Support for LAist comes from
We Explain L.A.
Stay Connected

Share This

This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.

This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.

News

How to Commemorate 9/11: Watch Loose Change

Support your source for local news!
Today, put a dollar value on the trustworthy reporting you rely on all year long. The local news you read here every day is crafted for you, but right now, we need your help to keep it going. In these uncertain times, your support is even more important. We can't hold those in power accountable and uplift voices from the community without your partnership. Thank you.


Loose Change, 2nd Edition

So here it is. The sixth anniversary of September 11th. I don't know how you feel about that. I was raised in lower Manhattan, so I am, as I am sure you can imagine, very sentimental and sad today to say the least. But saying that I am "sad and sentimental" is an understatement.

I am also angry and frustrated. Even after six years and one cross-country move to get away from things that remind me of the tragedy, I still think about September 11th everyday. When I moved to Los Angeles about a year and a half ago, I did so hoping that it would be a 9/11 out-of-sight-out-of-mind escape. But that has not happened.

I still hold my breath and close my eyes, anticipating the worst, every time I hear low-flying aircraft, loud explosive noises, and emergency response vehicles. I still wince to prevent myself from crying each and every time I give a moment's glance to the New York skyline that raised me.

Support for LAist comes from

Having grown up where I did, many of the childhood pictures of me and my little brother have the Twin Towers in the background. I can't stand to look at them. It is as if I am looking at two steel-framed ghosts and not my fond memories. I used to play tag and tell secrets on the grounds of the World Trade Center. I fell in love there...twice. But all of those memories are also trashed and contaminated with tragedy. When I became old enough to walk myself home from my music lessons, I would use those towers as a landmark to find my way back home and it worked every time. I never got lost. But now, it is as if I have no home to go home to. My home is ruined. My home was incinerated along with the thousands who died there. My dearest and closest friends still live just a few blocks away from the spot where the World Trade Center used to be. Now that they have their own kids, I wonder what they use as a landmark to get themselves home in the lower Manhattan labyrinth of alleys.

For a while, I used to wonder if there was something wrong with me for having these thoughts and I used to wonder why I can't stop thinking them. But I don't wonder about that anymore. I know why. One reason is that it is clear now that the Bush Administration used September 11th to justify a seemingly endless occupation of the Middle East that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Afghani and Iraqi civilians. As far as I am concerned all of those people are September 11th victims as well.

Another reason is that the official report of exactly what happened on September 11th just doesn't make any fucking sense! Not logically. Not scientifically. Not mechanically, nor technologically. Eyewitnesses at the scene of the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001 tell a story that is very different from that of the Bush Administration. And it is the eyewitnesses that the science is siding with. When all is said and done, it really looks like the Bush Administration orchestrated the whole thing. Common sense and logic point to a terrorist attack on American people by our own damned government.

I have heard folks calling this notion a "crazy conspiracy theory." But that is clearly only because they have never seen Loose Change, a documentary that simply and methodically dissects all of factual holes that are present in the official September 11th reports. You can watch Loose Change, 2nd Edition here by clicking on the YouTube screen above. If you want to learn more about the content of the documentary, you can go to the We Are Change website. Now excuse me as I must go and call my New York contingency...I have some commiserating to do.

Most Read