9/11/2001 was a brisk morning in Queens, clear as the leaves presented before me by sidewalk trees moving by as i coasted my way past lawns crystal with dew, on my way to school. It was the beginning of what was supposed to be my Junior year at St. John's University and along with four other young men, i had just moved a good walk off campus. At Spring Semester's end i had been elected News Editor of The Torch, the official publication of St. John's University, and coming into the '01-'02 class faced the next order of business in preparing for the coming issue as students traveled between classes with the special summer edition (produced by me) folded under the arm or spread wide about their faces.
It was on my way into the breakfast/coffee before The Torch office routine that morning that i encountered the friend of a friend whom recognized and elected to stop me with a block and a half to go. "Morning classes have been canceled," she warned me. "An airplane flew into the World Trade Center." ...Giving a tip of the cap and a word of gratitude for the looks i proceeded anyway, past the outflux of students i began taking notice of at that point. Straight to the University Center i headed, nestling between a tightening crowd into the UC room where i planted myself amongst about three hundred people staring stone faced over my head, then turned around to see what they were watching in placing a screen with the newscasters statement that: "a second plane has hit the towers". Before long the reality sunk in: "Ladies and gentleman, we have been attacked", etc...
_?$%+.-?_*
all along the watch tower*_?$%+.-?_
Fade to my eyes a few months later and they were most probably crimson red. Not a month after the attacks i had dropped out of school. A 3.4 student, News Editor of the school paper, a room in an off campus upper classman stud pad! I couldn't tell you if it was the culture of the house, in which we smoked
at least four blunts a day, like, EVERYday :: Or the stress of the worlds events weighing upon me, but i fell into a deep depression. I'm sure it was a combination of everything, on top of the fact that i just felt a general sense of being alone and empty, stagnant, not knowing where to begin, not having an idea of where i wanted to be or what i wanted to be doing. I had lost interest in Journalism because i found myself pigeonholed as a news reporter/writer, which we learn and then perpetuate as a strict conveyer of information to stand on the principle that we aren't to interject our own voice/opinions into our stories. That was dead to me. My spirit is that of an artist and it needed to be unconstrained.
So i left school figuring that maybe i needed some time off. And being in depression, i isolated myself in that very house with a roomate or two who like me just kind of slumped around. No job, wake up in the morning and throw the clips from the night before into a bong, play video games and wait for the others to get home with more weed to mooch off of. It would get to the point where i was smoking and drinking so much that some months after recovering from this depression i recall looking back on some writings that had words missing letters and ilegiable sentences missing words!
This image of Tony Rivera was quite a revalation to those coming through the house whom may have been meeting me for the first time yet knew of me as the guy who actually wrote a story on the rise of marijuana use on campuses across the nation. Just as it was a revelation for one of my roomates, whom had been expelled from campus for selling, when i offered to/and there-upon assumed the assignment of writing a letter of apology and plea making the case for reinstatement.
But in that time i also found myself reading alternative sources of information, and presenting liberal and even radical points of view to my roomates, who at times looked at me quite skeptically and at other times built with me. On one occasion for example a heavy white child who frequented our spot with his own stash to share and whose name i've since forgotten was rambling off to a boy of his he had brought along, about how drugs serve as an underground economy and fill a void left by a capitalist system which is dependant on a limited supply and excessive demand to thrive. So lack of jobs = poor folk with no money = less consumption (ADD DRUGS) now the jobless deal = have money = buy cars, buy homes, buy food. Economy is sustained.
I couldn't stop myself from laughing because like a week earlier he was very resistant to this argument. Particularly my theory that the government is well aware of how and through whom drugs get in, and that at times even plays a hand in managing its enterance into our communities (whether through a complicated web of relations or a simple agreement) >
This was before Traffic by the way, and i still hadn't even heard of Iran Contra and the politics of the crack era... it was just common sense to me<. But then there he was rehashing the conversation. After some time though i begun to quiet down and fall back from all the politiking because once i found myself thinking outloud about race things got uncomfortable in the house. Two of the gentlemen were white, one was Chinese and the other Indian, but every one of us had more white friends than anything else and these conversations often stifled the mood. I was not yet confident enough or proud enough to bring this conversation up even amongst my own, much less them. And when one day i ravaged the house to realize a new book i had bought (Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men") was missing, i knew things had gotten too cold. There was one fellow in particular who was a life long friend of the Chinese brother (they were from Long Island) whom began giving me a threatening gaze in a straight face when we'd see each other. This was in contrast to the first couple of times we met in which we were totally fine and there were smiles and daps. Apparently i wasn't playing my role.
