America Together: New Jersey Voices

America Together New Jersey Voices, made possible by a grant from the Gerald D.R. Dodge Foundation. We will find resources within us, we never knew we had. I think we will show the world that we will move on, any race, any culture, any kind of person, we get all worked together. It doesn't give me the same feeling to look across the river, isn't it used to? Memorials remind people that there's a price for freedom and that it's very telling, very emotional. It is to be aware, to remember, not the weakness. It is to be stunning people that spot off a rural region. Us and your family prayer want that we stand united and become a human strong nation.

We are a strong society, we're going to be a strong society if we really have people who care for each other. I believe that hope is one step out in front of us. We can't put it into words, it's too surreal, it just looks like it's a word zone, everything's just a level, everything's covered in dust. It almost looks like a nuclear fallout. I'm very impressed, I'm on a job 28 years and I've never seen people pull together like this. Every race, creed, color, and religion, but I know what to expect when I get over it, but I know it's going to be more than I've ever seen. It's a big tragedy, what happened? I want to help someone live. I couldn't sit at home helpless. I have family and friends that were in the building, but I mean thank God they're all home and okay, but I know people who still don't know where, you know, others are. These men that did their jobs, that were risking their lives to reach out to the five fighters and police officers that were trapped, they should be commended because they are a proud men. They're ready to serve at any time and this is what we do for a living.

2001 was not just another year and September 11th is the date that divides the year. Each of us remembers where we were, what we were doing, how we felt. This defining moment, beyond all others, despite our tremendous loss, will bring out the very best in us. Then although it may seem hard to believe today, the truth is we will heal and go on. We had a situation in my aunt, she was supposed to be in the building and she works in New York and the first thing when I first heard about it, the first thing running through my head was, is she in the building? It was very difficult being a teacher at that time and it's not anything that I ever spoke with my students because as a teacher you're supposed to have answers to all of their questions and if you don't you need to know where to find them.

I had the same questions that they did and I was probably as scared as they were. The people in New Jersey just pulled together and stuck together and we helped our brothers and sisters across the river and we lost a lot of our own people. Nobody, none of us ever thought when we came out that the towers will fall. We all thought yes it's going to be fire, there's going to be damage, they're going to put it off. But it was a big, big display of seeing the tower going down. Nobody thought that it will happen. It's not easy to look over towards the financial area anymore. So it's affected me in the sense that it doesn't give me the same feeling to look across the river as it used to because there are so many people who've died. That week we were getting hundreds of requests and 70 requests in one day, people were coming in, people were calling, all of the staff came to help and our first thinking was we didn't know how to help so many people.

The real tragedy here is how many treasures of human life like my dad were lost that day and how hard it will be for us, the survivors, to fill the void they leave behind. So tonight I would like to encourage children to hug and kiss their parents and parents to treasure every moment with their kids because as I have learned, those moments can be fleeting. Most people and many of them not directly affected by this in terms of having loved ones or personally being employed in the area but they just felt this had implications for the people of the region, people of the country, not just on that day but going into the future. So they wanted often to simply talk, not really knowing what they would see but simply wanting to express themselves, often to express their fears, to ask rhetorical questions, what does this mean?

After going down to start teaching my class a few minutes later some of the university came in and said, all class have been canceled, there's been an attack on the World Trade Center in the Pentagon and we ended our class but we came back since this obviously was very close to the theme of the class and globalization. Of course the events of September 11th were a critical component of the curriculum for the rest of the semester. I found out about the attack during a class and then tried calling my dad and my older brother who lived a couple hundred of yards away from Gonzero and I was unable to reach them for a number of hours and finally I tried, I had my cell phone with me which is sort of strange because I never carry it with me and I just remember frantically dialing over and over and over again. We didn't really know what was happening, we just thought parents would come early to pick their kids up and then finally when our parents came to pick us up they told us and it was like a shot.

We never thought anything like this would really ever happen. My dad told me that the World Trade Center had been bombed and when that happened I was scared because that's like the buildings were really special. I put on the TV and there was right in my face the first tower burning and I flew upstairs my mother was already on the phone trying to find my father, sterical crying everybody calling. That's all I could remember, the people crying as well because they thought that parents could have died, I thought that my mother could have died. It was really a real trying time for me and I don't know, I'll never get over that day, I'll never forget that day because of the impact that it had on the life of me and my friends. September 11th I remember exactly where I was when the events happened, I mean it's one of those days where you definitely won't lose your memory or won't forget where you were.

