Union Square Park. September 14, 2001. © syreeta mcfadden

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
— Mark Twain

I couldn’t stop crying this morning. Which really surprised me. Like everyone else, I stayed up to watch the President address the nation confirming the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden. Destroyer of worlds. Mass Murderer. Fanatic. Enemy of the United States. Terrorist.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the dust. I’m only thinking about the dead.

For the last 10 days straight, when I check my phone for the time, I always manage to see it turn from 9:10 to 9:11 every twelve hours.

What people fail to understand about New Yorkers is how we live the everyday of aftermath of September 11th. There’s the constructed narrative and imagination the nation feels, sees, experiences from a distance, but here, there’s simply the fact of it. I explain this to my grandmother this morning. Some details she didn’t know: the World Trade Center site burned for five months, the dust from the remains of the victims blanketed us days shortly after the collapse, we still get our bags searched, we smelled the decomp for weeks, there are memorials to the victims -everywhere, many of us (me included) contracted sinus infections weeks after the collapse, people I worked with contracted cancer and died. Modell’s on Broadway, a block and half away from Two World Trade, didn’t clean the dust from the collapse off its awning and window display till Spring 2002.

Osama Bin Laden. Saboteur of affordable housing subsidies. Here’s a detail that isn’t discussed much: the slated sale of the World Trade Center property in 2001, was imagined, planned even, to be a source of subsidy for low, moderate and middle income housing for new construction projects. When I worked for the City, we jokingly blamed Osama for that.

The boogeyman is dead. Forgive me if I’m not in the street flag waving and celebrating. I’m still processing the trauma of the events that shifted the world view of several generations, the nearly 1 million dead in ten years, the ongoing wars, their uncertain endings, the ridiculous far right extremism and racial animus manifested on our shores. This bastardized new world order initiated by the act of a deep pocketed, megalomaniac, opportunistic religious zealot. The pacifist in me recedes. Forgive me if I’m not sad he’s dead.

I’ve been lurking on the internets, following the latest on Chris Brown. Here’s dream hampton:

He clearly doesn’t have the kind of support system that is encouraging—even insisting—him to seek mental health treatment. His mother is an enabler, and his handlers huddled him into a truck the night he boxed in Rihanna’s face, leaving her to fend for herself—an incredible misstep. Even if they hated Rihanna, they had to know leaving her there would lead to a publicity Chernobyl. These handlers were twice his age.

I watched the interview before reading her article, and that was my sense as well. Robin Roberts questioned him as gingerly as a journalist possibly could. It almost had the feel that she prepped him before going on air, yet his answers were unrefined and without remorse. I don’t doubt for a second that these questions were not presented to him in advance. The post interview tantrum tells me of the storm to come for him if he doesn’t seek therapy. Team Breezy fans elective ignorance of Brown’s mental state only highlights a cultural taboo that still shrouds Black Americans, depression and domestic violence.

To boot, some are blaming the interviewer for the actions of the interviewee, keeping with the long trend to blame the victims for their assaults. Like Lara Logan for reporting in Egypt in Tahrir Square.

Let’s be clear, Chris Brown did a terrible thing. He has to take responsibility for that. He has to heal from the childhood trauma that led him to those actions. He hasn’t. His answers to Roberts on GMA were a controlled rage that inevitably had to explode in the dressing room afterward. I could feel how angry and uncomfortable he was watching that interview. He has to move beyond blanket statements like: ‘that’s all in the past. It’s about my music.’ I’m not convince of that. That’s the machine talking. The machine wants him to get out there and sell records, make millions, and it is willing wage his soul to achieve that end. I’m reminded of Brittany Spears troubles in the early aughts, when the machine pushed her past the limits of artist/entertainer and celebrity so hard that the walls collapsed. Brown is roughly the same age Spears was then, and yes the scandals that surrounded them are not exact copies, but the machine is.

I have a zero tolerance policy on sexual terrorism and domestic violence. I still have arguments with my students and family about the 2009 assault. Some have said to me, ‘but she provoked him.’ To which I have often had to respond, ‘I don’t care what she said or did. No one deserves that. No one. Male or female.’ Looking at Robyn Rihanna Fenty now, I’m not convinced she’s recovered. And that’s okay. It really is. Recovery takes time. And these guys, need to take as much time as they need.

The actions of others have consequence. The closing paragraph from the NY Times article about the church standoff in Iraq yesterday:

The church, with a huge cross visible from hundreds of yards away, was already surrounded with concrete bollards and razor wire, and church leaders have been fearful of attack since the Rev. Terry Jones in Gainesville, Fla., threatened to burn a Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Mr. Jones decided not to burn the Koran.