Least we forget...the Eleventh of September...a day that shall live in infamy

[shadowkat]

17 year old high school kid from Seattle who has never been to NYC in his life: So what sights should I see?
Me: 9/11 Memorial is amazing.
Kid: I was thinking of seeing it on 9/11
Me: Bad idea. Well unless you want to see it with a million other people.
Kid: It's really that crowded?
Me: Every year they gather to read off all the names at the site. They've been doing it since 2002.
And it's really crowded. Pick an off time. I did, and it was still somewhat crowded. I couldn't get into the museum.

They keep talking about "never forgetting" on social media -- from places far far away from NYC. And I keep thinking, if only I could. But alas, I live in frigging NYC. It's impossible. Every single year we get the reading of the names. There are still people filing lawsuits for being contaminated by the debris which caused various lung ailments and cancer. Lots of New Yorkers in and around the area contracted cancer because of the dust.



And...I worked in not one but two businesses shortly after 9/11, where the companies lost over 100 people in the disaster. Societe Generale was located in the North Tower and Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield in the South Tower. My boss at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield aka Wellpointe, had a shrine to the event in her office until we were laid off in 2006.

I honestly don't think folks outside of NYC know what it was like. I saw the frigging buildings on fire. I walked through the falling papers and the brown dust. It's not something you can forget.
So it annoys me when people post #neverforget....

I want to forget.

I want to go back to a time before security checks. Armed guards at various transit locations.
Before terrorists took over our national conscience resulting in not one but two endless Wars, discriminatory practices culminating in an anti-immigration policy that separates families and makes me physically ill just to contemplate, and an increased anti-muslim sentiment.

Did anything good come out of this? There were heroes..but many died, most from ailments discovered years later. Increased security? Did we come together as a world? No, if anything nationalism reared it's ugly head and divided us more than ever before culminating in Brexit, the election of the Americanized version of Hitler, and other equally despicable leaders.

9/11 and it's aftermath makes me ashamed to be an American, ashamed of my British roots, and ashamed of the human race.

Yet..yet...if you look past all that, there's hope in the crevices. The 9/11 Memorial itself, so elegant and kindly wrought gives me hope. As does the marches, protests, and continued fight of various organizations against these cruel policies and the politics of fear. Because make no mistake, that's what it is -- fear. When you vote or act out of fear, the terrorists win. And they have been, but not entirely. There's always hope.


I leave you with photographs...from the 9/11 Memorial:

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

It's remarkable to think there are near-adults who never lived through that time. I always remember 2001 for various reasons, such as a friend's wedding in the spring and the birth of another friend's daughter in August. She and her mother were stuck in a subway car that day for hours.

[shadowkat]

My niece who is 14 years old now -- was born four years after it. And there are kids who are voting age who didn't live through it. It's amazing. And very hopeful.

I last visited the Pacific Northwest in 2001 -- I'd taken a trip two months before to Oregon and did the wine country with some friends. It was actually an enjoyable year until September, when the bottom fell out of my life (my boss was bullying and gas-lighting me at my workplace (the former HW Wilson Company)).

But that's all over now. And I'm glad I left that company when I did. In the end I landed on my feet. But so many others didn't.

[yourlibrarian]

It's always good to be able to look back (far back) at something awful and realize that your life has improved so much since then (and sometimes also headed in a better direction as a result).

[wendelah1]

Your photographs of the memorial are beautiful.

I hope I'll get to see it in person someday.