Just like, you know, some of my friends grandparents remember where they were during Karl Harbor, I remember exactly where I was. You were in charge, some people, if they were really close to the bridge, you could have seen the skyline and now you look out there and nothing there, it's just a big hole. Nobody had ever called up this kind of attack before and essentially it took something that was a civilian aircraft, something that plays a very useful purpose and turned it into a weapon of mass destruction. And obviously thousands of people died that day. So I do think that the external reality is indeed worse and it is more frightening and therefore the challenge to us is greater. I believe that if Ben Laden really thought he was better than the USA and he bombed them, why did he run? Why didn't he stay out and learn the events? My family was hit hard, I lost my uncle and it was hard for me.

I'm sure it was. I felt obviously really alarmed, scared, confused, all the things that seemed really normal reactions. Confused was a really big emotion that day I think a lot of people had trouble realizing the magnitude of what happened. There are risks everywhere in our lives but the risk shouldn't paralyze us and shouldn't stop us from doing what we feel we want to do to continue to maintain joy and peace in our lives, pleasure with family and friends and taking advantage of the community. In that single moment I knew all the words and I spoke them aloud so everyone heard. There are things we have lost but just some and not all, while buildings have fallen, our country stands tall. There was a lot of work to be done, people to be found, people to be buried, streets to be clean, streets to be fixed, if only someone had seen us coming. Some people will be happy, some people will be forever sad, not everyone will come home, their hopes slowly fades away, if only someone had seen us coming.

The thunder rolls and sounds like the gods are bowling. The thunder clouds leave and I am left looking at the twinkling sky. I am left to wait till the next beautiful day. On September 11th and the days following the tragedy, New Jerseyans responded with heroism, faced feelings of loss, pain, confusion, anger, and they came together. Finding a sense of self and of community. I feel bad that people had Afghanistan like done letter a lot and we raised money, we collected money for the people in Afghanistan because there were wars and some people didn't really have enough stuff so we raised money and sent it there. So they could have more stuff.

Unicep decided that it would send all its money this past year to Afghanistan. So we talked a bit about Afghanistan in the class as we were talking about all the good things that Unicep does. We put in the dollars and some kind of a spot, a circle spot. Well, I made up this name and the name was Dollarman. 671. I just think that we love each other a little better now and I think we don't take each other for granted as much. I think right after 9-11 and in the subsequent months people were reaching out and they were working together and it definitely was a spirit of patriotism. After 9-11 happened, everybody was in great distress so the day after our school had a group and came up with some ideas to start a project. The pen will be put into bags as like these with inspiration poems on it and with cards like these or like this which we made ourselves to instill screening.

And we were giving it to families who have lost a life or a friend or a family member. I feel that I'm doing something for somebody else which I wasn't able to do before. This just helps me connect me to the event and knowing that one of the families are going to derive some benefit or pleasure or inspiration from this just makes me feel good. After the 9-11 I used to be scared because I get to wear a scarf. So now because I do this project it makes me feel more secure that I'm helping out and I can tell someone that I'm helping out. And they had an enormous outpouring when I saw from the photographs of people in the community who came out and laid out incredible memorials, photographs, candles, flags. And so that became a focal point for each community.

And with the background of New York City it became even more important, more critical in a way. When I got there it was a simple fence overlooking a beach with the water and there was flowers and flags. And all the flowers were red, white and blue, which since it's black and white you really can't see in the photographs. But it almost made me feel like a sense of loneliness and sympathy that these people are going through just the single flowers on the fence. Even though it wasn't overstated and there wasn't a lot going on there you could still feel the emotions and the pain that the people were going through. The memorials are interesting things because in the public mind they tend to acknowledge only a specific event in history. But I'm learning even myself, you know, I've done other memorials that memorial achieves many different purposes. It also helps people to move from the cycle of grief into a very positive cycle of using the emotions and grief and despair to channel it into something positive.

