September 11th …

I remember where I was on September 11th 2001…

I was working as an instructor at a therapeutic wilderness academy in the high dessert in southern Utah. As a lead instructor I was responsible for twelve teenagers and co-instructors. Having just put our group out on Solo’s, a period of isolated camping designed to stimulate reflection, I took my break in the form of an hour run along a 4x4 road through a grove of aspens.

As I rounded a bend a goat herder rushed me. Running down to the track from the grove of trees he yelled, “we have been attacked, we have been attacked, it’s the beginning of World War III”.  Of course at first I thought this guy was crazy. It was obvious that he had been out here for a while, covered in what we called perma-dirt, a thick coat of dirt-tan that covers any exposed skin when you have been out on the trail for weeks or months with only a sponge bath once a week to stay clean… Through his hysteria he started to explain what he had heard on his short wave radio. Still unconvinced that two hijacked airliners had leveled the twin towers and a third had plummeted into the pentagon, he ran up to his camp to retrieve his radio… proving his tale of destruction.

My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest… all I could think about was my brother, sister, close friends and girlfriend that I had left in NY.

I raced back to camp, careful to mask the feeling of doom that was washing over me from the other instructors. I found the radio and called to headquarters “Is it true what I have heard about the East Coast” I exclaimed. I was careful not to scare the 6 other groups that would all be monitoring their radios. “YES” the answer came back… Despair washed over me…

As I flew across the country on one of the first commercial flights back in the air, the plane almost totally empty, I wondered what I would find back in NY.  Those first few days after the attack as my girlfriend and I joined thousands of others in volunteering at the Salvation Army on 14th St. I had no idea what an effect this tragic incident would have on the rest of the world.

After September 11th, 2001 George W. Bush used his power and the momentary sympathy of the world to wage war on Afghanistan and later Iraq. He used his power to inflict death and destruction on the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Through his policy of preemptive war, the world and our place in it has become less safe and secure. Now, thanks to term limits set by our constitution, we have the opportunity to raise our individual and collective voice about how we would like our country and her relationship in the world to be managed in the future.

The days and weeks following the attack on the Twin Towers New York was a changed city… People were given a pause… Car horns silenced… Strangers turned to their neighbors and offered each other help… Even the lines at the corner Deli were orderly and filled with polite costumers and patient shop-owners…

We must elect a leader who will utilize their intelligence and intuition to seize these opportunities to promote peace and equality at home and abroad. We cannot afford to hire another executive that will jump on the opportunity to wage war and inflict pain on our brothers and sisters…

Please! Utilize your intelligence; intuition and strength during these last days of the election to support the candidate that you believe will guide our nation in the direction of peace … A nation that will exhaust each and ever opportunity for non-violent mediation before turning to war and violence…

Without your Voice/Vote history is bound to repeat itself!