Sean Tarjoto						    Prof. Neil Brenner
Urban Political Economy					    October 22, 2001

REACTION: “After the Disaster: Skyscrapers, Surveillance and the End of Public Space?” Panel Discussion
	We have the capacity to determine the political and economic future of the world. The nation needs to ask its government whether, in a recession, spending a tax surplus on industry bailouts is fair given the history of labor in the U.S. and whether a sustained, indefinitely timed, military campaign will increase our chances of survival. The matter of the global economic infrastructure’s dependency on airborne transportation raises the issue Thomas Bender says America has been ignoring: if this is a fracture on the societal structure of capitalism, then it is also a (second) chance to rethink its foundations.
	Then there is the bastard child of public space, and its desire to reclaim it.  The desire to connect around feelings of anger quickly turns into the feeling of helplessness, and that either manifests itself in mourning or organizing political movement.  In the weeks immediately following September 11th, the social role of public space was shared by a convergence of secular, political discussion with a patriotic sanctification. This, however, never seemed to be a territorial struggle. The political demonstrations September 14th at Union Square were made with sensitivity toward the space that had been claimed sacred - “marshals” wore red ribbons as both talismans of solidarity and neutrality, handwritten signs calling for both “justice and “peace” were displayed not with the call for action, but for restraint. The religious collective behavior of American hymns and the use of icons of patriotism were displayed on revolutionary memorials which also served as a canvas for signs of peace and love. 
	Two questions are raised: how is the religious and political action which violently altered the urban landscape being dealt with by the state on a local level? And how is its equally powerful economic apparatus serving to help the populace adjust? 
	Toward the course of a month, the dynamic moments converging at Union Square, which delineates the northern boundary of the police and paramilitary corridor, came to symbolize the reclaiming of community, and the south end of 16 acres which symbolize the victims of capitalism, an emerging polarization occurred. From September 11th to the day city parks and police were ordered to remove the memorial, the site of the trade center saw an increasing fortification, while on the last day the memorial was suddenly desecrated. *	 
	Abu-Lughod suggested that “sacred ground” was perverted into “ground zero”, as in the urns offered to the family of victims whose bodies would never be recovered were filled with dust of the disaster.  With rubble instead of remains, it seemed as if the victims were a sacrifice for economic progress.  Capital, not liberty, is the crux of American loyalty. 
	Abu-Lughod also suggests that symbols of patriotism, furthermore, also serve as “talismans of protection” for people of Middle Eastern, South Asian descent from retaliation from a domestic form of terrorism.  Hussein Ibish, from the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) reports that,
“In one instance, three Arab American men were expelled from Northwest flight 673 from Minneapolis to Salt Lake City at the insistence of other passengers, because of their ethnicity. When the other passengers refused to fly if the three remained on board, Northwest expelled the Arab Americans from the plane.” (http://www.adc.org/press/2001/21september2001.htm)
	What might these pessimistic observations amount to without a democratic decision-making process? And what is Sharon Zukis comment on Babylon and Union Square’s share with Peter Marcuse’s urban citadelization of the future? If Sassen is right, and this is really creative destruction, aren’t these forces of brutality a little too postmodern, a little too uncivilized? Suppose that the future of Lower Manhattan becomes an intensely networked “multiplicity of fragments”, and may become the home of dramatically innovative technological sectors which we could never imagine, what kind of social-moral fiber is this sort of economic progress weaving? Will the new sectors also be orphans of a disaster? Will we answer the question for our children, why do they hate us?