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A decade before United Nations climate scientists issued a code red for humanity, the 20-year-old college junior Evan Weber joined several thousand protesters descending on Wall Street to declare a code red for democracy. At the height of the Great Recession, Weber and his generation saw the climate crisis staring them in the face, along with exploding wealth and income inequality, student debt, and housing and health-care costs. On September 17, 2011, they rebelled. Pointing a finger at banks, corporations, and the wealthiest 1 percent, whom they blamed for corrupting our democracy by buying elections to control the legislative process, the protesters camping in Zuccotti Park issued a clarion call for justice: We are the 99 percent. That fall, hundreds of thousands of people joined Occupy Wall Street and its partner occupations in more than 600 U.S. towns and cities. Overnight, the movement created a new narrative around economic inequalityand seized the publics attention. Polls showed that a wide majority of Americans supported Occupy.

Then, almost as quickly as it had arrived, the movement appeared to vanish, leaving behind little except for the language of the 99 and the 1 percent. In the decade since, the wealth gap has only widened. The rules havent changed; our system remains rigged to benefit those at the top. And yet, on the tenth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, its clear that the movement has had lasting, visible impacts on our political and cultural landscapeigniting an era of resistance that has redefined economic rights, progressive politics, and activism for a generation.

At its core, Occupy made protesting cool againit brought the action back into activismas it emboldened a generation to take to the streets and demand systemic reforms: racial justice, womens equality, gun safety, the defense of democracy. As the Occupy veteran Nicole Carty told me, We cant unlearn the 99 percent. Now what you have is a whole generation that is growing up in movement times, which explains all the escalation youre seeing and the work thats happening among very young people who were still kids during Occupy.

Rewriting the protest playbook, Occupy introduced a decentralized form of movement organizing that enabled hundreds of city chapters to reinforce and strengthen one another yet remain independenta sharp break from the traditional, hierarchical structure of protest movements of the past. Pioneering the use of live-stream technology while employing powerful social-media messaging and meme tactics to grow participation both on- and offline, Occupy showed a new generation how to turn social movements into a viral spectacle that seizes control of the public narrative.

Read: The triumph of Occupy Wall Street

More deeply, the movement on Wall Street injected activists with a new sense of courage: Confronting power and issuing demands through civil disobedience is now an ingrained part of our political culture. In the years since, a cascade of social movements influenced by Occupy have altered the national conversation, including Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the Womens March, Indivisible, and March for Our Lives. On a fundamental level, we changed the way that people hear and see and understand and process a narrative of resistance, the former Occupy activist Dana Balicki said.

And in a sense, the protesters have never gone home. Harry Waisbren, who helped lead the movements online efforts at Zuccotti Park, told me, The individuals and the networks would go on and start new projects, and youd keep seeing them over and over at the cutting edge: The same people who were in Occupy Wall Street were in Black Lives Matter, the Peoples Climate March, the Sunrise Movement. Some of the top activists of this generation got their start at Occupy.

The Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate organization that Weber co-founded in 2017, is today among the loudest voicesin the streets and at the ballot boxdemanding transformative, Green New Dealstyle policies in Congresss $3.5 trillion budget bill. The impassioned Gen Z climate generation didnt come out of nowhere. It emerged as a direct successor to Occupy, whose activists helped redirect the fight against inequality into a focused, strategic movement to save the planet.

The six-year battle that defeated the Keystone XL pipeline and the 10-month defense of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in its challenge against the now-illegal Dakota Access Pipeline are two other examples of Occupy galvanizing the U.S. environmental movement as activists recommitted themselves to halting oil, gas, and coal infrastructure projects nationwide. From the fossil-fuel-divestment campaign to the 2014 Peoples Climate March, which preceded the Paris Accord, and from Extinction Rebellions militant direct actions to the global climate strikes that brought millions of young people into the streets in 2019, Occupys groundbreaking message and tactics set the modern climate movement on its course.

Some of the most skilled Zuccotti Park organizers also later founded the organization Momentum to train activists such as Weber to develop tangible policy goals and create a road map for enacting long-term, structural change. As a result, Sunrise helped marshal the youth vote in the 2018 midterms to elect a slate of House progressives including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who would elevate the groups climate-jobs planwhich came to be known as the Green New Dealto the top of the Democratic Party platform.

