As the United States commemorates the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed in New York City, Washington DC and Pennsylvania, the Guardian asked American readers to share how the attacks affected their day-to-day lives and the country at large.
Many readers shared their feeling of patriotism in the days following the attacks while also highlighting how the government’s response to 9/11 expanded government surveillance and fueled Islamophobia in the country. For those who were adults at the time of the attacks, the day marked a cataclysmic shift. For those too young to remember it, it served as the context for the complicated and violent world they grew up in.
“When 9/11 first happened, everyone became your friend. We were all together in this loss, and the country felt like home everywhere. Driving down a suburban street every house displayed an American flag,” wrote Jennifer Jasensky, a 55-year-old paralegal based in Milford, Connecticut. “It was a beautiful sight, like something out of a book or Hallmark movie.”
Elizabeth Zorko, a retired election administrator in Omaha, Nebraska, recalled a similar phenomenon: “I remember meeting the eyes of total strangers and there was a look that wasn’t there before, as if a deep personal connection had been forged by this shared horrific experience.”
That feeling of unity soon gave way to anger and division, in large part due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, begun by the George W Bush administration and framed as necessary conflicts to help the US win the war on terror.
“We launched two forever wars that were wholly ineffective at making us safer militarily, and only sank our prestige in the world – especially [in] Europe and the Middle East – at the cost of thousands of American soldiers and countless Iraqi civilians,” wrote Benjamin Price, a 50-year-old attorney in Savannah, Georgia.
“While we would take seemingly any measure to fend off potential foreign terrorism, domestic terrorism in our own country seemed to become a monthly occurrence with absolutely no measures to widen or strengthen domestic gun laws.”
Dan J, a 42-year-old based in Vermont, said: “From day one, the attacks on 9/11 have been used to demonize and dehumanize an entire region of the world.
“We allowed 9/11 to bring our nation together, not in grieving or resilience, but in group hatred. I was ashamed of us then, and as we have allowed this country to become more absorbed in hatred, xenophobia and isolation now, the shame is stronger.”
A Guardian reader, who asked to remain anonymous, wrote about the Islamophobia he faced as a devout Muslim growing up in a post-9/11 world.
“The most it impacted me was during elementary through high school,” he said. “I grew up in the Bay Area where people are generally more tolerant and educated, so the worst experiences I have are mostly with regards to jokes and being poked fun at by classmates in school.”
Beyond the walls of his classroom, he noticed that “the Middle East became associated exclusively with danger and terrorism, despite being the birthplace of all Abrahamic religions and a hotbed of ancient civilizations”.
Many readers pointed to the Patriot Act and the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, both passed in response to the September 11 attacks, as the most tangible examples of the day’s legacy in our daily lives.
“Measures we never would have accepted in the 90s, searches at airports, no bags in stadiums, seemed ‘reasonable’ and never went away,” said Price. Zorko said that she has not flown since April 2002: “Not because I’m afraid, but because it’s such a hassle.”
Mona, a 72-year-old in California, believes that “the Patriot Act laid the groundwork for the excesses of the DHS [Department of Homeland Security], ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and CBP [Customs and Border Protection] that have killed many since 2025. It also provided ignorant and racist white Americans with cover to act on their prejudices.”
Jeff Jarvis, a 72-year-old journalist and former Guardian contributor, arrived at the World Trade Center from the train right as the first plane hit.
“I stayed to report and was a block from the South Tower when it fell, enveloping me in the dust of destruction,” he wrote. “In the 25 years since, many, including me, have ongoing health issues. I don’t know to this day what the effect is on children, including mine.”
Jarvis continued: “Regardless of stirring memories of George W Bush standing atop the pile of rubble and visiting a mosque in a show of unity and compassion, now it is all the easier for rightwing fanatics in power to stir hatred, attack neighbors and start wars based on otherness. That one day of terrible suffering and loss took from us Americans our perspective for the suffering and loss we now bring down on other nations and peoples.”
Ashley, a 30-year-old based in Washington DC, who celebrated her fifth birthday on 11 September 2001, said: “People who are older than me say ‘it united the whole country’. But growing up alongside its passing anniversary, I feel it completely unraveled the US, and we are still wrestling with its legacy.”
She added: “To me, 9/11 has become representative of in America, paranoia, death, destruction, revenge, greed. Even our younger generations laugh at it, because they are desensitized not just to the violence of that day, but the overwhelming violence America committed abroad in its wake.”
