Memory Must Not Become a Prison – New Yorkers of All Faiths Come Together to Encourage Solidarity on the 25th Anniversary of Sept. 11

By Helena Milburn

On the evening of Thursday, Sept. 10, dozens gathered in the Village to stand together and urge fellow New Yorkers to let their memory of September 11 be in service of creating a better, more inclusive future.

Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders met in an interfaith march to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and stand in solidarity against the decades of Islamophobia that followed. The walk had three stops: the Hebrew Union College, Judson Memorial Church and the Islamic Center. It brought together participants from throughout the city, and featured speeches from religious leaders, community activists and politicians, including Congressman-elect Brad Lander and Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The march was organized by longtime activists Rabbi Ellen Lippmann and Dr. Debbie Almontaser, an educator and board president of the Muslim Community Network. Lippmann and Almontaser spoke about conversations they had in each other’s homes in the wake of 9/11 that led them to hold the first Children of Abraham Peace Walk in 2003.

The walks were held yearly until 2017, making this the first Children of Abraham Peace Walk in almost a decade. Lippmann and Almontaser felt the current climate of rising hate, antisemitism and Islamophobia necessitated its return.

“A change happens one person at a time talking at the dinner table,” Almontaser said in her speech at the start of this year’s walk.

Many participants looked back on where they were 25 years earlier. Though he’d lived in New York City for decades by 2001, Khalid Rehman was far from home on Sept. 11. “As a Muslim, I was on my way with my wife and my in-laws to go to Mecca for pilgrimage…. I was in the taxi when I heard this crackling news on this broken-up radio in the taxi. It sounded important but I couldn’t figure out what it was. When I reached my hotel, I turned on my TV and saw the towers fell.”

Rehman said that both his sons worked in downtown Manhattan but he was not able to reach them. “We were very, very distressed,” he added.

His sons were unharmed, but when Rehman returned to New York in November, he drove to his home on Staten Island to find a city forever changed. “Always as you drove down the hill you could see the Twin Towers,” he said. “That day there were no towers. And we literally stopped the car. I still remember that moment. We came into the city and the site was still smoldering.”

It wasn’t just the physical landscape of the city that had changed. For Rehman and many Muslim New Yorkers, the memory of Sept. 11 carries not only the painful reminder of the attacks themselves, but also the racist and Islamophobic harassment that followed.

Rehman said his son, born and raised in New York City, who ran across the Brooklyn Bridge to escape clouds of dust after the towers fell, was told to “go back from where [you] came from” as he entered the mosque for Friday prayer shortly after Sept. 11.

“I’m an immigrant but a New Yorker, for more than 53 years I’ve lived in New York,” he said “And our children are born and raised American and New Yorkers, and you know this is as much their city, as anybody else’s city.”

The 25th anniversary proved particularly difficult for Muslim New Yorkers as former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Councilwoman Vickie Paladino said the city’s first Muslim mayor should not go to the memorial for this year’s ceremony.

Brooklyn Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, the first Muslim woman elected to the city council, choked up during her speech as she spoke about how these attacks on Mamdani affected her. “I’m getting teary because of how people are treating our mayor…It’s been breaking my heart all week,” Hanif said. She went on to emphasize the importance of coming together saying, “There is safety in solidarity.”

Lander was proud to stand with Mamdani at the memorial. He said, “What a beautiful thing that 25 years after 9/11 this city has its first Muslim mayor…And honestly that’s part of New York City’s answer to 9/11 and what it means to build a city that doesn’t compromise on anyone’s humanity.”

In his speech, Mamdani urged the audience to remember not just the horrors of Sept. 11, but also the way the city came together to help those in need, and to carry the memory of those actions into the future. He said, “I come here today…to ask that this evening serve to renew commitment to love one another and renew our commitment to building a city worthy of those who were killed that day and those who lost their lives in the years since.”

“Memory must not become a prison,” Khalid Latif, imam and co-director of the Islamic Center, said during his speech. “The victims of 9/11 cannot be remembered by creating new victims in their name.”

