A Day For Crying

[first published: September 11, 2008]

by Virginia Hoge, 9-11-08

As a 9/11 eye-witness, it is impossible to speak about this event today, its 7th year anniversary, without speaking of the HORROR that has followed in its wake.

I do not blame the conspiracy theorists (although I do not believe them) for saying that 9/11 was "planned".

It sure seems like it! I mean just LOOK at the unbelievable advancement of the Right - riding happily, and with great evil, on the "coat-tails" of this historic event.

They took FULL advantage of it many ways including:

Starting a disastrous and deadly war that has murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people including children. It has maimed for life hundreds of thousands of others, leaving pained "walking shells" to face the rest of their lives (and often they are young), filled with suffering.

This is HORRIBLE!!

This is so sad and so sick, I could (and possibly should) stop right there, but I am not going to. Because I was there.

I was standing on the corner of 6th Avenue and 11 Street, the morning of September 11, 2001. I had just dropped my kids off at their school, PS 41 in Greenwich Village from our home in Brooklyn (yes, we took the train each morning and yes, this was stupid!!). A lady at the front door of the school who I hardly knew said "a plane just hit the World Trade Center". "Yeah, right" was my impression. But walking towards the corner, I noticed a crowd looking South, on this especially clear New York Fall day. I (of course) joined the crowd of gawkers - who normally would be looking at an automobile accident. But this was no automobile accident.

A large, airplane-shaped hole filled almost the entire span of the Northern face of the north World Trade Tower (Tower 1). Black smoke poured furiously out of that hole, from a building that rose as high up into the sky as fireworks. The smoke headed straight East, driven in a line by a strong wind, forming an upside-down "L" shape in the cerulean horizon .

Now some people actually left the scene and sensibly went to work. But I (never having been sensible) was riveted to my spot, and stayed. Suddenly, the South Tower burst into flames, right around the middle of the building. Now I wish I could say that this somehow looked like something I had never seen before, but this is not true. It looked exactly like a Hollywood explosion (which, I am sure, gives the conspiracy theorist's yet more "fuel" as I said, I cannot blame them.).

"Ok" I said to myself "get the kids out of school" and headed back to the school to retrieve my kids. Their teachers released them quickly, seeing my ashen face. But in true teacher fashion, calmly. Grabbing each of their hands (my son was in 1st grade, my daughter in 4th) we quickly walked towards the train while the clearly visible, smoking TWO massive towers rose high above us. Now, it seems like those kids would have been crying, but that is not the case. Children, Thank God, are sheltered in early life by a self-obsession that conceals the World's evils from them, at least to some extent.

They could have cared less, and were happy to be leaving school early. We grabbed an F train, knowing it would avoid lower Manhattan. (Later, I heard stories of people coming up from the C train entrance to falling bodies). We caught the last train out of there.

Now I would have expected to be saying here that the train was filled with crying, hysterical people, but that was not the case. The train had the usual heedless, half-asleep and extremely guarded people you always encounter on a subway train. I was babbling to my kids (scared half out of my wits!) and I am sure people over-heard me, but all I got was the one eye peaking up, then a second later, down - the usual!!

By the time we reached Brooklyn, Tower 1 had just fallen.

Climbing to the top of the (steep) Greene Ave exit, Fort Greene Brooklyn exit, gypsy cab drivers were parked all along Flatbush with groups of people gathered round, heads hung low, car radios blaring through open car doors, listening to the bad news.

Speaking of bad news, the Right has advanced so far into our local media, am I the only one scared? Nationwide also, but here, and here we can still do something about it.

Which brings to to my conclusion (enough already, right?). This event has been completely misinterpreted by the Right. I was there. The minute that tower exploded, I KNEW what this meant, this and nothing else, that this was where Hate leads.

This was where Hate leads. The perpetrators of 9/11 HATED the U.S. enough to die and kill for that hate. Why is this? Because Hate is the parent of Violence.

This is the message of 9/11, that Hate is wrong! Not to create MORE Hate, which is exactly what the Right has done in countless ways.

And on that morning 7 years ago, not so long from the very moment I am writing this, I knew instantly that my (and our) responsibility is to fight Hate, and not the hate we find over-seas, but the hate we find right here in our "own backyard".

That is where the redeeming message of 9/11, lies still buried.

Lets unearth it, in this, the year 7.