Democracy Now! • March 11, 2002
Howard Zinn’s speech at the University of Vermont at Burlington given on March 10 (begins at 12:20).
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: It is 27 degrees today outside in New York, a chilling reminder of the events of the day six months ago. Today is the six-month anniversary of the September 11th. On that day, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and sent them hurtling into some of the most vaunted symbols of American might and power: the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. More than three thousand people died in the attacks. Since then, thousands more have lost their lives in the US bombing ofAfghanistan. Few people in this country know exactly how many Afghans have died or who they are.
Just as we go to broadcast, the country is holding the second of two minutes of silence marking each time the planes hit the towers. Later this evening, New York will hold a “Tribute in Light,” ceremony, where the opera singer Jessye Norman will sing “America the Beautiful.” Twelve year-old Valerie Webb, whose father, a Port Authority police officer, died on Sept. 11, will turn on the first switch to light the 88 bulbs installed at two locations near ground zero. The lights will fully illuminate after 20 seconds, creating two tall beams of light.
In memory of the six-month anniversary of 9/11, news outlets around the country have put together retrospectives of the day and the weeks that followed. To watch them is to be alternately moved by the stories of loss and to be sent hurtling through the looking glass, into a world in which there is no nation more victimized than the United States, no president more heroic than George W. Bush, and no cause more just than the bombing of Afghanistan.
Well today on Democracy Now!, we are not going to take you through that looking glass. Instead, we are going to give you a series of reflections, glimpses of reality since September 11th.
In the months that followed the attacks, Democracy Now! worked overtime to broadcast a daily, two-hour “War & Peace Report.” The report was Democracy Now’s answer to the warp and whitewash of mainstream reporting. Today, in memory of 9/11 and all that has happened since, we bring you highlights of the War & Peace Report. We begin with DemocracyNow’s broadcast from the firehouse in the moments and hours after the towers were hit.
Democracy Now! • March 11, 2002
