Michelle Josephine Alleyne 7-06-1969
First Responder 9-11-2001 detail
Public Safety Officer #475 City University of New York assigned the Temporary Morgue Emergency Assistance Unit by the City University of New York.
First of all I would like to thank Voices of September 11th for allowing survivors of 911 to have a voice and a day of remembrance. For without first God, abolitionist, advocates, friends and supporters of justice, African Americans would never be able to have accomplished and or record historical data timeline throughout American history. I have also enclosed quotes from voices of various peoples throughout history to reveal how far African Americans have really come in American freedom and equality.
On September 11,2001, I along with other American citizens and guest was faced with a terrorism that impacted all of America. This was a day were there was no such thing as part suffrage. All of America was being attacked. And it affected all Americans in different ways. I was faced with a two-fold tragedy at ground zero, a terrorist strike on America, and how this plays a role in African Americans continued quest for true freedom and equality for its members.
My name is Michelle Josephine Alleyne, I was named after my Grandmother Josephine Jones a free Negro woman in the south who tolled and labored in the fields of North Carolina in order to make sure that her offspring had a place to come back to. My mother due to my brother being special had to grab on to the baton of keeping a place we call home. Due to the season and climate of the times of segregation my mother had to venture up north in the great black migration from South to North to find work because labor was scarce if not limited for persons of color especially women due to discrimination because of the color of our skin. My concern has to do with 911 attacks of the World Trade the continue quest of Globalization and where do we go from here.
On September 10, 2001 I was on patrol as a public safety officer when I got a call from the hospital that my mother was in intensive care. She was supposed to work on a local campaign the next day. When I turned on the television I realized we were being attacked as an American born citizen. When the second plane hit, I knew I had to report back to work because something was terribly wrong. This was also my brother's birthday, a sign and turning point in my personal life that things must change and it would take all of America to do it. If you do not believe in the reality of what I speak just keep in tune to our local election process to Presidency which enlightens on how four America really have come toward true freedom, justice and equality for black people in the land in which we were brought in chains on slave ships.
I was placed on assignment by my command to report to the emergency assistance, temporary morgue for duty at 199 Chambers Street which according to the Public Safety Director was a three month assignment. Though when I requested my exact time after I was forced out and placed on "Special Disability" I was not privileged to obtain my records for the exact hours and days assigned. The ordeal was very traumatic; pulling 8, 16, and sometimes rolling over to 3 shifts till relief came. I was later diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the ordeal from the World Trade Center Monitoring Network, as with other first responders who answered the call. The horror stories you have heard time and time again were true and it is one that is hard for anyone to forget. The death and destruction was high and loud and clear on a force that wants to destroy Americans.
On that day all of America's emergency personnel and volunteers came together that day to work for one purpose, to help Americans, clean up and protect America's safety regardless of what city, unit, division, title, position or rank or cultural ethnicity you were. On that day I knew there could be one America.
Who ever knew, after surviving that assignment that 9-11-01 would have an effect on me the rest of my life? ' started to go in and out of the hospital all the while having nightmares about the event, though' still had the will to make it. I graduated with a 3.88 average made the dean's list, then moved on to a different site where' became a sergeant in public safety only to go into the hospital again. Though the world was crumbling to terrorist activity around me , tried overcoming by striving to make something out of myself for my families' sake.
I was taught as a child that 1 had to work hard, be a thinker and make a way of your own. My parents sacrificed and placed me in private school and paved a way until I could pave a way for myself. My teenage years were a struggle but 1 made it through. When' was able to work, did and had to think toward the future. Josephine Jones was a thinker and a hard laborer. She did so not with her only in mind but of her offspring. By her thinking two steps ahead, she not only saved me from the bottomless pit, but also allowed me to understand clearly that even if the world rejects me , am loved first by God, then by her and my purpose for being. I am almost 40 years old and I want to go home now due to the health effects of 911, but it is not the time, nor season for though 'labored, do not have a place yet to call home where my grandparents and my mother left for her offspring.
They crucified me because I educated and informed by filling the bulletin board with up to date pertinent information crucial to public safety, the school and the community in which I patrolled because I was there on 9-11-01 and witnessed firsthand the devastation of the strike and the impact of terrorism. All of this was going on when I was just received a double promotion to Sergeant, was an officer with numerous awards and certifications and recommendations. I only needed to close with $128 dollars on a one family house with the HUD's Officers Teachers program and was accepted in a special B.A M.A honors program at Hunter College all of which the City was aware of. Due to being placed on Special Disability I lost everything I worked too hard to achieve, an officer with numerous honors, awards and educational achievement only to be faced with another ground zero.
