Farnoush Amiri

All posts by Farnoush Amiri

Living in the Shadow of Dreamers

Monica Sibri is on the advisory board of the CUNY Dreamers, where she oversees activity and initiatives that those with protected and unprotected status engage in. Photo by Farnoush Amiri

Monica Sibri is a Dreamer who isn’t protected by DACA. Not because she didn’t apply or because she was “lazy,” as members of the current administration have stated, but because she came to the U.S. from Ecuador three months after her 16th birthday, making her ineligible for the program.

The term “Dreamer” originally came from the DREAM Act, which was a legislation proposed by representatives of both parties. In 2012, Barack Obama’s enactment of DACA was a compromise based on the proposals of the act and they, too, called themselves “Dreamers.” Young people like Sibri, although not protected by DACA, have used the word as a way to empower themselves.

“The way someone reacts to you when you say you’re a ‘Dreamer’ than when you’re undocumented is completely different,” Sibri, 25, said.”By saying that you’re undocumented, it assumes that you’re not in school or you’re this person who’s working in cleaning or you likely crossed the border, but when you say you’re a ‘Dreamer,’ people assume differently.”

According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank that studies global immigration patterns, an estimated 3.6 million people were brought to the U.S. before their 18th birthdays, making the focus on the almost 800,000 DACA recipients seem like an overlook of the larger issue of child immigration.

 

Sibri’s father decided to uproot their family when Ecuador’s currency changed in 2000 from the Ecuadorian Sucre to the U.S. Dollar, and he lost his managerial position at a candle company.

Her parents came to the U.S. to establish a life in Staten Island, separating the family for five years.
“I became an adult really young,” Sibri said. “I had to take care of my two younger sisters.”

When she learned she was undocumented and about the negativity surrounding it, she started calling herself a “Dreamer.” Sibri said that this helped her to confidently pursue higher education at the College of Staten Island where she graduated last year with a degree in American politics, policy and advocacy.

Since the law does not require one to disclose their immigration status, especially in educational facilities, Sibri maintained this persona, but never received any actual funds or special resources because of it. She explained that it created a shield against the stereotypes placed on undocumented individuals.

“My passion for creating a network of support begun with talking about the barriers I experienced myself. In college, I was often questioned about my immigration status and when letting them know that I was undocumented I got concerned looks, followed by a list of questions as to how I was in school,” Sibri said. “When talking about this, I learned through speaking to the network that this was happening in all spaces, from the school’s scholarship to the academic department, from the registration office to the office of financial aid, from the classroom to the soccer field.”

Sibri’s solution to this was to create the City University of New York  Dreamers, an organization for those with protected and unprotected status in the college system. Today, she serves on the advisory board for the program and has gone on to help initiate a larger group for “Dreamers” after she graduated from college and realized the same resources weren’t set up to foster undocumented individuals after graduation.

“DACA recipients often assume that I am a DACA recipient because of my work, and often when they learned of my status, they share tears with me,” Sibri said. “We just cry together.”

She said that she knows other undocumented students who have adopted the identity “dreamer” or assumed the societal benefits of a DACA recipient, but that it becomes much more complex upon graduating from higher education.

“(Post-grad), undocumented students begin to realize there are some things they have to navigate around and that there are potential barriers to achieving their dreams,” said Cristina Velez, staff attorney for the Immigration Defense Fund at New York University.

Sibri has been pushing against that narrative through her work at a nonprofit called Ignite, which aims to empower college-aged women to become active in their community and eventually run for office.

“I thought to myself, I’m undocumented, I might be in the process of getting deported. What do I do in the meantime?” Sibri said. “Democrats and Republicans in office are not representing me so I have to train the next generation to represent their communities like they’re supposed to.”

Now, Sibri and the more than 11 million undocumented individuals in the U.S. have nothing to do but wait — wait to see if a clean DREAM Act is passed or if they have to bargain a possible road to citizenship and protected status with Republican efforts to get a border wall and an end to “chain migration.”

“I think there is a glimmer of hope right now that if DREAM Act does pass then some (undocumented individuals) would finally have some opportunity to work in the United States and to have status,” Velez said. “For them, probably seeing the benefits of DACA for their peers must be very destructive and difficult at times. And I’m sure it would be even more of a blow if the DREAM Act did not come to pass.”

