A Politics of Love

I just wanted to pass along this wonderful article by James Carroll, which appeared in yesterday's Boston Globe, and is posted on Common Dreams.

It brought back a lot of memories. I live in Queens and work in Manhattan, and I have vivid memories of the day of the Attacks. I had taken the day off, to tend to my brother's illness. (He died later that year from complications of brain surgery. Rest in Peace, Christopher.) I remember I saw the TV on in my local stationery, after I had bought the day's paper. It looked as if a small plane had hit the WTC; I remember at that moment I thought it was footage from the first bombing. So I was not sure what was going on. I walked home and ran into a neighbor, who told me what had happened. The next few hours are NOT in a blur, but I have an incredibly vivid memory of three specific things: watching the buildings crumble on TV, walking a little later and seeing fighter jets really high up in the air, and a fire engine from a New Hyde Park (a New York suburb on Long Island) rushing to Manhattan on Northern Boulevard, the main street in my neighborhood.

When the night came, all of New York was raw, heartbroken, and angry. We remained so for at least the rest of that year (and still have not gotten over it). I don't think any other city in this country really can every have any idea how we felt then. No disrespect... It was with us every day; I went back to work two days after the Attacks, and I remember on my way out the door thinking there was an electrical fire in my apartment. I was about to call the super, when I realized that the smell was everywhere, as strong as it was in my apartment. Until as late as November, just when the wind was right, there was still a burning bitterness in the back of my mouth, as far away as Flushing (where my brother was in the hospital). I remember seeing the heartbreaking missing posters, at places of meeting throughout Manhattan--Penn Station, Columbus Circle, Union Square. Have you seen my sister? She worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, the posters would say.

I also remember how New York reacted as a community--there was a real sense of being in this together, of family; I would even say that people were friendly to each other. People were proud to be New Yorkers, but not in the jingoistic way we saw "patriotism" grow in the United States later. We were still raw, and there really was a sense that "we must love one another or die." But then it started to change, or, rather, this feeling was co-opted by the administration for its own ends. At first, Bush's reaction seemed to me reasonable. I must admit that I (agnostically) supported the bombing in Afghanistan. (As I thought, read, and prayed that fall, I became less and less sure of that support. Now I am a pacifist.) Soon after the Attacks, the Bush administration started propagandizing for war on Iraq. We know what happened. That is why support for the administration is so low in New York City; we find it hard to forgive a man who took our rawness, our pain, our sadness, and yes, our anger, and directed it to yet another war. We resent that our pain was stolen that way.

"We must love one another or die."

There is a real sense that that realization has eluded us as a nation once again. The atrocity of the attacks was followed by an opportunity that we wasted. We reacted the same old ways, by demonizing the Other, by Shock and Awe. By only counting "our" deaths. The 3,000+ people that WE killed in Afghanistan, paid for by my tax dollars, was an atrocity on the same level as 9/11, which was supposed to change everything. It changed nothing. We answered terrorism with even more terrorism.

"We must love one another or die."

As much as I am angry at what has been done in my name, I try every day to resist the urge (not always successfully!) to demonize the "other" side. As a Quaker, I have to answer "that of God" in everyone. It pains me that we are so bitterly divided in this country, and I hope that sometime soon we have leaders that can bridge the divide.

Just a few thoughts on a rainy Tuesday night...