From BCC’s Remembrance Ceremony – American Civic Association Tragedy
Last Friday, Binghamton, Broome County, New York State, our Country, and indeed the whole world witnessed a senseless tragedy that unfolded at the American Civic Association building and remains as incomprehensible as it does horrifying. The killing of thirteen individuals, plus the shooter himself, is an event that defies rational, logical explanation and constitutes an evil act of monstrous proportions.
Here was a group of a few office workers, teachers, and student learners, immigrants if you will, persons who, in the paraphrased words of the poet, were among the “tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” human beings who were merely longing for a better life, working hard to master the English language, all the while dreaming of and working toward the goal of United States citizenship. How unfair that in the span of perhaps only one or two minutes, the dreams of a better life were forever diminished, and the carnage of that despicable act will continue to devastate many hundreds of lives for years to come.
Our hearts go out to the victims, their families and loved ones, their friends, but also to ourselves for our collectively having to endure once again such mindless tragedy and pain.
This remembrance observance today is first and foremost for the victims, who though no longer are among us, leave their mark upon all those with whom they came into contact.
This observance today is also for all of us, who again have had to witness an epic act of horror which has, so unfortunately, become commonplace in our society. We witnessed Columbine, and we cried. We endured the horrifying days of 9-11 and its aftermath, and we cried again. We witnessed Virginia Tech. – two years ago this month – and we cried again. We have seen so many seemingly random and inexplicable acts of desperation and violence that have unfairly targeted and punished innocent people – in Post Offices, in churches, in schools, in colleges and universities, in malls, and we have cried again. And now we see this … in our own community, and we cry and search for explanations again, but this time, we don’t just see it on television; this time we drive by and look at the building where lives were lost, perhaps even a building we have driven by hundreds or even thousands of times, or a building we have spent time in.
As a species, we are a resilient group. When tragedy strikes at our hearts and souls, our resilience, nurtured by the passage of time, is what enables us to rise again to face life with hope and optimism . And even at the precise time when acts of horror occur, they are usually always accompanied by an equal if not larger number of unselfish acts of kindness and heroism that reaffirm our faith in human nature.
Last Friday, even among the killing and devastation, there were acts of kindness, goodness, and bravery that were evident. There was the loving act of a husband who tried to shield his wife from the shooter’s deadly bullets. There was the phone call of a receptionist who made the 911 call after being shot and who, with that call, risked death. There was the blocking of the downstairs boiler room door by a young man who could easily have been killed had the gunman wandered downstairs. There was the unselfish act of BCC faculty member Twon Nwin, who was contacted early on and volunteered to serve as a Vietnamese translator-interpreter in telephone conversations with those who remained inside the building before they could be rescued.
But even in light of these acts of bravery and kindness, there remains the killing of innocent people last Friday and the devastating effects upon who know how many lives. When will this stop? And if it cannot be stopped, how can it at least be minimized so as to prevent us from become numb to its carnage? This is the question that we pose today – especially to those among us today who are 18, 19, 20 years old. Yours is the world of the future. What can be done to help prevent or minimize these acts of horror? What can be done to help make the aftermath of these acts easier for survivors to deal with?
These are among the great challenges with which the next generation of Americans will have to deal. So today, April 9, 2009, here, all of us present need to ask ourselves, what can we do to help stop this, to help find some solution, and if not a whole, complete solution, at the very least, what can minimize these types of acts and their consequences? Clearly, we must do something. To paraphrase the Irish Statesmen and Member of the British House of Commons Edmund Burke who observed that “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men [and women] do nothing.” Probably, we can never completely solve this problem, but merely to wait, cynically, for the next major shooting, and the next, and the next, without trying to do something to minimize these deadly consequences is not enough.
Just as our own resilience will help us deal with, prevail over, and eventually move past the tragedy of last Friday, may our resilience also help us, through our own Statesmen and Stateswomen, to find answers to minimize and better cope with – if not eliminate – these cruel, senseless acts of violence.
Daniel T. Hayes, Ph. D.
Interim President
Broome Community College
