Darakshan Raja was at high school in the Bronx when two planes hit the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. She felt the city and the country shift overnight. President George W. Bush declared the “Global War on Terror,” and bombs soon fell on Iraq and Afghanistan.
For Peace & Riot, Raja takes us through how the “War on Terror” treated children, families, communities, students, air, and water as acceptable collateral in the name of national security.
“Violence against communities and violence against ecosystems became mutually reinforcing expressions of the same political project,” she writes.
The U.S. military emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases between 2001 and 2017, making it the world’s single largest institutional consumer of petroleum. Meanwhile, intrusive surveillance and over-policing touched every part of community life, from gathering in mosques, to shopping in stores, to joining Muslim student groups.
“Precisely when community was needed most, the state sought to dismantle connection through a strategic campaign of surveillance, policing, and othering,” says Raja, who is the Founding Executive Director of Muslims for Just Futures. “After twenty-five years of treating entire communities and ecosystems as collateral, who has the state’s vision of security actually kept safe?”
Tomorrow, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, many will mourn those killed in the attacks, those who have died due to health complications from breathing in toxic air, and the communities who were scapegoated and vilified as a result.
In addition, we can reimagine how we define “security.” As Raja asks, “What if our collective future were instead organized around community care, power, stewardship, trust, democratic governance, dignity, justice, and freedom?”
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