I’m never sure how to react on this day, each year. I absolutely want to acknowledge the people who died that day, some heroes and some “just” victims.
But this day is a dark day not just for those deaths, but also for the tone that politics took from that day forth. The inbuilt racism in America politics went from implicit to explicit that day. The government had a chance to unite the people of this nation and instead preyed on our fear in the pursuit of power.
To this day our nation suffers from the damage done, not just to the people who lost their lives in the hijackings and towers, but to all the people residing here, and to the system that is the United States of America.
So today when I take a moment of peace, when I periodically pause and recall all that we’ve suffered from 9/11, I will remember the people we’ve lost. I’ll also mourn for the loss of civil rights and liberties, of freedoms, of instances when justice took a back seat to reactionary lashing out, to the vitriol and racism hate that has become part of the new normal.
We lost so much that day, sixteen years ago, and in many ways we haven’t even begun to address the healing that needs to happen. So much was lost that day, and our nation has continued to suffer ever since.
