn't seem like someone whom people in
Congress would pay attention to -- vivacious, scatterbrained, losing her
cell-phone every 15 minutes, living out of a suitcase, having no money.
"Then you listen to her, and you realize she's the only one doing it.
She's out there getting the data. She was doing something that really
needed to be done but was so dangerous many people wouldn't do it."
Her death stunned the activist community in the Bay Area and beyond.
"Marla seemed to have one speed -- all-ahead-full," Kevin Danaher and
Medea Benjamin, co-founders of San Francisco's Global Exchange, said
in a memorial statement Sunday responding to what they called "the utter
shock of losing this bright, shining light whose work focused on trying
to bring some compassion into the middle of a war zone."
It was at Global Exchange, a human rights advocacy group, that Ruzicka
began her activist career while still in high school.
A dozen years ago, recalled Global Exchange board member Tony
Newman, "a 15-year-old blond-haired girl walked into our office and started
grabbing armfuls of our research -- leaflets, brochures, books. I had
never seen anyone go in so hungry for material. She said she was going
to take them back to her high school to share with others."
Newman soon found himself going to Lakeport to speak about the U.S.
embargo of Cuba, a talk organized by the energetic Ruzicka, also a
basketball star at Clear Lake High School.
She later saw suffering first-hand in the Middle East, Zimbabwe and
Nicaragua through her work with Global Exchange and as a college
student at Long Island University's Friends World program.
On a trip to Afghanistan with Global Exchange, Ruzicka "was so moved
by the plight of the civilian victims that she dedicated the rest of her
too short life to helping innocent victims of war," Danaher and Benjamin
said.
As she got older, her approach evolved from direct action to pragmatic
cooperation. Her mother recalled an early episode when President Bush
visited Sacramento during the California energy crisis.
"She mooned the President," her mother said. "The back of her underpants
said, 'Public Power Now.' When she turned back around, the President
looked her in the face -- he was only about a foot away -- and said,
'Cute.' "
Her parents are both Republican but have always supported their daughter
and her work, they said Sunday.
"We're proud of her accomplishments," said her mother, a part-time
travel agent who helped arrange discount plane tickets for her daughter.
"We're going to miss her so much. She was a loving person, and she
spread that love around the world in her concern for others."
Her father, Clifford Ruzicka, who runs a civil engineering firm in
Lakeport, is trying to help CIVIC continue the work his daughter began.
"She was doing humanitarian work," he said. "It's the plan to keep that
organization viable."
Any donations in his daughter's memory are requested to go to CIVIC at
PO Box 1189, Lakeport, CA 95453, he said.
"She was constantly meeting with families and constantly meeting with
the military," said Chris Allbritton, a freelance journalist in Iraq.
"She was incredibly high energy, incredibly big heart, and she really
cared."
Chronicle reporter Rob Collier, who has witnessed Ruzicka's work abroad,
described her as "heavily driven, fast-paced and capable of unusual
political pragmatism -- what some of her former colleagues called
opportunism.
"She was a charming and relentless schmoozer, making friends of
journalists, military officers, aid workers and government officials. It
seemed that every journalist in Baghdad knew her."
Her research was a valuable resource for journalists and also a prod.
She was profiled in a 2003 book, "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq."
In a newspaper interview last year, the book's co-author, Bill Katovsky
of Mill Valley, called her "the media's conscience."
She won key support from George Soros' "Open Society Institute," said
Michael Shellenberger, a Bay Area friend of 10 years.
"She was trying to get a precedent set where militaries pay for civilian
victims," Shellenberger said. "I think there's something historic about
that."
A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Mary's Church
in Lakeport. A memorial service is being planned later in Washington, D.C.
Chronicle staff writers Matthew B. Stannard and Cecilia Vega contributed
to this report. E-mail Charles Burress at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Page A - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/18/RUZICKA.TMP
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