Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Heroism & Fear Related to 9/11

Our apologies for not getting in touch with you earlier.

80-20's e-mail line located in WTC was cut since 9/11.



(A) Heroic Act of an APA on 9/11

Right after the first AA Airline plane hit the WTC, Zhe Zeng, who works at Bank of New York on Wall Street, called his mother and said "I'm okay. It's chaotic outside. I'm going to help other people." and he hanged up the phone. Zhe has never been heard from since. A few days later, one of his friends saw Zhe in the Fox News' TV coverage of the rescue efforts around WTC just before the buildings
collapsed.

Zhe is 29 year old and got his MBA from the University of Rochester. Zhe came from Quanzhou to New York with his parents when he was 15 years old. He was a trained and certified rescue worker. While at Styvesant High in lower Manhattan, he was a honor student and was always willing to help the other students specially in math. He was so well liked such that the landlord where his family lived even lowered the rent in order to lighten his family's burden.

Zhe's mother, a former schoolteacher in China, said "Since we have immigrated to America, we have to think this land as our country. I always taught young people to serve their society and its people. I may have lost Zhe, but I'm very proud of what he did. I hope mainstream America will understand that there are Chinese Americans who are willing to sacrifice themselves in order to help others. Now I only want to find out what happened to Zhe. I pray that there would not be war, because more innocent people will be killed"

[The above was reported in The World Journal and translated by Charlie Sie, an 80-20 supporter and member of C-100. See article
(Chinese Big 5 format) ]

(B) Fear -- 1/3 of New Yorkers Support Internment
Camps

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- One third of New Yorkers favor establishing internment
camps for "individuals who authorities identify as being sympathetic to terrorist causes," according to a poll from the Siena College Research Institute.

Fifty percent of those surveyed for the statewide poll said they were
opposed to that idea while 15 percent had no opinion.

Internment camps have been controversial since World War II when the United States ordered thousands of Japanese-Americans into such facilities.

Douglas Lonnstrom, director of the research institute, said that given that World War II experience he found it "startling" that 34 percent of those polled supported the creation of new internment camps.


Lonnstrom said he didn't know if those questioned equated the phrase "sympathetic to terrorist causes" to Arab-Americans.