New York may be home to the liberal media elite, but it is also home to those who were most profoundly affected by the attacks on 9/11. We are the most diverse city in the nation, if not the world. When we could have succumbed to xenophobia and fear, we didn’t. Most of us were united in our grief and in our fierce determination to revive our city. We did not recover by turning on our neighbors who have different beliefs or cultural backgrounds, but instead by working together for a common cause.
An open letter to Senator John McCain.
Dear Sen. McCain,
I, like many of my fellow citizens, have been following this Presidential campaign more closely than any other campaign since becoming old enough to vote. I am deeply disappointed by the tenor of your campaign in the weeks since the RNC and the selection of Sarah Palin as your running mate. Until today, we have not heard any details of your plan to help salvage our economy. Instead, we have been besieged by negative ads, surrogates who are all too willing to spread innuendo and blatant lies and Gov. Palin's tacit approval of hateful speech. Your attempts to counter the shouts for violence and the misinformation about Sen. Obama were feeble and late in coming. If the last couple of weeks have been a preview of what we can expect from a McCain/Palin administration, I am extremely concerned for our nation.
I live in New York City. I was here on 9/11. I lived through those terrible first days, mourning for the dead and for my city. The hearts of every single New Yorker shattered that day. In the weeks that followed, we demonstrated our resilience and humanity by finding some way to help in the crisis, from the heroic efforts of the firefighters and police who worked tirelessly at Ground Zero to the children who expressed their sadness and gratitude with simple gifts of drawings and cookies. We are the most diverse city in the nation, if not the world. When we could have succumbed to xenophobia and fear, we didn’t. We were all united in our grief and in our fierce determination to revive our city.
We came out of the experience a better city, a more humane city. During the blackout of 2003, I witnessed first hand the kindness and generosity as well as the calm and civility of my fellow citizens. We rose to the occasion. While things are far from perfect, I think we became better for having weathered the crisis together. Some of the credit belongs with the leaders who shared our anger, but who also cautioned us not to seek revenge on our neighbors by virtue of their ethnicity or religion.
We are once again facing a difficult time and at the same time trying to decide who would be best suited to leading us out of it. Your weak attempt to quell the hateful speech from your audience does not instill confidence that you would be able to unite our country behind a common cause. You have demonstrated a lack of leadership in allowing your campaign to be hijacked by the same people who sank your candidacy in 2000. As a former military man, would you consider it wise to foment division amongst your troops? Are you not doing the same thing to us by trying to divert our attention away from the real issues at hand? Or do you count only your most die-hard supporters? As President you would be responsible for leading all of us, not just the Republican base. How do expect to have any credibility with the American people after what we have witnessed in the last two weeks?