My Name is Rachel Corrie is the powerful story of one person’s passionate journey in the global struggle for sense and justice.
Rachel Corrie was a 23 year-old college student and human rights activist (she has been called the Joan of Arc of the Human Rights Movement) from Washington as well as an American member of the International Solidarity Movement. She was crushed to death on March 16 2003 in the Gaza Strip by an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer when she was kneeling in front of a local Palestinian‘s home acting as a human shield in an attempt to prevent IDF forces from demolishing the home. The IDF stated that the death was due to the restricted angle of view of the IDF’s Caterpillar D9 bulldozer driver, while ISM eyewitnesses suggested there was nothing to obscure the driver’s view. Hence, the details surrounding her death are disputed – the ISM claim it to have been an accident while her parents and the ISM claim it to be deliberate.

At the time actor Vanessa Redgrave said: “This is censorship of the worst kind. More awful even than that. It is black-listing a dead girl and her diaries. A very brave and exceptional girl who all citizens, whatever their faith or nationality, should be proud and grateful for…”
In one of her last emails communications with her parents Rachel Corrie wrote:

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 in which these children exist, I wonder conversely about how it would be for them to arrive in my world."My name Is Rachel Corrie will be in production at fortyfivedownstairs early – mid November, 2010.