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Edited on Wed Nov-15-06 10:05 PM by NanceGreggs
Up On The Roof
By Nancy Greggs
Along with the five year anniversary of September 11, 2001, I marked another anniversary this past September. It went unnoticed, overlooked because of its inability to be politically spun into tarnished gold by hawkish Republicans intent on using the events of a national tragedy to rally pro-war sentiment, and justify the threats they have used to divide a nation.
It was the anniversary of the NYC Concert for firefighters, police and first responders, which aired within days of the events that had taken so many of their own.
I sat and watched the videotape I had made of that event – something I hadn’t done since it aired – and was immediately struck by a tragedy that seemed even more overwhelming than that of 9-11: This was the LAST time we had stood together, united as Americans.
As the musicians performed, the camera panned over the audience – often lingering to capture not only the grief, but the unity of those who had come together to remember the passing of the fallen, along with the sense of family that existed among those who had lost a brother, a partner, a beloved on-the-job mentor, a best friend.
I saw men so overcome with grief, they had to be held up by others. Men who probably never shed a tear in public in their entire lives cried unashamedly on each other’s shoulders. Women huddled together, each supporting the other in a moment of utter despair.
And as I watched this scene played out over and over on the screen, I wondered how many of those people – who held onto each other so tightly then – no longer even speak to each other. How many of those once-indestructible ties have been broken by bitter arguments over the war in Iraq? How many friendships have been destroyed by barbed remarks calling another’s patriotism into question? How many firefighter or police brethren now see each other as ‘the enemy’ because of opinions expressed about gay marriage, or whether the word “God” should be part of the Pledge of Allegiance?
This was the overwhelming tragedy. Not the collapse of buildings, but the aftermath of divisiveness – meticulously crafted not by a foreign enemy anxious for power, but by an Administration greedy for political gain.
Looking back in hindsight, there was something else framed in that five-year-old videotape: our own naivete as a nation.
As David Bowie sang Simon and Garfunkel’s classic America – “she said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy” – little did we know that in a few short years, being suspicious about being spied upon would be more than a silly game played on a bus trip. And as Bon Jovi sang about “living on a prayer”, none of us foresaw how many Americans would be rendered jobless, homeless, caught up in the financial nightmare of rising prices and stagnant wages, and living on just that – a prayer, and not much else. Within moments of The Who rejoicing in the fact that we wouldn’t get fooled again, we were – and to an extent that we, in that moment of unity, never saw coming.
We were, as things have turned out, totally naïve about the wedge about to be used to divide us, used to pit citizen against citizen, Democrat against Republican, Christian against Muslim – brother against brother.
Why did we, as a nation, not see that the enemy who would usurp our freedoms, inject unbridled hatred into our daily discourse, and profit financially from promoting the threat of terrorism rather than defending against it was the enemy right here in our midst?
Why did we, as a nation, not question the motives of an administration that would seek to divide the very country it was sworn to serve, and do so at a time when that country was as united as it had been since its inception?
One can only wonder – and wonder we did, together again as a nation, just a short week ago. We wondered why these things had come to pass. We wondered about the wisdom of our collective course, the inhumanity of sending fellow citizens to die in an unwinnable, deceit-driven war, the dismal effect of losing our place as a beacon of democracy to instead become a light of warning directed at those who would deign to dissent.
And we voted. We voted, again joining forces as a nation and not as a collection of warring factions, to put things right, to cross party lines and say in one voice that while we reserved the right to disagree with our fellow citizens on any number of topics, we would no longer allow ourselves to be separated, one from the other, on issues that serve the unity of our purpose, the straightforwardness of our goals, the commonality of our American dream.
While it seems to have been a victory for a party, it was in fact something more; it was a victory over divisiveness. It was a victory over a group that repeatedly urged us that seeing each other as sworn enemies, rather than fellow citizens, was somehow the path to a better, stronger nation. It was a victory over those who held out bitterness towards each other as something to be embraced rather than eschewed. It was a victory for American citizens who have finally realized that the Divided States of America is never the answer to anything.
As James Taylor said it, more poignantly than ever on a night five years ago, when this ol’ world starts getting us down, the only way to go is up -- up to the roof. It’s right smack dab in the middle of town, away from the rhetoric that incites hatred amongst neighbors, away from the self-serving babble of those who remind of us of our differences rather than our similarities, away from the destructive attitude of those who would place their own financial and political standing above the righteousness of a nation standing together.
To all of my fellow citizens, regardless of party affiliation or political loyalties, despite our differences on issues real or perceived, I am grateful – and made hopeful – by how many of us have joined hands up here On The Roof.
Although the stars may put on a show for all of us to see, it is, unfortunately, not a world that is trouble-free. There is work to be done, wounds to be healed, wrongs to be righted.
But somehow standing here – together – seems like a hell of a step in the right direction.
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