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Open Letter from Donna Marsh O'Connor
This September 11 will be the sixth anniversary of the day I had my last chance to talk to my daughter, Vanessa Lang Langer. I was barely out of bed and conscious during the dwindling moments that would come to be the remaining time her blood coursed through her veins, her heart beat, she had her hands on her steering wheel as she parked her car in the garage on Washington Street, sat at her desk, thought about her brothers, her husband, her coming child. I did not know it would be the last opportunity, and in this post-traumatic world that I now occupy I know there are millions of people out there who know how intensified my grief gets with each passing year and with each new crime perpetrated by the Bush administration and the many in our government who enable them. I know, and there is some comfort in knowing, that many of you are just as outraged, just as traumatized by the failure to bring to light that what was done to my daughter in body, and to our country and, indeed, the world, in spirit and action was (in whole or in part) facilitated by factions in our own government. The most important thing then is be certain that as we ask for an investigation or for impeachment we are conscious that we are asking for what may constitute our only hope to get out of this alive.
We must be strategic. Not sentimental. Not stupid. Not so angry that we lose sight of this first truth - even 9/11 occurred in the "post 9/11 world". On that day when so many are thinking about their last opportune moments to connect to those they love, we need to give them the space (intellectual and emotional) to see with their own eyes how this land has fared, how our government has failed us as it grew its own power. Because the most important thing is not respect for the dead and for the grieving who on this day will have those events unfold for them moment by moment - the most important thing is to stop it from happening again. And continuing. So on that day and only on that day in the places where the mourners gather, I am asking all of you to pause.
Donna Marsh O'Connor
Mother of Vanessa Lang Langer, WTC Tower II, 93rd floor