***** 16 September 2001
My name is Sam Friedman. I am an AIDS researcher and a poet. I work for a research NGO that was housed in WTC building 2. Luckily, I was not in the building when the planes hit, and all of my co-workers escaped without serious injury, but I watched the building burn, not knowing which of my friends and co-workers were caught inside.
This has been deeply traumatizing to us all in many ways. And many of us lost relatives or friends in the disaster.
But in my conversations and emails with my co-workers since then, none of us seem to be vengeful. We are more concerned about what the US may do in response. We do not see any justice in bombing the Afghani women who have suffered enough, or any of the other millions of innocent people who are likely to suffer the same kind of trauma that we have.
Some of us are also trying to come to terms with why there are people out there who would do such a terrible act. The simple answers that the media and politicians give do not explain it. They avoid discussing the pain we must have caused others. They avoid why the US may have acted in ways that caused pain. We need to think about that and to discuss it.
May we all have a peaceful world,
Sam Friedman Senior Research Fellow (and Poet), National Development and Research Institutes, New York sam4wp at netscape.net *****
-- Yoshie
* Calendar of Anti-War Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Anti-War Organizing in Columbus Covered by the Media: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/media.html>