In dollars-and-cents terms, Occupy changed the way Americans understood their role in the economy, inaugurating a decade of labor unrest as employees became activists and workers rediscovered their power. In the fall of 2012, a year after protesters were evicted from Zuccotti Park, Occupy organizers working in coalition with unions and nonprofits took the message of economic justice to those most ready to hear it: low-wage earners seeking a $15 minimum wage. When the first several hundred fast-food workers in New York City walked off their jobs demanding higher pay, better working conditions, and the right to form a union, that marked a breakthrough for organized labor, opening a new workers front known as the Fight for $15.

Annie Lowrey: The counterintuitive workings of the minimum wage

In response, voters and legislators raised the base pay in more than half of U.S. states; dozens of cities, including Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C., established a $15 minimum. Democrats nearly managed to include a $15 federal minimum wage in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which President Joe Biden signed into law in March, revealing how much the economic demands spurred by Occupy have reshaped the national discussion.

The fight against income inequality transformed the labor movement in other ways, as Occupy activists in 2012 began helping organize nationwide Black Friday strikes at Walmart, which eventually led to higher pay for half a million employees at the worlds largest retailer. The uprising spread across the low-wage sectorencompassing striking janitors, airport staff, nurses, domestic workers, hotel workers, hospital employees, construction workers, supermarket clerks, and othersshifting the balance of power between employers and employees. The decade-long wave of worker protests achieved its greatest visibility and impact in 2018, when public-school teachers launched strikes to demand raiseswhich they wonacross a dozen states, including West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, and the Carolinas, in what became known as the Red State Revolt.

The steady uptick in labor activism seems to be moving the needle. In March, the House passed the most pro-union bill in decadesthe Protecting the Right to Organize Actto strengthen labor protections, expand collective-bargaining rights, penalize employers who violate labor laws, and weaken right-to-work laws. Forty years after Ronald Reagan crushed the air-traffic controllers strike, dealing a generational blow to Americas unions, the nation appears to be entering a new, more robust era of worker demandsaccelerated by conditions in the coronavirus economy, and again, reflecting the distance the country has traveled since Occupy issued its seminal wake-up call to the 99 percent.

But perhaps Occupy Wall Streets most seismic and discernible impact has been on politics itselfshifting the window of what is deemed politically acceptable discourse and pulling the nation to the left. Prior to Occupy, no mainstream legislator in Washington dared to criticize capitalisms thorough corruption of our politics: the obscene wealth gap, the laws designed by corporations, the billionaires evading taxes, and the revolving door that keeps the 1 percent in charge. That all changed with Occupy, which declared that economic injustice and inequality were deliberate outcomes of policies shaped by Wall Streets greed. By framing the populist economic message that thrust anti-corporate lawmakers such as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez into the electoral spotlight, Occupy Wall Street arguably did more in six months to move American politics to the left than the Democratic Party was able to do in six decades. Which raises the question: Could Sanders and his political revolution have been possible before Occupy shattered decades of silence about income inequality? Not likely.

As Representative Ro Khanna from Californias Seventeenth District, which includes Silicon Valley, told me, Sanderss and Warrens lifes work was happening well before the Occupy movement, but Im not sure the country would have been ready to listen to their voicesand I dont think they would have emerged as national figuresif it werent for Occupy putting the issues of wealth and income inequality front and center. Some imagined that the movement would transform into a political force: a Tea Party of the left. Although the transition never happened, Occupy achieved something perhaps even greater. According to Khanna, it created the conditions for the emergence of a progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and in the long run, the progressive wing is ascendant and is likely to succeed.

The movement was particularly instrumental in the rise of Sanders, whom many would later call the Occupy candidate. When Sanders first got on the national map in 2015s primary season, it was thanks in large part to a group of Occupy activists who had repurposed their digital-organizing and social-media talents into a viral movement called People for Bernie. Operating independently of the Sanders campaign, the group created a horizontal model for voter engagement by inviting volunteers across all regions and demographics to help the Sanders phenomenon spread in the distributed, decentralized format of a social movement.

We understood how to mobilize the internet, Charles Lenchner, a co-founder of People for Bernie, said. We trusted the people and told them to do what they thought was right. We gave away the keys. The tactic drew millions of supporters as it empowered people to become stakeholders propelling the movement. The group fueled Sanderss meteoric ascent, particularly among Millennials, as the campaign introduced small-dollar fundraising as a winning strategy and activated a new generations engagement in the democratic process.

