Twenty Gandhis Reclaiming 9/11 through satyagraha

सत्याग्रह

As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, many of the nation’s values — tolerance, forgiveness, personal freedom, perhaps even courage itself — remain trapped in the wreckage.

It may take another anniversary, another 9/11 — Sept. 11, 1906, to be precise — simply to remind us of what lies buried beneath the fear and cynicism, the ignorance and politics; and, even more importantly, to wake us up to the urgency of reclaiming those values and healing as a nation.

Led by a president incapable of protecting us but eerily adept at exploiting tragedy, we went off on a howling revenge quest against “the axis of evil” and proceeded to compound the horrors of 9/11 worldwide — turning this day into an excuse for torture and wiretapping and the indiscriminate “shock and awe” bombing of a country that had nothing to do with what had happened.

Around the country, and particularly in New York City, the wakeup call is about to be sounded, as grieving Americans — grieving as much for the future we’re bequeathing our children as for the past — proclaim 9/11 a day of healing and peace, not revenge. The memory of Mahatma Gandhi will help drive the message home.

सत्याग्रह

to my mind it is quite unfair to call for peace and healing until the perpetrators have been apprehended and brought to justice

someone -- almost certainly osama bin laden who was given safe haven by the mullah omar -- funded this attack

just calling for peace and forgiveness to me makes me uneasy, no one would be calling to forgive if the attacker had $30 or even $30,000, his happy ass would be in prison for life if it wasn't on death row, but the rich man with $300 million gets a pass as usual

Liz Graydon, a former middle-school teacher who is now education coordinator for New Yorkers for a Department of Peace, saw mention in a newsletter from Nonviolent Peace Force, which does peace work in Sri Lanka, that this Sept. 11 would be the 100th anniversary of Gandhi’s movement for social justice. Not surprisingly, “The date just jumped out at me,” she told me. It immediately became the focal point of plans to commemorate 9/11, and the stunning aptness of it has lit up the national peace network.

In August 1906, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a young Indian lawyer living in South Africa, was stunned almost to paralysis — “an impenetrable wall was before me,” he later wrote — upon learning about the law the province of Transvaal had just passed, known as The Black Act, requiring Indian nationals to submit to a humiliating registration and fingerprinting process. Its intent was obviously racist, a first step by the white government to marginalize and eventually expel “coloreds” from South Africa.

“I clearly saw that this was a question of life and death,” Gandhi wrote. “...the community must not sit with folded hands. Better die than submit to such a law.”

On 9/11 I will be one of the people reading the biographies of the 9/11 victims from Ground Zero. I wanted to do it last year, but I couldn't get a slot.

http://ecaring.com/accounts/portraits/

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I will actually be reading on 9/9 but I am going to be on standby on 9/11 in case someone doesn't show.