In the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center, people tended to gather in the evening in Union Square Park, right above 14th Street. It was an ideal location: Fourteenth Street was the northern border of the downtown zone that was closed to non-emergency vehicles, and police checked IDs for anyone crossing into the zone; if you didn't live there, you were turned away. For anyone living above 14th Street, Union Square Park was as close as you could get to the World Trade Center site. These impromptu evening gatherings in Union Square Park were mostly about grief, and about being with our fellow New Yorkers to deal psychologically and emotionally with what had happened. I remember much sadness, many families and children, a lot of candles, photographs, and communal art works of sorts. Despite the random appearance of an occasional angry crazy person muttering about revenge and frightening the children, the gatherings were very quiet and peaceful. If these gatherings could have
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