I want people to obviously to remember the lives that were lost. And I think that inevitably that will be the first thing that people think about. But I also want them to see not only in the artwork itself, but in the actual physical feet, the physical accomplishment, a sense of the resolve moving forward. And, you know, the hope that we all need to have this time. Ladies and gentlemen, 9-1-1 New Jersey response and reflection for the families, citizens of our state. It's a living memorial in a way. It's very personal. It's very immediate. It's very accessible.

I work for architecture firms and I know the importance of memorials, but this seems more real in a lot of ways than a structure would. And it was immediate. Yeah, it was right after the event. So I think you see the gut emotions and the reactions of the families because we still were in a state of limbo. In many cases, we still are. It's powerful things when your kids or your mother or your father or wife writes what they want to communicate to someone that's lost. It's very telling and very emotional. I don't know how anybody can be unimpacted by, not impacted by a kind of emotion they see here. I did my project four days after September 11th. The next week we were just in school and that's when I started my project. It was all in the news and I wanted to do something that people wanted to say and it seemed like everybody had something to say about it.

It was easy, but yet it was hard to do because I didn't know what boundaries I could cross to do this project. We were all on standby, we were all 30 of us were down at the firehouse, you know, just waiting to be called and waiting to help. And I thought that doing this project would help me kind of cope and see what other people thought about the whole incident and express their feelings. And that definitely made me cope with the situation. So, from Montgomery High School, did you ask the question, how have your views of patriotism changed since the events of September 11th? And different people responded with different ideas, most have said patriotism has increased since then. Before you didn't see the flags everywhere, the people wearing red, white and blue, now everyone wears it. Everyone has a flag. Everyone has put their differences aside after this tragedy because they realize that they have a common goal and they are very patriotic.

Well, for one thing, the solidarity of the American people and how everybody kind of got into it and supported each other, I think was a wonderful thing for them to be aware of. There was so much talking going on after it and I felt like I was just talking and talking and talking and I was hearing so much what was going on, but there's only so much words can get through and at some point people just stop listening. So, with art, you're showing somebody a picture, you're showing somebody what you feel, but through a visual form. And I felt like that was just a really great way for me to get across my opinions and my feelings and at the same time to sort of do it in like a passive way where I let people decide their own thoughts about it. Every student made a book on patriotism and looking at all the different sides of it and I think it really helped to sort of document what was happening and the effects that September 11th had on people in this country and abroad and I think that really did help me personally deal with that.

The Garden of Remembrance Memorial to September 11th is a metaphor for a 21st century convovencia. It's based on the period from 13th to 15th century medieval Spain when Christians and Muslims and Jews live together in creative harmony, fostering learning and the arts and the sciences and we'd like it to be a metaphor of a better world in our future. As a private citizen, it's really important, this type of work, this type of discussion is really important and I'm so glad that the museum is pioneering this mission. To think quietly as in in this beautiful space, to talk with one another, I believe it really boils down to an invitation to think about what matters.

What do we value? What do we believe? And I can't help but think that over the next five or six months, school children, their parents, community members, people of all sizes and shades are going to walk through this and they're going to pause and think about what it means. I think it helps in the healing process in having somewhere to go especially for the children because they're in life, finding them. Sure, I can speak for a lot of other mothers that are in this situation. It's very hard to explain to a child who will know that his father never saw him or his mother or his grandfather and uncle, whatever it may be. And or a child who's only, you know, two years older, older, somewhere to go and explain that out of all the badness, there is some good and this is what the results there are of and you can come here and hope it'll give them some solitude. A seventh grade boy and his eighth grade brother lost their father in the tragedy and two eighth grade boys lost their uncles and that has affected us on a very real level, a very personal level. Then we chose to become, to figure out a way to ease the pain for us and for everybody that was affected.

Our school was trying to find a way to help America even more so they were open to suggestions. I started to think all of a sudden my mind went to veterans day when we put up letters on the side of school to thank veterans. Well, now we had more reasons to thank all the policemen, the firefighters who had been working around the clock to rescue any survivors and to clean up the ruins. So I came up with the idea that we could put up letters on the side of school and everyone in the school could sign it. It's made by students in seventh and eighth grade and they they worked out how to express themselves and that was important for all of us because we all looked after after September 11th, we all wanted to know what could we do. Being able to actually physically have something to be able to work on and being able knowing that you're going to give that to someone. It's just been calming and soothing and you feel like you're able to be a part of the healing process.

