Friday marks 25 years since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the crash of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Around 3,000 people were killed that day, and nearly 10,000 more have died in the years since from 9/11-related illnesses connected to the collapse of the twin towers.
In 2001, Democracy Now! was a radio show broadcasting from the attic of Downtown Community Television in Chinatown, just blocks away from ground zero. We were the closest national broadcast to the World Trade Center site. We were on the air when the second plane hit the south tower. Today, we reair a clip of that broadcast and hear Democracy Now! co-host Juan González read the column he wrote for the New York Daily News in the hours after the attack, “A Horror to Last a Lifetime.”
“A catastrophe like that changes people forever,” says González.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.