Being in sixth grade when the 9/11 attacks occurred, I don’t remember them very well. I remember I was on the bus on the way to school, listening to the news the driver had over the speaker and not really recognizing what was happening when I heard a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. It wasn’t until later, when someone told me that my English teacher was crying during lunch, I realized something big had happened. And still it seemed distant. The only real thing that happened to me was that the skies were silent for a few days and traveling became a little more obnoxious. I hadn’t even heard of the backlash attacks against people who looked like they could be terrorists until I saw Divided We Fall today, on the seventh anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
In addition to showing me an aspect of this national trauma that I had previously been ignorant to, I feel the film reinforced the idea that anyone can be an American, they simply have to support our country. This idea was brought up multiple times through the comparison of the post-9/11 hate crimes to the Japanese internment camps during World War II, or to hate crimes against African Americans and GLBT peoples. In a time of crisis, people need a scapegoat and they find whoever is convenient, in this case people who looked like they could have come from the Middle East. And yet, we are all Americans. We all support each other and we all love our country, regardless of where we or our ancestors came from.
In discussion following the film, I enjoyed hearing the stories of other members of minorities (in our case an Sri-Lankan American and a Mexican American).
Overall, I am very glad I had the opportunity to watch and discuss this film. It was a very moving and informative experience for me and I strongly recommend seeing it, especially for anyone who doesn’t clearly remember the events immediately following September 11th.
>Read viewer responses from the Alaska Pacific screening.
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