9/11 should be Centerpoint to End Partisanship

356 weeks ago, our world was turned upside down. Two airplanes were turned into weapons, and crashed into the two symbols of enterprise and capitalism. Later, a third plane was flown into our symbol of justice. What followed next was far beyond horrific, as we all should remember.

I, like most people, remember exactly where I was and what I was doing: sitting in an 8^th grade math class at McCants Middle School, listening to my teacher drone on about matrices. I can remember the events that followed as if it happened yesterday—no matter how hard I try to block them out.

My geography teacher bursts into the room, saying a sentence that still sends shivers up and down my spine, “The World Trade Center has been bombed.”

I remember going through the day, not an ounce of school work being done, all focus on the television screen. I remember going home, going to bed, and waking up the next day—thinking it was all a dream. But it sadly wasn’t, no dream could be that horrific.

On September 11, 2008, memorials were held at Ground Zero—the site of the new Freedom Tower--in Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania.

For one day, the partisanship, the attack ads, the speculation for this Presidential Election was put on hold, and rightfully so. But look how things have reverted back.

The day after 9/11/01 flags were flying everywhere—from homes, cars, shirts and hats. You name it; it had a flag on it. Republicans and Democrats put their issues aside and joined together: But those days seem to be over for our politicians.

Now, partisanship plagues both the Democrats and the Republicans in what looks to be turning into a win at all cost Presidential Election. Congress went on leave with nearly nothing accomplished, and looks to be at gridlock when they return. Hopefully the anniversary of 9/11 will put the politicians mindset back where it belongs—on the people that sent them to office.

They say that time heals all wounds, but whenever I think of that day, or see clips of the towers burning in the New York skyline, the scab reopens, and the hurt flows again. Hopefully the 7-year anniversary will put some perspective into the eyes of our leaders, and show them that the partisanship needs to end, and they need to “reach across the aisle” for the good of the American people. And if not for us, do for those firefighters, paramedics, and police officers that charged into the smoldering towers, those in the Pentagon, and those brave, everyday citizens that sacrificed themselves for their country in that field in Pennsylvania.

It is because of them, and so many others like them, that we have the freedom to write opinion, express approval and disproval of policy, and voice our differences.

Because people--like the ones that lost their lives on 9/11—that give up their freedoms to live so that we may live freely are worth celebrating and remembering.