I was a radio producer for Democracy Now! on September 11, 2001. I monitored press coverage all over the country for months and watched, in real time, as the Bush Admin exploited the grief of victims' families to justify invading Afghanistan and killing even more innocent people.
2/7 Two weeks after 9/11 around 20,000 people, many who had lots friends and loved ones in the WTC attacks, marched through Manhattan denouncing the rush to a war against Afghanistan that we knew would destroy that country and cause even more suffering. We knew it then.
3/7 As a producer for the only media outlet in the country covering protests against the coming war, I scoured press coverage for signs of protest. I read two lines on a candlelight vigil held in suburban CT and contacted the organizer, Colleen Stephen, who had lost her husband.
4/7 She estimated 5,000 people filled the streets of her suburban CT neighborhood to participate in a vigil denouncing the rush to war. We connected her w/ other families organizing events and they founded September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows: peacefultomorrows.org/home/
5/7 We started a voice mail box at Democracy Now! where people could leave messages about protests and vigils in their communities, and we'd read some of them over the air. At first a trickle, then dozens, then hundreds of events around the country, totally under the media radar.
6/7 Millions of Americans, in the days after 9/11 saw exactly what the Bush Administration was doing with our grief and rage. We knew that invading Afghanistan would ruin that country, create more terrorists, kill and displace countless innocent people. We protested.
7/7 Many of us saw the terror among our immigrant neighbors vilified, physically attacked, yanked off the streets of NY & NJ without due process and thrown in jail and prison. The Bush Admin exploited the panic after 9/11 to launch a generation of war. Don't rewrite this history.
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