i saw this woman for the first time tonight on cspan and heard her talking about her daughter and wanted to share it here
if you download it from cspan on real player she begins 13 minutes into the press conference
http://www.c-span.org/videoarchives.asp?CatCodePairs=,&ArchiveDays=100Donna Marsh O'Connor (mother of Vanessa Lang Langer who died in tower 2 on 93rd floor)
"this is my motivation (she holds up picture of her daughter). george w. bush says "god bless america". he already did. blessed us over and over and over again. and on that day--on that day--it was men who cursed us. not god. and it has been in the hands of men ever since, to investigate everything; the events leading up to, during, and the events post 9/11.
"i know, on a daily basis, the press covers the event post-9/11 but i feel, frankly, abandoned. if i question anything about the official story i'm called a conspiracy theorist. my daughter was on the 93rd floor of tower two and five minutes after the first plane hit she was on the phone to the park avenue office of regis business international where she worked, in the trade center offices. four or five months pregnant, depending on if you listen to the family myth or what the medical examiner told me when he looked at the fetal bones.
"she was at her desk, telling the park avenue office that the port authority police and those in the building were told they were safe, that they should stay at their desks.
"they were not safe. but she was almost saved. my daughter's body was one of only about 283 whole and intact bodies. the funeral director--they pulled her out of the rubble on september 24th--the funeral director told me, when they notified us on july 6th and he picked up her body, that she looked exactly as i would have expected her to look. so i asked to see her.
"and i did get support from hillary clinton's office, but my son-in-law wouldn't let me see her without him seeing her. and i couldn't put him through that.
"it took me four years for the courage to see those final pictures. this is a picture of my daughter without make-up. she would have been appalled to have been shown without make-up. she was stunning. and i always feared that her beauty would put her in danger.
"she went to work that day; in the glove compartment of her ford explorer--at that point in time the most dangerous car in america--i lectured her about that--was the positive pregnancy test kit. all she ever wanted was that child. all she ever wanted was the child who would be walking with me, five years old, today.
"roughly, about the time my daughter was on the phone to her park avenue office, thanks to paul thompson i know that is roughly the time that george w. bush--the president of this country--walked into a school to lecture to children. he didn't rush to command central. he didn't order evacuations of any of our major skyscrapers, including and especially tower two.
"my daughter was found ten feet from an alley, whole and intact. she wasn't crushed, she didn't fall. she had injuries--blunt trauma to her head, her neck, her femur. her autopsy report is public record.
"i have two sons; one of them, at the time, was her best friend--he was fourteen years old. and he spent september 12th researching all of the phone numbers of all of the emergency rooms in new york city because this was an impossibility--my daughter would have run for her life. my daughter would have run not to make her brothers the saddest human beings on the face of the planet.
"and all i asked for, when the first news reporter from my local area in upstate new york came to tell me she was going to allow me to tell a beautiful story of my daughter--all i asked that day was why could i not fly home from toronto but osama bin laden's family and some saudi nationals whose names i still don't know were flown out of the country in our airspace. i was grounded. they were not. i asked her that day: where was norad? where were our defense systems? and instead, she told the two minutes of the beautiful story i told about my fierce and loving daughter.
"and that's what it's been like for five years. the first thing members of the press always ask me and sometimes individual family members will ask me: where are the rest of the family members? why aren't you all questioning? and i will tell you that for five years, in my small community in upstate new york, i've been posing questions. and my kids have been loved by some and shunned by others because their mother is a "conspiracy theorist".
"i am not a theorist. i was a theorist at syracuse university for twenty two years when i taught writing and rhetoric and american public discourse and i can't do that anymore. i haven't seen my daughter in five years. except that she is the screen saver in my mind.
"and this government has made me a victim of conspiracy theories because they haven't answered fully, or allowed anyone to ask the true questions of september 11th.
"and that's what i'm asking from you today. for exposure.
"we are not crazy. we have questions. we demand answers. i don't want to be paternalized by my government. i am a parent. and i want to be able to raise the rest of my children to go to work, to live their lives, to do as rudy giuliani told us shortly after september 11th to save the economy...to go shopping. i want to tell them this is their land, this is their country.
"we are never again are going to be safe. we never were safe. there isn't a man or woman, politician, on this globe who can save us. but we can make ourselves safer by refusing to continue to cover up. don't look for stars to tell you the answers.
"we're asking for a new investigation into the events of september 11th and this time a truly bipartisan, global--with families invested from the beginning, middle and though out the end.
"god blessed america. and look what we did with it."
(in case the link doesn't work for the video--the title is 9/11: press for truth news conference)
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