The Compassionate Rebel Revolution: Ordinary People Changing the World

By Burt Berlowe

In this compassionate rebel sequel, we look at how millions of individual citizen actions have become a massive social change movement that offers every person a chance to make a difference in the world. We feature 65 everyday heroes who have turned adversity into triumph, compassion into commitment and anger into activism, and whose acts of caring and courage are transforming society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Changing Times Press
• Release date: Feb 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781936400089

Book preview

Acknowledgements

They say that finishing a book is like having a baby, only the gestation period is a lot longer. Giving birth to this book was a five-year labor of love. There are many people who have contributed to bringing it into the world. I greatly appreciate and value the work of the extremely talented authors, photographers and editors who gave generously of their time and abilities. (See the book contributors page). I am especially indebted to my colleague Rebecca Janke for her content editing, book fulfillment services, and constant encouragement and guidance; and to family members and friends for their technical, financial, editorial and emotional support. I also appreciate the professional assistance of Mill City Press in bringing this book to fruition.

I want to thank Friends for a Non-Violent World for making a preview launch of this book part of their recent foreign policy event, and all of the other social change organizations that have provided information used in this book and/or have helped or will help spread the word about it.

There would not have been a second compassionate rebel book without the cooperation of the people whose stories are featured on its pages. They have shown great courage in sharing the often intimate and controversial details of their lives. They are all to be commended, not just for baring their souls, but for the work they are doing to make positive change in the world. In some cases, their family members, friends, or co-workers assisted with editing their stories, finding photos, or other valuable tasks. I owe them all a debt of gratitude.

The compelling stories you are about to read are but a snapshot of a massive movement for social change. They reflect by example a much larger picture: the innumerable efforts of millions of ordinary citizens creating and spreading the compassionate rebel revolution around the planet, and, in the process, offering cause for hope in troubled times. To all of you out there, thank you for all you have done and continue to do to bring about the change we can believe in.

Book Contributors

Burt Berlowe is an award-winning author and journalist, radio show host, peace educator, and social change activist living in Minneapolis. He has published several books and articles on political and social issues, peace and justice, and grassroots activism. His books include: Nautilus award finalist The Compassionate Rebel: Energized by Anger, Motivated by Love; The Homegrown Generation: Building Community in Central Minneapolis; Reflections in Loring Pond, A Minneapolis Neighborhood Celebrates Its First Century; Peaceful Parenting in a Violent World, The Peaceful Parenting Handbook, and The 7 Habits of Peaceful Parents. He has been a reporter, editor and contributing writer for numerous local and national magazines and newspapers as well as the co-host of Spirit Road Radio on AM950 in Minnesota. He can be contacted at [e-mail] or 612-722-1504.

Content editor Rebecca Janke is the Executive Director of Growing Communities for Peace, a non-profit organization that specializes in PreKAdult peace education. In partnership with the Human Rights Resource Center at the University of Minnesota, she has helped develop the on-line Human Rights and Peace Book Store at http://www.humanrightsandpeacestore.org. She is the co-author of Peacemakers A,B,C’s for Young Children: a conflict resolution guide with the use of peace table, and The Compassionate Rebel: Energized by Anger, Motivated by Love; and the sole author of many peacemaking articles for the Public School Montessorian. She has served as president of the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers and is an active conflict resolution coach for families and couples. She can be reached at 651-214-8282 or [e-mail].

Angela Andrist is an emerging writer in the Twin Cities working on her first novel.

Madeleine Baran is a freelance journalist specializing in work and poverty issues. She is former editor for The New Standard and Clamor magazine and has reported and written for Minnesota Public Radio, the Twin Cities Daily Planet, the Utne Reader and other publications.

Bill Wroblewski is a freelance writer, editor and videographer. A Midwesterner through and through, he currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Arletta Little, a Twin Cities writer, has recently served as interim managing director of the Givens Foundation for African-American literature.

Anne Ness is an emerging writer and book reviewer in the Twin Cities.

Heidi Rivers is a recent Twin Cities college graduate pursuing a writing career.

Jacque Blake is a freelance writer and former columnist for Southside Pride in Minneapolis, where she wrote about ordinary people making a difference in their communities.

Tony Simon worked for a Twin Cities publishing house and organized a Neighbors for Peace group in Minneapolis. He now lives at the Iron Knot Ranch in New Mexico where he serves Lama Shenpen.

Stacey Larsen Stafki has written for peace and justice periodicals. She recently completed graduate school at Western Washington University and now lives in Port Townsend, Washington. She runs her own business called SeedSpring and teaches in a local school.

Andrea Peterson is a freelance writer, photographer and communications specialist living in the Twin Cities.

Pat Cumbie is a Minnesota freelance writer and editor of a whole foods newspaper. Her writing has been published in many literary journals, and she was nominated for inclusion in the Best New American Voices anthology. She has recently published her first novel, Where People Like Us Live.

