It’s been 19 years since the 9/11 attacks forever changed the social and political fabric of the U.S. On the anniversary of the attacks, feminists are mourning the tragedy, while also reflecting on our country’s current convergence of crises, including racial injustice and a pandemic that has taken 50 times the number of lives lost in the 9/11 attacks—while receiving only a fraction of the government attention and response that the attacks received.
Many also reflected on how the world has changed in the 19 years since the attacks—and how the Bush administration’s response has shaped decades of foreign policy and taken hundreds of thousands of lives, whether via Islamophobia and domestic terrorism, or via overseas wars that have taken countless civilian lives.
Some raised vitally overlooked issues, such as the way in which people with disabilities are treated as a liability in times of crisis—and how the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception.
Many cried historical revisionism when New York Times opinion writer Paul Krugman tweeted there “wasn’t a mass outbreak of anti-Muslim sentiment and violence”—despite the documented surge in Islamophobic violence immediately following the attacks, and the fact that this violence has risen in recent years.
Many mourned…
…or offered messages of hope for the coming days—because on a fundamental level, in order to change the world we have to believe in the possibility of a better one.
