Went downtown…didn’t like what I saw
Yesterday afternoon I decided to get on my bike and go downtown.
I wanted to all day, but I assumed it would be like a police state down there; that they wouldn’t even let me get close.
Well, that is true; I didn’t get too close, obviously (7 world trade hadn’t yet collapsed), but I got a lot closer than I thought I would.
Park Row (a street that runs diagonally from Broadway to the Brooklyn Bridge) was completele covered in ash…apparently it was obliterated concrete…wallboard…etc.
You ever wondered how much junk mail there is in the world? If the WTC was any indication, there’s a shitload. There’s a ton of papers among the ash, and I saw a few shoes and other items, too.
People milling about were a mix of news media, normal citizens, and emergency workers. There were a lot of others…people like me, on their bikes, just needing a closeup look, just needing a confirmation of what happened to our city.
We needed it because from the distance we were looking, this whole thing seemed more surreal than real. I honestly still can’t believe it. But going down and shooting pictures closer, it starter to sink in.
At the time I was down there, I was a little saddened by the amount of paramedics, doctors, and so forth that were just sitting around. They didn’t have anything to do. That told me that there wasn’t much of a rescue effort going on because of the danger of getting close, and indeed, 7 world trade (a 40 story building next to the two towers) collapsed. News reporters were dashing closer…police officers pushing people back.
How frustrating must it have been for them to not be able to really help anyone because the structure was still settling. We all know that there are thousands of people in that pile of rubble…many must be (or have been) alive, if only someone could have gotten to them.
I think we need to suspend our support of Israel immediately, because in some respects, this was warranted. I mean, I don’t think anything like this is ever justifiable, but I can understand the motivation, when we as a country have been supporting a genocidal war.
When you start to really research the Israel/Palestine crisis, and you realize how disgustingly racist Israel is, as an American (supposedly a land of freedom and integration) I am appalled. Palestinians have special license plates…special passports…Israeli military shooting at 12 year old children armed with rocks.
They are shooting children with our bullets, with our weapons, using our fighter jets, they get training from us. Can’t americans start to understand why a certain segment of the world sees us as evil?
We need to require Israel to start behaving like human beings, and to treat their neighbors as human beings. We should make our aid to them contingent on it. Without our aid, Israel would be invaded and destroyed within a year.
Today, the air in New York smells like burning plastic. I don’t enjoy this. We need to go after the people who did this, but we also need to look at ourselves and our allies, and determine if any of our actions contributed to the perpetrators’ motivations.