My children at home were 8, 10, 12 when the Twin Towers fell, when the Pentagon was plane bombed, when I lost friends and colleagues. The repercussions are still with us today. In the Xenophobia & anti-immigrant policies that are being espoused by a certain group that is scared of losing its grip on what it considers its “rightful superiority.” By people who can say, with a straight face (and believe it) that the words on the Statue of Liberty only apply to those with wealth who are coming from white Europe and were never meant to include any other group.
By those who have never served, as I have, in the military along side individuals from multiple nations, from multiple backgrounds, all united for a common cause. Along side those who feel an obligation to the country which gave them opportunity, not those who take for granted that their background and privilege exempt them from the service shown by the military, the fire fighters, the police. All those who risk their lives on a daily basis.
By those who have a problem recognizing that the majority of whites in the US don’t have ties going back centuries, only decades. Who ignore the fact that Spanish were here hundreds of years before most Northern Europeans. That every last person immigrating from Central and South America can trace ancestry in the Western Hemisphere back thousands of years.
I spent more than a minute of silence and reflection. Noting as I was driving George too and from UCSF, that there were flags not at half-mast. I don’t know the custom overall, but when I think of the lives immediately lost, all those who died that day in rescue attempts whether NYC or Pentagon, those who sacrificed their lives which ended in a field in Pennsylvania, and all those who have died since then as a result of their involvement – it is the least we can do for respect.
Be grateful on a daily basis for those in uniform, be it fire, police, military. They all serve our country, putting their lives on the line on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. They do it out of honor, responsibility, personal obligation.
You could just thank all of them for their service, in remembrance.
Hear, hear!
It doesn’t seem like eighteen years. I still remember waiting….and waiting…to hear from friends. It must have been far worse for you.