20th ANNIVERSARY - 9/11 Attack on America

"American Muslims remember how 9/11 changed America as they knew it" PBS NewsHour 9/6/2021

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SUMMARY:  This week, the PBS NewsHour is marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with stories examining some of the ways that day transformed the nation and the world.  Amna Nawaz begins our coverage with a look at the effect on millions of American Muslims.

 

 

"Middletown lost the most residents on 9/11 after NYC.  Here’s how the community is healing" PBS NewsHour 9/7/2021

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SUMMARY:  Ali Rogin returns to Middletown, a New Jersey town where she grew up that was disproportionately affected by the 9/11 attacks in 2001, to see how residents and neighbors coped over the past two decades.

"Remembering the 40 heroes aboard Flight 93 and how they thwarted 9/11 hijackers" PBS NewsHour 9/8/2021

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SUMMARY:  Since 2001, a great deal of attention has been paid to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon.  But less so for Flight 93.  The U.S. Capitol was the likely target of where hijackers had planned to crash the plane.  Instead, passengers and crew forced the plane down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — now an important touchstone site in the community.  William Brangham reports.

 

"How 9/11 weighs heavy on the generation born after the 2001 attacks" PBS NewsHour 9/8/2021

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SUMMARY:  PBS NewsHour's Student Reporting Labs network of high school journalism programs across the country gathered the reflections of teenagers to explore the legacy of 9/11 on their generation.  They present the voices of young Americans who were born after Sept. 11, 2001, and reveal how their lives were shaped by it.

 

 

"New York’s 9/11 first responders are battling a new kind of mass trauma" PBS NewsHour 9/9/2021

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SUMMARY:  For our endeavor to mark the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, John Yang spoke to first responders and medical workers who have lived and worked through both the attacks and have also more recently seen the mass trauma from COVID-19 in the city that was the epicenter of both: New York.

 

 

"Flight 77 crashed just below Robert Hogue’s Pentagon office.  Here’s his story" PBS NewsHour 9/9/2021

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SUMMARY:  PBS NewsHour's broadcast studio is just a few miles from the Pentagon here in Washington [DC].  On 9/11, that iconic structure designed to project American military might was struck clear out of the blue, just like the twin towers.  184 people died both in the building and on American Flight 77, excluding the hijackers.  But many more escaped.  We hear from Robert Hogue, one of the people who made it out.

 

 

"How the attacks of 9/11 reshaped America’s role in the world" PBS NewsHour 9/10/2021

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SUMMARY:  This week PBS NewsHour has been marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by exploring how they have impacted the U.S. at home and abroad.  Judy Woodruff leads our latest conversation on the ways the 9/11 attacks shaped American foreign policy over the last two decades.

 

 

"A photographer’s view of 9/11 from across the river" PBS NewsHour 9/11/2021

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SUMMARY:  On the morning of September 11th, photojournalist Jennifer Brown raced down to the waterfront in her town of Jersey City, NJ.  Directly across the river from the World Trade Center, Brown photographed the attacks for the former Star-Ledger, now NJ Advance Media.  She spoke to Hari Sreenivasan about the sights, sounds and emotions from her vantage point, and what it was like to capture a moment that changed history.

 

 

"20 years after 9/11, Dearborn market helps unify Arab community" PBS NewsHour 9/11/2021

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SUMMARY:  The attacks of 9/11 fueled Islamophobia, and increased incidents of hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs.  NewsHour Weekend’s Christopher Booker reports on how the events of 9/11 were a catalyst for an Arab community in metropolitan Detroit to unite and combat stereotypes by building a stronger cultural identity through food.

 

 

"20 years later, a remembrance for the NYFD’s fallen chaplain" PBS NewsHour 9/12/2021

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SUMMARY:  When the two towers fell and the New York Fire Department rushed in to save victims, Father Mychal Judge, chaplain of the NYFD, entered the burning buildings, too: he prayed in the lobby for victims and first responders. One of the many searing images from 9/11 is Father Judge's body being carried out of the rubble. In remembrance, this animated segment from our partners at StoryCorps is told by his close friend, Father Michael Duffy.

BRIEF BUT SPECTACULAR - Comedy And Islamophobia

"When a comedian realized she could fight Islamophobia" PBS NewsHour 6/16/2016

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SUMMARY:  Growing up in Palm Springs, Iranian-American Muslim comedian Negin Farsad yearned to fit in.  But as she grew older amid rising Islamophobia, Farsad realized she had her own people, and she could use her comedy to do more than make people laugh -- she could make them think.  Farsad gives her Brief But Spectacular take on being an Iranian-American Muslim female comedian lady.

HARASSMENT - Combating Islamophobia

"Teaching ‘different is OK' to combat Islamophobia in U.S. schools" PBS NewsHour 5/17/2016

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SUMMARY:  According to a new study, some 50 percent of all Muslim students in the U.S. have been bullied by their peers.  In mostly-white St. Cloud, Minnesota — where thousands of east African refugees have relocated — the problem got so bad that Muslim students walked out of the city's high school en massè.  John Tulenko of Education Week takes a look at the intersection of education and Islamophobia.

JOHN TULENKO, Education Week:  Hafsa Abdi, who's 18-years-old, remembers well the day four years ago when she was first bullied for being Muslim.

HAFSA ABDI, Student, St. Cloud Technical High School:  The last day of by eighth grade year, I was just going home, and then this boy — I think he was a year younger than me — he pulled off my hijab.  And at the time, I was wearing a longer one, so it was more easy to kind of like pull off from the back.

And then I also had like a pin underneath to hold it in place.  And then that kind of came loose.  So, like, at the time I was just trying to think of like five different things at one time, like trying to get the pin to not stab me in the neck, and then turn around to see who this kid is.

JOHN TULENKO:  In high school, the bullying continued, especially when she and other Muslim students would gather to pray.

HAFSA ABDI:  Mostly, the upperclassmen, they would come into the bathroom sometimes and start fighting with the Somali girls that were trying to wash for prayer, and then when it gets reported, nothing would happen.

JOHN TULENKO:  What would they say?

HAFSA ABDI:  So they'd be like, oh, well, why are you making the bathroom dirty, you stinky Somalian or you terrorist or stuff like that, or go back to where you came from.

JOHN TULENKO:  Where Hafsa comes from is Minnesota.  She was born here, after her parents fled Somalia to escape civil war.  Thousands of other East African refugees have also come to St. Cloud, changing the face of this mostly white, mostly Catholic small city.

WILLIE JETT, Superintendent, St. Cloud Area School District 742:  My job is to make sure that all children, whether it's their children, whether it's somebody brand-new to the country, that they have the best tools available to be successful here in America, here within our community.

JOHN TULENKO:  For superintendent Willie Jett, educating the new arrivals required changes across the board.

WILLIE JETT:  What we have had to do is start from ground zero.  You're trying to make sure that, (A) All the different languages within school are welcomed.

You're trying to make sure that you have interpreters.  You're making sure that you're revamping teaching staff and support staff and the way that you hold conferences, the way that you send messages home.  It's not what it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, even 10 years ago.

NEWSHOUR ESSAY - A Muslim Jedi

"Why the world could use a Muslim Jedi" PBS NewsHour 1/22/2016

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SUMMARY:  How can we relieve anti-Muslim discrimination?  Haroon Moghul says that adding a Muslim character to a certain science fiction franchise (Star Wars) might go a long way in changing perceptions (Islamophobia) and offering a vision of a more united future.