See the rest of the city, please, and wait for the memorial
The security firms about to lose contracts are complaining about Federal government take-over of the airport screening and patrolling duties. ÒPeople may think the work force will transition to the federal government, but they could well be dead wrong. There are lots of folks who donÕt want to work for the federal government, and the good and professional folks in the work force are likely to be retained by security companies and placed in other demanding security tasks.Ó The firms will lose about $330 million in contracts, but too bad. They had their chances and blew them in a big way. Of course, the firms are right in one regard: IÕd be surprised if the federal government manages to fully implement security in 420 airports within a year. I wouldnÕt be surprised, however, to find that the government hires ÒexpertiseÓ from the firms currently with the contracts, putting the same bozos back in charge.
The Red Cross move to give all of the Sept. 11 donations to the victims and their families is a mistake. The donations are being treated like the spoils of war, like booty, handled in the same way we handle the payoff in a punitive damages suit. And who are the ÒvictimsÓ who will receive these funds? Only people who were killed? What about people made homeless from the disaster? TheyÕre victims, right? And the jobless? All those airline workers, the restaurateurs and their waitstaffs, even the media employees cut because of weak advertising? What about people affected outside of New York City?
And who are the families which will receive those tens of thousands of dollars (or more) per victim? Husbands, wives and kids? Sure. Parents? Okay, maybe. FiancŽs? Romantic partners? Homosexual partners? Roommates? Who will say? Is somebody going to track down those families in Mexico who still donÕt know why they havenÕt heard from their father or brother or aunt and give them money, too? Or do they have to come get it?
The Red Cross reversal in how to spend those funds was a result of complaints from donors. But what kind of donor would freely give money then presume to tell the Red Cross where to spend it? Some folks said they felt misled by the television ads, that they were under the impression the money would go directly into the pockets of firemen, widows and orphans. But the Red Cross has expertise nobody else has, needs that nobody else knows about and a responsibility that should not be meddled with. You gave the gift: wanting ÒglamorousÓ recipients like smoke-blackened firefighters, big-eyed children and weeping widows is ignorant and selfish, when phones go unanswered, computers are outdated and no reserve is kept for future, less ÒsexyÓ disasters when the money wonÕt flow as freely. The real needs are mundane and unexciting, but vital, absolutely vital, to the success of the relief operation.
The gift-giving is out of hand. ThereÕs something almost nonsensical about the in-kind gifts given to the firemen. What purpose do 12,000 tickets to 20 concerts serve when there are fire trucks to be replaced and funerals to pay for, educations to plan, mortgages to pay? Relief efforts are not helped by gifts of trips to ÒSpain, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Panama, Delaware, Tennessee, Germany, France, Austria, Canada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Zealand, South Carolina, Mississippi, Colorado, Jamaica, the Virgin Islands, North Carolina and the Grand Cayman Islands.Ó They are certainly nice gestures and well-meant IÕm sure, but not very helpful or well-thought. Cooking and baking and serving on the spot are the sorts of in-kind gifts that are effective. Or cash, always cash, without strings attached.
The new ads promoting the city are funny, but theyÕre not quite on-target. Steve Johnson in the Chicago Tribune writes, ÒThe implication of divine intervention discredits the grit and resolve displayed by flesh-and-blood humans. ItÕs not a miracle. ItÕs what ordinary people under extraordinary pressure can do. And while the ads have a veneer of New York moxie, they, at their base, suggest something uncharacteristic, even disconcerting: that the city is the nationÕs underdog. As much as I empathize with its loss, I donÕt want to be thinking about the pluck of New York City. Pluck is for places like Omaha and Sacramento. When you think New York, you want to think in terms like ÔbrassÕ and Ôchutzpah.Õ You want, even now, an ad campaign that says, ÔNew York City. Come or DonÕt Come. Whatever.Õ Or: ÔNew York. So you think now you can score Producers tickets? Fuhgeddaboudit.Õ Ads like those would tell me it really is time to visit New York, because things are getting back to normal.Ó
One letter we received this week made a point of complaining that New York City is receiving too much attention. People are suffering elsewhere, too, it said. Yes, we donÕt doubt that. You canÕt blame all of the nationÕs current economic difficulties on September 11. The economy was already teetering precariously, with zero cash on hand for contingency and a lot of pushing and shoving for jobs and new business.
Yes, thereÕs misery elsewhere, too. But the trauma of the terrorist attacks still stands large in our minds, us New Yorkers. We havenÕt all partitioned off our feelings, or wiped away the memory, or repressed the need to think about those events. ThereÕs a space in our brains that was filled by those towers, and at the moment it is being refilled by stress, fear and tension. Friends tell me they feel tapped out, sapped, stretched thin. The effect of the attacks is physical and mental, a negative space around which we steer but keep bumping like furniture in the dark. I donÕt doubt that misery continues elsewhere in the country, as it does here. But do not slip back into your old perceptions of the City as the sneak who steals from the nation more than it gives. Some of us are still hurting, and your patience will be appreciated.
My friend Melissa has returned to her apartment, three blocks away from Ground Zero, three short blocks from where the World Trade Center stood. She left the windows open that day, September 11, so the insurance company paid to have the apartment cleaned: the rugs torn out, the curtains and linens discarded, the couch carted off to the dump, every surface vacuumed and wiped to remove the fine grains of concrete, asbestos, and other chemicals of modern office life.
So she and Drew are back, sleeping on an air cushion. Their phone is working again, and the iMac was saved, and she can begin receiving postal mail (if only theyÕll deliver it). They still have to traverse police barriers to go home, and show identification, and every time they come home for the evening, they generally donÕt, or ought not to, go out again. This is not the kind of situation where you want to come home drunk after a party at 3 a.m. and try to convince a cop that you live there.
