Anniversaries are a time of remembrance; for many in this country, the emotional wounds of 9/11 are still too raw for this date to have faded into memory and become yet another date on the calendar that people promise to never forget.For the families and friends of people who lost their lives on that day I wish them peace. For the many volunteers who came from across the nation and the world to offer their time and assistance, many of us who live in this city will never forget their selfless acts of kindness. As for the first responders and other emergency personnel who were simply doing their jobs and, in doing so, helped calm a nervous and frightened city I give thanks.Here we are, 10 years later…and we’ve become aware of a few things. We learned that:
- it helps to build diplomatic relationships with other nations. We can’t always be cowboys ‘going it alone’.- many of our public officials ‘talk the talk’ while wearing those “Never Forget 9/11″ buttons but, when the time comes to support legislation that will provide for medical and insurance coverage for people who are STILL suffering, they conveniently forget the first responders. Talk is cheap, medical coverage is not — and dignity is priceless.
- former Mayor Giuliani will STILL milk 9/11, in order to stay relevant, EVERY chance he gets. Ain’t NOBODY listening to you any more, Rudy. Go away and stop making every occasion an opportunity to try to take credit away from the people who did some real work — the same people you didn’t support until it became politically beneficial for you.
- bureaucracy (*bureaucraZy??*) rules. Ten years later and we still have what amounts to a big fucking hole in the ground downtown Manhattan. REALLY?!? Maybe we should have hired Sir Talk-A-Lot, Donald Trump, to develop one of his gaudy buildings just to fill that spot so that the people who lost their lives to senseless terrorism would know that we are as resilient as they were up to the very end? How many government officials, lawyers, judges and insurance company representatives does it take to finally move some earth and put a building or two on that spot? DAMN!! Is there some shit thing on WikiLeaks that we need to see before we can get a flippin’ thing done in this city anymore? Are we waiting for Chinese investors? I’ll bet if Ground Zero had been designated as a site for yet another bicycle path, Mayor Bloomberg would have found a way to mow folks down to get THAT built. Oh well…at least we’ll (finally) have an unveiling of the memorial.
I hope we can honour the memory of the people who lost their lives by moving forward as a nation. Maybe there will come a time when people of varied backgrounds and ideologies can arrive at a place of mutual understanding, compassion and peace — and that goes for people domestically as well as abroad. Maybe, one day, we’ll also get to a point where we realise that so much more connects us than divides us — and we can get back to that spirit of cooperation we felt on 9/11.