Jacqueline Mosio is a Minnesota writer who has lived and worked as a journalist, editor and translator in the United States and Mexico. Her work includes her latest book Getting a Jump on Life (with Aileen Frisch), editing In the South Bronx of America, photographs by Mel Rosenthal; and Loves of the Fifth Sun and Other Stories (fiction). Her writing and photographs have appeared in Architecture Minnesota, Reader’s Digest, Commonweal, Washington Journalism Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Mexico City News, La Jornada, and Proceso magazine. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. She is currently working on the book Marketing Hope: The Mercado Central’s Impact on Immigrants and Urban Life, which narrates the development of the Mercado Central on Lake Street in Minneapolis.

Michael Bayly, an Australian native now living in St. Paul, is a gay rights activist and freelance photographer specializing in peace and justice subjects. He is executive coordinator of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities and editor of The Progressive Catholic Voice. He authored the book Creating Safe Environments for LGBT Students: A Catholic Schools Perspective, published in 2007 by Haworth Press.

Chante Wolfe, whose war veteran story is featured in this book, is a well-known peace and justice photographer in the Twin Cities and recently published a book of her photographs. She is an active member of Vets for Peace and has spoken widely about her military experiences and the treatment of combat soldiers.

Dawn Vogel is a Twin Cities photographer who specializes in illuminating people and bridging worlds.

Robert Cress works as a proofreader for the Periscope ad agency in Minneapolis.

Sid Korpi is a freelance proofreader in Minneapolis who has her own company called Proof Positive. She rescues Westies and other animals in need.

Sue Ann Martinson is a Twin Cities activist who formerly worked in publishing.

Christine Anderson is a freelance proofreader living in Lino Lakes, Minnesota.

Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, a gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that hope lies in a nation; others in a person. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. As a result, there shines forth fleetingly the ever-threatened truth that each and every person, on the foundation of his or her own sufferings and joys, builds for all.

Albert Camus, The Artist and His Time

Foreword

By Burt Berlowe

Change has come to America

Barack Obama

YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!

The now-famous three-word mantra rolled rhetorically from the stage at Chicago’s infamous Grant Park, reverberating through the night air, then echoing back from the multitudes gathered below. The lanky poet politician with the unusual name and brown skin that glistened and glowed in the significance of the moment had captured the attention of the world on this memorable day. As he spoke his cadence of hope and change, people cried and screamed and cheered not just for the riveting figure on the stage but for what he represented—a true coming of age for America.

Barack Obama’s ascendance to the presidency on that historic November day realigned the political and cultural landscape in the United States and set the stage for a major transformation in the way we govern. It brought millions of new people—especially youth and minorities—to the polls and potentially into the government decision-making process.

As he so often said in his compelling speeches, Obama’s election was about more than just himself. It was about a movement, a grassroots uprising of ordinary people who rebelled against the status quo, who channeled their anger and frustration into positive change because they care so much about the future of the country and their fellow Americans.

Barack Obama was elected by the compassionate rebel revolution.

The compassionate rebel revolution is growing, not bit by bit, but by leaps and bounds. It is everywhere you look and anywhere you go. It is a mighty energy force that lives within all of us and surrounds us with hope in troubled times. It is moving like a bullet train across the land, picking up new, diverse passengers at stop after stop, building momentum and power as it carries democracy to the masses en route to a more peaceful and caring world. And, we might add, just in the nick of time.

Grant Park, the site of so much joy and unity on inauguration day 2008, was the focal point of a different kind of gathering forty years earlier. In 1968, it was the site of an antiwar demonstration during the nearby Democratic National Convention that led to violent confrontations between protesters and police in the park and the streets around it.

That was the year that America came apart at the seams. In the aftermath of the Summer of Love, hate and violence rocked the very foundations of our country. Assassinations claimed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., then Senator Robert F. Kennedy, just a few years after his brother John had been gunned down in Dallas. Rioting and bloodshed, racism and oppression ran rampant in Deep South cities. The tumultuous demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention tore that political party and the nation as a whole into shreds and ultimately gave us Richard Nixon and a further escalation of the Vietnam War. It was like no other single year in our history.

While 1968 has its own place in history, it hardly existed in a vacuum. The rest of the century that followed was plagued by violence—a plethora of school shootings, an explosion of criminal gangs, drug-related crime, police brutality, domestic and foreign terrorism, and the first Gulf War. The 20th century as a whole was the most violent 100 years in American history.

The new century seems to be taking up where the 1900s left off. We are now nearly finished with the Decade of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence established by the United Nations in 2000. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at our world. Although there are many caring people on our planet today, we do not truly have a caring culture. There is far too much violence, hatred, intolerance and greed standing in the way. And even as America pushes democracy on other countries, our own democratic system is in danger of collapsing.

Forty years after 1968, we are once again bogged down in a seemingly endless war in a faraway land. Our traditional, top-heavy obsession with revenge, retribution and domination has once again led us down a dangerous, counterproductive path. The so-called war on terror has not brought us any closer to a world of peace and reconciliation. Nor has it taught us to better understand and tolerate each other’s differences, to walk for awhile in someone else’s shoes, to treat one another with more kindness and compassion.

