New York's Hero Rescue Workers Face Kafkaesque Nightmare

by Joe Flood

An hour after Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the men of FDNY Engine Company 240 received orders at a nearby command post to enter the building and help evacuate survivors.

"As we were walking there it began to collapse and we were caught in the debris field," says fireman Thomas Dunn. "You could see absolutely nothing, we thought the building we were next to collapsed and that we were trapped…the only way I knew we were still outside was when I felt a car door next to me."

Leave it to Los Angeles. The media start paying attention when big-name stars flock to the cause. Meanwhile, heartening to know that this grassroots effort at urban-renewal-from-below has lasted as long as it has. From the LA Daily News, May 25:

Farmers facing imminent eviction from their urban plots of land played the ultimate trump card Wednesday: They called folk singer Joan Baez and stuck her in a tree.

The Los Angeles South Central Farm has been an oddity for the past 14 years. Tilled by mostly Mexican and Central American immigrants amid warehouses and train tracks, the 14-acre plot stuck out as a verdant block in a drab, industrial sector off the Alameda corridor.

From AP, May 13:

WASHINGTON - President Bush, trying to build momentum for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, is considering plans to shore up the Mexican border with National Guard troops paid for by the federal government, the Associated Press reported Friday, citing unnamed administration officials.

What an historical irony that this is happening now, eh? Talk about the paradoxical unity of opposites. And hooray for Montana! Even out in the heartland, not all Americans are brainless reactionaries, it seems. From AP, May 3:

HELENA, Montana — It was a black mark on dozens of family histories that lingered for nearly nine decades -- until a journalism professor and a group of law students examined what happened to citizens who spoke out against the government during World War I.

Sarah Ferguson writes for the Village Voice, May 2:

A Day Without White People
On May Day, the masses rose up in New York. But where were the white peaceniks?
A bit of revolution hit the streets on May Day in New York. Folks will debate the size of the crowd that jammed Union Square and beyond yesterday afternoon. People filled sidewalks along side streets, searching for a way into the rally. By 3 p.m. the park was full; by 5 it was bursting--so much so that police pulled back the metal barricades blocking 14th Street and let the throngs spill down Broadway an hour before the rally inside the park was supposed to end.

Another (very tentative) glimmer of hope in the battle for your privacy rights. From AP, April 25:

WASHINGTON -- An appeals court on Tuesday returned the criminal case against an Islamic scholar to a trial judge to determine whether the Bush administration's domestic spying program was used to gather evidence against him.

From the AP, April 22:

CALEDONIA, Ontario — As an uneasy calm settled amid the barricades, fresh tensions erupted Friday as protesters shut down a vital Ontario rail corridor in solidarity with those occupying a disputed tract of southwestern Ontario land.

An estimated two million people took part in coordinated demonstrations in more than 140 US cities on April 10, a National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice demanding legalization and other rights for out-of-status immigrants. Organizers scheduled the protests for a Monday during congressional recess so elected officials would be in their home districts to witness them. Hundreds of thousands more marched on the previous day, April 9. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Los Angeles Times, April 11)