Much of the fanfare over the 9/11 10 year anniversary had many New Yorkers flustered for sure. I spoke with several friends who expressed the usual litany of remorse and reflection, but there was also an undertone of anger from many friends. Anger from the feeling that we were being told “how” to feel and “when” to feel it.
My friend Jenn from Brooklyn echoed it first. When I asked her how the 9/11 anniversary had made her feel she said “angry.” When I asked her to elaborate she said that she was less interested in what happened ten years ago and more interested in the here and now.
“I’d like to know what’s happening TODAY. What’s going on in Egypt? How’s Afghanistan? Anyone ready to “honor the people of 9/11″ by paying for their health care when they get cancer?”
She went on to say that; “People (politicians) like to talk about “the terrorists winning,” and when I watch the news and listen to the radio and realize that our lives have been put on hold for the last few weeks, well, isn’t that what they wanted–to disrupt our society and our way of life?”
My friend Damian from Manhattan also told me he’d opted out of the 9/11 event saying, “I actually chose to leave the city for the weekend and was on Fire Island with friends. I’ve been so busy with work and planning upcoming travel that the 10 year anniversary, while heavy, was lower on the priority ladder than usual. I tried to mentally avoid it, not because of the memories of that day (which as a NYer I get to relive every day, and every anniversary since), but mostly because it frustrates me. I am saddened that as a nation we are paralyzed by that day, and have not taken the right road since. The more we hang on, the worse things seem to get – the economy is in the same place it was a decade ago, the DJIA is in the same place, the middle class is fewer in number, and we are still at war.”
With all this anger and all this confused, prolonged sorrow and all this stifled everything, it is easy to see how something like the 10 year anniversary of September 11 can effect us all differently. New York City is sadly still a giant vulnerable pinata with a big red “X” on it. Many New Yorkers who are fed up with the lack of forward progress in a decade have a right to be angry and a right to demand answers from the sobbing masses and the fat-cat politicians who have nothing to say but nothing much at all.