Oh well!Geo-Politics aside it was only a matter of time before race sparked a friction in the house. Because it was around this time that my venture into a calling to understand myself and whom/ where i was coming from culturally, historically...
to reclaim my OWN family's/people's story about how we arrived here in the U.S. and our conditions, and to even trace back before that so that i know a little more about being Puerto Rican than that we can fly without a passport, eat rice and beans, and have a flag with one star on it,... began. The year before was BIG in my development as a person, which makes sense! Freshman year i was timid and just trying to get into the swing of things. It wound up being a big party. But sophomore year i found myself slowly aligning with more of my own kind, and feeling more and more alienated from the white folks i had immersed myself amongst since entering college as 'a free man'. Began noticing that for as much as i had fun drinking with them, those in my circle didn't listen as intently when i spoke as they did when speaking between one another.
For example it was common for us to all be walking on our way to the bar and for me to be speaking on some shit, THINKING the group is listening, when before long i'd wind up lagging behind, hosting the ear of ONE person nodding incessantly, yet clearly not paying attention to what i'm saying. All of this before instantaneously placing my sights ahead and noticing another conversation commensing amongst the group. I began to realize there was more love when a brother Boricua Marcus for example, would come over, or when i'd cross the hall to chill with brothers. It was more intimate.
My transformation was further instigated, ironically, by an experience i had on our Spring Break of '01. It was a group of five. My brother and I, and three of my closest friends up until that point (all white). Our destination: PUERTO RICO. While there several instances occured that stand out in my memory like my mothers lips speaking.
- One of my friends stops us midway a walking bridge and decides to pee off of it. The police pull up __ one holds a stick to his neck and begins spitting obscenities in Spanish and the other stands aback before finally stepping in to calm him as he begun getting more aggressive __ "We don't like that over here!" he shouts.
- Sometime after that incident (mightve been the same night) my brother and i are walking down the street when a bottle comes flying out of nowhere and bursts about a yard on front of us.
- Coming out of a strip club one early morning (2:30ish?) my friend and i are robbed by a gun poking out of a car pulling up without headlights, which my naive ass walks up to assuming maybe it pulled over to ask a question. Then we run to Old San Juan and upon arrival find some police whom ask "What do you want us to do about it?" and promise to call a cab before deserting us in the night.
By the time we arrived back on the strip which led to the hotel i was in tears. Only my closest friend of the group, whom i had gone to high school with, remained by my side (my brother didn't come out that night). The other two continued their night. I was the only one stupid enough to give my whole wallet so i had no ID no cash or card, no NOTHING! I slammed my camera full of memories, which i had at that point determined were of absolutely no value to me, into pieces.
I say it was an ironic turning point because while many would identify those as reasons to detest Puerto Rico, and reaffirmations of the notions that our people are bad, I looked within. I had been maturing. I was at the end of my Sophomore year, facing decision time in my life and changing. Time to decide what my major was going to be, time to step it up and assume responsibility as Editor rather than a measly name in the by-lines, time to get a job, opening up to new circles and making relationships which ultimately equated to a decision to clean the slate of old company. I was begining to look at myself in the mirror. Clean cut, hair gelled, silver chain and earings along with an eyebrow ring / Then longer hair with beads around the neck. The music i listened to began to change. My Korn CD began collecting dust and i had rediscovered HipHop in the form of Mos Def and Talib Kweli, Common, The Roots. I was allowing myself to navigate for whom i felt comfortable being, whom i felt substance in being: What gave me a sense of power and self-determination.
The trip to Puerto Rico led me to eventually reflect, not on how hurt i was that my experience turned out to be so... but on why my people over there were so angry? And why is it that i felt so insulted, as if, THEY SHOULDVE KNOWN to treat me better? ME.. an All-American Preppy Rican.
___And the concept of Colonialism was born in my psyche. Not because i was being oppressed in PR, but because i was being oppressed in my own existance at home despite all of my priveledges, and because i began to accept the idea that upon touching down in PR and me assuming that i'd be catered to, as if though this was some commercial, as if the people working in hotels and restaurants dont go home and struggle; As if they work to serve MY happiness; I began to accept that upon touching down in Puerto Rico, that I was acting an oppressor.
