#Seattle unherd how to
Everyone was just reeling, trying to figure out how to regain some of the momentum that had been kneecapped by 9/11. There was at least one anti-war demonstration where organizers urged everyone to wear all white and march in total silence. Some on the Left felt it was too soon to protest in the weeks after 9/11. Activists probably spent too much time arguing over to what degree chickens were coming home to roost and not enough figuring out what to do next. One popular leftist writer claimed the victims were “little Eichmanns,” ignoring the fact that the majority of people who keep capitalism going are not the ones running it. A New Yorker writer claimed the attacks “reinstated a conceptual category of New York life that has, in recent years, become almost entirely meaningless: the uptown-downtown divide.” “Inside job” theories (often anti-Semitic, always unsubstantiated) spread faster than Covid at spring break.
Liberals responded the way they usually do, with wishy-washy navel gazing. More than one elite intellectual used 9/11 as an excuse to finally pivot rightward. So many bad takes were proffered in the media that if you stacked them all on top of each other you could dwarf the actual Twin Towers. The Left turned its energies toward figuring out how to respond to the near-inevitable carnage before it happened.
response was going to be a war on Afghanistan and that Bush/Cheney would use the tragedy to get their Iraq War. The most-direct attack ever carried out against the most blatant symbol of capital’s power set off a chain of events that nearly crushed the anti-capitalist upsurge. Nine-Eleven took most of the momentum out of the movement. This was unnerving to the elites who run society and exhilarating for those of us who were active in these efforts. Plans were in the works to shut down Wall Street for real later that fall as a part of a global day of action targeting the world’s major stock exchanges. Momentum had been building for major actions against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in late September.
#Seattle unherd series
The FT’s story carried a headline announcing “Capitalism Under Siege.” The ruling class was still shook after 30,000 protesters had encircled a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in November 1999 and shut it down, catalyzing a series of mass protests wherever the heads of major global institutions tried to meet. Both The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times carried major stories on the “anti-globalization” movement (though no one in the movement used that sobriquet, we generally considered ourselves broadly anti-capitalist). No one talks about the headlines on the morning of the attack. There are a few famous pictures of NYC newsstands the day after 9/11, every publication’s cover with the image of the burning towers.
Manhattan’s stark, indifferent skyline always seemed completely impenetrable. Down in the sound canyons created by all the imposing towers, the chanted slogans tended to evaporate up into the stratosphere unheard. They were often tepid affairs with more than a few sectarian front groups involved. I had joined in “shut down Wall Street” marches that never shut down much of anything. I knew the area around the towers well-enough I worked at a nonprofit down on Broadway and Leonard at the time. The smell of the “Pile,” the media elevation of Rudy Giuliani to near-sainthood - things like that I’d gladly erase from my memory bank in an instant. And much as there are valid reasons to remember 9/11, I’d be content forgetting a lot of what has stuck with me. The 9/11 Memorial would probably like the public to forget its own controversial history, a story of top-heavy executive salaries, pissing off families of 9/11 survivors and a very limited, often Islamophobic reading of history. Of course, the 9/11 Memorial, with all its never forgetting, has a very selective memory. The smell of the “Pile,” the media elevation of Rudy Giuliani to near-sainthood and the sudden disappearance of the global justice movement are memories I would like to forget but can’t.Īs part of its official 20 th anniversary remembrance, the 9/11 Memorial has launched a “Never Forget Fund,” which promises a “new way to never forget.” As if anyone who was in New York on that day could forget.
0 kommentar(er)
