As I anticipate that most people will find this title inflammatory, I will include a preface: 9/11 is also my 9/11. 9/11 is everyone’s 9/11.
There is no denying the tragedy or undermining the impact of such a significant event, and that is not at all my intent.
There are several reasons why I would put these events in the same category, and I don’t expect everyone to feel the same, but at the basis of 9/11, the impact on people not closely or directly affected is something of a time marker. On each anniversary I recall being asked in my classroom, “do you remember where you were when you heard about the attack?” I imagine in the years following the attack, this was a sensitive moment. Each student would have a story of the time and often a six-degrees-of-separation chain that connected them to an individual there. For me, on September 11, 2001 I had just arrived in Oceanside, California and was soon to be enrolled in kindergarten. I don’t know what I was doing and I definitely don’t remember any moments of tension. My first memory of 9/11 is actually several years after, hearing a memorial broadcast on the car radio while waiting for my mother in the parking lot of a grocery store. Being 19 now, there is no division between pre-9/11 and post-9/11 America; it is all post-9/11 for me. The heightened airport security, the visceral tension and looped memorial videos on September 11th each year, the unfortunate and unwarranted negative attitudes toward Muslim-Americans: these things have always been America for me.
9/11 is also the moment in time where many people lost trust in their own safety, in other people, and for a growing segment of the population, in the government. Many people are quick to dismiss conspiracy theorists, which is understandable, and the theory itself has become a common joke on the internet (“jet fuel can’t melt steel beams”). However, for a large portion of people, 9/11 was fundamentally a shattering of illusions; a symbol that things are not always fair, that life is not required to meet expectations, that we are not always safe.
Something I remember exactly is where I was when George Zimmerman was ruled “not guilty” for the death of Trayvon Martin. Sitting on the couch in the upstairs of my Texas home, I had complete, albeit unspoken, faith in a guilty ruling. At the time, I don’t think even I knew how passionately I felt. I remember the shock and disbelief. I remember getting in an argument over the ruling through text with a friend and classmate and being so heartbroken that I was even having the argument that I lost the strength to continue it. The wounds were too fresh and too raw. I turned to social media for comfort, and though there was some to be found, I felt like I was being punched in the stomach again to find that many people shared my classmate’s views. At 17 years old, the same age as Trayvon when he was killed, and only a year younger than he would have been at the moment of the verdict, my world divided.
For me there is a pre-Trayvon world, where I understood that people differed but believed that when it really mattered they could be sensitive, unbiased, and understanding. I believed that our government and our judicial system was the be-all and end-all, the pinnacle of justice. I still believed that the people I associated with were more likely to share my own point of view.
Post-Trayvon Martin, the world was no longer such a safe place to me. I no longer put my trust in the judicial system. I no longer naively trusted the people around me to be fair and unbiased. Many of my friends, my classmates, their parents and relatives, laid their opinions bare on social media, with little tact or courtesy, and I felt personally attacked. In Trayvon Martin’s death I saw myself, and even more vividly, I saw my brother, who was just 20 at the time. The post-Trayvon world is a place of fear and insecurity.
I know why I should remember 9/11 and I know why I do remember 9/11; but its waves of impact are fading with each generation. With each passing year we become more removed from the trauma and can see only its effect. I believe, however, every individual will have their own event that will strike with the suddenness of lightning, illuminating and capturing a moment of time and replacing illusion with raw truth. This does not make the events of the past any less tragic. It is an unfortunate part of being alive, but a necessary one, that teaches us how to experience and respect the tragedies of others. Though I wish Trayvon’s death and subsequent lack of justice had not had to happen, my disillusionment has served me well today. In a time where deaths continue to occur suspiciously in front of an even broader audience, I am grateful for my own consciousness.
The trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin was my event.
Trayvon Martin’s death will forever be my 9/11.