I decided that in spite of being the dismissed person back home while the dismissed person abroad, I wasn't going to just fall into the pecking order, without stepping into a journey to become whom i knew i wasn't, yet understood i needed to be! If i resisted this call with contempt for the incidences in the motherland, I knew in my soul who i'd be fighting for... and i knew well that though i was
a good one to keep in company, they never cared to really know me!
.
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I'm Sorry, ...i got caught up!
So what does this have to do with 911?
Why do i gotta drag the pulpit in
and use it to leap across topics? .
.
This is why:
Everybody knows where they were and what they were doing when speaking in passing about the occurance of a historic event. For example when Kennedy was assassinated, many remember being in school. And by in large each person has a sense of where they were in life in terms of their mindstate and the phase of life they'd been motioning through at the time. Thus, these historic dates are subjective to the perception of whomever is telling the story. For example to many when Punk music had officially hit it mainstream and began to submerge the reign of disco alot of people stopped going to clubs to dance and perceived it the death of good music. Meanwhile, fans of Punk music perceived that time as the rise of good music. Or if you want to talk politics look at the Vietnam War. Many view it as a time in which America was at low morale, that the youth became cowardice and didn't want to fight for their flag. But there were many (some heros of mine) on the other side of that conversation who felt that if anything America had maturened and gained a consciousness. That young people took the vanguard in standing up and fighting for their rights and to have their opinions matter, even if it meant allowing yourself to consider that maybe your own country (the U.S.) was assuming the charactieristics of an oppressive imperialistic empire, and in essence, WRONG. The date of 9/11 is no different. There are millions of stories about what went on 9/11/2001, because there are millions of people whom witnessed it, and each had a chance to evaluate the situation through a lens focused by their own socio-economic condition, experience, and education.
It mattered where you were at... physically and mentally. The person i describe to you above, carrying those thoughts in the brain, was me when 9-11-2001 happend. This was the context in which 9/11/2001 happened in my life.
Still, make no mistake about it: though a 9/11 has occured for each of us, WE ARE ALL CONNECTED as our experiences! So everyone's 911 is not an isolated 911! That is what the demons doing their work on earth do not realize when they release evil through us... that it all comes back to come to light... eventually all is redeemed. So it will always strike me as eerie, yet no mystery that the the special summer issue carried under the arm and at the face of students roaming the campus those first weeks of school featured a story, written by me, about the new St. John's Manhattan campus (only blocks away from the towers), and began with me detailing in the first paragraph my exit from the Chambers Street subway station (which at that time extended beneath the towers), and scanning around to identify where i was in relation to where i was headed. I write how upon turning 180 degrees i was overwhelmed by the mammoth edifice erecting a few feet before me, raising my eyes to no end. I had to walk half a block to see the sky above it. Back then i was yet a city dweller: had never worked in the city; had been in the city but was for the most part was still one of those New Yorkers whom live here yet never ventured beyond the hood (see even here we have bumpkins!). I could think of no better way to begin talking about the new campus but to place it in their shadows.
.... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ....
.... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ....
September 11, 1973The day the towers fell St. John's was cast in a shadow indeed. My world was cast in a shadow. The world certainly changed for me and for everybody i know. But did the world change for everybody? Was everybody in the world's life instantaneously casted into a shadow?
_____The economy began to slope and people who lost stock value in the market... a shadow was casted on them.
_____But how much lower could the family of four in Mississipi making less than $10,000 a year, have gone? Was that same shadow cast on them? *well maybe so, because it is the children of that family which will likely be sent off to fight for that money back> reguardless of whether or not his family ever has the opportunity to dig their way out of poverty in the poorest state of the union.
But you know what they say... A recession doesn't exist in the ghetto. The state of existence in the ghetto is constant depression.
_____Young men and women (god bless them each, they are young MEN, and WOMEN!) were sent off to fight a war... a shadow was indeed casted over them.
_____But the children whom carry AK-47s in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East; they see buildings blown up every day. They lose 3000 people over the course of some months and not in one day as was the case with the towers, but this is in the midst of wars that last generations. In which deaths total in the hundreds of thousands. So was a shadow casted over them?
As i've elaborated. Everyone has their own 9/11.
And what our history teachers don't teach us is about the 911 attack launched by the United States Government, through the CIA in 1973.
