What We Can Learn From the 9/11 Clean-Up

There was a lot of confused emotion clouding the air during the immediate aftermath of 9/11/2001. I remember hearing anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, watching varied responses to fighter planes flying all over town (where were they a few hours earlier?), and reports of Sikh and Muslim people being beaten. There were estimates of over 10,000 dead. I remember the grey wind pushing its load of ashes and chemicals away from my apartment in Midtown, across the East River and towards Brooklyn. I also remember that a day or two after, there were first tens, and soon thousands of flyers with pictures of loved ones and expressions of hope that the loved ones had made it out of the towers, or could be rescued in the rubble.

It was in that context that fire-fighters, construction workers, and many others went down to the site of the wreckage and tried to dig people out. They did manage to save a dozen or so (according to reports I read later) but I remember them digging for days after they had found the last survivor. I remember the flags starting to appear all over, supported by full page cut outs in the mass media. I also remember that the wind shifted on the 5th day or so to blow directly up Manhattan.

I remember that all the reports, from the EPA, all the media, were that the air wasn't dangerous. No need to evacuate lower Manhattan. Nobody seemed to worry much about the folks in Brooklyn. Some Manhattanites I knew left anyway, but not many - even though we knew that the asbestos, jet fuel, and bizarre chemical mixes in the air couldn't be as harmless as we were being told. If you look at the much hyped photo of firefighters raising the flag on the site of the wreckage, you will see they're not wearing masks.

New York City had already been in an economic slump, with most of the rest of the nation also in recession. Apparently the EPA's priority was to make sure that the stock market could re-open.

The big lesson of the day was that the U.S. government didn't make it much of a priority to protect us from great harm. Apparently Malcolm X was right that chickens do, in fact, sometimes come home to roost. Another lesson was that the government is not only incompetent, but that it will lie to the people, even at the cost of thousands of agonizing deaths of brave and patriotic citizens, to protect "order" and profit. And now the news reports begin to quietly stream past, of the sudden deaths and long pulmonary illnesses suffered by the would-be-rescuers. And I wonder if anyone will write the follow-ups, about the less-blatant but still fatal exposures of ordinary folks who made the mistake of breathing in the grey wind, who maybe posted their cut-out flags on their windows, when they should have been evacuating with the help of cut-out evacuation maps.

And I wonder if we can draw the parallels to what is going to happen as the energy crisis, global warming, economic collapse begins to really hit, here in NYC, where we still feel like the center of the world. Parallels to the the heroic and sadly-ill-considered bravery of the few, the confused inaction of the many, the government deceptions, and the impact of reality landing on our heads.


http://www.counterpunch.org/orkin02062006.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/nyregion/06reportcnd.html?hp&ex=1157515200&en=f57ac695af0fde43&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Many 9/11 Workers Have Lung Issues, Report Says
By MARIA NEWMAN
Published: September 5, 2006
In the largest study so far of post-9/11 health problems, almost 70 percent of workers who helped with the cleanup of the World Trade Center site suffered new or worsened respiratory symptoms, researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center found.