Belief:
When Words Kill: A Health Care Glossary
Ann Neumann
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
"Death Bonds": Wall Street’s Shocking New Plan to Reap Billions off Dying Americans
Mark Ames
DrugReporter:
The Numbers Are in: Despite 70+ Years of Criminal Prohibition, Marijuana Is Hugely Popular
Paul Armentano
Environment:
15 Must-Read Books That Will Forever Change How You See the World
Sarah Irani
Health and Wellness:
Exposed: GOP Congressman Who Yelled "You Lie" at Obama Speech Received $240,000 from Health Care Industry
Sue Sturgis
Immigration:
Tear Down the House: Why We Need Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Christopher W. Ortiz
Media and Technology:
How Corporate Media Are Washing Away Katrina From America's Mind
Movie Mix:
Michael Moore's 'Capitalism' Flick Rips into Crimes of Wall Street
Xan Brooks
Politics:
After Targeting Van Jones, Glenn Beck Takes His shot at Hip-Hop Activist Yosi Sergant
Jeff Chang
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Why Do Women Singers Have to Look Like Barbie?
Luanne Bradley
Rights and Liberties:
Book Says Obama's Life Is at Risk
Christopher Moraff
Sex and Relationships:
Why Sex Is So Much Better Today
Greta Christina
Take Action:
Decisions Are Made By Those Who Show Up: 9 Reasons Why Calling Congress Isn't A Waste Of Time
Greta Christina
Water:
New McCarthyism: Fear of Science and the War on Rationality
Peter Gleick
World:
Obama's Quagmire Looks a Lot like Vietnam
Robert Scheer
Eight years ago, 2,600 people lost their lives in Manhattan, and then several million people lost their story. The al-Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers did not defeat New Yorkers. It destroyed the buildings, contaminated the region, killed thousands, and disrupted the global economy, but it most assuredly did not conquer the citizenry. They were only defeated when their resilience was stolen from them by clichés, by the invisibility of what they accomplished that extraordinary morning, and by the very word "terrorism," which suggests that they, or we, were all terrified. The distortion, even obliteration, of what actually happened was a necessary precursor to launching the obscene response that culminated in a war on Iraq, a war we lost (even if some of us don't know that yet), and the loss of civil liberties and democratic principles that went with it.
Only We Can Terrorize Ourselves
For this eighth anniversary of that terrible day, the first post-Bush-era anniversary, let's remember what actually happened:
When the planes became missiles and the towers became torches and then shards and clouds of dust, many were afraid, but few if any panicked, other than the President who was far away from danger. The military failed to respond promptly, even though the Pentagon itself was attacked, and the only direct resistance that day came from inside Flight 93, which went down in a field in Pennsylvania on its way to Washington.
Flights 11 and 175 struck the towers. Hundreds of thousands of people rescued each other and themselves, evacuating the buildings and the area, helped in the first minutes, then hours, by those around them. Both PS 150, an elementary school, and the High School for Leadership and Public Service were successfully evacuated -- without casualties. In many cases, teachers took students home with them.
A spontaneously assembled flotilla of boats, ranging from a yacht appropriated by policemen to a historic fireboat, evacuated 300,000 to 500,000 people from lower Manhattan, a nautical feat on the scale of the British evacuation of an army from Dunkirk in the early days of World War II; the fleet, that is, rescued in a few hours as many people as the British fleet rescued in days (under German fire admittedly, but then New York's ferry operators and pleasure-boat captains were steering into that toxic cloud on a day when many thought more violence was to come).
Adam Mayblum, who walked down from the 87th floor of the north tower with some of his coworkers, wrote on the Internet immediately afterward:
"They failed in terrorizing us. We were calm. If you want to kill us, leave us alone because we will do it by ourselves. If you want to make us stronger, attack and we unite. This is the ultimate failure of terrorism against the United States."
We failed, however, when we let our own government and media do what that small band from the other side of the Earth could not. Some of us failed, that is, for there were many kinds of response, and some became more radical, more committed, more educated. Mark Fichtel, the president of the New York Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange, who scraped his knees badly that morning of September 11th when he was knocked over in a fleeing crowd, was helped to his feet by "a little old lady." He nonetheless had his Exchange up and running the next day, and six months later quit his job, began studying Islam, and then teaching about it.
Tom Engelhardt, the editor of this piece, began to circulate emails to counter the crummy post-9/11 media coverage and his no-name informal listserv grew into the website Tomdispatch.com, which has circulated more than 1,000 essays since that day and made it possible for me to become a different kind of writer. Principal Ada Rosario-Dolch, who on the morning of September 11th set aside concern for her sister Wendy Alice Rosario Wakeford (who died in the towers) to evacuate her high school two blocks away, went to Afghanistan in 2004 to dedicate a school in Herat, Afghanistan, that included a garden memorializing Wakeford.
In a Dust Storm of Altruism
Hollywood movies and too many government pandemic plans still presume that most of us are cowards or brutes, that we panic, trample each other, rampage, or freeze helplessly in moments of crisis and chaos. Most of us believe this, even though it is a slander against the species, an obliteration of what actually happens, and a crippling blow to our ability to prepare for disasters.
See more stories tagged with: 9/11, al qaeda, new york, twin towers, hijacking
Rebecca Solnit is the author of 'Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities'.
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