Y’all, I really tried hard not to write this blog. I’m going to be fully transparent & honest with you, I did not want to write a blog about September 11th, 2001, but here I am I guess. If you’re asking “Charlie, why didn’t you want to write about 9/11?” I think the answer has a number of reasons & responses. For starters I’m two days late on writing this post, I felt to a degree that if I were going to that I missed my window. However, when I sat down to write this afternoon it was the only idea flooding my brain as I stared long into the blinking cursor on my screen. Additionally, for a lot of folks, there are a lot of different feelings & beliefs around the day in question. For some people, they remember the day vividly because they lived through it in proximity as a resident of the Tri-state area, or they had a loved one who was involved to some degree in the tragedy. For others it’s something that happened in the history books, that they have no context for. Then there are those of us why watched it unfold from the 12 inch screens perched atop the refrigerator or from a wheeled in television, in a classroom. Others saw it unfold from the other side of the world or many hours or days after the fact. All of this is just to reinforce that each of us have our own feelings regarding September 11th & for whatever reason, this year, I’ve had a lot of feelings about it as well.
It seems to me that we had a lot more information & footage released this year regarding 9/11. Maybe because it was the 25th anniversary of the attacks there was much more of a push to mark the day with perspective. Whatever the cause was, my feed was filled with videos & stories I had never heard before & it really helped to flesh out the details of the events & further ground them in human stories of tragedy & pain, but also hope.
I think it’s worth telling where I was the morning of 9/11. The middle story in paragraph one is my own. Living in Kansas at the time, we were an hour behind in the central time zone. By the time I had gotten up for school, the first plane had already hit. I remember coming into the kitchen to find the image of the burning tower displayed on our tiny, lofted tv in the kitchen. The only other details that I really remember were that we watched the towers fall in the reading area of my fourth grade class from a TV strapped to a cart & of course, the detail so many others remember, the fact that it was an eerily perfect day out as far as the weather was concerned. I more so remember the aftermath, how every magazine at the store had pictures from Ground Zero or George W Bush or later Osama Bin Laden. I was 9 years old when the attacks happen & it took me another 9 years before I met anyone who was actually personally affected by it. I lacked a lot of the context & understanding I think.
I’ve spent the last couple of days really invested in the stories of September 11th & the days that followed. I learned a number of things that I had never known before, a number of things that I know for a fact I had never even heard of before as well. I saw footage & listened to audio that was newly released or had remained fairly buried until now most of which were very civilian level entries into the history books & I think that’s what has fascinated me the most this year; the stories of humanity set to the backdrop of this horrible historic event.
The more I dove headlong into the accounts, the more they got me thinking about the every day individuals who rose up to become heroes or those who had to deal with the fallout of these attacks from a physical, psychological, &/or emotional level. How do you even begin to process that? I also learned of many of the stories of those who unjustly had to be confronted with the weight of the wrath of a nation & world who painted them as the villains just because of the color of their skin, their nationality, or their religion.
I saw videos interviewing the people who managed to capture some of the most infamous photos of the day. I saw videos of the world gathering to mourn with this country from The UK to Iran to India & beyond. I saw interviews with those who volunteered, those who helped design the memorial, those who survived or stopped to help rescue people as just every day civilians. I heard the life stories of those aboard Flight 93, of victim #1, of the red bandana man. I watched detailed deconstructions of what was happening in the towers minute by minute with 3D modeling & scientific backing. I really spent the last three days deep down the rabbit hole of something that I knew so much about, that makes up the fabric of so many of our lives here in The US, but really hadn’t even begun to crack the iceberg on.
What ended up becoming the strange outcome of all of this was the way I actually felt myself feeling about it. I had a deep, profound sadness of course but it wasn’t necessarily around the same iconography of the day that I feel we typically are met with. No, instead I was deeply saddened by those who rushed into danger not because it was their duty to do so, but because it was the human thing to do. I was deeply saddened by those who stayed on the emergency lines with those they knew were beyond their reach. I was deeply saddened by the families who never even got physical confirmation of loss & the vault behind the 9/11 museum that still houses the remains of those yet to be identified. I was deeply saddened by the fear, not just of those in the planes or the towers or the pentagon, but the fear of this nation & the world & the way in which that fear has shaped this country as well as the world. The one feeling I didn’t expect to find amongst all of this horrible carnage & suffering was hope.
There is a great hope amongst the stories that come out of that day & the days that follow. It may not be found in the sifting of the rubble at the site or the grief & loss of the near 3,000 that perished that day (a number that is now projected at around 10,000 due to deaths from physical or psychological ailments), but there is a hope for humanity that lives amongst these stories, especially the stories that revolve around September 12th & the weeks that followed.
A lot of this nation became one people, taking care of one another, offering support & help as needed with pretense cast aside. We helped one another, we grieved with one another, we set aside our selfish ambitions to truly offer up what we could to those in need, especially the residence of New York & the surrounding area. I think it’s worth noting my use of ‘a lot’ here, because many of the stories I saw were of the fallout of xenophobia, racism, & islamophobia that reigned down on communities around the world & still continues to be prevalent to this day. I feel that not acknowledging that & including it here would whitewash these events, minimize the experience of an entire group of people, & make a false narrative out of history that so many had to live through themselves. All of that to say, it is the hope that I found in these testimonies & acts of service that gave me a glimmer of hope in this nation, especially given the state of the US & the division here within.
I’ve seen a number of posts claiming that Bin Laden won. That all you have to do is look around at everything happening here in The US & you’ll see that his plan in destabilizing this country & causing it to fall worked. We aren’t there yet. We still have time to turn this ship around, to unite, to block out the false narrative, cut out the corruption, build an America that fits the ideals of what this country could be. One where everyone is created equal, where we once again value life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness. A nation where we look out for one another, where our differences are celebrated & bring us together. Where we celebrate culture & engage with one another with joy & appreciation. Where we have true freedom, not this paltry, pseudo-fascist, “rah-rah-rah,” christian nationalism, hyper patriotic bs version of ‘freedom,’ but one where we can take actual pride in our nation because people are free to live without the fear of persecution, without the fear of being abducted off the street, without the fear of falling into unrecoverable debt from a single trip to the hospital or the pursuit of higher knowing. A freedom that comes with being genuinely seen, heard, revered, & celebrated. That is the America I dream of, that so many dream of. That is my hope for a post-9/11 America on this 25th anniversary of one of the greatest tragedies this nation has ever known.
As always, much love to you all,
-C