As I have mentioned before, I wind up in New York most weekends and this one is no exception. I’m staying in the Financial District, as I usually do, where there has been a particularly eerie spell cast over the streets. Cops are patrolling the area, one should have an ID handy, clergy members are not permitted to take part in this weekends ceremony, etc. It feels extremely dystopian.
I’m sure I’ll have a longer post tomorrow, but today’s sentiment is really not something to be happy about. We were attacked ten years ago largely because of our commitment to a free society, which feels just as threatened when my movement is tracked so closely. I’m not angry that there is a high concentration of military and policemen; I know they mean well and I feel safe. But it’s hard to feel like the world is a safer place now than it was ten years ago.
September 11 brought out some of the best in New Yorkers and, if anything decent can come from the anniversary of an act of terror, it should be the spirit that followed. For instance, Scott Heiferman found himself talking to more neighbors in the days after 9/11 than ever before. People said hello to neighbors helped each other, etc. which inspired him to co-found meetup.com: using the internet to get off the internet — and grow local communities.
Friendship is the way we should respond this weekend.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
How is it that the government has stripped the rights from entire classes of society such as clergy? Will this be enforced uniformly? Or will only Christian clergy be excluded from ceremonies? Did someone cut the first amendment out of the Constitution this past week?
Unless I’m mistaken, there was a space problem because of the numbers of survivors and their families. First responders are in the same position as the clergy who also wanted to come but weren’t even direct participants.
I have no idea what you mean by your post…
…Despite objections, Bloomberg’s office has said it won’t change the 9/11 plans…”The ceremony was designed in coordination with 9/11 families with a mixture of readings that are spiritual, historical and personal in nature. It has been widely supported for the past 10 years and rather than have disagreements over which religious leaders participate we would like to keep the focus of our commemoration ceremony on the family members of those who died…”
For Radical Islam: The Double Whammy of a Palin Presidency
“As the 2012 Presidential race comes into sharper focus, it is becoming increasingly apparent that four individuals have a chance to become President of the United States in 2012-”
“And Palin? On the economic front, she would undertake an energy development program similar to Reagan’s arms buildup in the 1980s, in the following sense. Reagan understood that the Soviet economy was too sick and fragile to keep up with the United States and that, if he pressed it with such an arms race, the Soviet Union would collapse. Palin understands that the Islamic economies are even more fragile than the old Soviet Union, almost solely dependent, as they are, upon oil exports. Palin further understands that the United States has the largest fossil fuel deposits (including coal, oil and natural gas) in the world,”
The second “whammy” of a Palin Presidency would be cultural.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2776492/posts?page=1#1
So, “One should have an I.D. handy,” huh? Well, if one of NYC’s finest asks you for yours, tell him you just came from voting and consider it a racist offense to have to produce any form of identification.
Here’s what Barack Obama is doing today to “commemorate” 9/11: http://weaselzippers.us/2011/09/10/obama-commemorates-911-anniversary-by-packaging-meals/ (huh?)
And here’s what George Bush is doing today:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/10/us-sept11-shanksville-idUSTRE7891DW20110910?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
An eerie spell cast over the streets? Clergy members not permitted to take part in the ceremony? Have an ID handy? A high concentration of military and policemen who “mean well?” Meaning well is not good enough any more. It’s a cop-out. Too often a license for thoughtless bullying in the name of “doing good,” no thinking required. Many, far too many, are simply automatons who suddenly find themselves deputized to stand out in the middle of the street. And besides, what’s the military doing patrolling in my city’s streets? The whole thing sounds far too much like Caracas. Have an ID handy? Please. We’re digging out from under the mud 30 miles south of you and an ID gets you nothing (but it is against the law to need one to vote). The community’s waiting breathlessly for the bureaucrats, professional do-gooders, and under standers from FEMA to show up. (FEMA alert: we’re out of red carpets.) All this is a victory – A Victory – for the people who flew the planes in to the trade center buildings. There is danger from terrorists, but a bigger threat is that our society’s in danger of coming apart at the seams because the government, politicians, lawyers, teachers, priests, and experts – none of them – understand it and want to change it. Deb Burlingame and Rudy Giuliani should have been put in charge of the September 11 ceremonies. Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama may have been invited as dignitaries, or not. In any event, they’d have been free to stand with the rest of the crowd if they wanted. Whoopee! Another social Web site. Well, what the hell, what’s one more Web site.
