On the anniversary of 9/11, a reminder that tragedy can’t prevent us from showing up

The paper was falling out of the sky. The dust and the smoke had filled the air all day – it seemed to come directly out of the earth where the towers once stood. I watched it accumulate on my windowsill. I breathed it in. At that moment, it seemed to be flowing in a dusty river directly above Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. And in it, scraps of paper, charred around the edges.

As it fell to the earth like flakes of snow, people reached out to pick up pieces, squatted on the sidewalks, ran out into the street. A piece drifted in front of me. I reached my hand out, but it blew away.

It was late afternoon on Sept. 11, 2001, and at that point I had reunited with my friends, accounted for my colleagues at Brooklyn College, and spoken with my family. I had also watched the steady stream of ash-covered people walking up Flatbush Avenue, including one man with blood on his face. I could hardly imagine the lives lost that day and the lives that would be lost in the violence that would follow.

I felt powerless, overcome by a steady panic and an anxiety for the unknown. And every day for many that followed, the dust continued to accumula te on my windowsills. One day, I stared for hours at the posters of missing people hung up around a hospital in the West Village. Another day, I walked to the Westside Highway and handed out water to Ground Zero workers. And one evening, I held a candle at a vigil in Union Square, turning around at one point to see a friend among the crowd, his face red with tears.

Years later, as the Bush administration launched a war that would lead to the deaths of more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 4,400 U.S. soldiers, millions of Americans hit the streets to protest and shouted, “Not in our name!” 

That war felt inevitable. And I felt, again, powerless. 

On the evening after the war in Iraq started, I walked to Times Square for a protest. It started raining and yet folks stayed. That encouraged me to stay. As the rain fell and police came in to break up the protest, I trudged, wet to the bone, to the subway. 

It was late so the train wasn’t full, and I was able to find a seat. A woman, also rain soaked and holding a “Not in our name” placard, sat down across from me. 

We eyed each other knowingly. I smiled and she laughed. 

“We’re drenched,” I remember saying. “I feel pretty pathetic.”

“Yeah,” she said, “but we have to keep showing up.”

Last week, after yet another school shooting, Sen. JD Vance said these massacres are a “fact of life.” That doesn’t work for me. I have children in schools and a wife, sisters and friends who teach. What a shameful thing to say. What a way to give up on your community and country.

Living in New York City in the aftermath of 9/11 taught me something very basic: Real people make policies. Real people search your bags as you hop on the train to go to work. Real people arrest your neighbors. Real people lie in order to start wars.

Every policy decision has repercussions. 

When our sorrow and our anger lead us to simple solutions or to vengeance, the harms accumulate tenfold and we wound ourselves and others in the process.

There are people who lack imagination and give up. There are people who create and build. There are people who know that another world is possible. And people who are incapable of seeing it. There are people who, in the quiet moments after devastation and loss, somehow channel a spirit of creation.

I’m with the people whose shoulders are pressing against the wheel. I’m with the people who say that violence doesn’t have to be a fact of life. 

I’m with that woman on the train.

She got off before I did, and as she did, she smiled and said, “See you next time.”

I have never felt so powerful.