But the lack of a caring culture is about more than waging war. It is seen in the continuing use and defense of genocide; torture and capital punishment; the prominence of guns in a so-called civil society; massacres in school yards, churches and places of work; the prevalence of domestic abuse; the rape and pillaging of Mother Earth; the lack of affordable health care and housing; the expanding gap between rich and poor; lingering racism and discrimination; encroachment on civil liberties and human rights; and the ruthlessness of empirical government and corporate greed and domination. As this is being written, we are in the midst of a severe economic recession that threatens the stability of American society. It often seems like our world has spun out of control into an unending, seemingly unstoppable cycle of violence and despair.

Yet we do not have to look far to find cause for hope. As the recent election demonstrated, there is a powerful people’s movement stirring in the land that is bent on making change. It is newly born and reborn, a hybrid of sorts, an eclectic blend of sub-movements, individuals and causes spread far and wide with a common title that holds them together: the compassionate rebel revolution.

Compassionate rebels have always been with us. Jesus may have been the first compassionate rebel. There could have been others before him, and there have been many more since: well-known and little-known people who have turned their anger at injustice into compassionate action to make a positive difference in the world.

With all of its sound and fury, the 1960s were also the Age of Aquarius, marked by the rise of a counterculture that preached love, peace and understanding, and that brought us the civil rights, antiwar, women’s rights and environmental movements, along with an emphasis on the value of public service and political and social activism. The great peace and love revolution promised by the hippie generation never fully materialized, but the ’60s left us with a sense of hope that even amidst shock and awe, a peaceful, caring world is possible.

The seeds of positive change planted during the 1960s have borne fruit. All around the world, people continue to work for peace and to do random acts of kindness and love every day. Often, they join with others to protest injustice or work for a just cause, changing society one act at a time.

Throughout history, these individuals and the causes and movements they have championed have been given many varied labels. But there had never been a phrase that would encompass them all.

That changed one day near the end of the 20th century. Rebecca Janke (founder of Growing Communities for Peace) and I had been planning to write a book of stories about peacemakers and were searching for a title. One day during a casual discussion, Rebecca and her business partner, Julie Penshorn, came up with the phrase compassionate rebel. We decided to make that the title of the book and set out to find people whose stories would fit the definition: ordinary citizens who were combining compassion with rebellion to promote social change.

We subsequently interviewed fifty activists we knew or discovered who were willing to tell us their stories. We were prepared to use only those stories that fit. We ended up keeping all of them. We eventually came to believe that every person has a compassionate rebel story in them impatiently waiting to be told.

In November of 2002, Growing Communities for Peace published the book The Compassionate Rebel: Energized by Anger, Motivated by Love, which included those fifty never-before-told stories. In that book, we referred to a compassionate rebel revolution that was growing worldwide. As that movement grew and we realized how many more compassionate rebel stories were yet to be shared, we wrote this sequel The Compassionate Rebel Revolution: Ordinary People Changing the World.

We are not referring here only to the traditional meaning of the word revolution—overthrow of a government or social system. Rather, we imply a much broader and affirmative definition. We sometimes spell it rEvolution to indicate it is a process of transformation for individuals and the world, one where common people take varied and distinct actions that disturb the status quo in peaceful, creative and compassionate ways. While it emanates from anger and frustration, our revolution is not one of despair, but rather of hope for a better world.

* * *

Compassionate rebel. Isn’t that an oxymoron?

I’ll never forget the quizzical look on the faces of some people who posed that question after noticing the title of our first book. That kind of assumption always seemed to me to be steeped in traditionally negative views of the word rebel as associated with radical insurgency, violent revolution and aimless alienation from the accepted norms of society. It also presumes that people who push against the status quo can’t have compassion.

Viewing rebels through that kind of narrow, refracted lens shows little appreciation of history. The fact is that without rebels, the world wouldn’t be what it is today. Regardless of your religious beliefs, no one can doubt the impact of the rebellious Jesus on our current culture. Without the insurgents who fomented the American Revolution, we would all still be ruled by the British. In the arts, in science, in politics and social change, indeed in all walks of life, rebels have been pioneers, prophets and pacesetters.

The compassionate rebel revolution has placed the rebel concept in a new framework. For one thing, it expands the definition of rebellion. The people we have profiled in our two books rebel against the status quo, against an institution or policy or way of life, but also, in some cases, against their own past, by overcoming adversity and life’s challenges en route to hope and social action.

The primary thing that compassionate rebels have in common is anger at injustice, a force that has propelled the large and small social change movements of our time. We all have experienced some injustice in our lives. We have all had times when we felt angry about something that was unfair in our personal experiences and/or in the world at large. The question is what do we do about those feelings? Anger is, above all else, a motivating force. It compels us to take action—yes, to rebel—against the injustice that is the source of our smoldering rage. Gandhi used to say that he didn’t want to get rid of or suppress his anger. He would put it on the back burner and call it up when he needed it as a way to inspire him to action. Rather than just complaining or forgetting about the injustice confronting them, or reacting against it in violent, destructive or otherwise negative ways, compassionate rebels turn their anger at injustice into positive change

As powerful as this rebellion may be, it often isn’t enough by itself to promote positive social change. But when combined with the giving force of compassion, it can become an amazingly effective tool for creating positive change.

