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September 11, 2006 |
By: Borann Heam
Khemara Times
Staff Writer (reprinted with permission)
Cambodia Town, CA – As part of an
international day of remembrance for the
victims that died five years ago on
September 11th, Sister Cities
International,
organized “The September Concert,” a
series of free musical concert held on
9/11.
“Today, we are going to have a September
concert to
commemorate 9/11,” said Patricia McMaster,
Chair of
Sister Cities of Long Beach, Inc., whose
sister worked
nearby to the World Trade Center when the
attack took
place. “This event is called ‘Together We
Fill the Sky
With Music.’ This is something that the
Sister Cities
International in Washington, D.C., has
been promoting
since 2002, and through out the United
States and
around the world, different Sister Cities
organizations are going to sing ‘All You
Need is
Love’.”
Under a cloudless sunny day, at the Civic
Center Plaza
in Downtown City Hall, the program began
at high noon
with Reverend Kristin Hawkin, leading
everyone into a
moment of silence to remember the victims
of 9/11, and
then challenging the audience to work
towards peace.
“We are, indeed, peaceful people because
that is the
truth of who we are,” she said. “It is in
the silence
that we dedicate ourselves to living a
life of a
peaceful person.” Quoting a famous Indian
intellectual, Jawaharial Nehru, she
concluded her
speech by reading: “Peace is not a
relationship of
nations. It is a conditions of the mind
brought about
by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely
the absence
of war. It is also a state of mind.
Lasting peace can
only come to peaceful people.”
Afterward, with a popular veteran band,
One Way
Ticket, breaking the silence and swaying
the crowd by
playing classical hits of the Beatles,
it’s hard to
imagine that this is only the first year
that Sister
Cities of Long Beach, Inc. has held this
peace concert
in Long Beach. Among those in attendance
were: City
workers, Fire Fighters, City officials,
Community
leaders, Religious leaders, and local
residents, whom
all together at 1 p.m. sung, “All You Need
is Love”.
This very song by the Beatles was also
sung
simultaneously throughout 115 other cities
across the
globe that held the concert.
 According to Richard Madeira, Chair of
Sister City,
Sochi, Russia, he believes that the
musical concert
allows people to reflect and start to heal
the wounds
of 9/11.
“I think this is a very sad and tragic
time in many
ways,” he said. “But I think there is a
side in each
one of our hearts that wants to heal some
of that pain
and move on. And the I think that song,
‘All You Need
is Love,’ is a very healing song, it has a
long
history of healing.”
Bonnie Lowenthal, Vice Mayor of the City
of Long
Beach, said that we all heal in different
ways.
However, part of the process is that we
should never
forget what happened in New York,
especially since
both cities have so much in common.
“Long Beach is an international city, just
like New
York City,” said Vice-Mayor Lowenthal, who
is also a
founder of the Phnom Penh Sister City.
“Long Beach has
a port, New York has a port. We accept
people from all
over the world that is why the Sister
Cities program
is so important to us. We can develop
meaningful ties
with countries that are distant from our
shores. Some
of the people from these countries live
here in Long
Beach. We need to promote these ties and
diversity,
just as New York City has many
international ties as
well.”
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