The motive was exactly the same as the one we propogate about why 9/11/2001 happened.
We say 9/11 was launched on us because
they didn't like our fr...
______free...
_________freedo...
____________freedom!
FREEDOMThe World Trade Center was the capitalist symbol for dominance. There is no coincidence as to why it was the tallest building built for a long time, it was meant to display how a nation with little natural resources (no diamonds, a tiny bit of oil, no steel, etc...) can become the wealthiest empire the world has ever come to know! I mourn the innocent lives taken on 911, but if you want to chalk me down as a traitor or evil being for caring less at this point about the actual buildings, then so be it. That type of cynicism only places you in my eyes as less empathetic about the people; probably because it wasn't a celebrity or a power broker. It was the common man and woman who died in those buildings. There are those.. some of whom are reading this.. that looked at the towers as the absolute symbol of freedom!
Then there are those.. some of whom are reading this.. that look at the will to work for a pleasant existance, befitting a humane humble existance, as baring the urge for freedom. Though they never got it. Though many of us with that same urge never get to be free and only know it as an unreachable illusion. It is not an illusion. They worked for it! Just so happens that those in power didn't work WITH them to accomplish it... because it befitted them to have the people work FOR them in scaffolding their own priveledge on the top of the hill, in first class, reguardless of whether the one ACTUALLY WORKING for the freedom came home with sore feet and calluses, and a check short of paying beyond minimum balance, while the one basically just keeping their parents contacts and connections, travels to eat at fancy places 'networking' and calling that work, doesn't know what default means!
On November 3rd, 1970 the people of Chile VOTED for what THEY believed freedom was! You couldn't tell them what freedom was or what it wasn't! They had their own experience and didn't want the old broken system back. It is the story in ANY election, held ANYWHERE around the world, involving ANY parties running!
In essence, Salvador Allende (Wiki; google; check sources; keep reading) was elected into office, becoming THE FIRST DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED Socialist Leader in the Western World. This is what the majority of the vote wanted. There were no tanks, there was no violence. See we have this phobia here in the U.S. about anything that may pose an alternative to the system we have. These were people whom understood that when your government is exploiting you you get rid of them!
Red flags raised within the U.S. Government's Chambers(
not that it was REALLLY any of our business! kind of gives me a visual of the nosy neighbor who gets offended when they hear that you have something in your apartment that the landlord told them THEY couldn't have) Why did red flags raise??? Well...
The United States has a long history of policies (actually written and passed by our government) of intervention in Latin and South America! For over a century companies (sugar, fruit, minerals and natural resources industries; manufacturing and pharmaceutical, tourism and off shore corporations) have planted themselves in the region, ESPECIALLY after the exit of the Spanish and Portugal colonial powers, with the concent of these nations' currupt government regimes (for example Fulgencio Batista in Cuba who gave U.S. businessmen, politicians, and mobsters access to cheap labor and land to run casinos and a booming hotel industry while the majority of the country starved: BY THE WAY THIS IS WHY A GROUP OF LESS THAN 20 GUERILLA FIGHTERS, INCLUDING CHE GUEVARRA WAS ABLE TO WIN THE SUPPORT OF THE PEOPLE IN OUSTING THAT REGIME) For over a century these FAT KAT business men have been given a pass to exploit South America with the support of the U.S. Military which often planted ships off the coasts, ready to attack the citizens of these nations if they tried to move in and fuck with our money! And we worked in collaboration with such KNOWN dictators as:
Fulgencio Batista (Cuba)
Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic)
Hugo Banzer (Bolivia)
Humberto Branco (Brazil)
Roberto Suazo Cordova (Honduras)
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez (El Salvador)
Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala)
Manuel Noriega (Panama)
Anastasio Somoza Sr. & Jr. (Nicaragua)
Jorge Rafael Videla (Argentina)
These were brutal brutal men who massacred whole populations of dessenters! And although it relies on your doing heavy research and common sense to verify whether what i am telling you is true about the connection of our government in supporting these Dictators who suppress the FREEDOM of the people of these nations and commit genocide, *because we don't like THEIR kind of freedom... their kind of freedom means WE wouldn't be free to do what WE want on THEIR land*, the information is out there.