The compassionate rebel revolution transcends race, age, faith, gender, geography, and political belief. It combines and propels the force and energy of millions of individual acts of caring and courage with existing sub-movements for peace, civil rights, environmental preservation, and other worthy causes into a bottom-up insurgency that is the largest and most diverse social change movement of our time. In the process, it transforms ordinary citizens from unrecognized bystanders into useful participants in society. Its goal is to spread the capacity to care and act as broadly as possible in order to bring about a culture where peace, compassion and generosity prevail over violence, hate and greed, where the power of love overcomes the love of power, and where ordinary citizens fashion true democracy for now and for future generations.

These architects of social change are everywhere. They live next door to you, down the block, in the community. They go about their daily business like everyone else—working at a regular job, attending school, raising a family, mowing their lawn and tending to their garden. But instead of merely complaining about or ignoring what they don’t like, they are involved in making change in any number of creative ways—protesting a perceived injustice, laboring for the common good of humanity and sparking the fire in those around them. They are carving out new vistas, plowing new ground and redefining our cultural landscape. Everywhere you turn, ordinary people can be seen taking social problems into their own hands, wrestling with them, and molding them into life-changing solutions. They are remaking America from the ground up as Barack Obama put it, brick by brick, block by block, calloused hand by calloused hand.

In this second compassionate rebel anthology, we continue to tell stories of ordinary, compassionate change-makers. But unlike the first locally focused book, the everyday heroes you are about to meet come from all over the world. And their deeply personal and previously untold stories, written by a variety of authors, cover a broad range of relevant topics, including war and peace; civil and human rights; immigration; ecology and sustainability; education; community building; spirituality, health and wellness; the new youth movement; and electoral, corporate and media reform; among others.

These stories are placed in chapters that represent sub-movements that all fall under its umbrella in an historical context. In Ground Zero Heroes and Peaceful Messengers we focus on the new peace movement through stories of caring and courage during 9/11, and from Vietnam to Iraq, on the battlefield, and in the streets of communities here and abroad. Freedom Riders/Freedom Fighters highlights the latest version of the civil rights movement, spotlighting the struggles and triumphs of citizens of immigrant stock working to make America a better place to live.

The Community Builders chapter covers a variety of grassroots efforts from urban neighborhood organizing to rural co-operatives involved in wellness, sustainability and social change. In so doing, it gives examples of the ongoing neighborhood and co-op movements, and the burgeoning emphasis on preserving the health of our planet and those who inhabit it. The section of the book called Care Givers, ranges far and wide: from a gallant mission in the wake of Katrina, and compassionate efforts to save families and children in Africa and Vietnam, to the compelling stories of people who have risen above personal setbacks to bring joy and healing to others.

Speak Out Sisters looks at the contemporary women’s movement through the lens of several female activists struggling for personal empowerment while transforming our culture. Generation Next features compelling examples of a newly emerging youth movement that literally holds the future of the world in its hands.

One of the reasons why so many ordinary Americans feel hopeless and betrayed is the sense that our fundamental democracy is slipping away. The compassionate rebel revolution, in all of its previously-mentioned forms, is largely about taking back that democracy through reforming the systems that threaten it. In our closing chapter that begins with a ride on the democracy caravan, we focus on efforts to reform three of our most basic and vital forms of democracy: electoral politics, the media, and corporate capitalism. The election reform, media reform and corporate reform movements are rapidly growing as key elements of the compassionate rebel revolution.

The breadth and depth of the compassionate rebel revolution are much too big and deep to cover in any number of books. There are countless numbers of compassionate rebel stories waiting to be told; innumerable social change efforts happening too frequently and too fast to keep track of. The 100-plus stories in our two books are but a sampling of the scope of this ubiquitous movement.

There are other participants in the revolution that we have only touched on in this book due to space and time limitations. One is a rapidly emerging new spirituality movement that is seeking to appease the gnawing hunger that so many people have for inner peace and well-being. We also did not give adequate shrift to the exploding green movement that is taking on the threats of global warming and encouraging change in the American way of life. There are undoubtedly other compassionate rebel movements bubbling under the surface. We honor and support all of them, as well as the countless individual efforts to change the world that do not fall under a specific movement.

Despite its many highly visible and effective efforts, much of the compassionate rebel revolution remains under the radar, essentially ignored or marginalized by mainstream media and the public at large. The sporadic news stories that do appear don’t do justice to what is really happening on the streets and in the backyards and living rooms of grassroots America—from big acts of protest to everyday gestures of compassion and rebellion. The best way to bring this culture into the mainstream is through the telling of stories in books, on radio and TV, and in other venues—individual, personally compelling adventures like those in this book that tug at the emotions, intertwine with relevant political and social issues, and move people to action. Those are the stories of the compassionate rebel revolution.

Everywhere I go, I find people who feel that their voices are not being heard, that their opinions and feelings don’t matter, that there is no use in bucking the system. We need to listen to these stories, promote them more widely and learn from them. It’s been said that whoever tells the stories defines the culture. If we want to change our culture, we have to change the stories that are defining it, and we have to provide venues for those stories to be told. Ultimately, the goal of telling these stories is to motivate readers to take action in their own lives that will address their concerns and positively change the world. That is the way a compassionate rebel revolution is built—one action, one story at a time.

