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Freedom Action of the Week
Email List Archive
Free-Market.Net's F r e e d o m A c t i o n o f t h e W e e k
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Edited by Thomas L. Knapp. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this and
other lists, click to: http://www.free-market.net/features/lists/
----- Featured Action of the Week -----
Fourth Week of September, 2001:
Honor the Heroes of United Flight 93
A lot of heroes revealed themselves on September 11th, 2001.
In New York City, hundreds of firefighters and police officers risked --
and lost -- their lives, doing their damnedest to get people out of the
World Trade Center towers. One of them, as many of you may know, was John
Perry, a libertarian activist and stalwart of the New York Libertarian Party.
On the morning of September 11th, Perry -- an NYPD officer -- was on his
way in to his precinct. Unlike many police officers, he wasn't going in for
a normal day of work. He was going in to fill out some papers.
September 11th was the day that John Perry was due to retire.
Instead, caught midway between home and precinct by the news of aircraft
crashing into the World Trade Center buildings, he decided to spend the day
doing what police officers, at their best, do every day: defend and protect
the people for whom they work. He turned around, rushed to the scene, and
entered one of the buildings to help evacuate the innocent and aid the
injured.
Like more than 6,000 others, John Perry is missing and presumed dead.
We'll never know the full extent or content of the heroism that manifested
itself on September 11th, but we should recognize it where we find it. In
particular, the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 are entitled to
our admiration and gratitude.
En route from Newark to San Francisco, Flight 93 was hijacked somewhere
over the Cleveland area; those who took it over turned it east, toward the
carnage that was even then taking place in New York and Washington.
Some of the passengers were able to call loved ones from their cell phones
or from the "sky phones" that are now regular features of airliners. We
know that they became aware of the fact that three other airliners had been
intentionally crashed into buildings full of people. And we know that they
decided they would not be part of allowing that to happen a fourth time.
Beyond that, all we know is that Flight 93 came to rest on the ground in
Pennsylvania, and that all on board were killed. We don't -- and may never
-- know if this happened during a valiant struggle for control of the
cockpit, or if the passengers defeated the terrorists but were then unable
to control the plane, or even if the plane was shot from the sky by U.S.
military aircraft (we do know that the president authorized the downing of
the plane; the military denies that it was actually accomplished).
What we do know is that the passengers of Flight 93 took their fate into
their own hands as best they could. Rather than passively allowing
themselves to be used as human weapons of mass destruction, they fought
back. They fought for the lives of uncounted innocents on the ground below
them, and they died defending those lives.
That's worthy of honor, and UnitedHeroes.Com is dedicated to the
remembrance of these unique individuals and their willingness to risk and
lose their lives in a twilight struggle aboard a doomed aircraft, with
nothing to gain except the hope that they might save the lives of others.
I hope you'll drop by the site and add your name to the list of grateful
individuals acknowledging the heroism of the passengers of Flight 93.
UnitedHeroes.Com
http://www.unitedheroes.com/
Action of the Week column archive:
http://www.free-market.net/features/list-archives/activism/maillist.html
The Freedom Action of the Week Club: Commit yourself to doing one
action per week. If the action above doesn't appeal to you, consider
one of the alternate actions at:
http://www.free-market.net/features/action/
If you know about another action or organize one of your own, e-mail
Tom at tlknapp@free-market.net so we can tell the rest of the group
next week.
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