By reinventing digital electoral politics, Occupy veterans helped put a once-fringe Democratic socialist into the leadership of the Democratic Party, where he was able to move progressive prioritiesMedicare for All, the Green New Deal, debt-free college, a $15 wage, higher taxes on the wealthyfrom the periphery into the mainstream. Sanders would provide the springboard for Ocasio-Cortez and a generation of anti-corporate lawmakers to begin to remake one of Americas two major parties, as social movements shaped electoral outcomes. In the words of Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, Occupy shifted the political culture of the U.S., birthing an era in which liberals have been radicalized, and radicals have been electoralized.

Photos: Occupy Wall Street spreads worldwide

When I interviewed Evan Weber for my book about Occupy and its legacy, he agreed that the movement played an essential role in igniting a new progressive eraone that might finally be on the verge of achieving transformational social, economic, and electoral reforms. AOC wouldnt have run if Bernies campaign wasnt as successful as it was, and Bernies campaign wouldnt have resonated and been successful if not for Occupy, he said. Occupy helped create a mood and understanding in the country of the populist moment that were in, where so few have so much at the expense of the rest of us.

Occupy was like a great wave hitting shoreand a warning of even bigger waves to come. Among the slogans and chants that resonated at Zuccotti Park, one in particular has echoed through the decade: This is what democracy looks like. For a generation whose time to solve the climate crisis is running out, government must now deliver. The alternative, Weber warned, may drive an army of young people to begin flexing its muscles on a scale not seen since the 1930s, through disruptive resistance featuring mass sustained shutdowns, occupations, and general strikes. As the turbulence of the past decade has shown, systemic crises must be confronted. Occupy provided a blueprint for how popular dissent and demands can change America. Now a new 99 percent must write the next chapter.

This article was adapted from Michael Levitins book Generation Occupy: Reawakening American Democracy.

See the article here:
Occupy Wall Street Did More Than You Think - The Atlantic

They say they'll quit en masse. They won't. They say they won't do what they're told. They will. They will do what they're told, then lie about it.

The day after the president issued a vaccine mandate last week that affects about 100 million workers, CNBC released a poll showing that of a minority of Americans still holding us back from reaching herd immunity, 83 percent said nothing would change their minds. A few days prior to that, the Post released a poll showing 72 percent would quit their jobs if mandates did not provide a "religious" exemption. This morning, a local TV station reported that Republican Governor Ron DeSantis would lead an anti-vaccine rally in rural Florida. All of this has the press corps wondering what Joe Biden is going to do.

Before they ask that question, however, they should be asking themselves another: Why believe anything these people say? They have decided what they will do and what they won't do, and they have rationalized their way toward that already determined conclusion using a grotesque process of intellectual dishonesty that's aided and abetted by grifters and corrupt political leaders. And then there's the anti-vaxxers who have decided against taking a free, safe and effective vaccine in favor of spending their hard-earned money on ivermectin, which might be safe and might be effective, but almost certainly is not, as Lindsay Beyerstein has said. Why are we trusting people who lie to themselves? Why are we trusting people who inject sheep drench?

Remember the difference between belief and conviction. Beliefs are cheap and easy. Convictions are hard and expensive. If people who eat horse paste genuinely believed eating horse paste would save them from "tyranny," then the president might really have a problem on his hands, one of his own making. But then again, these people are willingly and freely eating horse paste! It's not out of some sense of conviction, but because someone lied to them, and it felt super-duper good to believe that lie. And since "everyone" is doing it, why not do it, too? Convictions are built on rock. Beliefs are built on sand. By ordering a vaccine mandate, the president is calling their bluff.

It is a bluff, make no mistake. Here's how you'll know for sure. We are going to see two things that should not co-exist, but totally co-exist, because honesty plays a minimal role in these people's lives. Those two things are 1) polls showing resistance to vaccine mandates and 2) corporate reports showing compliance with vaccine mandates -- at the same time. The polls will be of workers. The reports will come from their employers. One of these should cancel the other, but won't.

Remember some of these people are injecting sheep drench. It should not be difficult to imagine an anti-vaccine employee of Disney, say, getting the shot in the morning, because his boss said so, then attend an anti-vaccine rally led by the Republican governor that evening. You might be thinking: You can't do both! You would be absolutely correct -- if we were talking about honest people. But we are already seeing this pattern play out. They say they'll quit en masse. They won't. They say they won't do what they're told. They will. They will do what they're told, then lie about having done what they're told. Cheap and easy!