For Sibri, it will be more than a blow. She is part of what she calls a “mixed-status” family; her younger brother is a U.S. citizen while the rest of her family is undocumented. As the March 5 deadline approaches for congressional agreement on the future of “Dreamers” and consequently undocumented individuals alike, Sibri and her family are at peril of being separated once again. Deportation has become more of a reality for undocumented individuals than ever before. Sibri, said she constantly lives in fear of deportation and options may be running out.

“As much as I would love to continue fighting, my timeline in New York is dependent on us getting some sort of legislation in the next five years. If not, I will have to self-deport,” Sibri said, referring to undocumented individuals leaving a country where they could face deportation before ICE reaches them. “What else can I do? We are living day by day without being able to look ahead.”

The children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors keep the stories alive

Vivien Orbach Smith with her parents Larry “Lothar” and Ruth Orbach, both natives of Berlin, Germany, at her NYU college graduation. Larry Orbach survived Auschwitz and a death march to Buchenwald.

 

At first, Vivien Orbach-Smith wasn’t sure she wanted to know the vexing details about what her father, Larry “Lothar” Orbach, had endured during the Holocaust, but in deciding to coauthor his memoir in 1996, she chose to tell the story of one man who survived.

“I became a writer/daughter on a mission: to give voice to the suffering, joys and complex humanity of not only Lothar, but the six million European Jews — 1.5 million of them children — who were killed under systematic, targeted, state-sponsored genocide,” Orbach-Smith said in the foreword of the book, “Young Lothar: An Underground Fugitive in Berlin.”

The NYU journalism adjunct professor and alumna, whose parents are both survivors of the Holocaust, has devoted her life’s work to furthering the stories that surround the tragedy. On the day after Holocaust Remembrance Day, she recalled her father’s life and the legacy of survivors.

“After the war, in the 1950s, the Holocaust was still very fresh,” Orbach-Smith, said. “We were surrounded by physical evidence, meaning the living survivors. Some of them with the numbers still on their arms and thick accents that were evidence of what had occurred.”

But even with visible confirmation of what had occurred surrounding them, Orbach-Smith shared that there was still hesitance to discuss the atrocities to their community.

Vivien Orbach-Smith is the co-author of “Young Lothar: An Underground Fugitive in Nazi Berlin.”

“I was not born into an environment or an American culture where people, Jews or non-Jews, asked questions about the number on my father’s arm or was he in any way encouraged to talk about it,” Orbach-Smith said. “The word ‘Holocaust’ did not even exist. There was no word for what had happened.”

But in recent decades, things took a shift, which many, including Orbach-Smith, attest to the need to tell the stories while they can.

According to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the youngest survivors today are said to be 73 years old.

“I think the survivors have more of sense of urgency now that it was time to talk. Before their time ran out,” Orbach-Smith said. “And that they really are the only living witnesses and their testimony would matter.”

NYU students Daniella Panitch and Ari Spitzer may be part of the last generation who will get their education of the Holocaust firsthand.

“I can remember having so many different Holocaust survivors visit my class in elementary school and my grandparents sharing their personal stories of them being in concentration camps or escaping Nazi Germany,” Panitch said. “And you hear the firsthand accounts and it’s not this date or this thing that happened in history books but it’s real person’s story.”

Panitch is a member of the Bronfman Center, a Jewish student life organization at NYU. But even with direct exposure and involvement in Jewish culture and education, Panitch feels obligated to further the message of her ancestors.

“I remember my parents telling me, ‘you’re so fortunate to being hearing this firsthand and your children won’t have that. It’s your obligation to pass that on,’” Panitch said. “So for me it’s just trying to hold on to that personal aspect of it and not feel like it’s just another instance of the persecution of Jews and we need to not pass on just the number, six million Jews, but the stories behind them.”

One of those stories was voiced by Elie Wiesel, a survivor and fervent voice in the Jewish community, who died at the age of 87 in July 2016. For 22-year-old Spitzer, Wiesel embodied the message of survivors of the Holocaust. And now that he’s gone, Spitzer says its up to him and his generation to carry this message so that moment in history is never repeated.

“My kids will go to all the exhibits and museums and visit Poland like I did, as difficult as it was, it was important to know where we came from and our history,” Spitzer said. “(The Holocaust) was such a formative event in bringing me to where I am.”

