This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated September 18, 2020
Last week we marked the nineteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. There are New Yorkers who are officially adults, who were not even born on that day.
We always use the anniversary to honor those lost, but also to look back at how our differences did not seem to matter much during that time. How we all came together to pitch in, to mourn, and to rebuild. This is undoubtedly true, but the effects of the 9/11 attacks are much more complex than that.
On each September 11, some note the negative consequences that came out of reactions to that terrible day. They are also correct. So many who were not directly affected on that day have unjustly had to deal with repercussions from the response to the actions of 19 terrorists.
Here in America, Muslims were immediately targeted. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, hate crimes increased dramatically against people of Middle Eastern descent and anyone perceived to have Middle Eastern roots. There was a rash of mosques and Muslim-owned stores being vandalized and even several murders of innocent Americans by other Americans who had decided the victims reminded them of the terrorists.
Abroad, our country became mired in multiple wars for decades. These are conflicts that, in 2020, most Americans have a negative view of, regardless of political party affiliation. The Iraq War, which was predicated on false pretenses, has resulted in the deaths of thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, from both the military and police forces assisting the American military, as well as innocent civilians.
Both things are true. It is not an either/or situation. On the day New Yorkers were attacked and nearly 3,000 were killed, we all came together and didn’t focus on our disagreements, but there were reactions to this horrific event that came at the expense of many people for many years.
The lessons we should take away from the 9/11 attacks and what followed are how we can all come together, but also how we need to ensure that “all coming together” includes all of us and that it does not hurt innocent people. As we face an ongoing national crisis in 2020 with the coronavirus pandemic, we often seem to be doing the opposite.
As has been the case every year since the September 11 attacks, a Bay Ridge memorial took place on the anniversary. These annual memorials have been held every year, hosted by both Republican and Democratic elected officials. Regardless of who has been in office, they have been apolitical events dedicated to those we lost and the community that rallied to lean on each other through that trying time.
In all the years these vigils have taken place, a strictly political 9/11 memorial, hosted by a political organization and focused on one political party has never been held, until 2020, when one took place earlier in the week. More remembrances are definitely not a bad thing but politicizing it would have seemed unfathomable years ago.
“The lessons we should take away from the 9/11 attacks and what followed are how we can all come together, but also how we need to ensure that “all coming together” includes all of us and that it does not hurt innocent people.”
On Saturday, September 12, a five-alarm fire destroyed two homes in Dyker Heights. Off-duty firefighter Piotr Orlowski, who lived in one of the houses, helped save his family and the lives of his neighbors, whose house was also burned in the blaze. He, and the hundreds of members of the FDNY who battled the fire, demonstrated the same heroism that was on display on September 11, 2001.
It is incomprehensible that in the following days, discussion began around liberals being responsible for purposely setting the fire. Setting aside the absurdity, it is right in line with the mindset we see today, that those with different political views are all evil; that anyone protesting racial injustice is automatically a terrorist. It is another cartoonish example of what we see in 2020, where all bad things are caused by the bad people whose politics are different.
Instead of focusing on any of that, let’s all come together as a community, as we did on September 11, 2001, and support the families displaced by this fire. GoFundMe fundraisers for the four displaced families had raised over $116,000 within three days of the fire. If you can, please contribute.
