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How has your life changed because of what happened on September 11, 2001?
I'm a Londoner and I live in the UK. I don't know anyone personally who lives in New York. I guess I'm sharing my story because I felt touched by the event.
When 9/11 happened I was on an anti-arms trade demonstration in the Docklands area of London. Somewhat despicably, the UK, like the US and a whole load of other nations, then and now, makes a pile of money selling weaponry and torture items to a whole bunch of people, not all of them defenders of human rights.
A friend of mine phoned me, worried for my personal safety, asking me whether I'd heard about the WTC. I replied that I'd heard something about a plane hitting the building and that we'd all assumed that it was some kind of small plane. My friend slightly hysterically told me that it was a 767 and that the building was on now on fire. At the time, she worked for Ford and they were evacuating all of their buildings and offices across the world. I was her last call before leaving.
I went straight home and turned on the TV. The images that I saw will stay with me for the rest of my life. One that I particularly remember is of a man and a woman, jumping to their deaths (rather than be burnt alive) hand in hand. I always wondered if they were lovers, friends or just colleagues who clung to each other in their last, desperate moments. Terribly, terribly sad.
I cried continuously at the horror that I witnessed that day. Even now, as I write this years later, I have a heaviness in my heart and tears in my eyes. It was one of the most truly awful things I've ever seen.
As always of course however, the world spins on, (although for some of us, time has stopped forever) and two things touch me ten years on.
The first is that, the memorial that has been built, and more specifically the waterfalls that flow into the voids left by the twin towers, are truly beautiful and, for me at least, a very poignant reminder of the fact that thousands of human beings died. Simple. Clean. Very, very powerful.
The second is that, maybe unsurprisingly, the world isn't a better place and we haven't learnt very much from the experience at all. The arms fair, (DSEi) that I was demonstrating against is still running and the UK still sells, along with the US and a whole bunch of other nations, weaponry and torture items to a whole bunch of dodgy regimes.
The war on 'terror' is a complete and utter phoney war because it can never, ever be truly won or ended. The only solution to hatred and ignorance and terror and fear is dialog, discussion, debate and yet more dialog.
No one really wants to die, but until we have a global society that is truly equitable and egalitarian, just and fair, some mad and crazy people will think that an appropriate response is to blow themselves, and others to smithereens.
It's not, and it never will be, but in my mind it's clear that if we want to truly make sure that no more human lives are wasted, ever, by this kind of tragedy, the only long term solution is peace, not war.
When 9/11 happened I was on an anti-arms trade demonstration in the Docklands area of London. Somewhat despicably, the UK, like the US and a whole load of other nations, then and now, makes a pile of money selling weaponry and torture items to a whole bunch of people, not all of them defenders of human rights.
A friend of mine phoned me, worried for my personal safety, asking me whether I'd heard about the WTC. I replied that I'd heard something about a plane hitting the building and that we'd all assumed that it was some kind of small plane. My friend slightly hysterically told me that it was a 767 and that the building was on now on fire. At the time, she worked for Ford and they were evacuating all of their buildings and offices across the world. I was her last call before leaving.
I went straight home and turned on the TV. The images that I saw will stay with me for the rest of my life. One that I particularly remember is of a man and a woman, jumping to their deaths (rather than be burnt alive) hand in hand. I always wondered if they were lovers, friends or just colleagues who clung to each other in their last, desperate moments. Terribly, terribly sad.
I cried continuously at the horror that I witnessed that day. Even now, as I write this years later, I have a heaviness in my heart and tears in my eyes. It was one of the most truly awful things I've ever seen.
As always of course however, the world spins on, (although for some of us, time has stopped forever) and two things touch me ten years on.
The first is that, the memorial that has been built, and more specifically the waterfalls that flow into the voids left by the twin towers, are truly beautiful and, for me at least, a very poignant reminder of the fact that thousands of human beings died. Simple. Clean. Very, very powerful.
The second is that, maybe unsurprisingly, the world isn't a better place and we haven't learnt very much from the experience at all. The arms fair, (DSEi) that I was demonstrating against is still running and the UK still sells, along with the US and a whole bunch of other nations, weaponry and torture items to a whole bunch of dodgy regimes.
The war on 'terror' is a complete and utter phoney war because it can never, ever be truly won or ended. The only solution to hatred and ignorance and terror and fear is dialog, discussion, debate and yet more dialog.
No one really wants to die, but until we have a global society that is truly equitable and egalitarian, just and fair, some mad and crazy people will think that an appropriate response is to blow themselves, and others to smithereens.
It's not, and it never will be, but in my mind it's clear that if we want to truly make sure that no more human lives are wasted, ever, by this kind of tragedy, the only long term solution is peace, not war.
How will you remember the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks?
Quietly, and with an occasional tear.
Collection
Citation
“[Untitled],” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed July 4, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/96885.