Let it Be

9.11 

When I went to the memorial a the World Trade Center in the spring of 2014, it seemed quite appropriate.  Infinite metric tons of water cascading down into the earth.  I remember reading the names of the many of the people who died: pregnant women, toddlers, partners, friends and family.  The sun was shining and the shadows danced through the trees.      

Where were you?  I was headed to Berkeley on the Bart train, when I heard that the 2 planes hit the Twin Towers and another hit the Pentagon.  Can you imagine people jumping for their lives out of windows over 30 stories high?  Or that the people fought back and crashed Flight 93 into the fields of Shankville, Pennsilvania?

On that day, I was working alone at the Women of Color Resource Center (WCRC).  The Executive Director, Linda Burnham, and Communications Coordinator, Jung Hee Choi, were in Durbin, South Africa.  They were taking a delegation of women of color to the United Nations Conference Against Racism and Xenophobia (UNCAR).  Suddenly, they were stranded there and had to find their way home.

The WCRC delegation came back with several lessons from that UN Conference in South Africa; however, most of them seemed lost in crisis.  Linda and Jung Hee created a publication, raising women's voices.  I can't find it.

Mr. Rogers said, "Look for the helpers." Many people that came together with love and compassion and generosity that day.  First Responders that gave their lives and never felt like it was enough.  New Yorkers and everyday people shined in tragic and amazing ways; covered from head to toe in debris and blood, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge en masse, hugging one another, carrying the wounded.  

Before the drum beats of war in Iraq/Afghanistan thumped and the racist, anti-muslim hate crimes mounted, I just wanted to live in that moment of compassion for a little longer.  I listened to "Let it Be" back in 2001 and cried.  

"Let it Be" by the Beatles. 18 years later, I am still listening.  Still crying.  Mourning the loss of compassion in an increasingly racist and xenophobic society.  What might have been?  What is.