Here is my final essay for my school's memorial session today...and I won! (That means you should do what I say in my essay.)
I was eager to speak about today’s theme, “Remembrance and Reconciliation” because reconciliation is what brought me to DU, and that journey began on September 11, 2001. My cousins, Timmy and Johnny Grazioso, were killed in the World Trade Center.
Kathryn and Kristen, Johnny’s two daughters, are now teenagers, and they’re stunning. But no matter how many highlights they put in their hair, or how many scandalous comments they post on Facebook, I can’t erase the images of them, 7 and 4, crouched under the sink anxiously waiting for their dad to come home. My sister and I had lost our own father just a year earlier to cancer, and so we formed a bond with Kathryn and Kristen because we empathized with their grief. But I don’t think we can ever fully understand how it feels for the families of the victims of September 11th. They not only have to deal with grief, but the surrounding circumstances of this grief that ushered in a new era. They not only have to deal with death, but with murder, and a history of hatred that long preceded the attacks. I only had to deal with one type of reconciliation –reconciliation with death. But for those who lost someone on 9/11, or in the subsequent wars, there is also reconciliation with the perpetrators, and the surrounding circumstances.
As I studied the history leading up to September 11th, and I observed the direction we took afterwards, I could see the cycle of violence was a chain threaded throughout history. What most consumed me at the time was the loss of lives in Iraq –both Americans and Iraqis. I realized the cycle of violence would never be stopped unless there were no longer perpetrators and victims. We must work together to ensure that the situation that is causing us to take up these roles is annulled.
Theories of justice have gradually expanded from being largely focused on the offender –retributive justice –to restorative justice, which takes into consideration the victims, the offenders, and the surrounding community, and more recently to reconciliatory and transformative justice. Reconciliation means confrontation between the perpetrators and the victims. Reconciliation requires honest acknowledgment of the harms done by each party, sincere remorse, readiness to apologize, readiness to ‘let go’ of anger and bitterness, commitment not to repeat the injury and sincere effort to redress past grievances that caused the conflict.[1] Reconciliation extends as far as reconstruction of the community, in this case the global community, construction of non-exclusive ideologies, and promotion of intercultural understanding, respect and development[2]. Transformative justice works to reconstruct our societies to make sure that there are no beds to sow the seeds of violence in. It goes beyond the justice system, into the fibers of our society, where we all have a role in rooting out and correcting the things that are causing the injustices. We must all take responsibility for the state of things and devise an action plan to fix what’s broken. There are two underlying values involved in transitional justice: justice and reconciliation. Although they appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, the goal is an end to the cycles that perpetuate war, violence and human rights abuses.[3]
As lawyers, we have many roles. One path I am suggesting is that we use our skills to advocate for peace to lessen the likelihood that tragedies like September 11th happen here or anywhere else. Promoting rule of law, helping disadvantaged people advocate for themselves, providing alternatives to violence through public policy, and strengthening forums for the peaceable resolution of grievances are all options. They will all help transform our world into a place where violence is not a viable option for having your voice heard.
All of us standing here today, but particularly those of us who lost someone on September 11, 2001 have been chosen as guardians of our generation and those to come. By light of our experience, by light of the grief that we have suffered for the past ten years, we have been given an insight that many others who are shaping policy for our nation and our world have not. These ten years have shown us that the process of grieving is similar to breaking a bone. The initial loss is sharp and all-consuming, and time –the only healer –takes away this sharpness, replacing it with a dull ache that, on rainy days, pains us down to the core. Loss is permanent and so is the pain that accompanies it.
We are the keepers of this tragic insight. We are protectors of others who have not experienced it. Nothing can change our pain or our loss. But we can harness our grief, and gain strength from it to make every effort to make it less likely that others shall have to suffer grief unnecessarily or for unjust reasons in the future. Transformative reconciliation is our obligation, if we don’t want to leave the mess we are in now for our loved ones in the future. We must change the environment of our world that allows many young Muslims, poor and with limited options for the future, to be vulnerable to religious fanatics that would turn them into terrorists. We must make sure the grounds are fertile to sew with seeds of peace –not seeds of violence.
Most of the time I fear engaging in conversation about these ideas with my family because the hurt still runs too deep to suggest the personal strength necessary for reconciliation. But the more time that passes, the more seeds are sewn for future acts of violence. In essence, I am asking my family and fellow Americans to make immense personal sacrifices not for ourselves as much as for future generations. But ––it is worth the cost. Nothing is more important than a human life –your own and the lives of those you love. This is our one universal human goal –everything else is inconsequential. So, on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, I think it’s a good moment to step back and remember and reflect on that. I began by saying that my own personal journey has been a journey of reconciliation –it has been guided by the spirit of my two cousins. Their voices are gentle and remind me to never forget, but also, to never let this happen again.
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