In the closing lines of his election night speech, Barack Obama, referring to the famous words of Abraham Lincoln, talked about wanting a government of the people, for the people and by the people. The coming months will determine whether those words turn out to be prophetic; whether the movement that put him in office will have an impact on the way he governs. That is the newest challenge of the compassionate rebel revolution.

And if we tell our stories with intensity and focus...we’ll break the spells that bind us. We’ll start to want that other world we say is possible with such intensity that nothing can stop us or deny us. All it takes is our willingness to act from vision, not from fear, to risk hoping, to dare to act for what we love.

Starhawk From her book Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising

Chapter One

Ground Zero Heroes

Introduction

No event in this young century has had the impact of the attack of September 11, 2001. It has led us to a seemingly endless war and subsequent erosions of civil and human rights, changed America’s image abroad, united, then divided our country, and dramatically impacted our political, social and cultural landscape. It has also left lingering questions about what really happened on that fateful day, who is to blame, and whether we’ve been told the whole story.

The answers to those questions may not be far away. A grassroots movement of organizations dissatisfied with the government’s version of 9/11 and intent on finding the truth, has been growing around the country, consisting of architects, attorneys, physicists, engineers, physicians, firefighters and educators, along with community activists and concerned citizens. They have produced a plethora of books, films, radio shows, websites and blogs that have raised public awareness and rallied people to action. (See resources section of this book.) The ultimate goal of this movement is to bring about a new, independent investigation into the events of September 11. Other organizations, formed by 9/11 families, have opposed our government’s militant response to the attacks and continue to advocate for a more civil society.

Some magnificent examples of compassionate rebellion have emerged out of the smoldering rubble of Ground Zero. The heroes of 9/11 are many: from the first responders who saved lives at their own risk to the survivors and activists who have sought to turn the horror of that day into a quest for peace, truth and justice.

In this chapter we offer two profound stories of 9/11 valor and compassion. One is the dramatic tale of the courageous World Trade Center custodian who became a national hero, and whose explosive first-hand account raises questions about what really brought down the Twin Towers. The second story features one man’s valiant effort to transform personal tragedy into a clarion call for a peaceful world.

Willie Rodriguez describes the explosions

he heard in the World Trade Center

(Photo courtesy of Willie Rodriguez)

The Last Man Out

By Burt Berlowe

William Rodriguez stops pacing the church sanctuary stage, moves away from the microphone and turns to directly face the overflow audience in front of him. His face tightens, squeezing away the engaging smile he had used to warm up the crowd. His voice gets suddenly louder, the words bursting forth like a discharge of dynamite.

BAM! BAM! he shouts, clapping his hands firmly twice to mimic the sensation he is describing All of a sudden we hear an explosion so hard it pushed us upward," he exclaims, turning his palms toward the ceiling as he rocks forward on his toes. In that dramatic moment, William begins to tell the story of how he became a true American hero.

Early morning September 11, 2001, New York City. William Rodriguez is preparing to go to work as he has done for more than two decades, cleaning the stairwells, floors and gleaming offices in the north tower of the World Trade Center.

A native of Puerto Rico, William had once dreamed of becoming a famous magician/escape artist in the tradition of Houdini. For a while he worked with a magician during performances, using the stage name Roudy. He helped expose faith healers and psychics and was featured on Puerto Rico TV escaping from a chained straightjacket while hanging from a burning rope.

William immigrated to New York hoping to make it as a performer but he was a small fish in a big pond of magicians. In need of work, he took a job as a custodian at the World Trade Center in 1982. His show business aspirations ended when his responsibility for cleaning Governor Mario Cuomo’s office expanded to include organizing the governor’s press conferences. After Cuomo left office, William was re-assigned to cleaning the staircases of the Trade Center’s North Tower.

September 11, 2001 started like most other weekdays for William. He clocked in at 8 a.m. and went directly to the 106th floor to eat breakfast with Hispanic employees at the Windows on the World restaurant. He then began work in sub-basement levels (from B-1 to B-6) of the Tower.

That was where they had all the building support companies, William explains. "Mine was ABM, American Building Maintenance. The stairwells were narrow, steep and without windows. There were ninety-seven passenger and six freight elevators in the building.

"At 8:46 a.m., I’m in the ABM office chatting with my supervisor when all of a sudden I hear

BAM! BAM!

"It came from the basement between the B2 and B3 level. I thought maybe a generator blew up. It was so loud that the floor beneath my feet vibrated and everything started shaking. The walls began cracking and the ceiling fell on us. The sprinkler system went on and everybody was screaming for help. I began to think it was a bomb. I was caught in an elevator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and had to break through a wall to get out so I know what a bomb sounded like.

BAM! BAM!

"A few minutes later, at about 8:54 a.m., I heard another explosion. The building creaked and oscillated and the walls broke. People thought it was an earthquake.

