by Saeed Shabazz
Staff Writer

GROUND ZER0, N.Y. (FinalCall.com)�Anger, frustration and disappointment characterize the feelings of many Black and Latino victims and family members of victims here as the three-month anniversary of the horrific attack against the World Trade Center was celebrated.

All of the complaints are not solely centered on the blatant absence of Black and Latino victims and their families in the media coverage. Many have voiced their concern about how the service agencies are handling their paper work.

In the beginning, everyone at the Red Cross was talking very nice, Arevalo Marina from Patterson, N.J., told The Final Call. Now, that has changed. She lost her son, Kenny Lira, 28, who worked on the 110th floor in the south tower.

�He was on the 83rd floor and that was the last we heard from him,� she said sadly. She says that the Red Cross keeps changing the story concerning what benefits are available to her.

�I have just received a call from the FBI, telling me that my paper work has been lost. Why is this happening?� she asked. Ms. Marina is a native of Peru.

�People are beginning now to understand what racism is about in this city,� said a Brooklyn community activist, adding that people are calling his office every day complaining about the lack of news coverage concerning how Sept. 11 is affecting the Black and Latino communities. �It is true, the White media has projected White people as the only ones who suffered from the WTC attack.�

Shaun Powell, a sports columnist for Newsday newspaper, said it seems that if you were not a fireman, policeman or CEO, you do not count. Mr. Powell lost his brother, Scott Powell, when a plane hit the Pentagon in Washington.

Mr. Powell wrote a column about his brother for Newsday. �If I hadn�t been in a position to write that story, no one would ever know about Scott. He was just an every day ordinary guy, a wonderful human being. I am still numb,� he said.

The victims of the WTC attack died by fire, suffocation or explosion and most had been torn to pieces. Witnesses say that firemen cried during the first days because they discovered so many bodies of young women.

There was Myrna Maldonado, 49, a kitchen assistant who was tending to the breakfast buffet on the 107th floor when the first plane hit. Helen Cook came from Honduras. She was working on the 83rd floor when she called her brother Edson to tell him not to worry. She never made it out. There was Margaret Mattic, 53, an office temporary worker who died on the 83rd floor of the north tower.

The overall total for the dead and missing at the WTC now stands at 3,557, including those who were working in the immediate area and people who were making deliveries to the towers.

�Whenever I pass the WTC area, I can�t help but feel that they will find something, maybe a finger, some sort of positive DNA, so that we will have something to bury,� Greg Taylor of Staten Island explained. His brother Darryl Taylor, 52, an office manager, was somewhere, possibly the 82nd or 83rd floor, he said.

�They have not found my brother�s body, but it was important to bring some sense of closure for our father, so we applied for the death certificate, issued by the city,� he said. �We had a memorial service on Staten Island that was well attended. People came that we hadn�t seen in years.�

According to the Office of Emergency Management, there have been 457 death certificates issued by the Medical Examiner�s office, because of positive identification. Families such as the Taylors have requested over 1,900 certificates.

It has been extremely difficult to find out the exact numbers of Blacks and Latinos missing or dead. A media spokesman for Mayor Rudolph Guiliani told The Final Call that they were not keeping racial or ethnic statistics. �Call the Red Cross,� he suggested.

Calls to the Red Cross Public Information Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were not returned.

Among the photos of WTC victims CNN has posted on its website are approximately 110 people that are Black and Latino. At a memorial site at Penn Station in Manhattan there are photos of Port Authority Police Officers who are dead or missing. Black officers named include Nathaniel Webb, 56, from Jersey City, N.J.; Bruce Reynolds, 41, Columbia, N.J.; Uhura Houston, 44, Englewood, N.J.; and Clinton Davis, 38, Massapequa, Long Island.

Two Black New York City police officers died at the WTC, a sergeant and a patrolman. Twelve of the more than 300 New York City firemen killed are Black. The remains of 116 firefighters have been discovered in the three months since Sept. 11, according to Fire Department officials. There are still 227 firemen missing.

I personally knew all the brothers that died, Paul Washington, president of the Vulcans, a Black fireman�s group said. �The memorials are winding down. These have been difficult times, because we are a tight-knit family,� he said.

There are stories of the Black and Latino security officers who stayed conscientiously at their posts and guided people to safety, such as the Black security guard, who was off-duty and in the basement of the WTC attending a class. He heard the alarm and immediately went to his post. He is dead or missing and his family may not be eligible for benefits because he was not officially on duty.

Emergency medical technician Rudolph Muhammad told The Final Call that for the first few hours there was nothing but chaos at the WTC site. �There was no one taking charge, but the Black and Latino security people went into action and saved a lot of lives,� he said.

Mr. Muhammad says that he was assigned to the site from Sept. 11 to Oct. 30. He remembers his high school friend, Andre Fletcher, who was with the first rescue company to go in.

�Andre was the kind of guy that lived for the moment as presented on September 11,� he said. �What is so tragic about the 25 men who were with Andre is that their captain argued for over five minutes with those in charge that the tower was not safe.

�The captain gave up arguing and went to pull his men out. The tower came down,� Mr. Muhammad said.

The complaints concerning the problem people are having navigating the system has been heard. Franklin Thomas, a Black man who heads the Sept. 11 Fund, the second-largest charity established to help victims, will distribute $75-million by year�s end. This money will be sent to victims and their families, with most of the money going to those who have lost homes or jobs in lower Manhattan.

It is estimated that 20,000 people lost jobs or were displaced. They will receive $2,500. The rest will be distributed to the families of those killed or injured with each family getting a check for $10,000 regardless of any amount received from other charities, according to Mr. Thomas.