Senior Minister at Judson Memorial Church Rev. Micah Bucey recited a prayer he wrote to commemorate Sept. 11. In it, he too suggested looking to the past is useful only if we let it guide us to a brighter future. He said, “Until memory is not just a thing we pray to never use, but a gift that is gained every time our prayers push us to become more than memorials, more than a mourning, more like a morning light that not only promises a new day, but sticks around to see it through.”

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The World Trade Center Attack: A Remembrance

By Roger Paradiso

One day, the unthinkable happened. On September 11, 2001, two planes flew into the World Trade Center. I was driving through Hoboken, trying to get to the MGM office that morning. I stopped twice and pulled over. The first time was when I was listening to Imus in the Morning and he turned the spot over to Warner Wolf, the Imus sports guy. Wolf, who lived in an apartment building near the World Trade Center, said he was looking out the window and saw a huge gap in the side of the WTC. He said he heard a plane and then a crash. Reports circulated saying it was a small plane, which made sense. But Wolf said, “Oh no, that was no small plane to make this huge gash into the side of the WTC.” I listened carefully. The WTC had been attacked in 1993. A bomb went off in the basement and caused death and destruction. The militants from the Middle East were trying to hurt us again.

I started driving away when my friend and partner Michael called me. He was watching the devastation from his Manhattan apartment and said, “Don’t go in.” Then he told me something being echoed by Imus and Wolf ─ a large commercial airliner has just crashed into the second WTC tower. This was war.

I turned the car around and raced back home. I called the office and made sure everyone was getting out and locking up. My son’s school called and asked if I was safe. I said I would be there shortly and to tell Anthony I was OK. My wife called and I filled her in on Anthony.

My niece, who was attending Fordham, was calling and freaking out. I told her to close her windows and to stay in the apartment.

We just weren’t sure what else was going to happen. The word came out that they were closing all bridges and tunnels to Manhattan. Nobody was getting in or out.

Thank God for Wolf and Imus on the car radio or I would have been stuck in the city. So, as I’m picking up Anthony, my friend Andy calls, and I tell him to come over. When we get home, I let Anthony play video games, and Andy and I watch the devastation on TV. Bob Relyea calls from MGM in L.A. to find out if I’m OK. He says to keep him posted so he can tell the studios what was going on. Some other friends call during this horrible moment in history. And then we were watching the buildings come down on live TV. It was unreal.

Our friends at the Mayor’s Office for Film called to ask if Michael and I were all right. Nobody could believe what was happening. I got a call from my niece, and she was still not doing well. I told her to get her brother home and to call friends and not to worry. I spoke to her until she calmed down.

The Mayor’s Office asked me to convey to the studios that most of the city is open for now. But anything south of Houston Street and the entire West Side Highway is closed. I called friends and they say people are walking around doing their business north of Houston Street, about a mile from the WTC. The Mayor’s Office calls back later and says they anticipate that Canal Street, about ten blocks from the tower, will be closed indefinitely. But productions shooting north of Houston would be shut down today. They will be allowed to shoot in a few days whenever the federal government gives the OK.

The Feds wanted all troops and emergency personnel to have clear sailing to and from the site. I convey this to Bob. The rest of the day was spent with friends and family. It was a nightmare, and we were glued to the TV.

We all got to sleep out of exhaustion. Sometime that night, I had a distant memory awakened. It was when we had just moved into the Lois Avenue house when I was five years old. We had big picture windows, and one of them, in the dining room, had a gorgeous view of the Manhattan skyline. I had been watching King Kong a lot on the Million-Dollar movie series.

These were Hollywood classics that were out of circulation, and the studios got another payday by selling them to TV. You remember King Kong climbing up to the Empire State Building and being harassed by planes. Those were the dreams I had for several days. I woke up in a sweat and looked out at the window. It was just a nightmare.

Many years later, I was reminded of those nightmares when the World Trade Center was attacked by planes crashing into the towers. When I woke up on 9/12, I remembered that old dream. I had not thought about it for decades. It came back, and it was real in some respects. I never told anyone about that dream. It only came back to me again as I was writing this book.

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This is an excerpt from Paradiso’s book, My Hollywood Circus, which is coming out this month.