"Then I heard that a plane had hit the building. Two separate explosions at two different times. I turned around in the basement and couldn’t see the top of the tower, only fire and smoke. I was worried about my friends in the Windows on the World restaurant.

Then out of an elevator stumbled a fellow worker, Felipe David. He had been standing in front of the freight elevator on sub level about 400 feet from our maintenance office when fire burst out of the elevator. A large fireball had shot down the elevator shaft and exploded through the doors near Felipe. He came running into our office yelling ‘explosion, explosion.’ When I looked at this guy, he had all his skin pulled off of his body from his armpit to his forehead and hanging from his fingertips like it was a glove. He had apparently put his hand up to cover his face. He got burned on a third of his body. He practically got vaporized.

William led Felipe out of the building and called the emergency medical unit. I took him through the loading dock to an ambulance. Then, ignoring police orders to stay out, Willie returned to the building. "I heard a ‘swooshing’ sound coming from freight elevators on B2 and B3. Water from the fire sprinklers had gone into the elevator shaft. I heard people call for help. There were people encased in an elevator and in danger of drowning.

Before that day I was agnostic. I didn’t believe there was a God. But suddenly I found myself praying ‘please help me God,’ Willie says, clasping his hands in a prayer position and looking upward. "There was a place near me where everything was supposed to have been cleaned away. But I found a metal pipe there that I could use to break open the elevator door. The people were stuck way up in the shaft and I needed a ladder to get up there. I prayed again. All the ladders were locked except one. I used it to extend into the shaft and was able to rescue the people.

"Everything happened so fast. Dust was flying everywhere and all of a sudden it got real hot. I threw myself on the floor and covered my face. It felt like I was burned.

"I looked skyward and cried out:

‘God please help me, please give me strength.’ I said that twice.

I found myself praying: please help me God!’

(Photo courtesy of Willie Rodriguez)

I led some more people out of the building to an ambulance. Then I started screaming, ‘I’ve got to go back, got to go back.’ My supervisor demanded, ‘Rodriguez, stay here.’ ‘Sir, I’ve got to go back and help those people,’ I shouted. I ran into the building through the basement to the North Tower. There was water all over from when the sprinkler system had been activated.

William scurried from floor to floor opening doors and letting people out. There were only five master keys for the building. The port authority had four of them. William had the other one, which he used to unlock the doors and which he carries with him to this day. This is the key of hope, he says, dangling it in front of him on the stage, because it gave hope to a lot of people.

As William climbed the tower stairs firefighters wearily trudged with him. "They had seventy to 120 pounds of equipment on their backs plus the gear they were wearing. They bumped against people because the stairwells were not wide enough. As we went up we heard small explosions in different areas.

BAM! BAM!

"I wondered ‘what is that?’ Maybe it’s gas from the kitchen. But all the kitchens were electrical. Where was that coming from? I heard screams for help coming from the elevators. More people were drowning from the high water or trapped by the fire. They never had a chance. I heard that there was a man in a wheelchair on the 27th floor that needed help. I went down two floors to let the firefighters know. I had no equipment or fireproof jacket. I did that staircase every day. I was in good condition. The firefighters hadn’t done that and they had all of that heavy equipment and had to get to the 27th floor. Some of them collapsed and couldn’t get up. They dropped their bags to the floor. It was a shocking moment. I was afraid I would have to go up there alone.

"I called my mother from a phone in my office. She is in Puerto Rico. I let her know I was okay. She had heard about the attack. She said, ‘What are you doing there? Get out now.’ I lied to her and said I would. But I had to help my friends who were stuck in there. I couldn’t abandon the building. My boss said to me, ‘It’s not your job. Get out of here.’ But I continued going up by myself, letting people out along the way.

"When I got to the 33rd floor I heard loud scratching noises as if someone was moving heavy equipment and furniture around coming from the next floor up even though that floor was supposedly empty and elevators did not stop there. It was off limits due to a construction project. The new security chief had his office there. He said it was the first time he felt afraid. I continued to ascend to the 39th floor before being turned back by the firefighters who had made it that far.

"As we began our descent we heard a strong explosion. We made it to the chasm where a large metal framed front door had been blown out. The building began to collapse around us. On the main floor of the building bottoms of elevator doors were blown open with some powerful pressure from beneath. Windows, glass on the revolving doors and fluorescent lights were broken. Large ornate pieces of marble that covered walls were resting where they landed. It resembled a war zone. The smoke was so heavy it was hard to breathe and my leg was burned.

I ran out of the building. I heard another ‘BAM! BAM!’ Someone yelled, ‘Don’t go back, the building is coming down.’ I raced for the first cover I could find. I saw a parked fire truck and jumped underneath it just as the tower was collapsing.

For several minutes, William lay helpless and in pain as debris crumbled around him, his legs pinned against the bottom of the truck, his escape artist training of no use to him. I couldn’t feel my legs. I thought I had lost them. When they finally pulled me out of the black hole under the truck, I checked to make sure I still had my legs. Within a few minutes, the tires of the fire engine were blown out. I was fortunate to get out of there intact. It was a miracle. After receiving medical treatment for his injuries, William spent the rest of the day assisting in the rescue efforts and was back again at Ground Zero at dawn the next day.