It's worked as an outlet I guess to get my feelings out but I feel about the victims. I had only been here for a week and being far away from my family and not really knowing anyone here yet, I was scared. I think I felt that I had to do something and I brought it down instead of talking to people. When the angels are gathering, let them sing. Let it be heard and touch our hearts. It is a song we will remember not the crying. It is the bravery we will remember not the weakness. It is the living souls we will remember not how they die down. September 11th raised our awareness. Awareness of what matters. Awareness of who we are and where we are as a nation, as a community and as individuals.

The part of what was happening for all of us is other traumas or triggers. We're reminded of other traumas and everyone's had them. So we start to confuse the past traumas with now and again start to feel more and more out of control and it's really important to remember that memories fade. They will interfere less and less with your life. I think we are still trying to figure it out. I think we'll be reminded of it when the leaves start to turn, when the weather changes, those subtle cues that that time is here again. I think it's important to acknowledge those feelings. It's important to have some sort of a ceremony, be that public or a personal, some sort of acknowledgement and then absolutely move on.

After I had time to process what had happened, I began to get really worried about among other things, about a backlash against Muslim Americans in the country and just general misunderstanding about cultures and prejudice. I too am a Muslim and they are not really Muslim. They do not represent our religion. The idea that the Middle East is a violent society I think is very much a stereotype that we have. There is political violence directed for political ends against specific individuals but on the whole it's a very nonviolent culture. I try to convince people out there that we're not here as a people because we're trying to exterminate their cultures. We're not trying to repress them. We're not trying to get rid of their traditions.

They're a stereotype of something called the United States, America and the West. That is something very, very different. People are having misconceptions about who the Sikhs are, who don't know it really. So that's increasing our pain. So please don't mistake us. We want to help out the American public. But for us to come out freely, we need to be assured that nobody will be doing any harm to us. We are peace-loving people that's part of our religion. We don't want anybody to think that we are violent people or we will attack somebody. Many people from the Middle East have been experiencing, you know, prejudice from, you know, close-minded people who don't understand what's happening. But at the school, there's been none of that. And I really think everyone has reached out and come together. And there's no sense of, you know, well, you're from Afghanistan, you're responsible for this. More so it's your American, you're part of the school, and you're suffering just as much as everyone else.

Well, if we could just recall how we pledged to treat each other in the fleeting moments of the evening of September 11th and the morning of September 12th, a boy or boy, this would be some place being respectful of one another, being willing to help. And by the way, I have the impression that some of this has been lasting. Some community initiatives, volunteerism is up, I suspect, in some places. Church attendance, by the way, went up for a moment. But I have heard, unfortunately, that we're up to our old selves again. You would have thought that the patriotism, which came out of this external assault, would have cured us of the internal assaults that go on all the time on the American experiment. So I think kinder, more thoughtful, more appreciative of the diversity of our population racially, culturally, and otherwise.

For example, I heard people within hours talking about how dare they kill Americans. And every day in the news, we were being told that the victims of this assault were not only Americans. But they were for people from every part of the world, including Muslims. That was a gift to us to know what time it is in our world. We are not isolated. I think that a culture of materialism, of selfishness, had really started to emerge in this country. Some of that grows out of our economic system where it's sort of like, I'm going to just take care of my own economic needs. And so it is an automatically fostered that you look after each other. You know what I'm saying? I think there is some truth to that. And I think we had drifted in that direction. And I hope this can sort of help us. We are all Americans. And yet we come from so many different places. Some of us come from Puerto Rico, some of us come from all over South America, some of us come from Europe, some of us come from Asia.

But at the end of the day, we're all Americans. Our faiths bring us back to the concept of one humanity. And the fact that one humanity must turn to God for its support and its guidance. Not only in time to prosperity, but also especially in times of adversity. Seventh grade boy and his eighth grade brother lost their father in the tragedy and two eighth grade boys lost their uncles. And that has affected us on a very real level, a very personal level. And then we chose to become, to figure out a way to ease the pain for us and for everybody that was affected. We're only going to be able to respond to that event, to the extent that we are a strong society. We're only going to be a strong society. We really have people who care for each other.

