By Clifford Jackson
The 25th anniversary of 9/11 continues the many many myths and prefabrications of this country’s history. I was impacted by 9/11 personally because on that day I was working for a financial services firm wandering around for hours because public transportation was shut down.
I viewed the destruction of the twin towers from across the Hudson River where i worked at 30 Hudson Street in Jersey City. Helen Crossin, later Helen Crossin-Kittle, one of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, was someone that i had completed a real estate transaction at a local co-op in Larchmont the year and a half before. So when i heard of her death it was very sad, and even more tragic because she was pregnant when she was killed. This is how i believe 9/11 should be interpreted and described on this very personal level for anyone impacted.
What we are seeing today, especially from the corporate media, is this falsehood that we were all affected by 9/11 as one nation that supposedly puts everyone on the same side and that we were devastated in the same way which is a myth.
What we are seeing from people like Michael Strahan and others, with their shows of remembrance, is a very false narative that somehow we are part of some kind of “American quilt.” This show and others state that “the world changed that day.”
Maybe for Strahan and others who are colonized in their thinking, but there are many around this country and around the globe whose world had not changed. It has not because the violence and brutal policies of this society here and around the world have demonstrated that 9/11’s have been happening to people in this country and around the world way before September 11th 2001.
9/11 was a direct result from Americas violent, rapacious and sanguinary history. This history that is replete with racist and criminal behavior has been exhibited around the world especially over the last 150 years. It has been perpetrated on this continent since the signing of the declaration of independence with the genocide of native Americans which has been white washed.
There are many people, like myself, who fathom this evil history of America and understand that 9/11 was a not a case of good vs evil. Thomas jefferson said ” I tremble for my country, our God is a just God and his vengeance will not remain silent forever.” Martin Luther King said “America is going to hell for all of the violence it has committed on this continent and exported around the world.”
Those two statements echoed the cries and outrage at America’s violent and jingoistic foreign policies that precipitated 9/11. This econimic violence is happening to Cuba as I write this. Because of the economic embargo and sanctions by this criminal administration, people are dying daily in Cuba from starvation and committing suicide. Many people don’t know this history and they will deny this history altogether and call it “woke” or propaganda.
This remembrance for many in this country has become a daily day of hate and disdain of muslims here and around the world. This remembrance is allowing for the far right to demonize anyone who is not white and more is not Christian. The daily racist attacks on Zohran Mamdani has become exponential this week including Rudolph Giuliani’s racist attempt along with thousands of others to prevent him from showing up at one of the 9/11 events. Mamdani has said “I will be there to support the families of the victims of 9/11,” and he has signed executive orders to that effect.
Supporting them should be the priority as well as all of the victims who have died from the fall out of this tragedy along with first responders and others who have suffered. When we respond to these people we should think about what has happened here as far as the fall out of 9/11 in terms of the toxins and cancer rates, that the United states has committed the same crimes and this fall out has been replicated many times over in other countries.
The bombing and killing of tens of thousands of civilians by this country during WW II in Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had even more devastating and evil consequences because of thousands of Japanese who were the progeny of many of the people killed in those US bombings have had birth defects and cancer rates that exist to this day.
This good vs evil narrative of many in this country is not honest because millions of these people in this country will not acknowledge the millions of men, women and children around the world who died because of American bombs, American guns and American sanctions.
This is still going on. Anyone reading this should ask themselves would Tecumseh, Crazy Horse, Malcolm X, Dr. King, Che Guevara, Gloria Richardson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Hampton, Sitting Bull, Geronimo and the millions of others who died on this continent because of Americanism think that 9/11 was a case of good vs Evil?
Clifford Jackson, Larchmont