9/11 — the day I became a humanitarian
By: Lauren Anders Brown
Tags: Storyteller, 9 11 Attacks, Humanitarian

We all know where we were. I was in my high school gym class, it was a bright and sunny day and we had been running around the track just ten miles away from Manhattan. I quickly changed back into my normal attire to make sure I wasn’t late for my honours history class on the other side of my high school. I was so quick, I was the first to walk in and witness my distraught history teacher failing to hold back her emotions as she noticed me come in. She jumped out of the chair instantly at my presence, and made me sit down and do what she couldn’t do — read the news. When I was reading the webpage, they were just words coming out of my mouth I hadn’t understood what was happening until her eyes filled with tears. I asked if I should continue on and she told me yes, she couldn’t bear to read anymore because her son was working in one of the buildings near the first tower.

By the time the bell rang and all the students filed into our history class, our history had changed forever.

Over the course of the day, one by one students were being pulled out of school by parents as they were able to leave work — the first to go was the NYPD commissioner’s son. Before lunch in my philosophy class I was able to go as well, at that point all classes consisted of televisions and speechless teachers. What could they say that could explain what happened?

For me what came out of the ash of Ground Zero was not a blind sense of patriotism or a burning hatred for revenge. That day I found the humanitarian within me that would continue to shape and inspire my work until today.

Twenty years ago I first sat with the heavy curiosity wondering what drove people to commit such a horrific act? I find myself still sitting with that same heavy curiosity as the crisis in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. It can feel too heavy, oppressive and where it’s easier to forget than to feel the powerlessness.

9/11 was the first time I attempted to transform that powerlessness into empowerment. I self-started a volunteer club called H.E.L.P. (Helping Each other Live and Prosper). I took metal coffee cans and decorated them for donations before the days of cash free transactions when people asked for change, I made red white and blue ribbons to hand out in exchange of donations and organised a day to volunteer at a distribution centre. All of this was supported by my one teacher I asked to be the advisor for the group. When the distribution centre day came, I was the only student present. I had to work harder working alone, and find resilience I was unaware I possessed.

So today twenty years on, I am still working harder as I mostly work alone as a self-shooting director and everyday find resilience I am unaware is buried deep within me to continue to tell the stories of others.

That resilience can come in the form of long travels to get to remote destinations, learning a new language and sometimes a whole new alphabet like Arabic, respecting the cultural understandings of others, listening to the challenges and traumatic stories even if they trigger my own trauma within me. I feel it is through better understanding of one another we can relate to each other and assure we never have another event with such a senseless loss of life in our living history.