The Human Toll

[LeoCasey at aol.com]

My daughters attend a small full inclusion school in the lower Park Slope 
section of Brooklyn. Tonight I was on the telephone making arrangements for 
school's opening tomorrow because no less than five staff people lost close 
family members at the WTC. The teacher who is the union chapter leader, and 
has a new born child, lost her husband firefighter. Another teacher lost a 
husband, and another a daughter who worked at the WTC. A teacher who had lost 
a firefighter husband two years ago in a fire now lost a cousin. Another lost 
a brother-in-law. We don't yet know about students who have lost family 
members.

I do not look forward to tomorrow morning. The union has a whole team of 
counselors and mental health professionals to deal with crises of these 
sorts, but we never imagined a situation in which they would happen 
simultaneously across the city. We have two entire small high schools which 
were in buildings directly across from the WTC which no longer exist, and we 
will have to deal with them. 

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who 
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and 
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --
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