Seeking an Alternative

By Cassidy Regan on 09/09/2011 @ 04:00 PM

Tags: Peaceful Prevention, September 11

My memory of that morning’s science class – I was thirteen years old at the time – is only vague. The rumors started circulating as soon as parents began arriving to take their children home. Living in a Connecticut suburb just an hour from Manhattan, I slowly learned that many of those around me were directly affected by the day’s tragedy; I, though, remember feeling somewhat detached – as if the event were one that, like many, would not make the transition from media reports into my immediate life. The students still at school remained unsure of the details, hearing only sparse pieces of information on planes and towers and, without explanation, terror.

It wasn’t until I returned home that afternoon that I saw images on the television and heard estimates of the number of lives lost. Though no one I knew had been physically harmed in the day’s attacks, I no longer felt removed – rather, seeing the day’s documentation seemed to make real many of the tragedies and injustices too often easy to ignore. That evening, my mind fixated on a sense it articulated as “so much evil.” I was shocked and devastated by the hatred of which I’d been reminded. By the massive proof that there were those willing to kill and to kill so indiscriminately. By the deep fear, now amplified and felt by so many, that had always haunted me as a child whose nightmares were dominated by “bad guys” rather than monsters or fires or tornadoes.

More tangibly, I was terrified of not knowing what could be done next – not understanding which steps could be taken to prevent this evil from perpetuating. As the foundation for endless war was laid, I confusedly felt that further violence and hatred would not help – but in the midst of being scared, of being aware that something had to be done, I did not know how to articulate what could be pursued in war’s stead. The options seemed to be inaction or violence, and it didn’t fit to be an advocate of neither.

Since 2001, my understanding of the evil of 9/11 has shifted to include an understanding of the injustice, inequity, and intolerance that have marred humanity's history. Teachers, friends, and many I've never met have encouraged me to think critically about the means through which hatred is given ground, and the ways in which I have and continue to participate in the institutions that entrench it.

But after years of studying the mistakes of the past (and present) and the legacies of oppression left behind, I found a viable, affirmative alternative to war entirely elusive. I found a positive approach to international engagement seemingly nonexistent and a means of righting historic wrongs – without creating new ones – nearly impossible.

Nearly ten years after that morning's science class, I began work at FCNL with hopes of learning how to respond to the question that had lingered through a decade's worth of attempts to comprehend the world: if war is not the answer, what is? This 9/11, I’m grateful for those I’ve encountered, at FCNL and elsewhere, who have remained committed to discovering those alternatives. The people and the movements that have, from so many places and perspectives – be they military, peacenik, faith-based, environmental, economic, otherwise – maintained belief that we have the ability to heal our world and its communities. Without them, I wouldn’t have the hope that now sustains me as the adult who still fears what she began to process as a child. The hope that reminds me of how much exists to counter violence and hatred, of how much we have to build upon if we only trust that an alternative is possible.