Voices: Confessions of a Dissenter

This isn't a column about September 11, 2001. Whether you'll admit it or not, you're sick of hearing about 9-11 already - you've spent the requisite year in respectful mourning and want to move on. Fine. I don't want to talk about "The Day that Changed America" anyway. I want to talk about September 11, 2002 - the day I realized that America hadn't really changed at all.

Here in my own little world, I seemed to be the only one filled with dread at the thought of getting up and getting through the day last Wednesday. After receiving the second copy of chain e-mail message urging everyone to drive around all day with our lights on, I began to grow paranoid. Someone would notice my dim headlights and harass me for my lack of patriotism.

"Three thousand people died!!!," they would accuse. Don't you care?

I was afraid of the "one size fits all" commemoration services that were being planned for just about every city, town and village crossroads and for every other educational and corporate institution. Such a commemoration was planned here at work and the more I thought about standing in a sea of red, white and blue garments and singing patriotic songs, the more I dreaded participating.

Don't get me wrong - I think it's wonderful that so many people were able to find comfort in such gestures of patriotism and solidarity on the anniversary of one day so horrible that many people (such as Laura Bush) claimed to have thought about it on every day thereafter. But waving flags and singing songs that I didn't even know the lyrics to felt hollow for me and I couldn't bring myself to "fake it" in order to "fit in."

On 9-11-02, I witnessed an America lost. We claimed to be taking a moment to "reflect," yet the majority of American's didn't bother to stop and consider what might be an individually meaningful gesture of commemoration. They behaved according to the etiquette suggested by the powers-that-be and hoped that in doing so, they had played the role of "good, patriotic citizen." And I was afraid that my desire to find my own uniquely meaningful method of reflection would be misunderstood and misconstrued.

United We Stand means that we stand together despite our differences. That's what America is all about - the freedom to disagree, debate and dissent. These are the values that make me proud of my citizenship. But this is the age of George W. Bush. This is the Brave New post 9-11 World in which we have willingly handed over our freedoms in the hopes of receiving security in return. We are in a war against terrorism in order to defend our freedoms. Yet it seemed to me that the oft-cited change that had overtaken America that past year was the elimination of dissension.

I had spent many days since 9-11-01 searching for signs of dissension. Certainly there would be some sort of peace movement protest against the "war against terrorism." Occasionally a news article regarding a global economic forum protest or some similar happening would slip through the net of media censorship and find its way into my in-box. But such signs were few and far between.

On the evening of 9-11-02, I attended a candlelight vigil at the AFA Gallery in Scranton. A circle of people who seemed to have been as uncomfortable as I has been that day, gathered and prayed for peace. A trio of flag T-shirt clad people had been among the group, but left with pained expressions on their faces shortly after a man carrying a "War Is Not the Answer" sign entered.

Each one of us in the circle was allowed to express ourselves or not as we passed the lit taper candle. Specific feelings and frustrations and hopes and dreams and visions and fears and prayers poured forth as the candle passed from hand to hand.

Finally, a full year after the attacks of 9-11 in a small art gallery in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the real American woke up, rubbed the sleep from her sparkling eyes and smiled at me. Dissension wasn't dead, after all. It had merely been hiding patiently in the hearts of isolated followers who had found no leader to bring them together.

-- alicia grega-pikul, 19 September 2002