9/11 Memorialized

As a place and a symbol, Ground Zero inevitably overshadowed all other locations this year in the commemoration of Workers Memorial Day.

By Roger M. Williams

New York City

The scene was almost as eerie as it was awesome: As noontime church bells pealed over the immense hole known as Ground Zero, efforts to dismantle the rest of the World Trade Center wreckage came to a near-halt, and workers clambered up the banks and stood, silent and motionless, behind a plank-and-pipe stage. Together with the union leaders seated onstage, they had come to honor their brothers and sisters who perished at the trade center seven months earlier.

Workers Memorial Day is normally and understandably an emotional, sometimes heart-rending time for organized labor. But this year, the emotions took on a new dimension.

Pres. Gerald W. McEntee captured the spirit in a speech near Boston's Logan Airport, point of departure for two of the hijacked airliners. With flight attendants and airport workers in his audience, McEntee also paid tribute to the public employees "who risked their lives and who helped our shocked nation move through the crisis."

Inevitably, however, the day focused on New York, where the airliner attacks killed some 3,000 people, more than 600 of them union members — and the great majority of those either on the job or trying valiantly to rescue or minister to victims. Among the latter were three members of DC 37 and five of the Civil Service Employees Association/Local 1000.

A memorial garden

CSEA held a trio of memorial events across its sprawling territory. In Saratoga, in upstate New York, 500 people attended a remembrance service for the five members lost at the trade center and an additional five members who died in other workplace incidents. CSEA also held services on Long Island and at the Finger Lakes, near Rochester; there, a group of members dedicated a memorial garden at their workplace, a state service facility for the developmentally disabled.

The main event in New York City, coordinated by the city's Central Labor Council, consisted of a solemn service at Trinity Church, a bagpipe-skirling procession to nearby Ground Zero and a series of brief speeches there by labor leaders. Three-century-old Trinity provided an ideal venue: The church suffered no damage in the trade center attacks but served as a haven for survivors and rescue workers. At the morning service, it was filled with a broad mix of politicians, union officials and — in the clear majority — rank-and-file workers, many of whom wore the colorful jackets of their particular councils and locals. They also wore small, yellow ribbons that bore the standard yet stirring Workers Memorial Day slogan, "Mourn for the Dead, Fight for the Living."

A psalm and a 'prayer'

From the pulpit, Lillian Roberts, DC 37's recently installed executive director, read the 23rd Psalm. Ed Malloy, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York City, emphasized not only the victims of Sept. 11 but also "the 6,000 other workers who die each year and the nearly 60,000 who suffer workplace injuries and diseases." Imam Alhag Souleymane Konate's address, billed as a "Prayer," was actually a call to action to secure safer workplaces. "The best way to make sure our workplaces are safe," the imam declared, "is to make sure workers have the freedom to join together in a union."

Most of the Trinity attendees walked to the stage set up alongside Ground Zero. There they braved a chilling wind and strained to hear the speakers above the thrum of heavy equipment that rose from the site. At noon, as the bells rang out, the pipers played "Amazing Grace," and many in the crowd swallowed hard to keep away tears.

Then an employee of Windows on the World, the famous restaurant that collapsed with the rest of the trade center, talked about the many colleagues who had died on the job. And an immigrant worker related in Spanish how he and his colleagues, fed up with unsafe conditions at the jewelry factory that employs them, had banded together to form a union. That seemed a fitting benediction to a day dedicated to fighting as well as mourning.