September 11, 2001
By Michael Cartier
As I walked into the house with the dog this morning, I looked at the TV; a skyscraper was on fire. Was this an ad for a movie? I stopped to listen, expecting Bruce Willis or someone to jump out and save the city. The person that was speaking said that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York, the highest buildings in the world, so high that they had their own zip code, 10048. As soon as he finished his sentence, another plane appeared onscreen. Is this a replay? Then, I watched as the plane crashed into the second tower. A huge explosion followed by black smoke, emerged from the second tower. I expected the plane to come out of the other side, but it didn’t. This was all happening too fast. The newscaster didn’t get it either… an attack on the Twin Towers? After another half-hour, it became clear that these crashes were not accidents. What’s going on? Later that day I would find out that 10048 was no longer there.
I watched for as long as possible, but I had to go to a meeting before going to school. I was meeting with someone regarding the Columbus Day controversy. I would find out during the meeting that the Pentagon was hit too. Had someone declared war on America? I tried to keep my mind on the meeting; it was an important one. Later, I would spend 3 hours at the blood donation center listening to the latest news reports and watching people around me cry. I didn’t know what to do, I mean, how could I help?
As I kept my focus on the Columbus Day meeting, I couldn’t help but to think that hundreds, maybe thousands of people were dying at that moment. How small this meeting was compared to that. Yet, this situation could also end in violence and death. I couldn’t do anything to help in New York, but I could do something to prevent violence here. I’ve spent a lot of time working on this issue over the past year. It’s hard to see such good people fighting over what their ancestors had done. The issue is extremely important to both sides. Many people think that the issue has nothing to do with them, but it does. It’s about America, and respect for diversity.
Last year everyone talked about how peaceful the event was, but as someone once said, “The absence of violence is not the same as peace”. Peace includes understanding and harmony; the parade was not peaceful. Everyone arrived sad and scared, and left angry and hurt. Everyone exercised their rights, but did anyone do what was right?
How can the American Indians stand by and watch Italians, and others, celebrate a man who initiated the mass destruction of the Native American people; not to mention the humiliation and degradation of Columbus being praised as the ‘Discoverer’ of America. Weren’t they the true discoverers of America? Who greeted Columbus on the beach, coconuts?
Yet, why can’t the Italian’s take one day out of the year to celebrate someone who represents something very different to them; the beginning of the greatest country in the world. The fact that he was an Italian gives all Italians a sense of ownership in this country … a symbol to all immigrants who came here, and under great hardship, helped to develop the United States of America into the symbol of freedom that it is today.
The Italian community has a right to celebrate Columbus with a parade. The American Indian community has a right to protest that celebration. But, who wins here? The courts and the city of Denver can’t fix this problem. They can’t get rid of the pain that both sides feel. This can only be fixed by opening the heart, not the law books.
We are all Americans. Tolerance of others is not just expected, but it is necessary, for our country to continue to survive. And, even though we all have different backgrounds, religions, and cultures, we are all still Americans. We should not just be tolerant of others; we must also be kind and respectful. If one American hurts, then we all hurt. Never has that been truer, than in the past couple of days.
In view of what happened yesterday, it is more important than ever that we stand together, as Americans, one and all: Italian Americans along with American Indians, along with Hispanic Americans, Black Americans, Jewish Americans, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, other European Americans … everyone who lives in this country because they respect and value the freedom that ALL of our ancestors struggled and suffered to achieve, either here or abroad.
We all came from violent backgrounds. No one is innocent. In most cases, people did what they had to do to survive. Europeans battled Europeans, American Indians battled American Indians, Asians battled Asians, and Arabs battled Arabs, and often they would all battle each other. The winners celebrated, the losers were killed, not a situation that any of us are proud of. I believe they did so in order to create a more peaceful place for their children. None of them wanted their great-grandchildren to have to continue the violence. If we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always gotten. It’s time to forgive our ancestors for their violent past, and honor their dreams by living together peacefully.
We are under attack by people in the world who don’t understand our way of life, and feel threatened by it. They say that power corrupts, and since we are the most powerful nation on the planet, we must also be the most corrupt. Therefore, for the sake of all good people in the world, they say that we must be destroyed. How do we fight against that? The FBI estimated that over 5,000 innocent people died yesterday, for what? We will go after the bad guys and ‘get justice’. We need to defend our rights, protect our freedoms, but will that stop this from ever happening again? How do we convince others that our way of life won’t harm them? How do we protect ourselves from ignorance? How much of our basic freedoms do we have to give up in order to feel safe? If we give up too many, have the terrorists won? How many people have to violently die before we can finally live in peace?
It is now the second day. I can’t stand it any more. The pictures, the sounds, the horror, the tears … why? How is my generation supposed to fix this? Our world is becoming more and more violent. Our childhood memories will include scenes of Columbine and now this … ‘Attack on America’, ‘Ground Zero’, buildings collapsing, people screaming, fire and smoke everywhere, families destroyed, and, it’s not just here. All over the world, kids are having to live with the violence created by adults who just don’t get it. Why don’t you get it? We live in one world. We must begin to appreciate, admire, and respect our differences, rather than fear them.
Can we really expect other countries to be tolerant of our country and our way of life when we aren’t even tolerant of each other. Please, for this year, can we just put our differences aside and march together as one community, one America. As we raise the American flag across the city, let’s remember what it’s meant to stand for. Martin Luther King once said, “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”. As many as 5,000 people lost their lives this week in a senseless act of violence; so let’s honor their memories by living up to our ideals of freedom and peace. Let’s make sure that the attack on America does not start at home.
The world, today, needs to know that we really do believe in the foundation of our country. The Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these rights to be self-evident: That all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”. The right of liberty was so important that it was addressed in the very first amendment of the Constitution (1791), called ‘Basic Freedoms’: freedom of speech, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government. We all have 1st amendment rights.
We don’t always live up to our ideals, but we can’t ever give up. Everyone says that they believe in the first amendment … until someone disagrees with them; then suddenly they shouldn’t have a right to say those things. For some people, freedom of speech only means freedom to agree with them. They believe freedom of assembly is great for an Independence Day celebration, but if anyone assembles to protest the event, then they can just move out of this country. Isn’t that a little hypocritical? Well, there was a line in the movie, ‘An American President’, that really impressed me, it said something like, ‘Believing in the 1st Amendment means defending the right of free speech and assembly for everyone, even when what is being said goes against everything that we value’. To protect the rights of people we like is easy, to protect the rights of those we hate is difficult. Freedom wasn’t easy to obtain, and it definitely isn’t easy to maintain.
As we try to resolve the problems of Columbus Day, we must remind ourselves about what really is important to the future of our people, of our country. George Santayana once said, “Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. We must not ignore the injustices that were committed years ago, but we will never be able to move forward unless we are willing to lift our foot off of the past.
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