The March for Answers

The March for Answers is a not just a protest march against further suppression of NYC CAN in its battles with the City of New York City to get the referendum for a new 9/11 investigation on the November ballot.

In this context, think of the city as Mike Bloomberg, who just bought his third term as mayor despite New Yorkers voted twice to limit local elected officials to two terms. Term limits were extended by Bloomberg with a good twist of the arms of the City Council and pushed through. So much for the will of the people.

Yet, in the case of NYC CAN, I can readily see why this should be a can of worms for many of the participants in 9/11 still lurking in the city shadows, not to mention in several Middle Eastern countries, including Israel, who all call themselves our friends. With friends like these who needs enemies. That said, NYC CAN filed a 621-page Bill of Particulars on August 27 in response to a summary judgment that was to be made by September 21.

This was in response to an earlier letter from the City Clerk dated July 24, 2009, the city claiming that only 26,003 signatures were valid ergo they were short 3,997 short of the requisite 30,000 signatures to qualify for a ballot referendum. The main reason for disqualifying ballots turned out to be somewhat shady: some having proper addresses counted more than authentic signatures, even if the owners of those signatures may have moved.

This was accentuated when Dennis McMahon, counsel to the petitioners, pointed out, “The City has an incredibly successful record of shooting down ballot initiatives; we will be arguing from a fresh perspective that reflects the unprecedented events of 9/11. We believe the courts will see how critical an issue this is, and be persuaded with our legal reasoning and point of view.”

As a result, there was an immense effort put forth by 50-plus volunteers who gave more than 1,000 hours over a two-week period, from August 10 to August 25, to identify those 7,166 signatures it contended in fact were valid. NYC CAN submitted another 28,000 signatures on September 4 to guarantee that the referendum will go on the ballot if they win the case, bringing the total number of signatures to 80,000.

Representatives for NYC CAN, 9/11 family member Manny Badillo and Executive Director Ted Walter arrived at the Board of Elections on the morning of Wednesday, September 9, to assist the court-appointed referee in beginning a line-by-line review of disputed signatures. This only to hear that the referee’s review had been called off due to a last minute concession by the city. As Mr. Badillo reported, “The city conceded we have 30,000 valid signatures. Big victory.”

Some bright light in the city must have estimated that if the city tried to block this referendum, the numbers of voters for it would escalate dramatically. The attempted block caught the New York public’s eye. And so NYC CAN plans this Sunday, September 27, to hold a March For Answers from Battery Park to City Hall via Ground Zero, the city clerk and the state Supreme Court.

Speakers will include the gutsy Bob McIlvaine, who lost his son on 9/11; Manny Badillo, who lost his uncle that day; Daniel Sunjata, star of “Rescue Me,” the hit show about the lives of firefighters, and many other speakers.

What brings joy to my heart is that this is the perfect follow-up for the 9/11 protest march organized by WeAreTruth.org and other groups. Though dampened somewhat by the rain, wind, and wrath of the gone, the protestors showed in big numbers and held their own. Hopefully, the March For Answers may have fairer weather. In any event, we will keep on keeping on if it doesn’t.

On a larger scale, I hope the March For Answers generates a referendum for America in the next voting cycle. 9/11 occurred first in New York City, but it obviously was, or made to appear to be, an attack on America.

So let New York direct America into the awareness it deserves as to what really happened on that day, first by a new investigation in New York City, which could lead to a new, impartial, commission -- one whose members are not all directly connected to George Bush, his administration, the military, oil interests, and the usual band of bandits.

This would be an enlivening breath of fresh air for America, still weighed down by the misguided “War on Terror,” declared without an investigation, only days after 9/11, even as first responders were working their lungs out on the smoking pile of debris that included thermate-coated steel, molten pools of it, used as an explosive to truly bring down the towers.

The Pandora’s box of pollutants it released in the free-fall explosions of the Towers created the most potent toxic site, New York, and America have ever seen. Of course, urging these men and women to work round the clock helped destroy America’s largest crime-scene, clearing it in eight months, not the year and a half allotted for it, sending the metal to China, other debris to Staten Island’s land fill.

I’m talking about a million tons of atomized concrete, plastics, glass, asbestos, heavy metals, which is listed in my article, 9/11’s second round of slaughter – A review of the health effects of 9/11, A film by Heidi Dehncke-Fisher. If you haven’t read this article, you should. As the filmmaker pointed out the pollutants included . . .

• Over 400 tons of asbestos, which once inhaled in any quantity cannot be expelled by the lungs
  
  
• 90,000 liters of jet fuel containing benzene, a carcinogen that suppresses the immune system and causes leukemia
  
  
• Mercury from over 500,000 fluorescent lights that is toxic to the nervous system, and damaging especially to the kidneys
  
  
• 200,000 pounds of lead and cadmium from personal computers, toxic to the respiratory track, especially damaging to kidneys
  
  
• Polycystic aromatic hydrocarbons that cause lung, laryngeal and throat cancers
  
  
• 130,000 gallons of transformer oil with PCBs, causing serious skin rashes and liver damage
  
  
• Crystalline Silica from 420,000 tons of concrete, sheetrock and glass (tiny particulates that lodge in heart, causing ischemic heart disease)

• . . . and so on and on and on . . .

What happened to New York City was literally an apocalypse, a barbarism which as a life-long New Yorker I am unable to lay on 19 Muslims, so-called hijackers, but on the Bush administration and their helpers in Israel, and to a lesser degree, Pakistan, whose then President Pervez Musharraf, was told by Bush that if he didn’t cooperate, he’d “be bombed back into the stone-age.”

The Saudi’s had a 60-year love affair with the US over their oil, which made them complicit, like it or not. The bin Laden family were in fact old friends of the Bushes, a substantial portion of their money handled by former President GHW Bush at the Carlyle Group, and who withdrew it once the beans were spilled. The prodigal son, Osama, has denied being involved in 9/11, or willing to kill innocent citizens and especially children. You’d never know that from the later, CIA-produced videos with various Osama stand-ins, several wearing gold, which is not allowed in the Muslim faith.

The even larger tragedy here is the world tragedy these lies about 9/11 produced, two ongoing wars that left a million Iraqis, countless Afghans, not to mention upwards of 4,000 Americans dead. The Afghanistan War of Bush has now morphed into the Afpak War of Obama. Similarities in names to Osama and a Hussein middle name seem to have no relevance to a thorough settling, as in go home, in either of those wars.

Needless to say, the cost in dollars as well as blood is bankrupting America, if we’re not there already. So, consider the NYC CAN March For Answers as not just your ordinary garden variety referendum, not just a local issue. It’s a world issue and I imagine the world is watching. So, those of you in New York City, the rest of the US and from any part of the world, are welcome to join us at Battery Park this Sunday, September 27 at 2 PM. The March For Answers is really the first step in stopping this world conflagration in which we currently live.

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net. His new book, “State Of Shock: Poems from 9/11 on” is available at www.jerrymazza.com, Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com.

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