For World Trade Center cook, surviving 9/11 led to activism

Washington, September 11

Twenty years after 9/11, Sekou Siby still feels the pangs of survivor’s guilt. A cook and dishwasher at the World Trade Center’s Windows on the World restaurant, Siby had swapped shifts that day with a co-worker, who ended up dying in the terrorist attacks.

The tragedy sent Siby on a path he had never imagined he would take when he emigrated from the Ivory Coast in 1996. He made it his mission to advocate for higher pay and better working conditions for restaurant workers — a role that has gained importance as the restaurant industry has struggled more than most in the grip of the viral pandemic.

Siby, 56, is now president of Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a nationwide advocacy group that emerged from the attacks. The pandemic’s calamitous impact on restaurant workers has raised the group’s profile since last year’s widespread shutdowns initially cost 6 million restaurant workers — nearly half the industry’s total — their jobs. ROC United, using donated funds from foundations, responded by distributing USD 10 million in cash payments to 5,000 laid-off workers.

The money was a financial life-saver for people like Jazz Salm, 37, who lost her server job at a Sunrise, Florida, Chili’s that closed in March 2020 when the pandemic erupted. The $225 she received from ROC United enabled her to pay her phone bill — her only connection to the Internet, which she needed to file for unemployment aid.

Siby has been driven by the memories of his 73 Windows on the World co-workers, many of them fellow immigrants, who died in the 9/11 attacks. “Without 9/11, there wouldn’t have been a ROC United. The fact that I was able to turn whatever anger I had to support other people who were more desperate than me, is what allowed me to turn the corner,” he said. — AP