It’s Been Ten Years…

Next Sunday marks the ten year anniversary of 9/11. Unbelievable that it’s been ten years already and unbelievable that there is a whole generation of South Asian American youth that don’t remember what life was like before this day. It’s irrefutable that the events on that tragic day have strongly shaped the narrative of being a South Asian American.

People from across the country are getting together to remember, reflect, and dialogue in their own ways this week. Design Action Collective’s Sabiha Basri is designing a series of political poster to commemorate the anniversary (image above); Wajahat Ali and the Center for American Progress released a report last week called Fear Inc. collecting data on the root sources of islamophobia; The Sikh Coalition created on online video narrative platform to crowdsource stories at Unheard Voices of 9/11; The Asian American Literary Review has released a narrative publication with contributions from Sonny Singh, DJ Rekha, Vijay Prashad, Purvi Shah, mutineer Amitva Kumar and many, many more; McSweeney’s published an oral history book from the Voices of Witness series called Patriot Act: Narratives of Post 9/11 Injustices; and SAALT has the An America for All of Us campaign, an effort to unite policy makers, politicians, and community leaders under one pledge for equity for all.

View List of 9/11 Ten Year Anniversary Events Compiled by South Asian Americans Leading Together, SAALT in a larger map

Additionally, SAALT has also put together an amazing national resource list of upcoming 9/11 events that will be going on this week. This map is also being crowdsourced so that you can add your own local events as well. Be sure to check it out to see what events are going on in your neighborhood.

I’ve listed just a few of hundreds of things going on this week. We’d like to hear from you – if you have an event, project, collaboration, or story remembering 9/11 that you think would interest the mutinous crowd this week – please list it in the comments below.

5 thoughts on “It’s Been Ten Years…”

Ten years on how have the bloggers changed as visible Americans? Let’s look at the selection of posts on the home page. Have these people developed since they were tweens? Every week is spectacle to self absorbed posts by wanna be pop chix, indignant posts bawling about not being recognized as American but labelled on grounds of brown skin color (this black person wanted to learn more about my Indian heritage, this white person thought I was hispanic, no one asked me what tribe etc etc), posts highlighting the problems of being a picked on religious minority, or posts highlighting entertainers from those and other minorities. Taz, I’m not a South Asian American but here’s my narrative or two cents (cos cents are still part of the currency of my country). I was in Canada when 911 happened. I live in the suburbs and my parents were downtown at some doctor’s office, I think maybe a dentist’s. I think it was my sis from the States who called us at home to let us know. My uncle also from the States was visiting so she wanted him to find out first even before his kids could get through to him. She didn’t want him to panic and was looking out for him. When my parents got home, I went to our neighbourhood park e.g. part of the benefits provided by our taxes 🙂 with my dad and uncle. The brothers wanted to clear their heads, but more than anything the Sardars wanted to show the world that our community was not responsible so don’t pick on us please. We sat at a wooden table and an elderly white man sat near us to hear their conversation since they were discussing the day’s events. My father made a point of saying that these were disgusting acts and that they should never have happened. And of course, his condolences to the families of the deceased. Like he always did my uncle agreed as do I. My point is that it wasn’t just Americans who got screwed. I know yours is a blog about the South Asian American identity but some of us move about to widen our psychological borders.

Unbelievable that it’s been ten years already and unbelievable that there is a whole generation of South Asian American youth that don’t remember what life was like before this day. It’s irrefutable that the events on that tragic day have strongly shaped the narrative of being a South Asian American.

Firstly, unless your definition of ‘generation’ is different than the norm, 10 years does not come close to it. My son, 14, remembers it so any teenager would. Besides, what’s your point? What’s ‘unbelievable’ about the passage of time? Better to think that we’ve had 10 years of mostly terrorist-free times, and that 9/11 was an aberrant blip in the history of terrorism. The undue emphasis on ‘remembering’ does us all a disservice.

Profiling probably saved lives. Two wrongs do not make a right, unless your family member gets killed due to lack of profiling. just saying.

nobody in afghanistan had anything to do with 911 – this attack was the work of big satan/little satan so as to keep their permanent war economy functioning and to strengthen their neocolonial policies – (stealing resources of the middle East/Greater India region) – kosher is tortured animals – they enjoy torturing human beings also – one day – o din avai – when these demons in quasi-human form are no more..

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topaz on September 5, 2011 at 4:13 am said:

Ten years on how have the bloggers changed as visible Americans? Let’s look at the selection of posts on the home page. Have these people developed since they were tweens? Every week is spectacle to self absorbed posts by wanna be pop chix, indignant posts bawling about not being recognized as American but labelled on grounds of brown skin color (this black person wanted to learn more about my Indian heritage, this white person thought I was hispanic, no one asked me what tribe etc etc), posts highlighting the problems of being a picked on religious minority, or posts highlighting entertainers from those and other minorities. Taz, I’m not a South Asian American but here’s my narrative or two cents (cos cents are still part of the currency of my country). I was in Canada when 911 happened. I live in the suburbs and my parents were downtown at some doctor’s office, I think maybe a dentist’s. I think it was my sis from the States who called us at home to let us know. My uncle also from the States was visiting so she wanted him to find out first even before his kids could get through to him. She didn’t want him to panic and was looking out for him. When my parents got home, I went to our neighbourhood park e.g. part of the benefits provided by our taxes 🙂 with my dad and uncle. The brothers wanted to clear their heads, but more than anything the Sardars wanted to show the world that our community was not responsible so don’t pick on us please. We sat at a wooden table and an elderly white man sat near us to hear their conversation since they were discussing the day’s events. My father made a point of saying that these were disgusting acts and that they should never have happened. And of course, his condolences to the families of the deceased. Like he always did my uncle agreed as do I. My point is that it wasn’t just Americans who got screwed. I know yours is a blog about the South Asian American identity but some of us move about to widen our psychological borders.
chandru on September 6, 2011 at 4:32 pm said:

Unbelievable that it’s been ten years already and unbelievable that there is a whole generation of South Asian American youth that don’t remember what life was like before this day. It’s irrefutable that the events on that tragic day have strongly shaped the narrative of being a South Asian American.

Firstly, unless your definition of ‘generation’ is different than the norm, 10 years does not come close to it. My son, 14, remembers it so any teenager would. Besides, what’s your point? What’s ‘unbelievable’ about the passage of time? Better to think that we’ve had 10 years of mostly terrorist-free times, and that 9/11 was an aberrant blip in the history of terrorism. The undue emphasis on ‘remembering’ does us all a disservice.
IwasLiberalOnce on September 6, 2011 at 6:42 pm said:

Profiling probably saved lives. Two wrongs do not make a right, unless your family member gets killed due to lack of profiling. just saying.
nkr on September 6, 2011 at 7:16 pm said:

nobody in afghanistan had anything to do with 911 – this attack was the work of big satan/little satan so as to keep their permanent war economy functioning and to strengthen their neocolonial policies – (stealing resources of the middle East/Greater India region) – kosher is tortured animals – they enjoy torturing human beings also – one day – o din avai – when these demons in quasi-human form are no more..
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