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PW: So I'm going to shift again. So in the '90s, there was a major national/international incident that I'm sure must have affected the congregation, and that was September 11, [2001], when there was the tragic attack, terrorist attack on the World Trade towers in New York.

MY: 9/11, yeah.

PW: Yes. What was the congregation's response and what was your response?

MY: The very first... we were going through a renovation at that time, and so we weren't using our sanctuary, but we were using our social hall for our worship services. And that was also a historical building because it was built in 1927 after the 1924 Anti-Exclusion Act. So there was a certain ambiance whenever we worshipped in there that I'd feel, because it was almost like you have the ancestors with you in the space, because they've built the place. But it was interesting to me, because the very first worship service we had, a couple of folks spoke up. I remember particularly Ki Nomura and Tats Tajima, who said it reminded them of Pearl Harbor, when they were the face of the enemy, and they were worried about the Arabs and the South Asians and the Muslims who would be targeted, because there was a stereotype of who was causing the World Trade attacks. And so there was a quick pivot for us on looking at how do we reach out to these communities. And at the time, there was a strong Afghan community. So the very next week, I invited an Afghan friend, a doctor who was active in the community from Afghanistan, and he came and talked about how they were feeling as Afghans in the community. And we actually did kind of a holiday gift giving. They were Muslim, so they don't celebrate Christmas, but it was getting toward Christmas, but we called it a holiday gift giving. Because he was taking a plane, he was chartering a plane to go back to Afghanistan to help family members and community members there that he knew.

And then the following Sunday I invited a Muslim friend from some networks that we had been involved with to come and speak about what Muslims were experiencing, feeling as well. And it became very clear that there was a lot going on in terms of these communities where there were monitoring of communities, there were deportations taking place immediately, there was a lot of surveillance going on, and a lot of fear in the communities themselves about kind of being looked at in a fishbowl. And so we started working with a woman named Samina Sundas, who started a group called (American Muslim Voice) or something like that. But she was organizing vigils at the INS, and also when there were families that were being subjected to deportations of family members unjustly, that was getting on her radar screen, and we were going out to some of the INS vigils and rallies, things of that nature.

PW: INS being Immigration...

MY: Immigration and Naturalization Service in San Francisco. And then she was developing conferences to bring people together, and she was particularly aware that Japanese Americans were being supportive of their communities, so she reached out in that respect. And so that kind of shifted some of the landscape of what we were doing to the more global understanding of this situation. And also it was a pivot back to civil liberties theology. Because when we think about the things that were going on, and what the commission said about race prejudice, lack of political leadership, and war hysteria being the reasons for this, we were seeing that in front of us in terms of the hysteria going on around the attacks. There were justifiable fears that were going on for people in terms of the attacks, but then there's another level of it being, kind of going sideways, and certain communities being impacted. And we could see definitely the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment being fueled in that as well. And then paying attention to what political leaders were saying and doing for that matter as well.

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