For Orbach-Smith, another worry lies in the recent rise of anti-Semitic rhetoric and white supremacy, especially once there are no living survivors to represent the result of the bombast.

“My worst fear is that the world of my children and grandchildren will be like the world of my parents and grandparents and I feel guilty and distraught that my life has been this charmed period of sympathy for Jews in the wake of the holocaust,” Orbach-Smith said. “I sort of coasted through and now once again the rise of this ugliness. I never dreamed that this would be possible.”

But the now-grandmother believes that continued storytelling and empathy from future generations will help combat prejudice and repeated history.

“Time plays a role here in remembering tragedies more than anything else,” Orbach-Smith said.

Dreamers continue to live with uncertainty as government shutdown ends

Ricardo Aca, on the left in blue, before he speaks to the crowd outside the Federal Building in downtown New York City. Photo by Farnoush Amiri

 

Ricardo Aca swayed nervously behind a cluster of microphones before he disclosed to the group of protesters, counter-protesters and press that he was a DREAMer, a status that he could lose in 10 months if congressional action isn’t taken. Aca was speaking at a rally in downtown New York City today in support of a clean DREAM Act, as the third and ultimately final day of the government shutdown began.  

Six years ago, Aca was an undocumented immigrant working as a busboy at the Trump SoHo Hotel. Today, he has legal status and an associates degree in commercial photography. He is working towards a bachelors in international affairs at Baruch College. But with less than a year of certainty left and with Congress using DACA recipients as a leverage between party lines, Aca has decided to use his voice as his defense.

“We are here today because we condemn Donald Trump and congressional Republican leaders who have forced a government shutdown by insisting on Trump’s racist border wall and other anti-immigration policies,” Aca said.

Approximately nine hours after the rally, President Trump signed a bill that would reopen the government, funding it for the next three weeks and simultaneously putting a delay on legislative action for the DREAMers. This uncertainty has created a limbo for most recipients of the program and also puts those who are close to their renewal period ending at risk for deportation, which is why many of them have laid low in recent months. But not Aca, who interns at Make the Road New York, a public advocacy group for immigrant communities.  

“Because if I don’t fight for myself then nobody is going to do it for me. I need to fight not only for myself but also for my parents who have fought for me my entire life,” Aca said. “They deserve dignity and justice and so do those 11 million undocumented immigrants, and if I don’t do that nobody else is going to do it for me.”

Aca is one of the nearly 800,000 recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that was devised by the Obama administration in 2012 to allow for undocumented immigrants who entered the country as minors to defer deportation.

Under the current administration, the program has been used as leverage against the Democrats in exchange for reinforcing stricter immigration laws, ultimately leading to the government shutting down on Jan. 19.

“This is where I consider my home. I pay taxes over here,” Aca said. “This is where I go to school. This is where my family and my friends are and so for congress not to be able to come up with a fix that is more permanent is very upsetting.”

The 27-year-old came to the U.S. from Puebla, Mexico, when he was 14 years old. Aca’s mom had pursued legal routes to come to the country but when those failed she found a job as a seamstress in a factory in New York and later arranged for Aca and his younger sister to cross the border through Arizona.

“(Congress) doesn’t care about people of color or immigrants who come to this country to work hard,” said LaShonda Lawson, a speaker at the rally who works as a security guard at the Statue of Liberty. “America should stand for freedom and inclusiveness. That is what I think about every day when I go to work. I see hundreds of people come to the Statue of Liberty because she is a symbol of freedom.”

Most DACA recipients file for their renewal every two years in pursuit of that freedom. And at Monday’s rally, Aca shared what he and his fellow DREAMers have been doing since President Trump rescinded the program in September 2017.

“Instead of enjoying my life I have been constantly in the streets having to have my voice be heard because I know I deserve to be here,” Aca said. “This (amendment in the Senate) is only a temporary fix on a larger issue.”

Currently, the state of New York contains the third largest population of DREAMers, which has created a need for public officials and advocates to hold rallies, hearings and conferences in light of the recent attacks to the program. One of those officials leading the fight for young people like Aca is Carlos Menchaca, who serves as the city’s Chair of the Committee on Immigration.

“We are in front of Federal Plaza in New York City where New Yorkers from every corner of this city, like Ricardo, are saying one thing clearly: we want a DREAM Act now,” Menchaca said.

