Seven years ago, I thought I was going to die. I was in the basement of a building on Broadway, a section now renamed Canyon of Heroes, where I’d run, knowing one of the World Trade Center buildings was coming down. At the first sound of the rumble, I didn’t even turn my head to look, I knew exactly what it was, and ran into a lobby, all the way to the back where there was an alcove, where I hid. After the security people shut the metal doors, they quickly ushered us all to the basement. I remember seeing a few people totally covered in something gray, the last who’d entered the building. One woman was screaming for her brother, who was in the WTC. She was a black woman, but you’d hardly know it for all the gray that covered her. There was a cameraman, obviously for a tv station. No reporter ith him, though. One man was sitting on the floor, with a badly cut leg, which a couple of people were tending to. All told, there were maybe 20 of us.
I felt like a rat in a cage, pacing around, thinking we could be buried in there for days, if not forever. I tried my cell phone, which of course didn’t work. I thought first of my family, and how worried they’d be, but quickly made myself stop thinking of them. Too painful. I remember thinking, these may be the last people I spend my life with, and which of these strangers would I want to know and share my last moments with.
This is what it was like to be in downtown Manhattan seven years ago today. Thoughts of the kind no one should have to imagine, and it changed my life.
Immediately after that day, I stood with all Americans as one. United against the people who did this to us. I read everything, absolutely everything I could find, on alQaeda and bin Laden. I myself would have gladly pushed the button or shot the missle or even the gun that would annhilate them.
But then our president (and I use that term loosely) decided who was our enemy, and it wasn’t bin Laden, it was Saddam Hussein. He decreed that those who disagreed with him were not patriots, and he used the tragedy that had so affected me for political gain.
He started a war with Iraq, who even I knew at the time played no part in what had happened. He used that war to divide us as a people. Every single person who’d tried to light the room was quashed, from Hans Blix to Scott Ritter, to Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, to the entire country of France. They were demonized, ridiculed, and lied about. To question was unpatriotic.
I watched this country deteriorate till, after Kerry’s loss, I said no more. The morning I found that Kerry had lost, I sat by myself and got drunk and cried. And then picked myself up and said no more.
After that, I wasn’t content to just sit on a blog or a forum and argue, I became active. I started donating to different causes, like VoteVets, because I feel so badly for our strained military, and to different political campaigns, some not even in my own state. I don’t have much money to give, but I gave. Because I said no more.
When the field of Democrats for president was known, I checked each of them out, suspicious of all, and determined to make the best choice. In July, 2007, I decided Barack Obama was my choice. I won’t deny, I sweated through the fall last year, but I never wavered. And then I joined MyBarackObama, and made phone calls. Lots of phone calls.
When I heard a local office was opening near me, I was one of the first to join. I worked in the office almost every day. I made phone calls at night. I canvassed. When the primary was over in my state, I went to another state and worked there. I kept in touch with our campaign staffer, and when we started revving up for the fall, I immediately started working. All because I said no more.
When I heard that John McCain used footage of the WTC at his convention, you cannot imagine my rage. That he would sink that low, be that craven, to use that tragedy as a backdrop for a political campaign. It was worse than despicable. No more.
I know there are things in my life that I could, or possibly even should be doing besides working on a campaign. Money’s tight, but nothing is more important to me than making sure the tragedy I endured is something that ends, and that all of us see a better, safer America. No more.
This was a difficult and painful diary for me to write. I don’t like to remember that day seven years ago, and I debated with myself whether to even write it. I walked away from it several times but each time felt I had to finish.
I thank all of you who take the time to read this. I won’t be making any comments, not on this diary. Not on this day.
But I hope each and every one of you says to yourself no more, and works as hard as you can to elect Barack Obama. And if you’d like to leave a tip, leave it here.
No more