I sat in a deli in blue collar Brooklyn this evening. The TV was on as was the news and coverage was of the obligatory 9/11 anniversary preparation. The increased police presence, the subway bag checks, the potential terror threats. A man sitting across from me, who is middle aged but on whom years have been harder than they are on some asked the woman behind the counter, who wouldn’t have looked out of place if brought back in time 25 years, what she thought of the developments. She said that she was glad that there were so many cops in case something happened.
He cut her off to say that it was a bunch of fear-mongering, incited to scare us all into more control. His arguments are ones you’ve heard, the “Patriot” Act, etc. I’m not sure whether I’m more relieved that lots of portions of our society understand this concept, or saddened by our acceptance and complacence as if these dynamics are inherent.
My mother called me this evening and one of the first questions she asked was whether or not people in NYC were alarmed by the talk of terror threats and increased security as reported by the news 250 miles away and doubtless across the country.
Dan and I have been meaning to rewatch V for Vendetta, which we finally got around to this evening. When I witnessed the conversation in the deli, I thought it insightful as a anecdotal measure of the level of trust of government in this country.
On 9/11/01 I stood in uniform behind a pizza counter where I typically spent around forty hours of my week in an empty mall and listened to the radio. I was 17 years old and the events of that day would definitely awaken in me an awareness of the world that is growing to this day. I can’t pinpoint a time in my life where I realized that things weren’t quite right, but in hindsight I can see that I’ve been reacting to those dynamics all along.
I counted myself lucky to be 17 on that day and to have something to prompt me to be more aware while I was still young. It seems to me that it had nothing to do with my age. I hope that we’re all more aware now.
Being young, rebellious and distrustful, I maintained that I wouldn’t put it past our government to let such a thing happen, even potentially facilitate it for gain. This is clearly a short-sighted belief but I can’t blame my younger self for thinking such a thing.
When I think about the elements of my hometown and my young life that repeled me and drove me to where I am now, I think about my lack of worldly perspective. I can clearly remember the sensation of standing and listening to the radio and trying to imagine this fascinating place, NYC, and its people. I felt connected, or as though I wanted to form a connection. I wouldn’t realize this desire for another five years, but I use that moment as a marker to remember how small my world was and how much it has expanded.
We have so much unquestioned fear. We white people tend to be afraid of poor areas, of black areas, of hispanic areas, without having any facts pertaining to each specific neighborhood as to why we should be afraid. We are afraid of cultures that are different from our own as we are told that they hate us. Which, might I add, is similar to tactics used by individuals who would seek power in a group by dividing other individuals. Some of us fear attacks when we are told simply that there has been some degree of subjectively credible evidence, though we can never know exactly what that evidence is nor have evidence ourselves that it exists.
That 17 year old me quickly learned to remind herself to question everything. Truly, as adults, I don’t recommend it as it will drive you insane and you’ll likely want to go off the grid and start a remote, selective commune somewhere. However,
Question fear. Though I am sad about any loss of life, I can’t condone the sensationalization of this anniversary on the grounds that I find it disrespectful for those who have given of themselves and their families and because far more people die around the world each day either at our collective hand or as a result of our turned backs. I think the best way to honor those who died is to question the fear that their terrible demise has been used to perpetuate.
When I first moved to NYC, I worked downtown at One Liberty Plaza, across from the WTC site. At that time it was nothing more than an empty lot, really. I would count quarters to get the slice of pizza that was my daily lunch and sit on the plaza outside the building to eat. It was upraised, giving tourists a better look over the construction barrier and into the lot, cameras snapping away. A security guard was hired for the sole purpose of telling people not to stand atop planters for fear that they might fall and sue. I always thought this was despicable - that this place where people died was now tourist attraction. It cemented for me the understanding that most people must not feel this connection to other individuals as people, that their connection has been replaced with a network of sensationalized information and the gathering of trophy experiences.
I know what I fear. I fear what it means that I recently read a single article about NYPD unfairly targeting and questionably terrorizing Muslim New Yorkers and have heard nothing about it since. I fear people who are so sucked into the culture of fear that they would proudly state that all Americans must speak English, I fear a culture in which one never has to mentally or physically leave their homogenous environment. Even more I fear all of us who have unwittingly and subtly internalized this fear culture so that we default to avoiding unknown communities and perpetuate separatism. I fear having children in a world where they will go to school and, year after year, will hear about the 3k people who died ten years ago but never be told of the countless others who have died for myriad, preventable reasons in the chain of events that is history because of their location, or skin color, or income - because they are invisible and not valuable as political props.
