It has been 10 days since the catastrophic September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, and Ground Zero remains a smoldering, jagged ruin encasing the bodies of nearly 3,000 victims. On that 10th day, for the first time, a fully costumed clown in traditional red-nose regalia stepped into the site, attempting to lift the spirits of gas-masked emergency crews and the thousands of visitors already streaming past the still-smoking wreckage.
What was once the site of the world’s most iconic twin skyscrapers has quickly become both a massive open-air urban funeral and a chaotic gathering place where grief, opportunism, faith, and political fury collide. Thousands of dazed, mournful people travel to the perimeter of the obliterated site, where armed National Guard troops and police have allowed public access within just a few blocks, despite the lingering acrid stench that still requires responders to wear protective gas masks. Surrounding skyscrapers stand deserted, their infrastructure knocked out by the attack, creating a walled, hollow corridor for wandering visitors who move through the area in solemn silence.
Crowds jostle for the perfect view and photograph, most aiming to capture three specific elements in their frame: the smoking wreckage, an American flag in the background, and uniformed U.S. Army troops in the foreground. The entire site is bathed in the constant strobing flicker of camera flashes. Many visitors wear newly printed souvenir T-shirts emblazoned with the twin towers and the American flag, while others bear more aggressive slogans: one young man’s shirt threatens Osama bin Laden, the identified mastermind of the attack, while another declares “America Under Attack. I Can’t Believe I Survived.”
Even as the nation reels from the surprise atrocity, commerce has already reemerged in unexpected, often jarring forms. Mass-produced pre-attack World Trade Center memorabilia—keychains, refrigerator magnets, paperweights, desk decorations, and spoons—are being bought and sold by private vendors, the once-cheerful trinkets now transformed into macabre, commercially priced tokens of the disaster. Near the site, sidewalk vendors hurriedly sell hastily printed postcards and posters showing the towers in flames, while online sellers list charred shrapnel purportedly recovered from the wreckage, including damaged stop signs and other fire-scared debris. Visitors themselves comb through the scattered rubble: one man hesitates over whether to take a handful of broken glass and plaster from the collapsed towers, while a woman bends to pick up small sharp chunks of concrete from the tangled, crushed wreckage. Even lower Manhattan shop displays, coated in a thick layer of ash from the collapse, are photographed as if they are surreal 21st-century Pompeii artifacts.
Raw grief and anger paint the scene as well. Countless visitors scrawl revenge-filled slogans and the names of lost loved ones across the ash-caked walls and windows of surrounding buildings. One Irish visitor, who traveled to the site just for the day, can barely process the horror of what she sees, noting “Up there, they were jumping out of the windows. It’s too horrible to even think about.” One anecdote shared among visitors encapsulates the scale of personal loss: when a reporter asked a woman wiping ash off a car if it belonged to her, she simply pointed to the ash and said, “No. These are my friends.”
Alongside grief, competing social and religious forces have also converged on Lower Manhattan. Black Christian evangelists bang tambourines and preach salvation near the site, while a group of Missionaries of Charity nuns from India, clad in their signature white-and-blue saris, distribute prayer cards for the upcoming canonization of Mother Teresa, who died in 1997. Pundits in the immediate aftermath have already predicted the end of “frivolous” pop culture obsessions like celebrity gossip, arguing the attack has permanently shifted American priorities.
Beyond Ground Zero, the attack has already upended American society and exposed deep political divides over how the nation should respond. In New York’s Times Square, just 10 days after the attack, nearly 2,000 anti-war activists gathered for the first major post-9/11 protest, holding signs challenging planned military action in Afghanistan and questioning political and corporate motives for war. Their demonstration was met with hostility from counter-protesters, who taunted marchers with claims the event amounted to martial law. Above the crowd, giant outdoor screens looped a tribute to first responders killed in the attack, while electronic headlines scrolled below updating the public on plans for a U.S. assault on Afghanistan.
Protesters challenged the emerging pro-war consensus, with voices ranging from anti-globalization activists to communist organizers to anarchists. Many warned that the attack would be used to justify expanded domestic surveillance, roll back civil liberties, and profit wealthy defense contractors while working-class people paid the price in blood. “This alleged war that is going to start, is going to make a lot of billionaires into multi-billionaires, and a lot of body bags,” Daniel O’Connor, a member of the anti-globalization Direct Action Network, told a reporter over a battery-powered loudspeaker. Even within the protest, tensions boiled over: a blonde activist got into a shouting match with a Palestinian mother over fears that U.S. bombing would kill Afghan children, yelling “Why not? They are only going to grow up to be adult Talibans and attack us!” before the woman left in anger.
Critics also decry the rapid commercialization of the tragedy, with vendors selling revenge-themed T-shirts calling for bin Laden’s death for profit. “I think it’s revolting that they’re making money off of a tragedy. It’s like a novelty for us,” observed Charlotte Bormann, an accessories designer who attended the Times Square protest. Media figures have also split along pro- and anti-war lines: the New York Post published a column attacking veteran CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour for anti-U.S. bias in her coverage, while respected human rights writer Nat Hentoff warned that new repressive measures would target any American who spoke out against the coming war on terror.
In the wider country, the attack has left minority communities fearful of backlash. Narinder Singh, a Sikh man from Lenexa, Kansas, wrote that he planned to wear clothing matching the U.S. national colors out in public, because he feared neighbors would mistakenly blame him and other Sikhs for the attacks carried out by Arab suicide hijackers. “Am I ashamed of myself, my ethnicity or my faith? Am I afraid of my fellow Americans? Did I commit a crime of some sort?” he asked in an open letter, pushing back against the unfair targeting. At the same time, conservative supporters of President George W. Bush pushed back against anti-administration criticism: one Dallas woman wrote to the Village Voice snapping that any critic of Bush should move to Afghanistan, a letter the paper headlined “A Load of Kabul.”
Across every corner of public life, the attack has already reshaped American culture: advertisers have rushed to add American flags to their branding and publish heartfelt messages about unity and national endurance, while posters calling for Osama bin Laden “dead or alive” for mass murder line shop windows across the city. As New Yorkers grapple with their loss, they also disagree sharply on what comes next—with some optimistic that the nation will rebuild like Japan after World War II, and others bracing for more deadly attacks at home, spurring thousands to buy $85 gas masks out of fear of chemical or biological assaults, even as officials downplay their effectiveness.