NYC City Council “Kneel In”

A group of NYC council members knelt on the steps of City Hall yesterday. The action was a show of solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who are protesting police brutality and racial injustice in America. Photo by Farnoush Amiri

Donning a black “IAmWithKap” t-shirt under a striped fitted blazer while holding up a red San Francisco 49ers jersey with Colin Kaepernick’s name and number inscribed on the back, Councilman Jumaane D. Williams (D-Brooklyn) led a group of council members in a “Kneel In” on the steps of City Hall yesterday  morning, just days after President Trump called out demonstrations in the NFL.

The group of about 15 city officials joined together to display unity against the president’s tweets, which called the action of kneeling during the presentation of the National Anthem a “disrespect of our country,” and suggested that the NFL owners should get any “son of a bitch,” who doesn’t stand off the field.

“This here today was a protest,” council member Inez Barron (D-Brooklyn) said. “It was perhaps silent but it speaks volume in the action we are taking.”

This form of protest began back in 2016, when Kaepernick chose to kneel during the National Anthem in protest of the recent rise of police brutality against African-Americans in the US. The now free agent became the league’s unofficial symbol for the cause for police reform and civil rights for minorities.

“Protesting is probably the most American thing that one can do,” Williams said. “It is in fact the only thing that has ever propelled this country to move forward. Everything we have enjoyed from this country has come from protesting.”

Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn) speaks to reporters about the importance of understanding the reasoning behind Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players protest and kneeling during the National Anthem. Photo by Farnoush Amiri

The city officials demonstrating the right to protest also brought light to the lack of attention the president is directing toward Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. They said  his focus on NFL players’ right to protest is a distraction from more pressing concerns. One council member even alluded to racism being the reason for the president’s hesitation to devote more attention to the Caribbean island.

“The struggle for racial justice, which we are honoring by taking a knee today, is not narrowing about policing because obviously we have systematic racism in our housing, segregation in schooling and now even in our hurricane relief response,” Councilman Brett Lander (D-Brooklyn) said.

Lander, along with Councilman Daniel Dromm (D-Queens,) were just a few of the leaders who showed support for their minority colleagues whose cause they said they are able to empathize with.

“I stand as an ally. Obviously I am not a person of color, but I feel that white people, myself included, need to stand up for this cause and need to remember how it all started, which is an action against police brutality and the experience that people of color experience, oftentimes at the hands of police,” Dromm said to the crowd outside City Hall.

Andy King (D-Bronx,) also believes that the president and others who are not directly affected have an obligation to the ones who are.

“I will ask Donald Trump, live a day in a black man’s shoes, live a day in a Hispanic’s shoes, you’ll have different perspective of the world because you were born with a spoon in your mouth,” King said.

For African American councilmembers, this cause is a personal one, but they know that not unlike the dozens of other civil rights marches and causes that have occurred in this country, this one will also begin and end with the act of nonviolent protest.

“When this started months ago, many of us made it clear that this was not about the flag, this is not about patriotism,” Williams said. “This is about a system of supremacy, a system of oppressive policy that has been around a long time, and many people have tried to use patriotism to stop people from protesting and we’ve said that that will not last.”

A melting pot of resistance to Iranian president

Attendees and protestors hold huge banners that read “No To Rouhani, Time for A Free Iran,” in response to the Iranian president’s visit to the U.N. General Assembly today. Photo by Farnoush Amiri

A man wearing a red cap that states “Make Syria War-Free Again,” along with a group of African Americans wearing “Incarcerated Lives Matter” T-shirts and a protester holding a sign that claims, “Qatar Is Supportive of Global Extremism” are amid the sea of fluorescent yellow visors, T-shirts and signs that read ‘Free Iran’ in front of the United Nations Plaza this morning.

As their world leaders convened a few steps away at the 2017 United Nations General Assembly, the hundreds of protesters congregated on the steps of the U.N. Plaza to protest for the sociopolitical and human rights issues that have arisen in the Middle East and domestically in the U.S.

The Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC) put together this demonstration as a direct response to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to the annual convention of leaders. The mission for the OIAC is to support and suggest a third option when dealing with U.S. negotiations with Iran by building a groundwork for a “democratic, secular and non-nuclear republic” in their native country, according to the group’s mission statement.

“I am not surprised that so many people of different races and cultures come to this event each year,” said Homeira Hesami, an organizer for OIAC for the past 30 years. “Iran’s problem (with searching for democracy) isn’t just Iran’s problem, it’s a universal issue.”

