#Sep 11
One day late, but there are a LOT of war stories from that day.

I was a bike messenger that year. I still remember a glorious Sep 7 post-work bike ride down to the old SE Gay enclave in DC. On the 9th an anti-capitalist convergence meeting. On Sep 10 I was practically bouncing off the walls with energy for what was to be a huge, 100,000 strong siege of the IMF and World Bank Fall Meetings. That was to be end of the month. Tues, Sep 11 was D-18 for this battle, a clock that was forever stopped.

Had my schedule for the next day set up: an anti death penalty rally at Noon, a comms and scouting meeting at 5PM. Then my mother wakes me up, to planes bringing down the Towers in NYC and damaging the Pentagon.

The next day was a work day for me, but nobody was sending packages. I rode around, National Guard was holding street corners like they would 20 years later in 2020. A thin trail of smoke still rose from the burning Pentagon. I rode down to the 14th st Bridge for a better look, but most of the fire seemed to be out.

To this day, I hear rumors that I went down to the flames of the Pentagon to roast marhmallows, which I do not even eat! The courier scene started to recover from Sep 11, only to get clobbered far worse by the anthrax attacks from the US far right. I had a cop tell me at that time he would not have the guts to do my job!

Messengers in NYC on Sep 11 found themselves riding into the cauldron to deliver various emergency supplies, running their lungs wide-open in that asbestos-ridden air. I wonder how many of them are still with us?

Back to my real work: Everyone was scrambling to make new plans. The planned IMF/World Bank protests were like a huge ship that could not be stopped and could barely be turned that fast. The issue soon arose that Mobilization for Global Justice could not as an organization shift fire to a new target (the war) because they had fundraised for the IMF protests and using that money for anything else would constitute charity fraud. Someone stood up, telling everyone who wanted to protest the war to follow them. That was the night DAWN (District Anti-War Movement) was born. We got right back to work.

As it was, at the end of the month 800 anarchists in a symbolic Black Bloc marched on the empty World Bank, before being kettled by cops, marched over to Freedom Plaza, and dumped into ANSWER's 27,000 strong antiwar march. We also had a lockdown against former Mayor William's plan to close DC General Hospital. We were defeated on that one, turns out the reason was to make space for the archery range for the city's 2012 Olympic bid.

That Olympic bid we did manage to shoot down. We harassed the Olympic Selection Committee at their ceremony at DC General/ RFK Stadium/DC Armory. The next day a big crowd heckled them at the reopening of the Wilson Building. They departed in a huff, getting the message "DC has an Olympic security problem." Months later, DC's gentrifying, stadium building 2012 Olympics bid was formally rejected.

When Bu$h II used 9/11 as an excuse to invade totally uninvolved Iraq, DAWN was spun up and ready. With a pesky antiwar movement in the streets, the subject of conscription became taboo in government circles. At one point I warned Congressmen and military at a Center for American Progress event that bringing back the draft would "open a new insurgent front inside the United States." Never again did I learn of a proposal to bring back the draft for the Iraq war.

Oh yeah: Sep 11 changed everything-except in Afghanistan, where in 20 years it changed exactly nothing except for killing a lot of people. Bush is gone, and the entire Neocon movement has been totally taken off the table. Downside is that opened the way for Trump and his paleocon friends, rebranded first as the Tea Party, then as the alt-right and alt-light. All the dogwhistles were replaced with train whistles it seems.

If we have a civil war in the US in 5 months, some of the seeds of it were sown in many parties's responses to Sep 11. More go back to 1877, and some all the way to 1865 though.