For the Future

The Healing Project for the 2003-2004 year is under construction. Art is in production that will further define and push our edge, and cranes will again be folded and collected to give away on 9/11/04 to passersby, victim’s families, companies who suffered losses of life, individual victims/survivors, peaceful Americans and peaceful neighbors everywhere.

The following thoughts were from the 2002-2003 year, but remain relevant today:

During the yearlong course of this current project, we realized that many people who came to participate had some link to violent death---which is to say that someone close to them has died violently and not necessarily on 9/11. We wanted to find a way to speak to these deaths as an extension of the Healing Project, to explore the links, to honor their lives, to offer a platform, to offer visibility via art, and healing through process.

Examples of how widespread and pervasive the issue of violence is in our lives include these: our former Co-Director whose High School friend was killed at École Polytechnique in 1989, when a gunman went on a killing spree; my own mother who died from a self-inflicted gun shot; and a teenager who was one of the first participants in this project, who lost her brother to random gun violence, here in Oakland, California. These examples are intimate and unique, and yet mirror experiences of many.

We’ve decided to push this edge and branch out now because the City of Oakland---where this project is based--- is experiencing a string of violent deaths this year which is at once both record-breaking and heartbreaking. At the same time the nation’s attention has again turned to terror as a gunman indiscriminately chooses victims to target near our capital, to kill. Simultaneously, the World grieves for the victims in Bali--- Balinese, Indonesian, and Australian, native and foreign---alike. These and other victims of violence throughout the World need to be recognized as an integral first step on the path toward ending these cycles of violence.

Because we view 9/11 as a totem event, formidable in it’s own right and yet representing many things to many people, we are going to continue our 9/11 focus, and supervise projects with partners whom we build coalitions with, including schools where we have already experienced participation. We outline these projects as an example of what can be done in your own community to improve their climates, build bridges, and express yourself on important issues that affect us all.

Some of our projects are designed to impact locally, and some are fashioned to speak more globally. The important thing is to not be a tourist to tragedy and injustice, but to mobilize and to give voice. We urge groups and schools to consider undertaking a special project with the WTCHP to give voice to their special concerns.