On Sept. 11 and Moving Forward

By Chuck Sudo in News on Sep 11, 2011 4:00PM

This true-color image was taken by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) aboard the Landsat 7 satellite on September 12, 2001, at roughly 11:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Savings Time. (Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory)

I didn't know how I was going to approach writing about today.

I knew I wanted to (and had to) write about the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks but I didn't want to take the "where were you on that fateful day" approach.

I certainly didn't want to write about any "loss of innocence" that may have happened that day. I don't believe we as a nation lost any more innocence with the attacks than we did when Pearl Harbor was bombed or John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated or Watergate or when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford Theatre or any other crises that arise that have us questioning a "loss of innocence."

We as a staff did discuss certain angles, like looking at our nation's history from the prism of pre- and post-9/11. Or maybe rounding up the most persistent conspiracy theories that sprung from that day. Or the astounding outpouring of global compassion goodwill in the immediate days after we promptly squandered. That debate rages every day.

Lost for words, I began to find them when the staff discussed earlier in the week if it was too soon to look at "Falling Man" photo again. It was a passionate debate that could have made a post of its own and the staffers who said it was too soon surprised me.

The Sun-Times asked that question of its readers but was very disingenuous in running the photo first before asking the question. Kim's reflections on the shifting stances of songs Clear Channel wanted played on their stations was another angle we considered and ultimately published.

Ultimately I decided to look at how we've moved forward in the decade since the attacks. Time stands still for no one, as the aphorism goes. Painful as it may be to some, it's true. We can hold our memorials every year but even this morning's remembrances in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania shows we move forward. Where once two buildings touched the sky, we have a memorial to the tragedy that happened that day. Steps away from that memorial, another tower rises.

Technology has made it easier for us to watch the memorials and disseminate information from multiple platforms we didn't have ten years ago. The forensics that made it possible to identify those killed in the attacks has only become more refined. Children born in 2001 only know about 9/11 from what they see and read. People have dealt with the aftermath in different ways, but they've still moved forward. Where a decade ago nations in the Middle East and North Africa were once tightly controlled autocracies, we now see the beginning seeds of democracy from an Arab Spring.

Through it all, we're still part of this experiment in democracy, this American Democracy, that's been challenged in recent years like it hasn't in quite some time. And I'm reminded of the words Steve Earle wrote in 2004, from the liner notes to his album The Revolution Starts...Now.

"The Constitution of the United States of America is a REVOLUTIONARY document in every sense of the word. It was designed to evolve, to live and to breathe like the people that it governs. It is, ingenuously, and perhaps conversely, resilient enough to change with the times in order to meet the challenges of its third century and rigid enough to preserve the ideals that inspired its original articles and amendments, as long as we are willing to put in the work required to defend and nurture this remarkable invention of our forefathers, then I believe with all my heart that it will continue to thrive for generations to come. Without our active participation, however, the future is far from certain. For without the lifeblood of the human spirit even the greatest documents produced by humankind are only words on paper or parchment, destined to yellow and crack and eventually crumble to dust."

I'll take that a step further and argue that the Constitution is the one thing all of us as Americans have in common. It ties us together when race, gender, sexual identity, religion, political affiliation and income level separate. That is the ultimate gift given to us by the Founding Fathers and it would be shame to let it waste.

We all move forward.