Seventeen years ago, Muslim extremists crashed separate planes into the two towers of the World Trade Center in downtown New York City for the express purpose of killing as many inhabitants as possible. Forty-seven years ago, New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered heavily armed state troops and local correction officers into the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York for the express purpose of killing as many inhabitants as possible.
2,996 people were killed and over 6,000 were wounded on the morning of September 11, 2001. Most if not all of the city’s surviving population was prevented from contacting friends and family outside of the city by nearly universal cellular equipment failures. Forty-three people were killed on the morning of September 13, 1971 and the number wounded has never been fully accounted after decades of government obfuscation. Every single one of the facility’s survivors was prevented from contacting friends and family outside the facility by Governors Rockefeller’s specific instructions.
One attack was an attack by a foreign threat on our unsuspecting general population, a fact many Americans deflect by imagining a government conspiracy. The other was an attack by state Governor Rockefeller with full support from President Nixon, followed by an actual conspiracy to hide it for decades afterward.
Both were acts of faceless violence motivated by fear and hatred.
Both are rightly considered dark days in American history by anyone who remembers them.
If you are, like I am, too young to remember the Attica massacre and wonder why you should care, just remember that next year will be the first year that a large number of college freshmen will have been born after 9/11/01. Do we want them to forget?