It also creates an opportunity for us to be more understanding of what people are experiencing in different parts of the world. Living in New York City and other crime rights dropped completely. Even though all the police were in Lower Manhattan, people just dropped what they were doing to normal daily activities and wondered what had just happened. What's going to happen next? Where are we all of this? We're part of a democracy and that means that we're all part of solving this problem together. We are all human beings who are deserving of respect and understanding and not of prejudice, not of stereotypes or anything else. We have differences from each other certainly, but our commonalities are far more important than that. And so we need to be in solidarity as a human community above all.

So we want to be that beacon, not only of democracy, but of peace and justice. And to do that, I think we've got to set a very positive example around the world. I've seen as a nation how we've all come together. I've seen as a town how we've all come together as a community and hopefully we won't go back to the same way we were. We may go back to the normal routines of every day, but we'll always remember what happened and we'll keep that in our conscience and hopefully it'll change us for the better. Although people had religious difference, that didn't mean that they had social differences and cultural differences, that people shared culture, that they had an idea of a collectivity that went beyond religion. And then it might remind people that that's what we have here at our very best, and that to be a real proud American is to embrace the idea of diversity. That's what distinguishes us. We can't let division, we can't let attacks attack the very thing which is best about us, which is the fact that we live together in tolerance.

I was hearing about the discrimination against the Muslims and the Palestinians and many of my friends are Muslims, so I wanted to make sure that they didn't get discriminated against. After September 11th, I think everyone kind of fell into this thing of like fatalism and like, well, what's important? There's nothing important in our lives and it doesn't matter, nothing matters. Just doing stuff, even little insignificant things like putting little clay stars on something that we can all easily do. It just gives some idea that we all have a purpose and that it's not so hopeless as we thought. When we think about September 11th, we feel there is a before and after of then and now.

But what does it mean? Have we changed? What are the next steps toward a better future? And what are the critical questions to be answered? People who don't have some basis of hope in what the future will bring, are left to admire in the trauma of their experience. Is there a better day? Is the question that most people need to be able to answer? Will we ever be like we were before September 11th? Probably not because there's something in our psyche and our emotional being and our people in our persons that our lives have changed. But doesn't mean that our lives have to become surrounded by fear and anxiety, no.

Have we learned the appropriate lessons from September 11th that will allow us to really function as a multicultural society, given the tremendous diversity that we're going to see in the next half century? Does that mean that our great grandchildren will also be imbued with a hatred? We see that in Bosnia and Herzegovina. What we don't want to do is, at this point, bequeath to yet another generation, the hatred. I just want to say that people have to understand and differentiate between the good and the bad. There cannot be every Muslim be bad. There are very good Muslims also. And also people have to learn how to differentiate and be a little more intelligent and pay attention to what they are doing. Not to just act on emotions. I can understand there's a lot of anger when it happens on any nation. You cannot control it, but people has to be more patient and be selective in making the judgment without the fore accusing anybody.

Me, I've always been a person that's giving and that like to acknowledge other races, I like African people, all different types of people. I think that I just continue with my lifestyle of loving diversity, believing in diversity and teaching other people to love diversity also. I definitely don't think we should forget about it, but to go on to get over it, I think you should reach out and talk to other people that maybe haven't talked to before. Much more effort has to be made to provide opportunities in which these kinds of issues can be brought out into the open, in which if immigrants feel that they're not part of this country where they still feel hostile towards the country that they're able to talk about why they feel this way, and they're able to also get responses to them. We're just such a big country and we think of ourselves sort of as the center of the world, and it's all too easy to forget about the suffering that goes on in other parts of the world to people every day, the suffering that they live with, and I think even if we just started becoming more aware of that, we have so much less animosity towards us, other cultures.

In the end, we can all work together, people, any race, any culture, any kind of person, we can all work together. I think Americans are a positive group, and I think we will show the world that we will move on, and we will never forget, but we will take care of ourselves. And I think we're looking to be independent and self-reliant, and make contributions back to society like we did before. With the Mugay of course. In Judaism, we have a concept called Ticono Alam to repair the world, and it's just an important thing to do to give back to the community and try to make the world a better place.

I think it's important for us to stop once in a while and think about what happened, and remember all those lost. I think it's also important to move on, because that's showing America's strength, and that way the terrorists don't win. I think security measures must be taken that are effective to prevent people from repeating this or similar attacks. There's no question about that. I think when we do that, of course, there must be a lot of attention paid to the injury this does to our First Amendment rights as Americans. But in addition to taking these actions, providing appropriate security screening, safe airports, and other kinds of measures, I think we have to look at the broad view. There is a breeding ground for terrorists that is not unrelated to our own countries, international relations.