So just as a symbol of capitalism was attacked on 9/11/2001
A Reighteous symbol of Socialism was attacked on 9/11/1973
A Democratically Elected government, ousted by a man Augusto Pinochet whom is quoted as saying "Democracy is the breeding ground of communism"! The coup was supported by the CIA and more specifically, masterminded by Henry Kissinger and some neo-conservative economists from the Chicago School under the Nixon Administration. They saw the rising of socialism in South America as a threat just as President James Monroe did when he signed "The Monroe Doctrine" (google, wiki, read) in which the United States Government basically declairs THE RIGHT to interfere if they sense any form of government or economic system EVEN IF SUPPORTED BY THE PEOPLE OF THAT NATION, other than one approved by us, growing in the region.
...Shiiieeet if another country were to declair that same law over us and go sending secret spies and paramilitaries to fight us on this soil what might they call that?
TERRORISM!
The Monroe Doctrine was an imperialist policy OBVIOUSLY because you cannot just impose a policy on another country can you? The more cordial proposal to any nation we determined a threat from was called The Big Stick policy!
It was Monroe's way of saying that we will negotiate with you, carrying a big stick. SHIT! that sounds like some animal cruelty shit. Alot different than saying you are going to extend an olive branch.
So as you can see the U.S. hasn't always had a whole lot of respect for my people below the border!
And in helping install the Pinochet regime, which was responsible for torturing, murdering and the dissapearance of TENS of THOUSANDS of 'communists', the U.S. was carrying out an imperialist act (which is to say it lightly).
Just a couple of weeks ago i watched the documentary "The Judge and The General" on channel 13. It was about 9/11/1973 in Chile and the testimony of the families of those persecuted.
You see... We have this tendancy to omit history by giving prevailance to events we favor to celebrate, or mourn over others. So we talk about
THE Holocaust, when in fact there have been plenty of holocausts in the history of the world... take Darfur for example.
And the history books leave these events out. I once asked someone, why couldn't we consider what's going on in Darfur to be a holocaust, and this person replied: "Oh that's just them killing each other" Which happens to be the same thing said about black people in America. It is one of the most racist statements that could be made about war. The war in Darfur is actually very complicated and goes beyond Muslims and Christians killing each other, but damnit, at least acknowledge that there are two sides: Muslims and Christians. When we refer to Bosnia we dont say "They're only killing each other". We say it is ethnic cleansing. There is one group of people within that mix of white people, killing another group of white people. And i bring this out just to show you about our biases, and how blind we can be and miseducated and in essence: APATHETIC! about some serious HELL going on here on earth. We are conditioned to think about things in accordance to how the media dictates. So the killing of a communist is ok, even though there is no dictionary in the world that will tell you anything other than that communism is a different system of government (AND EVEN WITHIN COMMUNISM THERE ARE DIFFERENT IDEAS AND TRADITIONS AND THEORIES SO IT IS NOT ONE BIG GROUP.) I once asked someone what communism means and they told me: "It's when a dictator takes power and abuses his power" NOOOOOOO... that is a dictatorshp! LOOK UP COMMUNISM
Actually, if anything (and by the way i am not
A Communist!, but there are traditions and components in communism that to me speak of ensuring strong democratic ideals) You see the opossite of Democracy is a Dictatorship (a dictator takes power, a democracy requires people to vote) NOW THE OPPOSITE OF CAPITALISM that's a different thing. The opposite of Capitalism can be Communism or Socialism. The problem is that the United States has Usurped the notion of Capitalism and made us believe that Democracy can only co-depend on Capitalism to Survive, when the fact is that there are probably more socialist style governments (which are ELECTED IN via a Democratic Process) on this earth, throughout Europe, South America, Asia than Capitalist ones.
All i know is that i get tired of the ideological war when i settle for a moment and recognize what i am fighting for. The People (that includes myself, my family, the people with children in my community, those in love for 30 years in my community and those working their way through struggling to grow in relationships... Those who hustle with stress on their mind trying to make it out that stress and turn things around for their people... Those accomplishing alot in high places even, whom walk and talk to get where they need to be to include us on every level of playing ground that power plays out).
.
on 9/11/2001 the people here were violated by men of power fighting 4 power.
And on 9/11/1973 The People were violated by men of power fighting for power.
And it is just as much about the personal experience of each person.. of me, of you... as it is about our collective experience. Because they are one in the same.
It is in recognition of this fact that i expose what i know, and know i have the freedom to know, in a system that hides it all very well, for the sake of power over me.
IN DEDICATION:
9/11/1973
9/11/2001