William was the last person to exit the North Tower alive. Before he finally dived to safety, he had re-entered the burning structure three times, singlehandedly rescuing fifteen people and evacuating hundreds more by opening doors with the master key.

Needless to say, 9/11 changed William’s life forever. With no building to work in, he lost his job and his New Jersey apartment. He was homeless for a while, living in a car until a friend took him in.

At the same time, the obscure janitor and magician wannabe became a national hero. He was honored five times at the White House and by New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The Republican Party wanted him to run for Congress and offered him millions of dollars in assistance. He turned it down, deciding instead to tell his story to the world and to raise questions about the strange explosions he had heard and felt that day.

During this time, a 9/11 truth movement was gradually taking hold in the U.S. It began when the victims’ families pressed a reluctant Bush administration into holding hearings on the causes and impacts of the terrorist attacks. William joined the family members in pushing for an investigation, resulting in the establishment of the government-appointed 9/11 commission.

When the commission began its hearings, William offered to talk about his first-hand experiences. He wanted to find out what caused the explosions he felt that day. He was only allowed to testify behind closed doors in private session and his questions were never addressed. His testimony is nowhere to be found in the Commission’s 576 page report. When the administration began to link 9/11 with the Iraq war he felt manipulated and used.

William also contacted the FBI and the government-funded National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) four times to offer his testimony to help with their investigation. They never responded. The media also showed little interest in William’s story. CNN spent a day interviewing him at his home but thoroughly edited the show when it went on the air to take out any areas that might cast doubt on the official government account. Some reporters warned him to keep quiet or his words could jeopardize his life, telling him, You don’t know who you are dealing with. I tried to tell my story, he says, but nobody wanted to listen.

Unable to get a fair hearing in the U.S., William went abroad with much different results. He did a speaking tour of Europe and Latin America. In Muslim countries, he was on the news every night. The mindset about 9/11 changed after I visited. I met with the Venezuelan president of national assembly who was concerned about my safety. There was an FBI agent around the hotel asking about guests. The president said they had to protect me. A documentary of my life was filmed at the palace so that they would have historical evidence if something happened. In Puerto Rico and other Latin American countries I told the story uncensored.

William returned home determined to tell America the truth about 9/11 and to use his experiences and skills to help others. His days as a magician had left him with the ability to perform in front of an audience. He had learned how to set up press conferences for Governor Cuomo. The WTC explosions lingered in his mind, leaving many unanswered questions: Were explosives planted in the building to make it easier to go down when the planes hit? How could a jetliner hit ninety floors above and burn a man’s arms and face to a crisp in the basement below within seconds of impact? He had become convinced that the U.S. government was not leveling with its citizens about what really happened on that historic day. I was a magician for thirty years. It is very easy to do misdirection, to make you look into one place while you’re doing magic with the other hand. It’s just a big magic trick. It’s an illusion.

As William toured the U.S. the 9/11 truth movement expanded nationwide. A group called 9/11 Truth in Boston became the leading force. Academics, especially physics professors studying the collapse of the trade center towers, formed Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Citizens in communities around the country formed their own organizations and networks—all with one major purpose: to secure a new, independent investigation into the events of September 11th. I am still searching for answers, William says. I don’t want tragedy used for political gain again. I am asking people not to be ‘couch potato activists’ who are concerned about a problem but don’t do anything about it. We have to take action to make change.

With his powerful eyewitness story, commanding stage presence, and a passion for helping others, William Rodriguez has become a hero of the 9/11 truth movement. By blowing holes in the government version of that day, he has opened doors for others to walk through in finding the path to the truth. It’s been a mission of mine since I was pulled from the rubble to fight for victims’ rights and immigrant rights, to seek the truth about 9/11 and to stand against the war in Iraq—to use the 9/11 tragedy to create a positive agenda here and abroad.

In addition to speaking engagements and media interviews, William has participated in antiwar marches and was the lead plaintiff in a RICO lawsuit against President Bush and others alleging conspiracy to commit murder and other crimes. That lawsuit was eventually dismissed but it raised the specter of possible government complicity to new levels.

As he did on that fateful September day, William is continuing to sacrifice his own needs to help others in distress. Much of the money he makes on his speaking tours goes to help 9/11 victims. He has refused the funds offered to him by the 9/11 victim’s compensation fund. I don’t want to touch the September 11 money intended for others, he says. That would seem exploitive.

William has been working at the grassroots level to help people who have been hit by all forms of disaster. He is director of the 9/11 United Services Group, a board member of the 9/11 Families Advisory Council and the lower Manhattan Development Corporation and founder of the Hispanic Victims Group. He has assisted Hispanic survivors and relatives of victims who have not been receiving adequate attention from support organizations and relief agencies because of cultural and linguistic gaps. He was a major force behind the campaign to encourage illegal immigrant survivors and relatives to come forward and talk about their fears of deportation, and in raising funds for scholarships for children of immigrant victims of the 9/11 attacks. He also has aided survivors of the Madrid bombings and worked with Spanish government officials on handling the aftermath of terrorist attacks on commuter trains.