Hesami, along with the hundreds of other Iranian-Americans gathered, is part of the resistance group called the People of Mujahedin of Iran led by Massoud Rajavi and his wife Maryam, who have been fighting this battle since the 1988. The group began after thousands of Iranians were persecuted and killed after the Iranian Revolution in 1978, which overthrew then-king of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi.

“We have had a resistance for decades against this administration and the ones before,” Hesami said. “I’m glad that President Trump is strong against this Iranian government when it comes to nuclear weapons.”

The melting pot of resistance and aggression displayed against their respective governments is a reaction to recent events and negotiations by U.N. leaders.

Nuhanad Alhasani, 50, is a Syrian-American who has been coming to this rally for the past 15 years, this time with a sign the size of his person, which starts with the line, “What is happening in Syria is not a ‘crisis’ or a ‘civil war’ or a ‘conflict between the regime and the opposition.’ It is the revolution of a people who want to live in dignity.”

“Syria’s (neighboring countries) want to recycle Bashar al-Assad’s regime, even if he kills everyone,” Alhasani said in response to the recent attacks on the Syrian people by their government, which has been largely supported by the Iranian and Russian regimes.

For 52-year-old K.C. Zang, an Iranian-American, this is rally is an annual tradition for him and his wife, who travel down to the city from New Jersey each fall.

“We come here every year, in hopes that the U.S. government can help and support us in creating a regime change in Iran,” Zang said. “Whether that help is through congress or senate, it doesn’t matter.”

The day’s events began with a drum and music performance and continued with a slew of remarks from Iranian leaders and notable members of the Tri-State community, including pastors, senators, ambassadors and scholars.

One of the members of the religious community present was Bobbie Dant from the Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn.

“I’ve been coming to this event every year,” Dant said. “This issue of freedom from a dictatorial government is collective for us all.”

 

 

Latinos discuss leadership in the Age of Trump

A DACA rally in San Francisco. Photo by Pax Ahimsa Gethen, used under Creative Commons.

A panel of Latino leaders met yesterday at New York University’s Law School to discuss their governance in the age of Trump after the president announced the rescinding of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) bill on Sept. 5.

Withdrawal from this policy would put almost 800,000 undocumented young adults at risk of deportation, one of them being Peter Hernandez, who feels like the Latino community hasn’t done enough for him and the hundreds of thousands of DREAMers alike.

“I wish they could convince and advocate more for us and talk more to the Republican senators – tell and share our stories with them so they can know what kind of people we are,” Hernandez said. “We are not bad people and we’re just here so we can make a life for ourselves and we’re doing everything right.”

The bill, which was enacted in 2012 by an executive order during President Obama’s last term, is an immigration policy that allows minors like Hernandez, who initially entered the U.S. illegally, an opportunity to receive legal delayed action from deportation as well as eligibility for a work permit for a period of two years, with option for renewal.

The Oaxaca native moved to Texas with his mother, father and sister at the age of seven. His father began working as a landscaper and his mother sold items at the local flea market. Hernandez applied for the DACA program after he graduated from college, the year it went into law.

“The things I think students are most concerned about (in Latino representation) is that some of the folks who are in charge are the same ones that were in charge when I was college and at some point the different civil rights communities need to make space for other (racial communities),” said Myrna Perez, a member of the panel, hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice and an adjunct faculty at both Columbia and NYU law schools. “People are upset that there is not room for them to grow, not that there isn’t space.”

Perez, along with her colleagues, believe that the journey to representation in the Latino community is going to be an incremental one but that even the small victories should be feted.

Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law hosted a panel with (left) NALEO Educational Fund Northeast Director Roberto Frugone, former Hispanic National Bar Association President Robert Maldonado, New York City Council Member Antonio Reynoso, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law Voting Rights and Elections Project Director Myrna Perez, National Institute for Latino Policy President Angelo Falcon. Photo by Farnoush Amiri

 

One of the people actively leading the charge for undocumented students like Hernandez is 21-year-old Jessica Calderon. The NYU student has been at the forefront of the fight for immigration advocacy, and now DACA.

As a first generation Peruvian-American, Calderon felt the need to fill a void in her community. The politics and Latin American studies major has worked for a slew of nonprofits here in New York City and at NYU Washington D.C. as a part of her study abroad program.

