Friend,

Early on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was sitting on an airplane at Newark Liberty International Airport, on my way to Washington, D.C., in a long line for takeoff. Busily editing a Supreme Court brief in a case I would argue a few weeks later, I was paying no attention to what was happening outside the window. I vaguely recall the flight attendant saying something about an accident at the World Trade Center, that our flight would be delayed and we were returning to the gate. Still in a zone of concentrated brief-writing, I was the last person to leave the plane after the flight attendant gently touched my shoulder. The airport was shutting down.

I stumbled out of the airport a few minutes later, unaware yet that the world had changed forever. Driving home to Montclair, New Jersey, I could see the World Trade Center buildings on fire and began to panic. Our office at the American Civil Liberties Union was just a few blocks from there, and I commuted through the World Trade Center every day. I was overwhelmed with fear for my co-workers and my husband, who was already at his job in the city. I couldn’t reach anyone. I didn’t own a cell phone yet.

Had I not been traveling to D.C. that day, I would have arrived at the Trade Center by train at 8:45 a.m. The first plane crashed into the North Tower at 8:46. I learned later that my Newark flight was just a few planes behind United Airlines Flight 93, the one that was hijacked by the terrorists and crashed in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board.

Several days later, I returned to work, taking a ferry from New Jersey because the train station was destroyed in the attack. The boat navigated a narrow route between the World Trade Center site and New York Harbor. I wanted to pull the Statue of Liberty in a little closer.

Every day, the ferry would pass by ground zero. It smoldered for many months as first responders in gas masks and protective gear continued their rescue and recovery efforts. I would hold my breath to avoid the smell, fighting back emotion about what I was breathing in.

That first day back, the ground around our building was still covered in a fine layer of dust. From my office, I could hear the constant clang of metal and see cranes on barges sort twisted debris from the destroyed buildings. The images, sounds and smells of those days still haunt me.

Swift and brutal backlash

There was no time to recover from the shock of the attacks. With dreaded certainty, we knew that civil rights and civil liberties would be gravely threatened. During a tearful all-staff meeting, I recall the prayer of one of my Muslim colleagues, “Please God don’t let the attackers look like my brothers.”

The backlash was swift and brutal. Congress passed the Patriot Act a mere six weeks after the attacks, ushering in a wave of executive overreach. I spent the next several years litigating cases and advocating against a broad range of government abuses perpetrated in the name of keeping our country safe from terrorism.

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In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center