It should be clear to the respectable white people who will determine the results of the coming midterms that they can't trust people who will do what they're told and then lie about it. What they can trust is a president laying down the law. (More on that in a minute.) Grifters, strategists and the most corrupt Republicans are making resistance to vaccine mandates seem noble. They are trying to cast themselves as freedom fighters! They are trying, in other words, to revive the old tea party. While the methods are the same -- billionaires funneling cash to astro-turf operatives -- the spirit is different. The tea party had credibility among respectable white people. Anti-vaxxers do not.

What isn't clear to respectable white people is that there is an honest minority inside the dishonest minority. Both are holding us back from reaching herd immunity, but only one threatens violence. This minority of the minority? True Believers who will quit their jobs in the belief that comrades will be by their sides. These are the people who will feel betrayed on discovering their comrades not only didn't quit but act like they didn't do what they're told. While their comrades are fine with getting the vaccine in the morning before attending an anti-vaccine rally in the evening, this honest minority can't tolerate so much bullshit. They will come to see the bullshit as something that prevents "a hero" from doing what "no one has the guts to do."

If and when the violence comes, it will be tempting to blame Joe Biden. But mandates are no more of a source of violence than regular law and order is. The president is laying down the law for a sizable minority that is fundamentally lawless. (For instance, DeSantis warned Florida businesses this morning that his administration will fine them $5,000 per instance if they comply with federal law.) More importantly, the president is laying down the law to instill public trust. It's for the benefit of law-abiding Americans who have honored their obligations. I hope respectable white people remember two Novembers from now.

Continued here:
Why should we trust GOP leaders and voters who reliably demonstrate their lawlessness? - Raw Story

By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times @mikemcgannpa

If they held a local competition for off the rails in politics, Chester County Republican Chair Gordon Eck would win by a landslide.

His I wont dignify it by calling it an Op/Ed recently published screed attacking a fellow Republican and local Board of Education president over the fake issue of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in our countys schools was factually challenged (okay, it was completely bogus), violated Ronald Reagans 11th Commandment Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican and frankly was just looney tunes.

Chris McCune is the president of the West Chester Area Board of Education and he has become the target of Ecks false claims about CRT in the school district. He is a Republican and has served two terms on the board and is seeking a third in November. Eck is calling for a write in campaign against the official GOP nominee which seems unlikely to do much beyond making it easier for a Democrat to win the seat.

I was able to speak with McCune this week and he came across as a shockingly normal, moderate person not unlike dozens of other board of education members Ive known over the last couple of decades in Chester County. The kids, their families, the staff and the schools are the top priority for people like McCune, while trying to keep budgets in check to respect local property owners. Its likely there are issues we disagree on, but at least you can have a conversation with the guy hes willing to listen and engage.

That last part describes almost every school board member I know in either party, by the way. For these folks today with the challenges in education, it is often about making the least bad choice when presented with no good ones. They get no pay, it is an amazing time commitment (dont forget about committee meetings, in addition to the two or more regular meetings held monthly). And in the best of times, they get a lot of grief.

It is not the best of times.

Right now? While McCune is in the spotlight, the same kind of crap is going on all over Chester County with a bunch of brainwashed lunatics screaming over something that just doesnt exist. For reference, these are some of the same people who claim COVID doesnt exist and masks dont work.

No school in Chester County is teaching CRT. None.

Are there schools working on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts to better serve a growingly diverse community? Yes. Are those notoriously left-leaning Fortune 500 companies doing the same thing for their work forces? Yes.

McCune said he has tried to explain this to Eck and some of the others on the committee that the DEI efforts are not just about race, but about better inclusion for special needs students and those of varying social-economic groups, but that the message just doesnt get through.

In a county where only a few years back, entitled white students at one high school started chanting mow my lawn to the students of a school with a higher latino population during a football game, Im pretty DEI isnt just a nice idea, it is kind of warranted.

But, you know, those are just pesky facts.

Lets be honest, truth and reality have been slipping away from Chester County Republicans for more than a decade, since the Tea Party started taking over county committee slots, running out the old moderates.

According to McCune and others Ive spoken with of late, there are four unbreakable truths one must agree to if you wish to run for office as Republican in Chester County:

This is entirely out of step with the people of Chester County, of course, and leading a once dominant party into becoming a very small minority party of screaming extremists. It also keeps a lot of good people who might do well in the public arena, but consider themselves too conservative to be Democrats, from running for office.