There is something that annoys her, after two months of being homelessÑin which no assistance was forthcoming from the city; only the Red Cross, in the end, was able to help, and that after much prodding and frustrationÑand that is the hordes of tourist through, around and by the barriers surrounding Ground Zero. Melissa has to elbow her way home.
You might say, perhaps, as many have said that thereÕs a need to see, that closure is called for, the itÕs a shared experience via which we become joined. A letter to the editor at The Times tells this small story: ÒWhen my wife and I went to ground zero several weeks ago to join the cordon of mourners who had gathered to bear witness, we were ordered by well-meaning and exhausted police officers to Ôget movingÕ because Ôthis is not a tourist attraction.Õ Their assessment was correct, but their directive indicated that they did not understand why we were there.Ó
The officerÕs perspective is one Melissa and I share. Those tourists are rubberneckers. Morbid importance-seekers. They want to see carnage, and they want to say, I was there: Here, these are pictures of me there. I am not a victim, nor a culprit; I am not cop nor fireman nor movie star slinging hash under an assumed name, but there I am. Am I not somehow important? Ruth Groebner writes in the Greenwich Village Gazette, ÒDespite its dusty air and desolate feel, the area may be the safest due to the large police and military presence. Or does that make it a target? You make the call. We talked for awhile with a Guardsman ÔcelebratingÕ his birthdayÑas much as he would talk, that is. When asked how long heÕd been here, his pat answer was ÔI canÕt give you specifics.Õ In the midst of our discussion, we were then asked to leave by two of New YorkÕs finest. It felt weird, like some sort of turf battle, but in a strange way it felt safe.Ó Ruth, the site is dangerous, thatÕs why you were asked to leave. ItÕs crowded. All together itÕs a crime scene, a mortuary, a demolition site, a construction site and a high-security zone. You don't belong there. We New Yorkers bear witness throughout the city; we don't necessarily see the crime as site-specific.
IÕm not even sure if foreign dignitaries visiting the site are appropriate. There is an observation deck, but whatÕs the end result? A ÒboostÓ in morale? Does it work? Do the workers feel the boost? Or would they rather work unhindered by muckety-mucks or tourists alike? Do these pictures run in papers back home? Or do they go out in the city's myriad ethnic media, showing New York's foreign citizens that though they have chosen to leave their native land, the leaders of that land still think of them?
See the rest of the city, please, and wait for the memorial.
New York City even at the worst of times is a great place for tourists. There are parts of town where they can indulge in their Disney-land idealsÑwalk in the streets (as if they were safe, as if the automobiles were on rails), take pictures of the locals (as if the locals were actors, reciting lines), talk loudly across wide spaces (as if they were invisible observers, ghosts in someone elseÕs dream). But I think perhaps they should stop coming to New York City to see Ground Zero. That kind of behaviorÑtourist behaviorÑis not appropriate there. Where does this visit to Ground Zero derive its pleasure? In the thrill of knowing so many died? Is there a sense of risk of being close to such a place of grief and misery and passed danger?
As a New Yorker, I take an additional perspective on the idea of tourists visiting the city since September 11. In the first place, people should act like New Yorkers, and acknowledge that someone elseÕs misfortune is their good fortune. Empty hotels, cheap airfares, un-crowded restaurants await. Deals are to be had. Come, partake, and visit a New York City few see. In the second place, any tourist that comes to New York City has an obligation to him or herself to resist the pathetic pleasure of the typical, thoughtless, outings, of which I would call a visit to Ground Zero one. There is nothing to be had there, just as there is no pleasure in the Hard Rock Cafe, if there ever was. Why are you, Oh Tourist, still visiting it, when there is so much else to see? Do they not have bookstores in your hometown, in which you can buy guidebooks that tell you of ten thousand other, better things to do? Are you also standing around forlorn outside the former location of the Fashion Cafe, bemoaning its closure? What, pray tell, is the purpose of walking down Fifth Avenue at 9 p.m. when the stores are closed, in the Thirties, where there is little for you to do or see? What, too, is the pleasure of the square in front of the Plaza? You go there, but you do not see a movie, or have a tea, or traipse very far at all into the park. No, Oh Tourist, there are better things to do: they do not involve creeping along behind your baser instincts, nor do they involve fulfilling someone elseÕs desires for you. Leave your checklist of New York City landmarks home this time, and do not try to bask in the attention we have been receiving. It is not for you.
Of course, while the tourists come, thereÕs a certain type of person who has decided the city is not longer liveable, that itÕs time to leave.
Two days ago on the ground at the university I found a photocopy of PattonÕs speech to the Third Army from July 5, 1944. ItÕs a double-sided photocopy of a ragged, folded sheet, the words typed on a manual typewriter. It is a shorter, tighter version than the one found here, which is a compilation of the many versions available.
ThereÕs one passage in particular that strikes me: ÒEvery man in the Army plays a vital part. Every job is essential to the whole scheme. What if every driver suddenly decided that he did not like the whine of shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? What if every man said ÔThey wonÕt miss just one man in thousands,Õ what if every man said that?Ó
The lines above remind me of those peopleÑand they do existÑwho believe their votes do not count in elections, who choose to forfeit their public voice, in which they complain to those in charge. And they remind me of those who are leaving New York City, or considering it.
I say stay. Stay here. You are needed. You count. Your body is an important space-taker. Your absence will be noticed. Can you withstand the still-regular bomb threats just a little longer? Can you restore your native cynicism? ÒWhatÕs the "
