The last days of our USA trip we have spend in New York City. We stayed in Mary House in the east side of Manhattan. Two blocks down is Saint Josephs House and, important to us, one block up is where Anthony has his appartment.
 |
| Anthony, Ina and Susan |
|
We met Anthony last year in Büchel at the International Camp against the nuclear weapons stationed there, entered the airforcebase and got arrested together. Anthony is a 5th generation New Yorker and has lots of knowledge about the city and its people. He also is one of the friendliest and loving people I have ever met.
He showed us many places in New York, too many to tell you about in this blog. From the offices of the Black Panther to the Stonewall Inn, the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and the hall Lincoln spoke inn before he became president. He took us to a 80 year old vegetarian dinner for breakfast and showed us the best bookstores.
The most moving day was when we went with him to the memorial of the atack on the twin towers. Where the towers stood are now two big waterfall-like fountains with the names of all who died there. And a beautifull dove-like new subway-station that seems a celebration of capitalist victory over the attack because of all the shops inside, which made me both sad and angry. What made it so emotional was Anthonies story of how he felt that the world came together right after the attack and there was so much love and good will to make things better again. And that all this was destroyed three days later when talk started about revenge and starting wars on terrorism.
Other things we did was joining the weekly vigil against the war in Jemen and meeting with the faithfull vigillers
that have been doing this for two years now.
We helped serving lunch in St Joseph house,
Chris helped in the kitchen in Mary House,
and we had a nice meeting with Carmen Trotta who is one of the Kingsbay Plowshares.
We listened to a reading of a play in Mary House, climbed the Brooklyn Bridge, saw where the Occupy movement camped and had dinner in a restaurant called Via della Pace and we talked to some of the amazing women running Mary House, Jane, Kathy, Joanne (I probably are forgetting someone, sorry!)and many volunteers too.
