A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

Material contributions and volunteers immediately converged on the site of the fallen towers, increased by the intense, worldwide media coverage of the event. Charles Fritz has identified this phenomenon as convergence, when people move toward a disaster zone to donate their time and supplies as well as to find their loved ones, living or dead. Those who converged created their own tasks when there was not anything immediately obvious to do, such as singing songs and creating altars. Blood and food donations poured in from all over the country and the world—more than was necessary. Two weeks after the attacks, citizens were organizing against the war that they rightly assumed was coming in retaliation. A minority felt the need for vengeance, which was unfortunately exerted against those of Middle Eastern descent.

Union Square, a park in Manhattan, became a “public forum” for citizens to gather and discuss the recent events. A young organizer, Jordan Schuster, put up huge pieces of paper for people to write and draw on to create a mural inspired by the AIDS quilt. Altars and conversation groups were formed, and the park became a temporary utopia.

Tobin Mueller, a musician, helped create a spontaneously formed aid center. He and several others helped turn a donut stand into a food station for relief workers. The project grew and eventually moved to a warehouse near the river. People helped organize food, find housing for displaced people, and distribute supplies. Eventually, the project, now called the Chelsea Piers Commissary, was shut down by the authorities, who treated the project with suspicion, perhaps irked that the volunteers were doing their jobs better than the authorities were.

For some, including Jesuit priest Father James Martin, this time felt like the “heavenly kingdom.” Such religiously minded people felt an almost holy degree of unity and brotherhood while helping. Solnit references several witnesses who in various phrasings identified the aftermath of 9/11 as utopic.

Solnit opens by comparing Hollywood movies with the way that 9/11 was covered by American news media, which focused on the explosion itself and the actions accomplished by a few “masculine heroes” including firefighters and mayor Rudy Giuliani. What was missing was that most of the rescue and evacuation work was conducted by ordinary people in a cooperative and orderly manner. While Giuliani did act bravely and empathetically that day, he soon resumed his self-serving political strategies, using his behavior that day to further his political influence and cover weaknesses in the city’s disaster preparation.

Following the attack, the emphasis for the government and media was on appearances rather than real responsibility. Environmental Protection Agency reports on air quality and other reports were censored by President Bush, with whom Giuliani complied. While the firefighters were lauded as heroes, they were also not equipped with adequate protective equipment.

Another reaction from the media was to leverage the disaster to condemn feminism as a weakening of the nation and to promote “masculinity” via belligerence and militarism as the way to national security. Solnit explains, “War too was a familiar story that people slipped into, a way of asserting nobility, potency, and purpose in the face of a disorienting and destabilizing attack” (314). People craved a sense of civic belonging, and many found this by enlisting in the military. This narrative helped justify the invasion of Iraq that followed, and the portrayal of 9/11 as an attack on the nation as a whole skewed media attention toward foreign policy, so the efforts of citizens in New York City were not covered very closely.

Analysis of the event showed that the institutional and military responses the day of the attack were woefully slow and ineffective, while the quick thinking of passengers on one of the hijacked flights led the plane to crash in a field in Pennsylvania rather than into a more important target. These spontaneous ground-up responses were again more effective at organizing than the top-down authorities.

Solnit argues that the USA could have, under different circumstances, used this moment to propel itself into a rethinking of existing norms, oil dependency, and foreign policy. She explains that the US “hovered on the brink of a collective post-traumatic growth into something more purposeful, united, and aware, but the meaning of the event itself got hijacked, again and again, and in its place came all the cheap familiar stories” (322), including directives from Bush to go shopping to support the economy, equating consumerism with patriotism. Suspicion intensified toward people of Middle Eastern descent, and the situation was used as an excuse to erode rights in the name of security as the government stoked fear while purporting to wage a “war on terror.” Meanwhile, in smaller ways, many citizens found themselves politically galvanized and got involved in anti-war protests and voting against Bush in 2004.