18 YEARS OF INJUSTICE AND INSULT TO INJURY
(Thursday September 5th, 2019
Trinity Place, NYC) It has been 18 years.
Not that any of us in the 9/11 Community need any reminder. No, each and every one of us who raced to the
Twin Towers moments after the first hijacked plane struck remember all too
vividly the sights and smells of that atrocity.
Most of us can still taste it today.
Those fiendish toxic clouds created as our Towers collapsed one after
the other. Ours have been 18 years of
anguish and agony – grinding sorrow in its most profound manifestation. Families still grieve; grief knows no timetable,
no expiration date. It has no end point,
there never comes a time that it is “supposed” to end. The addition of raw anger and the gut-wrenching
ironies that have defined the last 18 years for so many of us is but an
additional cruelty, an insult dealt by our own federal government.
How many years did we have to
fight for funding the medical care that so many of us desperately needed as we
faced respiratory ailments, strange malignancies, and the myriad illnesses from
the toxins inhaled while working on “The Pile”, in “The Pit”, at “Ground Zero”,
whatever one prefers to call that hellish landscape of twisted structural steel
and debris. Those MOS sifting through debris at Fresh Kills on Staten Island
also became ill. How many among our
Community died after valiant battles with cancers? How many were lost before the proper funding
became available or a medical panel “decided” what diseases were and
weren’t classified as 9/11 related?
While the exact number may be unknown what is for certain is that the
number was far too high.
While we had to fight for our
medical care, the actual legislative maneuvers engaged on behalf of us all by
men like John Feal founder of the Fealgood Foundation, Ray Pfiefer retired FDNY,
NYPD Detective James Zadroga and Jon Stewart were successful only after shaming
Congress to do the right thing. Actually the bill that will provide the
requisite funding of the "Never Forget the Heroes: James Zadroga, Ray
Pfeifer, and Luis Alvarez Permanent Authorization of the September
11 Victim Compensation Act" was only passed by the Senate and signed
into law at the end of August 2019; 18 years after the fact. Yes, in the
aftermath of 9/11/01 all MOS were suddenly “heroes” and were recognized for
their valor for doing what they do on a daily basis day in day out in anonymous
scenes and scenarios throughout the Five Boroughs. The world bore witness to
MOS of the FDNY, PAPD, and NYPD doing their jobs. Sadly, it took such a monstrous tragedy and
loss of life for the public to have a glimpse of the collective character and
individual bravery of the men and women who constitute these Agencies.
Politicians promised all those negatively affected, sickened from their efforts
would be “taken care of”. What a crock
of shit that turned out to be. Their hollow promises faded just as fast as did
the makeshift street memorials all around the City. It took a man, a gravely
ill yet extremely strong man, Luis Alvarez of the NYPD Bomb Squad, sitting in
front of members of Congress telling the long story of how his illnesses left
him ravaged. He would be dead just 32
hours after that appearance. That is
beyond shameful. But that is not the end... Now comes the irony.
GITMO
As has been widely reported
recently the Pentagon is finalizing
plans to expand the facilities at the Detention Center that has housed up
to 610 “enemy combatants” since 2002. Originally
intended to be a temporary prison for those captured on the killing fields of
Afghanistan, the Tora Bora region of Pakistan and later insurgents from Iraq,
only 40 remain held there. The
classification of these terrorists and Islamic zealots as “enemy combatants”
was made to avoid having them claim their rights as codified in the Geneva
Conventions. The legality of having these detainees on US soil seems muddled
and murky. All things aside these men are in our custody and we are responsible
for their care as well as their mounting health care needs. According to the Pentagon’s own discussions
regarding GITMO, they are preparing to transform it into a geriatric
medical/prison facility at a cost of over $88 million. It should also be noted
that many of our Military troops assigned to GITMO reside in substandard living
conditions basically unchanged over the last 18 years.
While the 9/11 Community was
fighting our own Congress tooth and nail for funding of the SVCA the detainees have
been receiving the best medical care our Military can provide. On numerous occasions the physicians serving
at GITMO have had specialized surgical teams from US bases in Homestead,
Florida, Norfolk, Virginia, and other locations. They have been flown in with their specialized
equipment to perform surgeries ranging from spinal fusions to joint
replacements. The expense of these services has been astronomical all things
considered.
The Pentagon has been a bit
fuzzy in providing accurate numbers but a common figure of $11 million is what
it costs, on average, to house each detainee. What a miserable slap in our
collective faces this is.
As the detainees have aged so
have we. Some among us have begun to move on in baby steps while others remain
paralyzed in their grief. There are
those who may protest that this is not the time to write about anger towards
the detainees, but we must counter that this is precisely the time. The admixture of grief and mourning laced
with seething, festering anger is a toxic vapor that impedes our ability to put
some emotional distance from 9/11/01 to this day and beyond. Yes, it has been
18 years but no amount of time can ever fill the voids in families across the
tri-state metro area, no passage of years can extinguish the fires and
billowing clouds that choke us in dreams.
But we all must continue to soldier on, allow our memories to become planks
of living history we have the sacred responsibility to share with younger
people.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/apr/29/john-ring-gitmo-firing-ignites-prison-detainee-fir/
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jun/20/closing-gitmo-prison-detainee-transfer-fight-renew/
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Copyright Brooding Cynyc 2019 © All Rights Reserved
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