Osama Is Dead: A Celebration At Ground Zero
On September 11th 2001 I was living in Alexandria, VA a suburb of Washington, DC. I had taken a semester off college and I was living at home. My parents woke me up to tell me that someone had bombed the World Trade Center. My father had just canceled a business meeting in NYC that would have put him less than a block from the WTC. I got out of bed and came into their room about the time the second plane hit. About 30 minutes later a third plane hit the Pentagon in Arlington, VA just a few miles from my parents house. At some point planes were scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base and the sonic boom from the jets shook our entire house. It was absolutely terrifying. That night I went out with one of my best friends and we watched the Pentagon from a hill overlooking the city. There were probably 100 people there and I don’t think anyone said a word. This moment was extremely powerful and traumatic for me and I certainly will never forget that day.
But I didn’t live in NYC. I didn’t have any family or friends die that day. I didn’t have ash rain down on me. I didn’t have to pull anyone out of a burning building. I didn’t have to have my entire neighborhood quarantined. I didn’t watch the sky fill up with smoke as everyone around me contemplated the end of the world. 2000 people from my community weren’t all murdered on the same day. As scary as it was living in DC on September 11th, it doesn’t compare to the emotions nearly every single person living in NYC in 2001 went through that day.
So when the news hit that Osama Bin Laden had been finally killed I knew that whatever emotions I was feeling were magnified ten fold by millions of people living in the city I now call home. I watched the news for about an hour and then grabbed my cameras and headed down to Ground Zero. There was a party down there to say the least. I stayed for hours and witnessed so many different feelings. People were singing and screaming and crying and drinking. Firemen walked around remembering their brothers who had been killed saving lives. Frat boys drank beers and chanted “Fuck Bin Laden”. Hipsters brought out boom boxes and sang country songs about America. Marines carried flags and got hugged by everyone. The Fat Jew and the Hipster Grifter was there, and so was Dan Choi. People were climbing anything they could find so they could wave American flags high above the crowd. I saw Muslims, Hasidic Jews, Sikhs and Christians all come together to celebrate this moment and finally get some closure. People crowd surfed and bag pipes played Amazing Grace while everyone sang along. It was an amazing moment.
I can’t say too much more about all this. I was just really glad to be there and be part of this city and this countries healing after the attacks 10 years ago. My Twitter feed has filled with Osama jokes and while I rarely think anything is in poor taste, I just can’t find myself contributing to that. This moment is just too important.