Ive taken much heat in the last three years for suggesting that you cannot vote for any Republican as unfair as it is to folks like McCune and others who are part of sane minority in the party.

It was my thought that without utter and total repudiation and one would think that losing every row office and control of the County Commissioners, not to mention the countys Congressional seat might have been a wake up call the Republican Party would not reset, reassess and return to its old center-right conservative roots.

But thanks to a never-ending media machine driving these lies, Im not sure there is any hope for this party to be reformed.

In the long run, it might be best for the GOP to be retired and replaced with a less crazed center right party that can start from scratch. Like it or not, we need two parties dedicated to democracy so we dont find ourselves running to extremes. The Republican Party no longer embraces anything beyond a naked grab for power and autocracy.

Its a tragic truth and maybe one you do not want to hear: Gordon Eck is todays GOP, not Dick Thornburgh or Tom Ridge.

And we are all the poorer for it.

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Rabid GOP now feeding on their own | chescotimes.com - The Times of Chester County

Have you ever wanted nail art that highlights your favorite Disney Movie? Maybe nails that show Mulan below a cherry tree, or Alice at her Wonderland tea party, or maybe you want to see Stitch getting into shenanigans across your hands... Whatever your preference, Vivian Xue Raheyhas you covered.

These conversation pieces are clear fan favorites online. Vivian's Pamper Nail Gallery has hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok, and millions more views.

And they do more than just Disney; they paint everything from popular anime shows to pop singers. It's a unique art form. And their business is growing.

Since the start of the pandemic, Vivian, has switched up her "Disneyland of Nails" business model: moving from appointments in the salon where nails are painted on site, to an e-commerce model where you can order press-on sets that ship to your doorstep already bedazzled and painted with scenes from your favorite flick.

Since the switch to press-ons, Vivian says, "now we can do it at a larger scale, faster!"

Vivian, who had been concerned about her ability to retain employees through pandemic, says she's started to hire more artists from across the country.

Despite changes to the model, the company is staying true to the vision she first described to me in the spring of 2019. Today, we're revisiting that conversation with the CEO of Pamper Nail Gallery, and hearing how this art-based business not only stayed afloat, but expanded in the midst of a global pandemic.

Rightnowish is an arts and culture podcast produced at KQED. Listen to it wherever you get your podcasts or click the play button at the top of this page and subscribe to the show on NPR One, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Pressing On with Press-On Nail Art During The Pandemic - KQED

Editors' Note:On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Dennis Cook was where you'd expect to find him on a Tuesday morning at work. He was a 33-year-old bond trader for Cantor Fitzgerald, which had its offices on the top floors of the World Trade Center.

Dennis was killed that day, when a hijacked plane crashed into the North Tower. More than 650 of his coworkers also died that morning.

He left behind a wife, Dana, and two young daughters Sophia, who was 3, and Lindsay, who was just 6 months old.

Research shows that most of us dont have memories before the age of 3. Sophia and Lindsay are young women now, and theyve spent their lives coping with the loss of a father they cant remember.They cant outrun the tragic and violent death of their dad the nation has been trained to "never forget" but they want a say in how it defines their lives. And, more than anything, they want to understand who their dad was, and which parts of him live on in them.

This is Sophia and Lindsay Cook, in their own words.

LINDSAY: I'm definitely a "9/11 kid." I know some people don't like the title, but I guess if the shoe fits ... I'm still figuring out how much, what percentage, what fraction of 9/11 is part of me. I'm 20 on the 20th anniversary, and I've still been figuring out what that means to me.

SOPHIA: I think that's something that my mom did a really good job of ... that she never wanted us to see that as part of our identity. She wanted us to, you know, it's something that happened to us. It's very, very sad. But you can still be your own person.

SOPHIA: So on Sept. 11, 2001, it was my first day of preschool. My mom was going to drop me off, and when she was in the parking lot she heard on the radio a plane had crashed into the twin towers. She obviously didn't know what was happening, but you had to assume the very worst. And that's kind of how that day began and unfolded for her in the middle of what would have otherwise been a very regular, normal day.

LINDSAY: One day she was living with an infant and a 3 year old, and she had her husband by her side. And then the next day, she didn't.

LINDSAY: We didn't talk about my dad a lot growing up, not in the sense that he was hidden or something,but maybe that was my mom's way of coping. She couldn't talk about my dad all the time and keep herself steady and keep everything really normal.

