9/11 families appeal for
peace and justice
Author: Tim Wheeler
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/31/04
BOSTON – The families of the 3,000 people who died in the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack made a powerful appeal for
peace, justice, and understanding both inside and outside
the Democratic National Convention last week.
Haleema Salie’s daughter Rahma, seven months
pregnant, died with her husband Michael aboard American Airlines
Flight 11 that crashed into the World Trade Center. The still
grieving mother was a featured speaker the first night of
the convention.
A member of the Democratic Party Platform Committee,
she reminded the crowd that she is a Muslim and that people
of all races and faiths died in the tragedy. She called on
the crowd “not to forget those who died, to give them a human
face, to remember September 11 as the day we were one … responsible
for each other. It must be the defining moment” and a reminder
that “what unites us is stronger than what divides us. We
bring our memories but we turn our faces to the future to
a new day and a new world.”
Two days earlier, at the Boston Social forum,
Sept. 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows launched “Stonewalk.”
Stonewalk is a project in which volunteers will pull from
the Democratic Convention in Boston to the Republican National
Convention in New York a 1-ton granite gravestone dedicated
to the 100 million people – 80 percent civilian – who died
in wars over the past century. The gravestone’s permanent
location is the Peace Abby in Sherbourne, Mass., where it
was dedicated several years ago by Vietnam War draft refuser
Muhammad Ali.
For its journey to New York, the stone is cradled
on the back of a 3,000 pound caisson festooned with the American
flag and the UN flag and a banner that reads, “Remembering
the Human Cost of Terrorism, Violence, and War.” A long bar
reaches out in front with crossbars for 14 volunteers to do
the pulling.
“I’m here because I know there are four times
as many people who lost family members because of the immoral
war in Iraq as died September 11,” said Terry Rockefeller
as she leaned into the crossbar. She lost her sister Laura
in the terrorist attack on the WTC.
David Potorti, whose brother Jim died in the
WTC, told the World, “I have not yet read the 9/11 Commission
Report but I know that we are not safer because of our response
to September 11. To the extent that the report is a narrative
of what happened that day, it is good. But until it takes
up why it happened, it is not enough. Why do people want to
kill us? I think some September 11 families are in denial.
But many others are asking that question. Why? This is about
our foreign policy and how we relate to the rest of the world.”
Potorti decried the Bush administration’s war
on Iraq and its drive for global domination and a “new American
century.” He said, “It’s not the American century. The century,
as well as the world, belongs to everyone. We share this planet
with a lot of people. I like that quote of John F. Kennedy:
‘Those who make nonviolent evolution impossible, make violent
revolution inevitable.’ This is our nonviolent evolution.”
The “stonewalkers” marched north to Copley Square.
There the caisson stood beside a churchyard where 907 pairs
of boots were arrayed on the grass, symbolizing the number
of GIs who have died in Iraq so far.
The author can be reached at
greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com.
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