One Poet's Reflections Eight Years After 9/11

Today's post is somewhat outside the scope of our typical mission to inform NOPE supporters and the general public about the Laurelwood housing situation at Weapons Station Earle, but a Middletown-based blogger poet by the pseudonym "findingmyroom" eloquently encapsulates thoughts and emotions of so many of us living outside NYC and how the 9-11 terror attacks turned our attention to Weapons Station Earle as a target.

"Never did anyone think they (the Twin Towers) would fall at the whim of a group of fanatics with box cutters on planes," as written by findingmyroom, is especially striking, considering that some of us in NOPE either were in NYC that morning or worked at Fort Monmouth or Earle, which clamped down on security in the aftermath and continues to heighten security measures to get on the base - precisely why the U.S. Navy's decision to open an unimpeded civilian access route to the Laurelwood housing complex is all the more baffling. We still have yet to hear a logical reason (i.e., the Laurelwood EIS was utterly incomplete, lacking in relevant security and financial impact assessments) for cutting a hole in the security fencing a few hundred yards south of the main gate on Rt. 34 of a massive military weapons installation; obligating an 80s-era privatized housing contract is not a sufficient reason to compromise national and regional security.

Gone are the days of the community softball leagues at Earle's ballfields and other feel-good community events on the base, replaced by justifiable concerns among citizens well beyond the list of our thousands of supporters...not so much about what the present security force at Earle is doing, but about the greater potential for domestic terrorism and NWS Earle as a potential target in the wake of 9/11.