I spent a lot of time in countries where the police and military patrolled the streets carrying fully automatic weapons. The very fact that these governments felt it necessary to patrol the streets with police and military carrying fully automatic weapons made me feel unsafe.
We won’t win this war by massive numbers of police patrolling the streets looking for the bad guys who are here. We need to control the borders to prevent the bad guys from getting here and then use the resources of the government, state and federal, to get bad guys out of the country. Then we won’t need troops in the streets on the 13th anniversary of 9/11…
Kathleen, I agree with you. Friendships ARE the way to deal with this weekend and the ignoble threats of terrorism.
I would add that commemorations are very important and so are community events such as square dances, church picnics and the like.
A one on one relationship with others is very important. Loving our enemies is the real ground zero.
New York City is a singular place, one that is constantly reinventing and rebuilding itself. There are precious few structures that last long in its huge energetic embrace. For example, a few Sugar Houses once stood there, but stand no more. Those were the buildings where thousands of our first national heroes were cruelly held prisoner, and where so many of them perished under abysmal conditions during our Revolutionary War for Independence. Today, they are mere addresses, ones where you could stand and face toward the hallowed ground but only imagine what was once there.
There are, however, a few notable landmark exceptions. One of them suddenly emerged from relative obscurity ten years ago, and became bound up forever as an inextricable part of the memory of 9/11 and its aftermath.
Who could possibly ever forget the moving speech of the Mayor of New York, Rudy Guilani, on September 23, 2001 at the Citywide Prayer Service held in Yankee Stadium, noting as he did the miraculous fact that St. Paul’s Chapel, and its quaint churchyard, located at 209 Broadway and its back facing Church Street, a fragile edifice situated in the immediate shadow of the World Trade Center, had somehow emerged unscathed amid the horrendous damage and destruction that rained down all around it?
Though littered with a thick blanket of debris from the collapse of those several buildings, he noted that not so much as a window was broken in the Chapel!
This little ancient church was the frequent place of worship of George Washington, who chose to attend services there whenever he was in New York City, including to pray following his first inauguration. Gracing the inside wall, right adjacent to pew that great man occupied, is a timeless reminder, a priceless yet unattributed painting of the Great Seal of the United States of America. It too was undamaged and somehow untouched by all the havoc for literally blocks around.
Here was a part of how America’s Mayor put it back in 2001:
During the entire cleanup period following 9/11, untold numbers of the firemen, police, other emergency workers, the frequently unheralded and dedicated steelworkers, and countless others, who all labored throughout that agonizing cleanup period, sought moments of refuge and inspiration at St. Paul’s. Professionals of all stripes attended to peoples’ needs there.
Their personal faith did not matter. Many of them were ministered to and were always offered refreshments and countless other forms of assistance alike by the staff, and by the volunteers of multiple denominations and faiths who put in time there on behalf of the workers.
There is not now, nor could there constitutionally ever be an established church of the United States. But I would submit that, in its way, that little Chapel was for a time a kind of inspirational ground zero for many people, almost as if a metaphorical spark of recognition was reignited there, if you will, triggering a reaffirmation or a reconnection that many Americans have had to whatever faith they personally hold dear. It is a regular pilgrimage site for visitors to the area.
Maybe a subconscious sense of that is part of why a kind of mass denial seems to have once again surfaced and has now cast a sad shadow over one aspect of these 10th year remembrance ceremonies. We Americans seem to have gotten ourselves trapped by the organizers in the odd notion that merely speaking of religion at an official gathering, or, in this case at memorial services, or even permitting or merely inviting religious leaders of any denomination or faith to attend those remembrance ceremonies, must perforce be rejected at all costs.
The memorial ceremonies truly should be centered on the families of the victims. But they should also include the responders and those who assisted them, including those who ministered to them, and by extension to all of us.