I’ve spent the last couple of months working on a 9/11 focused campaign for dosomething.org, which focused on getting teens around the country to submit thank you messages for emergency service workers.
As part of the campaign, we took the 4,000 messages that we collected over 2 weeks and decided to project them on buildings around NYC so that everyone could see the gratitude that America has for people that risk their lives every day to help strangers.
We were initially concerned that our sketchiness would get us arrested (driving around NYC on 9/11 with a huge battery, projector and computers, projecting out of a moving car) but the opposite was actually the reality. We found a great spot in a parking lot near ground zero which ended up being right across the street from the NYPD, FDNY and a large group of police officers stopping cars at checkpoints.
We had the perfect wall and, magically, a power outlet, and we set up shop and started projecting the thank you messages on the side of an old, beat up building. Almost immediately, officers started to stare at the messages and were showing their co-workers what was going on. A lot of them started taking pictures and calling people out of the police department.
By the end of the night, we had about half a dozen officers come over to us, incredibly graciously, to tell us how much those messages meant to them. One officer shook all of our hands, told us that we were doing an amazing thing, and that this was exactly what they needed on an extremely tense day.
It was easily one of the highlights of my time in NYC so far, and I couldn’t imagine spending 9/11 in any other way than saying “thank you” to the people that deserved to hear it.
photo by Keri Goff
