Executive Director, Bruce Iwasaki

The Frontline

September 14, 2001

The horrific national tragedy we awoke to Tuesday morning still defies comprehension. Each new heartrending piece of news further overwhelms our ability to process the atrocity. And now that the rhetoric from our leaders is less about bringing perpetrators to justice than about waging a prolonged war against a fiercely felt, but dimly seen, enemy, cause for foreboding must only increase.

The cognitive overload has made it difficult to focus on the day-to-day events that normally consume our lives. Both our shock at the incomprehensible destruction and our anguish at recognizing how vulnerable we are, swell and linger like the billowing smoke in repeated video images.

LAFLA, I am proud to say, stayed open and working, because our clients needed us. Courts and government offices closed, other legal services programs shut down, but because we are on the frontline, because our clients have nowhere else to turn, we were there. On Tuesday, the hands of the Foundation continued to pick up phone calls, receive intake forms, click out e-mails, and thumb through files and statutes and briefs. I salute and thank you all.

We know it was not easy. The unfathomable human suffering and loss we witnessed rendered what seemed mighty important before Tuesday much less significant. Perhaps, for me, tending to the routine was an effort to channel rage and sorrow to constructive purpose. And beyond a psychological defense, our being there for those seeking justice was a statement: a way of declaring that our vital work will not be interrupted by madness or intimidated by criminals.

We cannot say we have returned to normalcy. To honor the innocent and the dead, the heroic and the grieving, we will not speak of normality for some time. But let us take this moment of anguish to recognize the significance ­- the uniqueness ­- of what we do. If in its application America too often falls short of its ideal of full and equal justice, it is an ideal and idea worth clinging to and fighting for. Many many people play a role in seeking a better system, but few more nobly I believe, than those who assist the poor to solve their problems and offer hope.

BGI