New York has its pillars of light and readings of names for the anniversary of 9/11, but it seems to lack any invitation to the citizenry to feel its own power and prepare for the next calamity. For there will be next times for San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, and possibly – in this era of extreme and turbulent weather, and economic upheaval – a great many other cities and towns in this country and elsewhere.

The rebuilt city, the eventual rise of disaster preparedness, the people who go on with their everyday lives – these are the monument San Francisco needed and every city needs to transcend its calamities. New Yorkers could gather in Union Square and elsewhere to remember what happened, really remember, remember that the heroes weren’t necessarily men, or in uniform, but were almost everyone everywhere that day.

They could open their hearts and minds to discuss mourning, joy, death, violence, power, weakness, truth and lies, as they did that week. They could consider what constitutes safety and security, what else this country could be, and what its foreign and energy policies have to do with these things.
They could walk the streets together to demonstrate that New York is still a great city, whose people are not frightened into going into hiding or flight from public and urban life. They could more consciously and ceremoniously do what new Yorkers, perhaps best of all American, do every day: coexist boldly

and openly in a great mixture of colors, nationalities, classes, and opinions, daring to speak to strangers and to live in public.

The dead must be remembered, but the living are the monument, the living who coexist in peace in ordinary times and who save one another in extraordinary times. Civil society triumphed that morning in full glory. Look at it: remember that this is who we were and can be.