We Are All New Yorkers Now

Eight years ago, 7 days after the catastrophe we now call 9/11 I wrote this essay. It was accepted by my fellow members of the editorial board of New Jersey Lawyer, the New Jersey State Bar Association's weekly newspaper.

New Jersey Lawyer Weekly

September 24, 2001

10 NJL 1814

Editorial

We Are All New Yorkers Now

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and America combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

- Abraham Lincoln (1838)

At these points now do we expect the approach of danger: when a tourist visa is granted, when a man named Mohammed boards a plane, when a flight takes off from Newark bound for San Francisco, when we enter the elevator and push the button for the 44th floor, when your train stops in the tunnel, when the cell phone rings.

On The Day After, New Yorkers woke to a silent city. Dawn normally brings traffic helicopters and the background hum from the highways. On The Day After, New York was patrolled by military helicopters. An aircraft carrier was posted off the white sand beaches of Jones Beach State Park. “Tasked to provide air defense for New York”, said the NORAD commander. Air Defense? For New York? At the gateways to New York Harbor - the Throgs Neck, George Washington, and Verrazano bridges Coast Guard cutters on picket duty barred civilian traffic. No fuel, no stone, no freight, no fishermen’s skiffs could pass. No cars entered Manhattan. Traffic at mid-day was lighter than Sunday morning 7 AM.

The glistening symbol of the City is gone. A thick plume of smoke rose for days, marking the spot where thousands of the fallen towers’ workers were buried. With each wind shift another boro felt the sting of the acrid smoke. A day of mourning stretched into weeks still without end. The burials that may never come still lie dreadfully before us.

First came the offers of blood for the wounded - who never got to the hospital. Then came the firefighters, EMT’s, and construction workers from Ohio, from Tennessee, from New Jersey and Massachusetts to clear the rubble and honor the dead. Soon we saw flags fluttering from car antennas and hung from balconies and fences.

They came because New Yorkers were killed by planes filled with hostages bound from Boston for LA, because the captors incinerated other Americans along with their unmourned selves as American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon. They came for those who struggled with the attackers and crashed in a field in Somerset, Pennsylvania. They came because the distinction between combatants and non-combatants has been erased. We are all New Yorkers now because we are all Americans, and because we are all combatants now - and do not know the face of the enemy.