When you see something that is not right, not fair, find a way to get in the way and cause trouble.
Congressman John Lewis
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Friday, September 11, 2009
WE WILL NEVER FORGET
Antietam.
The battles at Yrpes and The Marne and The Somme in the First Great War.
A thought on discriminatory grieving. Over 3000 people died on September 11, 2001. Each one of them was a huge tragedy. About that there can be no dispute. On every anniversary, we hear speeches about the victims and the tragedies their families had to endure because of this senseless terrrorism. Who can forget the sight of the funerals attended by politicians and the media's focus on the personal losses,etc. Most all of the families who lost a loved one were compensated by the government or private charity, many to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is now time to look at this tragedy from a different perspective. Namely, why do some victims of tragedies get showered with money and attention while others get ignored? Let us say you were an investment banker with two children and a wife on 9/11. You are drinking coffee, look out the window and a 747 flies through your head, killing you instantly. A tragedy? Yes. You have tons of life insurance so your family is taken care of. The fact that they get a bundle of extra cash from the government is icing on the cake. You had nothing to do with the way you died. It was very random. Now suppose you are a janitor in the World Trade Center. You are 22 and work to support your girlfriend and daughter who live in Queens. You decide to stop at 7 11 and get a pack of cigarettes before heading to work on 9/11. While you are in line, someone tries to rob the store and you get shot and die. Your girlfriend and her now fatherless daughter are devastated. They have no money and will be certainly destitute. But if that robbery had not happended and you had the good fortune (assuming you would die that day anyway) to die via other means, your loved ones would cash in on your tragedy. I don't mean to be or sound heartless, but I find it fascinating that our society will treat deaths differently when the dead had absolutely no control over how they died and the effects of the death on family and loved ones is exactly the same. In other words, why should the US government bestow a financial windfall o my family because I died in a way over which I had no control while my neighbor gets nothing even though his death is just as tragic and his family has suffered just as much if not more than my family?
1:45: what is the point of your post? To point out that people are not treated the same? Thank goodness for your observation, those of us who work in the criminal justice system never would have picked up on that.
Today is not the day to question the support bestowed upon the victims of 9/11 or their families. The attack wasn't just on those individuals, but against our entire country. Nothing against the 7-11 victim, but 9/11 was different and anyone with a brain knows that.
Remind the Christian Coalition that a gay guy saved Washington DC by his actions on flight 93.
Remind the jerks who filed the State brief in the case at the 3rd DCA about gay adoption, that one of those "unstable" gay guys was the real hero of flight 93.
Heroes and victims can be found any day of the week if you look hard enough. Why 9/11 get everyone's (extra special) attention is the symbolic nature of the attack. I personally cheer for any hero my life experiences show me and feel sad for any victims. I do that every 9/11 but also everyday I read the newspaper too.
We used to debate at the AP what constituted a "massacre." Was it three dead? Was it five dead? Was it three kidnapped from their homes and killed? Was it three killed publicly? Did it matter? The ugly truth is we were trying to find words that accurately reflected the truth that sometimes killing a few people randomly affects a community more deeply than killing one person randomly does. Sometimes it scares everyone so much that it silences debate and stifles our rights better than a law or an ordinance can. That's why I honor the victims who died during certain, high-profile events. Their deaths remind me that any effort to terrorize or silence all of us is more serious than an effort to terrorize or silence one of us. And while I stand up for each one of us, I fear the efforts that can make fear viral. The only question your post provokes 1:45 is: is the war on drugs worth the costs when it comes to the fear that it engenders in our communities? It’s really a more relevant question than why honor some and not others. Why not honor those too?
9 comments:
Not mentioned. D-Day? Pearl Harbor?
A thought on discriminatory grieving. Over 3000 people died on September 11, 2001. Each one of them was a huge tragedy. About that there can be no dispute. On every anniversary, we hear speeches about the victims and the tragedies their families had to endure because of this senseless terrrorism. Who can forget the sight of the funerals attended by politicians and the media's focus on the personal losses,etc. Most all of the families who lost a loved one were compensated by the government or private charity, many to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is now time to look at this tragedy from a different perspective.
Namely, why do some victims of tragedies get showered with money and attention while others get ignored? Let us say you were an investment banker with two children and a wife on 9/11. You are drinking coffee, look out the window and a 747 flies through your head, killing you instantly. A tragedy? Yes. You have tons of life insurance so your family is taken care of. The fact that they get a bundle of extra cash from the government is icing on the cake. You had nothing to do with the way you died. It was very random. Now suppose you are a janitor in the World Trade Center. You are 22 and work to support your girlfriend and daughter who live in Queens. You decide to stop at 7 11 and get a pack of cigarettes before heading to work on 9/11. While you are in line, someone tries to rob the store and you get shot and die. Your girlfriend and her now fatherless daughter are devastated. They have no money and will be certainly destitute. But if that robbery had not happended and you had the good fortune (assuming you would die that day anyway) to die via other means, your loved ones would cash in on your tragedy. I don't mean to be or sound heartless, but I find it fascinating that our society will treat deaths differently when the dead had absolutely no control over how they died and the effects of the death on family and loved ones is exactly the same. In other words, why should the US government bestow a financial windfall o my family because I died in a way over which I had no control while my neighbor gets nothing even though his death is just as tragic and his family has suffered just as much if not more than my family?
May those who died rest in peace.
May it never happen again.
My original post unintentionally omitted the heroes of Flight 93. I have corrected that.
1:45: what is the point of your post? To point out that people are not treated the same? Thank goodness for your observation, those of us who work in the criminal justice system never would have picked up on that.
Today is not the day to question the support bestowed upon the victims of 9/11 or their families. The attack wasn't just on those individuals, but against our entire country. Nothing against the 7-11 victim, but 9/11 was different and anyone with a brain knows that.
Your post is moronic.
Remind the Christian Coalition that a gay guy saved Washington DC by his actions on flight 93.
Remind the jerks who filed the State brief in the case at the 3rd DCA about gay adoption, that one of those "unstable" gay guys was the real hero of flight 93.
I feel better now.
Heroes and victims can be found any day of the week if you look hard enough. Why 9/11 get everyone's (extra special) attention is the symbolic nature of the attack. I personally cheer for any hero my life experiences show me and feel sad for any victims. I do that every 9/11 but also everyday I read the newspaper too.
In 1920 NYC 10,000 people a week died from the Spanish Flu
We used to debate at the AP what constituted a "massacre." Was it three dead? Was it five dead? Was it three kidnapped from their homes and killed? Was it three killed publicly?
Did it matter?
The ugly truth is we were trying to find words that accurately reflected the truth that sometimes killing a few people randomly affects a community more deeply than killing one person randomly does. Sometimes it scares everyone so much that it silences debate and stifles our rights better than a law or an ordinance can.
That's why I honor the victims who died during certain, high-profile events. Their deaths remind me that any effort to terrorize or silence all of us is more serious than an effort to terrorize or silence one of us. And while I stand up for each one of us, I fear the efforts that can make fear viral.
The only question your post provokes 1:45 is: is the war on drugs worth the costs when it comes to the fear that it engenders in our communities? It’s really a more relevant question than why honor some and not others. Why not honor those too?
Susannah Nesmith
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