Recently, I was showing a friend from out of town around the World Trade Center area with our children. Her daughter wanted to know why there were so many police officers and barricades everywhere. My 8-year-old son explained, “Well, that’s New York.”
Ten years after 9/11, for those of us who live and work downtown, that’s the “new normal.”
This weekend, thanks to security surrounding the ceremonies at the World Trade Center site, we’ll be back in a “frozen zone” — and have to show ID just about every time we leave home.
It’s a burden — but one we’ve had to learn to accept.
I remember the initial evacuation after 9/11; I remember the military lockdown. I remember being among the last to leave, late at night, feeling like I was deep in the heart of a war zone. I remember the acrid smell that the neighborhood had for months.
Back then, we lived across from the Stock Exchange; all three of my boys knew the names of every bomb-sniffing dog that checked every vehicle that came through the area. (Our favorite was named Coco.)
By January, the smell was mostly gone. But what has never left, and will probably be with us for the rest our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren, are the restrictive rules and regulations and the clear presence of police.
The city has just sent us an even-more-exhaustive list of street closures and restrictions to pedestrian access for this weekend. Many of my constituents have complained, and I can’t blame them: We already live with more security than any neighborhood in the country.
But, of course, Lower Manhattan continues to be the prime terrorist target; we don’t want to do anything to compromise the security of our denizens, workers and visitors.
We, perhaps more than any community in our nation, understand the consequences of failure to safeguard against attack. In the past 20 years, terrorists have attacked us twice, taking thousands of lives, ripping a 16-acre hole through the heart of our community and wreaking $83 billion of damage on New York City.
In fact, terrorist attacks have occurred throughout Lower Manhattan’s history — in September 1920, someone detonated a horse-drawn carriage on Wall Street. But liberty has been cherished in our community for even longer, back to when the Sons of Liberty hoisted and rehoisted their liberty pole in what is now the South Street Seaport.
This tension between security and quality of life has existed in our community for centuries, and we confronted it again last year when we succeeded in our campaign to not have Khalid Sheik Mohammed put on trial at the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan. It would have shackled our community with 2,000 security checkpoints and a vast media circus, not to mention cost hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.
Our community has endured a lot — financial panic, terrorist attacks and most recently a mandatory evacuation for Hurricane Irene. But we’re still here, and thriving — the fastest-growing residential area in the country.
Here on the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, we are a community of survivors, and we will continue to thrive and grow, no matter what the future has in store for us.
Julie Menin chairs Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan and is a member of the September 11th Memorial Board.