The City University of New York turned its back on me, an officer committed to serve while her mother lay in the hospital the day before the strike. Though the question comes up time and time again what about my safety? Does America care about me as much as I care about her is the question? As the scale tips, I measure the scales of justice the and level remains severely off balance for a black women in America and her offspring.
My middle name was named after my grandmother a woman who toiled in the fields of America in quest for a better life for her offspring. Due to no labor in the south and hard times for a black man and women in South. My mother along with her female siblings had to migrate to the North in search for a better life, economy and way of life.
My father is a tailor by trade and worked as a city bus driver. My step-grandfather was a military man and one who risk his life to defend this country. My mother continues to dedicate her life to being a productive American citizen, she ran for office, volunteered for numerous civil duties, advocates, fights for justice for the local man and woman in her neighborhood till this day even after her getting run over by a van, suffering from breast cancer, the removal of her breast and her adoption of my new brothers that she saved from entering into the system.
My grandparents and parents were born in America; I was born in America, worked 20 years in this country, served and committed my life for ten years in uniform as a peace officer in this country and sworn with an oath the importance of public safety of America with my life. Though America where is your oath to me?
Is it tied in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence that was re-written and put into archives by our founding father Thomas Jefferson? Is it portrayed in the original sketch model of the statue of Liberty by Frenchman Fredrick Auguste Bartholdi which was denounced by American people?
African-Americans are an indigenous people in the historical quest American freedom for all and need to be protected. The American Indians were protected with the furnous H. R. Bill 2204 which was a declaration of allegiance of the American Indians to the United States thus reducing them to US citizenship. The Emancipation Proclamation was a powerful document that paved the way for Africans Americans to be free but led the way for all Americans and new American alike through African American Labor, sufferings, blood sweat and tears to benefit from the toil to a greater extent. African Americans need to be protected by government due to their continual sacrifice through blood, advocacy and love for America to be protected from the continual paradigm shifts of globalization, industrialization, corporate conglomerates, international trade agreements, and outright denial of equal inclusion by members of evil and terrorism against African Americans.
I received a commemorative pin from my chief and a letter of commendation from the director of public safety at Borough Manhattan Community College that was turned into an emergency temporary morgue and hospital unit. I also received a letter from a student in my Happy Meal thanking me for being a heroin which was very sentimental to me, but my things were left at Hunter College after they let me go and were never returned.
Since that most tragic event I knew that I was coming to a point where achieving success after 20 years of working was very important to me even though I suffered from symptoms of shortness of breath., insomnia and thoughts of the tragic event. I was an honor student in 2000 at Hostos in Public Administration where my concentrated courses were law enforcement and social change. I had a 3.88 average and wanted to move on career wise and educationally. I transferred to Hunter in 2002 where I made it known to the Director and in my portfolio that I had the skills, education and the know how to become a Sergeant at Hunter College and my long term goal which was to start a not-for profit organization.
Within a year, I received a double promotion to Sergeant were I was celebrated by colleagues and was enrolled in a BAIMA honors program at Hunter College. I also won the lottery for a one family house in Jersey City in the Officers Teachers Program where I went into contract with. Things were looking very well for me after the tragic event of 911 although I was suffering health problems that landed me .into the hospital in 2002, then later in 2003 when I was promoted.
I am currently two credits away from receiving my Bachelor in Psychology and a Minor in Cross Cultural Studies. I have since written a proposal for the Josephine Jones and Mary Alleyne Family Foundation that would build a library, educational scholarship, a baseball field, and a senior citizen center for African American and included persons who were injured from fighting for America. This proposal is still in its embryonic stages and I am seeking extended family that understands the need for this foundation to take place for African Americans and the injured black Americans who dedicated their life in spite of the obvious injustices of America to accomplish the task for true American liberty. There is a dire need to bring African Americans up to date on the ever evolving goals and effects of Globalization and we need to be protected.
I also developed an organization which was my final examination called the (AAAG), Afro-American Advocacy Group which is enclosed on CD, that could assist Afro Americans need for assistance as well as its existing communities in the future against terrorism, bigotry, discrimination and the withholding of Americas entitlements that our forefathers fought and died for in Slavery, Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement.
I have volunteered and received numerous awards for my effort of being an active American citizen. I am still healing since being hospitalized after the 911 attacks. I pray that my mother and well as myself can see purpose for this foundation fulfilled based on our contribution to America and I thank our angels in advance while we are still on this earth and hope to be able to see its formation.