We have to think about this and think of ways that we can use our considerable power, and that's not just military power, but cultural power. The power of our freedom, our economic influence, to really develop more harmonious and fair relations among nations. There are always, I believe, nonviolent alternatives, and they take patience. But to my mind, by building an international community of conscience, and to say, we're none of us are in this alone, but by banding together, we need to take global action as a global community through instruments like the United Nations. But there's a lot of other ways that we can develop to work together. One of the most important lessons I think is that we can see that out of really awful, horrible, terrible things, God shows through, and shows us how to act, and is unbelievable.

And it shows us that, through very difficult times, our best shines through, and that's certainly true of America. I really think that the only way we can really get over is to learn to trust each other, to learn to accept each other's differences, because that way, if something else like this happens again, we'll all be able to stand together and be strong about it. So the next step, as far as I can see it, would be to have that sense of reassurance in ourselves and in the world, and not to be so suspicious of other people, not to be so frightened of the world out there, that it again diminishes our own sense of who we are. We just have to keep putting our best foot forward and try to explain and accept our diversity, whether it's religion or economic. The fact that we've kind of gone back to life as it was beforehand, so fast, and it was such an awful tragedy, and it was such a graphic tragedy.

I tend to think as an educator that we need more reflection, and we need to talk about it more. And I think a really good way to move would be if we started reaching out again, where we'll run the groups here at the hospital, most hospitals and agencies are doing that, and I think for people again to feel connected will help them. I hope this will take, make us realize that we ought not take life for granted. There were many people who got up Tuesday morning, took the train into New York City, or to the Pentagon, and thinking that it was a routine normal day, and it turned out to be the great tragedy that we have witnessed. And so those of us who are remaining, I think we must truly understand, life is fragile, and life is not to be taken for granted. What can I do to help this world become a better place? And I think if each one of us can find one thing, two things that we can do, to make this world a better place than those lives that were lost in Washington, and in New York, we're not have been in vain.

Otherwise, if we don't change as individuals, then those lives will be lost in vain. Remember that in everyone's life, pain is inevitable, but misery is optional. Choose to live a life with joy, even within the pain. Hang on to precious memories, but don't let them hang on to you. Be brave enough to keep moving forward. Because the world moves so fast, sometimes, even important events are quickly forgotten. They're forgotten much too soon. They go off the front pages, and we move on to the next thing, and we forget. And sometimes we forget how an event like that, certain events can really bring us together. And the good that came out of 9-11 was the bring us together, and I was just saying, we must not forget that.

We must not forget it and allow divisiveness to come back, and to forget that we're not strangers, that we're all connected in ways we don't even understand. And I just wanted to say that because I hope really that this particular event will be a defined moment, not only for New Jersey and New York, but really for the whole country. Time will heal the drama and the emotional destabilization caused by the crash. We can be certain of this by simply looking at the things that the country has overcome over time, even in the latter part of the last century. We are a resilient people, and we have the ability within ourselves to move on, to be able to acknowledge and accept what's happened, but it takes energy, and sometimes it takes time, but we can do it.

Can we have to live each day to the fullest, because you never know what's going to happen. Hug your kids before you go, they go to school. If you have an argument, settle it with somebody, because you never know if they're still going to be there. Stuff like that, it makes you realize that life is so short, and you never know when your life is going to end. Let us never forget. Let our resolve be as strong as our courage. Let our footsteps forage in the very foundation on which a better brighter tomorrow will begin. I think that if people believe the answer is totally within their realm of personal logic and rationality, they will never find healing. I believe that hope is one step out in front of us.

Live vigilantly and courageously, forging forward, healing broken hearts, while shattered spirits rebuild, the world we shape, the world we touch, with our words, with our actions, with our dreams. Step gently for the dreams that rest here will reach beyond the despair and the bitterness. Their sacrifice and their deaths will lead us towards hope, enlightenment, and a cherished happiness. We pray for those who are lost, who are in the building, in the rubble. Everyone who we've lost, everyone who we love, even though people we don't know, even if you didn't have anyone over there, we all love people. Even if people are okay, we want to pray for the families of people who aren't. We want to pray for those people who are on the airplane. We want to pray for those people who stopped the plane that was coming from Newark Airport, from going to its destination, which was probably the White House.

