Stories
The Culture of Peace News Network continued
Missions for the Culture of Peace
Travels with Lindsay in the USA
Vacations with Lindsay in the Caribbean
Vacations with Kiki in Reunion
The geometry of time
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Along with many other activists I was at the United Nations on September 11, 2001, for the annual meeting of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) affiliated with the UN.
Coming a bit early for the first session, I had gone to the Vienna Cafe in the basement of the General Assembly building for the cup of espresso that I had grown accustomed to in Paris. As I arrived there was a knot of people around the television set that was perched above the tables of the cafe, and I joined them to see what was happening. And then I saw it! The television cameras were focused on the burning World Trade Center as the second plane crashed into them. For the first few moments I thought that it was somehow a rerun of the first plane crashing, but quickly realized that there was no way they could have had such film footage. And then I knew that it was an act of terrorism. One plane could be an accident. But not two!
Within minutes the call came over the loudspeakers in the UN buildings to evacuate the buildings and we all went outside. Of course, we didn't know if the UN was also a target!
At the corner of First Avenue and 47th Street I bumped into Anwarul Chowdhury. We looked at each other in surprise for a moment and then said more or less the same thing at the same time. "The world has changed, and the time has come for the culture of peace!"
Across the street from the UN is the Church Center with many meeting rooms for NGOs. It was a natural place to congregate. I met a young woman from Cornell named Denise Medeiros and we decided to put up a sign on the door. Anyone interested in drafting an NGO statement should gather in the meeting room on the third floor. And then we waited.
Over the course of the day perhaps a hundred people came and went from the meeting room and there was always a lively conversation. Gradually, there was emerging a formal statement, demanding that terrorism be met with with nonviolent mobilization and not with further violence. There was agreement to talk of the need for a culture of peace.
We requested the presence of a representative from the UN department concerned with NGOs and Oleg, a young UN staff member from Russia, came and took part for a while and left with assurances that this was a good thing to do.
By evening, we had a good statement and we made many photocopies.
The next day (or was it two days later, I have forgotten), the UN opened its doors again, and there was a final session for the aborted NGO conference.
We came to the door with hundreds of copies of the NGO statement.
We were met by a member of the NGO Committee who called us "terrorists" and demanded that she be given all of the copies of the statement so that they could be destroyed. We appealed to the head of the UN Department concerned, an American, who confirmed that the statements should be destroyed. And the officers of the NGO Committee responsible for the event used their precious few moments during their address to the final session to denounce those "disrupters" who had tried to profit from the situation to distribute their "terrorist tract." Ironically, the woman who spoke had been one of those who had contributed substantially to the final statement.
Several of us tried to reply, but no discussion was allowed and the session was closed.
The UN bureaucracy had triumphed again. To see the text of this "terrorist document", click here.
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