Besides coping with tragedy, if you’re a survivor you have the difficult, frustrating job of trying to get help and answers from authorities, he says. "The September 11 families had to learn how to demand accountability from others. I am trying to take what I have learned to help others.

Even today, every time I get on an elevator I have flashbacks to 9/11. I lost 200 friends that day. I still have survivor’s guilt about that. There is a reason I survived my own tragedy, and I believe that reason is that God had this mission for me to help others who have been devastated by some misfortune. Perhaps the best description of William came from a father of a World Trade Center victim rescued by the Last Man Out: He has saved so many people that I think the only word to properly describe him is ‘angel.’

Derrill Bodley and his daughter Deora on Fathers

Day 2001 a few months before September 11

(Photo by a friend of the Bodley family)

A Song for Deora

By Burt Berlowe

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows. —Martin Luther King Jr.

September 11th, 2001 had begun for Derrill Bodley like many other days before it, full of joy and satisfaction. He was looking forward to several more hours of doing his favorite thing: teaching music to young people, grooming the next generation of song makers, fulfilling his lifelong dream. As he drove to work in the California traffic, tunes he had taught his students that morning cruised through his mind, soothing the rush hour tension. Little did he know that the harmony he was feeling with the world was about to become the saddest and most dramatic song of his life.

Derrill could play the piano almost before he could talk. His parents were musicians, his mother a classical pianist, his father a choral conductor at the University of the Pacific near their California home. I began playing when I was three, maybe before, he says. My mother taught me initially, then my father taught me to play jazz, classical, just about anything. They gave me more than one record to listen to. I was an early Bartok lover. That was unusual for a small child. I had flute lessons in the fourth grade, played the saxophone in the high school band, the organ in church, and ended up at the Eastman School of Music.

Music has continued to dominate Derrill’s life. He has toured with a rock band; written a variety of songs, including an infomercial used on television, and classical, jazz and pop numbers; and worked as a professor of music at University of Pacific. One of his proudest compositions was the score for a theater production called Compukids, about a group of youngsters trapped inside a computer who find a way to solve the world’s problems.

The theme of Compukids may have been no accident. As early as his high school years Derrill had begun to show social change tendencies. He recalls watching peace rallies on campus in the early 1960s from the sidelines and beginning to think about world issues, but being unable to fully participate. I was sheltered in a conservatory of music, he recalls. I became aware of what’s one could do to make peace. But I wasn’t an activist. Musicians go through this training that makes them self-absorbed. They spend lots of time in practice rooms by themselves.

In graduate school, during the Vietnam War, Derrill enlisted in the service rather than be drafted and became a musician in a military band. My own self-preservation led me to enlist. It guaranteed that I would not go to Vietnam. Although he never got into combat, he had friends who did and heard their stories. It was pretty sad. Inexperienced commissioned officers from the military academy system were potentially targets of their own men. One guy threw grenades into his fellow soldiers’ tent. I began to develop a position about the war. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

After the war, Derrill went on tour as a piano player with a top forty cover band called the Executives, playing in clubs, bars and other venues throughout the Upper Midwest, and ended up making a living at it for some twenty years until he took a job as a computer software engineer in San Diego. He returned to music as a teacher in the late 1980s.

Deora came into Derrill’s life in 1981, the only daughter he and his wife would have. They divorced soon after her birth but continued to share visiting rights. He later re-married and his second wife Nancy had a daughter of her own named Eva. From the time Deora was a toddler she was living with her birth mom but would come over all the time to visit me, Derrill says. I was an important part of her life. She liked to listen to me play music and to try to play herself. She was a normal kid who liked to read. Even when she finally went off to school at Santa Clara University to study psychology, she would visit me often in Stockton (California) some 400 miles away, and I went down there a lot. We were very close.

* * *

Derrill was teaching music on September 11th, 2001 when the news came that would so profoundly change his life. "My students started coming into class with wild stories about planes hitting the World Trade Center. At first they said it was eight planes. It started getting pretty crazy. I told them, ‘We’re not doing ourselves any favors by just saying this stuff; let’s go find out for ourselves what’s really happening.’ I went to my office. Then Nancy and my brother called to tell me that Deora was almost certainly on the third plane. Nancy met me at school and we drove home together listening to the radio for news updates, waiting for some word that would confirm or end our worst fears. The confirmation came quickly.

"I was about five minutes from my house when I got a cell phone call from my ex-wife. She was hysterical, sobbing on the phone. I knew right away that Deora was on that plane.

I began experiencing a different kind of terror from what many of the people in New York had to go through. At least, I knew right then there was no hope for survivors. There were hundreds of people who didn’t know for days. I can’t imagine that terror.

Derrill had steeled himself against the pain that he feared might come. "I had prepared for ‘What if it’s true, what am I going to do?’—for the desperate, angry, chaotic questions, ‘Why did this happen? Why me? Why would anybody do this?’ But anger at the terrorists never crossed my mind. I couldn’t go anywhere with that. There was nothing I could do about what had already happened. I had