Those four people did whatever they had to do, knew that they weren't getting out of that plane alive, but they fought till the end. We should all be proud of who we are and where we come from. But this tragedy reminds us of one thing that no matter where we came from, we're all here together now. Our people died together, Latinos, African Americans, every type of European imaginable, Christians, Jews, Muslims. We lived together under one flag, we died together under one flag, and I hope we don't forget that. I think now you might realize what it means to be an American and what some people want to take away from us, whereas before you might have taken after granted. Being a patriot and an American means that we live our lives to the fullest based on the values in the Constitution and what the forefathers fought for.

I love this country and I'm proud that I was born here and I would serve and die for the country if I have to. This is still a wonderful tribute being in a country like this. That's why anybody who's here should get on their knees and kiss the ground because it is a remarkable, remarkable country. Actually, even more than economic opportunity, what immigrants value about the United States and what we as a citizenry value most is freedom. The freedom to think as we wish, the freedom to move and to travel and to associate. And incidentally, we often take this for granted. But having visited, closed societies throughout the world, that is the precious thing about America.

I'm lucky to live in a country where I have a lot of freedoms to make decisions and choices, to believe in the faith I choose to believe in, to have the ability to say what I want to say as long as I'm not being destructive towards or against someone else. But these are freedoms that I think we may have taken for granted and with what happened to us, with a perception of it being just because we're Americans, I think it reminded all of us well. It might have happened to us because we were Americans, but gosh, isn't it still great to be Americans? I think to be an American is not so much a set of specific issues so much as it's an environment in which we can express our creativity, in which we can really lead a life in which we can be free in many, many different contexts, in which we can raise important questions that allow for both societal and personal growth. Before you didn't see the flags everywhere, the people wearing red, white and blue, now everyone wears it, everyone has a flag, everyone's put their differences aside after this tragedy because they realize that they have a common goal and they are very patriotic.

It was sort of like a blessing and disguise, I guess you could tell it, like it pulled country together, I think it really did. It's horrible such a thing had to happen before it pulled together like that, but everybody seems to have one thing in mind and everybody seems to be getting along a lot better. Personally to me doesn't mean that you have to hang out a flag every time, you see an opportunity which is good, but I think being patriotic is just being involved, being involved with your country. It's amazing, this event has brought people together in the country and in the world and it's a huge tragedy and it's amazing to see people stand together and unite to try to make sure that something like this doesn't ever happen again. There's no such thing as an American identity that's separate from diversity, you can't have this though American identity, that's one color, that's one religion.

American identity has its heart, a kind of diversity, it was very much like being a spanner to the Middle Ages. Once identity wasn't based on one's religion, it was based on an enormously complex life that one shares with other people. Patriotism is loving your country, as you love your family, as you love your parents, which means also recognizing that it's not perfect but still working with that and trying to make the best out of it. There are more flags I've ever seen in my life, 51 years here on this planet. It's good to see unity, unity is what's needed, united we stand. Patriotism is a funny word. We had discussions about if you hang a flag out, are you more patriotic than someone else or what exactly does that. In fact it was sort of a good stepping stone for discussion and we all have different points of view.

Everybody was affected by September 11th no matter where they are or who they are and it just proves that no matter who you are, what race, nationality, religion that we're all American and that we all feel that we're part of America. America is strong because of its people and today we are strong people with strong spirit and good spirit. We make up of different backgrounds and different countries and different ethnicities but what we are proud that we live in America, what we can call ourselves an American. September 11th was a shock to New Jersey and to the world. Now in its aftermath we face essential questions about how we will live. Will we retreat or reach out to others? Will our guiding emotion be fear or hope?

Perhaps the challenge of our times will be to build on the best of what we have seen in ourselves and in others during this time of crisis to help make the world a more livable place in the years ahead. Like nearby signals and for all the fire and terror still, the tumbley of towers and violence are real. No force is the evil for who the belt holds and could never have darkened the light from such innocent souls.

The light of innocent souls, the light of innocent souls. The light of innocent souls. A copy of America Together New Jersey Voices is available for $12 covering shipping and handling and duplication costs.

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