But now, I have all these questions that I don't always know how or when to ask. And very recently she said, I wish I'd talked about your dad more growing up, because she'll realize there are these things that she thinks we know, but we don't know.

A song will come on in the car and she'll say, this song reminds me of your dad. So now when I'm out and I hear, Come On, Eileen I turn to my roommate and say, My dad. My dad liked the song. This song reminds my mom of my dad.

SOPHIA: A lot of what I know of my dad is stories. It's not my own personal memories because I was so young. My dad's name was Dennis Cook, and he is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

LINDSAY: People say Sophia looks a lot like my dad and that I'm a mix of my mom and my dad. I feel like I'm constantly looking at pictures of my dad, trying to pull out myself in him. He was often described as a funny, fun-loving guy. But I've never heard a joke he's told. That's just what everybody tells me. I want so badly for people to tell me, not bad things about him, but ...

SOPHIA: But, like, more human character traits.

LINDSAY: Yeah. Like the real trouble he got into when he was in college. They weren't going to tell me the stuff when I was 8 years old. What was your dad like? He was very nice, Lindsay. Give me the dirt. Give me the inside scoop.

SOPHIA: One of my favorite pictures with my dad is us having a tea party. And it's at one of those teeny tiny little kiddie tables. I fit perfectly in the chair and everything's my right size. And it's funny because my dad sitting there, this big man, sitting at this tiny little lady table.

LINDSAY: I have four or five good pictures with my dad. In one of them, hes holding me; in one of them, I'm in the stroller and you can't see me; in another, it's me fresh in the hospital; and there's one at my baptism and that's about it. It's different not having anything tangible, not having anything concrete no memories that are my own.

DENNIS: I, Dennis. Take you, Dana. To be my wife. I promise to be true to you. In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.

LINDSAY: I heard my dad's voice for the first time. A few years ago, when I found my mom's wedding video. I took it and I watched it alone.

DANA: Id especially like to thank my parents for the best night of our lives, and Id like to thank Dennis's parents for all the love and support.

DENNIS: Hi, Mom and Dad.

DANA: Thanks, Mom and Dad.

LINDSAY: I was 17 and I had spent the past 17 years of my life puzzle piecing my dad together.

DANA: And Lets say hello to our future kids. Look how young we look! Dont we look good?

DENNIS: Dennis Jr., not little Alfie.

DANA: Well see

DENNIS: All my ushers. I'd like to thank you guys. Dave and Pat, you did a great job tonight.

LINDSAY: Watching that video I was definitely trying to get a piece of the demeanor that everybody told me about the fun-loving guy who's a great time to be around. It's getting to see that in motion.

DENNIS: Uncle Mike, Karen... and everybody that came by that gets to see this video. I hope you had a good time tonight. And thanks for coming.

DANA: Yeah, we thank you all. Thank you!

LINDSAY: It wasn't just a wedding video to me. It was so much more. I feel like I've dealt with it internally, on my own time, and I've been figuring out what it means to miss somebody who you never knew.

LINDSAY: Sophia and I have kind of talked before about how, we can see our friends with their dads and you don't really expect it. But just in little ways and little interactions, you feel that little pang of pain and you just move on from it.

SOPHIA: In 2004, my mom got remarried. So my dad" is technically my stepdad, I call him dad. My younger siblings are my half-siblings, but that's never been how it rolls. We're full siblings.

LINDSAY: Thinking about some other alternate universe feels so wrong, but it's so natural to think, What would this life have been like? What would he have been like?The "what ifs." But sometimes thinking about the "what ifs" feels wrong.

SOPHIA: People have asked: do you ever just wish it never happened? You know, you could just go back and stop that day? And that's probably one of the most difficult things and a very hurtful thing for someone to ask. Of course, I wish it didn't happen. But also, you're asking me to give up the lives of other people that came into the world only because it did. I think that's really how my mom and Lindsay and I look at it. We lost so much, we gained a lot more.

LINDSAY: I think about my dad a little bit every day. That doesn't mean I'm sad every day or grieving every day. I can think about him and be happy. But I never know where my mind is going to take me. It's just something that I've come to accept.

This piece was produced by Cloe Axelson and Frannie Carr Toth, with help from David Greene and Paul Calo.

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As '9/11 Kids,' We Only Have The Stories Other People Tell Us About Our Dad - WBUR