“Working with these DACA applicants last summer sort of changed my life, and after that, I knew I wanted to go into a profession where I can serve the immigrant community,” Calderon said after her months spent filling applications for roughly 20 DACA recipients.

For Calderon, it’s not the number of Latino leaders in power that is the issue in their community, but the ideology and policies that they set forth.

“A lot of times, the people that are representing us, the Latino ‘elites,’ are not representative of our entire community, the most vulnerable of our community,” Calderon said. “For example, a Marco Rubio is not representing a low-income, undocumented worker’s needs. It’s crazy that we believe we won the battle once we get (Latino members) into congress, but really we need to get (our community) to vote on the ideas towards progressive change.”

 

The 11th of September at O’Hara’s

A photo of a memorial reunion at O’Hara’s Restaurant & Pub in Lower Manhattan. Photo by Farnoush Amiri

It was a dissonantly quiet Monday morning in Lower Manhattan. Bartenders at O’Hara’s Restaurant & Pub silently cut limes and lemons and placed them in plastic containers to later garnish the drinks of the almost 6,000 patrons that were expected to walk into the pub that day. The Battery Park watering hole normally opens at 11 a.m. on weekdays, but on this day, for the past 16 years, they unlocked their doors at 8 a.m. in honor of the attacks on the Twin Towers.

Tri-State area natives and tourists alike began to slowly stumble into the bar, located on the corner of Greenwich and Cedar streets, and as they sipped on their cold Bud Lights and Heinekens, each person participated in a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. to commemorate the tragic moment the first plane hit the north tower.

Two of the first patrons in are Paul Fischer and his son, Frank, who have been coming to O’Hara’s from Union Beach, New Jersey, for the past 16 years. The father and son were some of the first volunteers who came over on the ferry from the Garden State to help join the rescue efforts in the piles and rubble throughout the days following the attacks.

“It’s going to be crazy in here in a little bit,” Fischer said, preparing himself for the bittersweet day ahead. “You won’t be able to get to the bathroom.”

For Fischer, a member of New Jersey’s Sheriff’s office, O’Hara’s represents a tradition for him and his son: a place where he knows almost everyone who walks in and where almost every one of his drinks is on someone else’s tab.

Among the roughly 2,750 people who died that Tuesday morning, many were regulars of O’Hara’s, whether it was for an after-work drink with a colleague or on their lunch break for a burger and fries.

“This place used to a happy-hour destination for those who worked in the area,” said Eric Tremaine, a bartender at O’Hara’s. “But everything changed after that day. This place represents so much more.”

O’Hara’s the morning of the 16th anniversary of 9/11, before the crowds came in. Photo by Farnoush Amiri

The eatery and bar, which first opened its doors in 1983, was also a victim of the attacks, with most of its first and second floors being demolished and left uninhabitable. Fortunately, there were no casualties for any of the staff, who hid down in the basement when the first plane hit. The infamous Irish bar restored and opened its door back to the shaken and grieving community seven months later.

On the first anniversary of the attacks, a New York Firefighter’s badge was ripped off of his shirt and stapled onto the wooden walls of O’Hara’s – by the end of that night there were around 250 embroidered patches and badges covering the walls. Today, the bar proudly displays over 6,000 insignias, which have been gifted from law enforcement officers and firefighters from across the country.

For any newcomers, the traditional Irish bar has two scrapbooks underneath the beer taps that highlight the days, weeks and years since the attack. The lamented pages show the initial damage, the months of repair and rebuilding and the ensuing commemorative events that have followed. Amongst the photographs and news articles detailing the tragic events are letters from patrons, who left the establishment with a sense of understanding of the significance of that day for O’Hara’s and the community that surrounds it.

One family, who traveled from Oak View, Calif. wrote to the owners and said, “Thank you so much for your place and what you stand for.”

The four coordinated attacks that occurred on this day almost a decade and a half ago seem to still ring through the lives of those directly affected and the country as a whole, but for O’Hara’s, it represents a day where anyone who lost something or someone can come, have a pint of Guinness and reminisce on how far they’ve come.

“If you went to my funeral, I would want it to be like this,” Tremaine said as he looked around at the people gathered to remember the lives lost. “I would want you to enjoy and celebrate my life and that is kind of what today is for this place.”