Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

15 Jul 2006, 11:48 a.m.

Transit

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2006 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Via Feministe: tributes to those who died in the London terrorist attack a year ago. The terrorists exploded bombs during rush hour, on the subway and bus systems.

Lee Baisden, an accountant for a fire brigade: "He had just moved in with his boyfriend of three years but also spent much of his time looking after his widowed mother, who suffers from multiple sclerosis."

Of another victim: His new employer, Jessops, closed all its 280 stores for the national two-minute silence on July 14 [2005].

Another: the victim's mother, a minister, "had been bombarded with messages of sympathy and support, and driven to memorial sites by cab drivers who had refused payment."

"I will always remember her and all the others involved in these tragic events but I will not be afraid of these evil and barbaric terrorists, ever."

Another: "His parents were killed by the Taliban when he was a teenager. He left his family in Afghanistan and arrived in Britain in January 2002..."

Another: "Shahara Islam, from Whitechapel, east London was born in Britain to a devout Muslim family of Bengali origin."

We still don't know who killed almost 200 people a few days ago in Mumbai. People were going home from work on commuter trains, as on BART or Caltrain or Metro-North. And every day we take our trains, and we're not going to stop.