In Memory of Marla Ruzicka

 No doubt there will be a lot of coverage of Ms Ruzicka’s passing over the next week, and this plays to the discussions we (well Molly, Rob and I) were having here yesterday. When I read stories of people like her, I can’t help be amazed by such selflessness. So today, with all of the media hoopla going on, I ask – what have I given of myself today to make the world a better place for others? Marla gave her life.

From Tim Dunlop:

I suspect Marla Ruzicka is the sort of person who puts us all to shame, no matter what side of the political divide we are on.

In case you don't know, she is the 28-year old American activist who was killed this past weekend by a car bomb in Iraq. The reason she was there was because she had set up her own, sort of, aid agency, trying to bring together American dollars with victims of war:

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.

The best piece I've seen on the theory and practice of Marla Ruzicka is this one by Maj. Bob Bateman, a soldier stationed in Baghdad:

Ms. Ruzicka might be considered my anti-thesis by some. I would disagree. I would suggest that we occupy flip sides of the same coin. That is just my opinion, however, and has little worth. I do think she was probably braver than I. This is what I know of her:

Marla Ruzicka was 28. She was from California. Her parents are Republicans. She was not, and though I would not presume to know what her personal politics were, I am assuming they were considerably left of that point. She has a twin brother. She was dedicated to people, to improving life and saving life. She felt a deep and abiding need to do everything she could towards that end. In the course of her life she worked for one NGO, then founded another. The latter, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), had as its mission, the cataloging of civilian deaths in this war. That is a task which the military does not pursue (nor, for what it is worth, has any military ever done so), and Ms. Ruzicka thought it important that these numbers should be counted. But more significantly, from where I sit, is the fact that she did not catalog numbers from the safety of a desk in some London office. She did not just compile news clippings and then post them on the alternet. She came here, lived here, and attached a human face to those casualties. Then she worked to relieve their suffering. She learned the systems, first agitating in Washington, DC, and eventually here. She did so even to the degree of working with the military to help distribute funds for the victims which the military has for that purpose, all of this in order to help innocent people. In the end, it seems, she left politics aside in favor of practical reality and set her shoulder to work for humans, not just ideals. Nobody I know opposes an objective such as that.

There is no need for me to go into the details right now. There will doubtless be a thousand articles about her in the next few days.

In the past several weeks, in your gifts of creamer and magazines and the like, and by e-mails and letters, many of you have asked me, “What else can we do?” For the most part I’ve side-stepped your generosity. Today I have an answer.

Go to CIVICWorldwide.org. Go there and donate ‘til it hurts.

I'm kind of half-dreading the fact that she seems to be on the verge of being giving the sort of insincere martyr treatment that cable news does as its stock-in-trade, and welcoming the fact that they are at least acknowledging her efforts. Clouds and silver linings, I guess.

Comments

[Rob Irwin]

Sounds like a very brave lady. I think at times in our lives we have a chance to make a difference or, more correctly, a time when something might hit us between the eyes and we have this total clarity about what needs to be done, how we can do it, and how our abilities will make a difference which is why we have to do it, no matter what. Maybe this moment never happens for some people, but I live in hope that it will one day happen for me. It had obviously happened for Marla.

[Nicole Simon]

I do like Australia since the Olympics (or let's better say: it had kind of come to my mind as being an interesting place), also because one of the two national televisions had a theme song which is since then very much bound to these olympics and Australa: Heather Small and Proud.

The line "What have you done today to make you feel proud" has such a power and plays exactly into what you are asking for.

Today I'll be giving a seminar abozut podcasting to our comunity radio people, which is of course nothing compared to what Marla did. But then again, step by step we will be able to change the world.