Remembering September 11th, 2001

In remembering what happened September 11th, 2001, I remember all the people who were around me and all the differences in the world becoming one. I remember I was in Wildwood, NJ at a hotel called the Lollipop with a large group of adults with special needs and being awakened to what I assumed was another breakfast I had slept through. My buddy ran in the room and said, "Rob, Rob they're attacking us, they're bombing us, they just set off a bomb at the World Trade Center!" Groggy eyed and stiff from only a few hours sleep, I sat up as he turned on the TV, and as it came into to focus, I got to see one of the first replays of the first jet slamming into Tower 1. The next thing I noticed was the silence. The silence that all of us can remember experiencing that day all across America. The only word that comes to mind in Eerie. Immediately all the staff began to congregate in my room, or at least all the black staff. I don't know, but I've always been the token white kid most places I congregate. People began to pray, talk, I remember most of us were all holding hands, staying connected. NO ONE took their eyes off the tube, and that was when I realized that every television in the whole Hotel was turned on and replaying this whole experience as it unfolded and we continued taking care of our folks. What a weird way to experience this, I remember thinking. We have all these people whom we're caring for, showers, medicine, shaves all were being administered as the whole nation, was experiencing the most direct undermining of security and our sense of integrity on a collective level. I remember walking along the boardwalk the rest of the week and all of the people, surrounding me, of color experiencing a sense of appreciation beyond any perception they could ever remember. Admittedly, I couldn't fully buy it. Being one to have put forth tremendous effort to break down barriers instilled even by my relatives, I couldn't understand how we couldn't see through the facade. But I understood how much being an American meant for people to put down their shields and swords maintained for so long. Later that winter, I met up with a friend of mine, whom I hadn't spoken to since I was 12. He and I had had a falling out about me being racist just cause I was white. I had never had anyone tell me that before. He and I had grown up right behind each other, our back yards connecting. I had become his friend one day when I was 7 and I had only been in Philadelphia a few months. He had been throwing a ball to his dog in his backyard, and I had had the opportunity to throw it back to him when it had accidentally landed on our side of the fence. We, of course started playing catch, and after exchanging names in our pajamas, we started a friendship that was inseparable for the rest of our childhood. Until one day, when we becoming men, we were confronted with a demon our father's had just barely extended themselves further from. I didn't talk to him again until I was 17. After September 11th, 2001, making his acquaintance again, we found ourselves speaking on the most pervasive issue of current events and he turned to me and said point blank, "That is the only day, I didn't feel like a black man." He went on to tell me how he was able to walk outside and white people actually would smile at him. He said for the rest of the week, he had no idea where was, cause America was not the America it acted before. But how long did this feeling of togetherness actually last? How did we go from tragedy, to acceptance to a regression of not only social interaction but our very foundation of our inherent rights as citizens of the United States of America, as I remember in the call for Security. Might I remind our prying minds that race became citizenship. We immediately closed our borders to anyone but one very evasive family of note. We allowed our legislature to enacted motions and laws that not only profiled people of distinct ethnic description but also undermined the sure basis of our form of Democracy. It wasn't a month after the Patriot Act was signed into law that I was waiting for a train to arrive at 30th St. Station. A group of several Amtrak Police briskly walked up the corridor and began to question a man who looked to me Indian, but definitely of south-east Asian origin. First one officer approach and asked the man for ID, as he went to fumble for his wallet and very graciously cooperate with the officers request. The 4 or 5 other officers that had been just to his left closed in and completely surrounded this man, who had nothing but a briefcase with him. In the space of thirty seconds, they had asked him for his ID, encircled him, began interrogating him from all sides. He showed them his driver's license, his INS identification. He stated where he lived, how he was getting there, where he was coming from, what he did for a living, and even told them as much about his family as he could squeeze in as these officers barely gave him room to breath. He fumbled with his belongings, tried not to make any motions that might raise their already tense reactions. With his voice nervous and quivering, he spoke clearly and directly to each inquiry and no one else in the corridor but me, all the way at the other end, said a damn thing about this absolute disgrace unfolding in front of us. I remember stomping my feet, and my fists on the floor and bench I was sitting on. I stood, and yelled to everyone around me that this man deserved our being his witness. I raised the opinion that maybe at one point most of us had immigrated to America from somewhere else. But not a person turned back to acknowledge this man any further. They had all seen the police surround him, and watched the situation unfold. But all of us being white, no one put down the paper they were reading and showed this man any dignified sign that they were aware of the demeaning nature of what was going on. Having propped myself up against a pillar, it didn't take long for these officers to realize that this man was not the threat they perceived, and as my train was being called, they returned his ID to him and he and I on our perspective stairways made our way to the platform for the trains we were to commute on. I remember this experience much more than I could remember the idea that we all became equal, even for a short period on September 11th, 2001. I remember a state of confusion that everyone seemed to have a real recognition of. But any level of equality I felt was clouded by a decisive and deliberate persuasion of the best way to deal with the sense of loss we all shared together, at the same moment, with the same ideals that were to keep us safe not moments before. It is, on this anniversary of the fall of the Twin towers, of the explosion of Flight 11 and crash into the Pentagon, that we as a nation stand up and recognize that with our vision cleared and ability to seek the truth not diminished, but strengthen by the healing of time. That it is our duty to reaffirm the essence of what it means to live in a democratic society. That we as a people must demand that our representatives work for the betterment of all the people who live within our borders. That they are not to overlook their duty to bare the reigns of our collective responsibility to make a better nation than we had before. In loving memory of those who lost their lives because of the tragedy of September 11th, 2001, and the eternal support our Nation is in dire need, I write this piece to add to all the love and appreciation we hold to the betterment of all that surrounds us. Peace and Blessings.