It has been a long 25 years. Even now, conflict, tensions, grief, responsibility and how to commemorate 9/11 all remain contested. On one recent night, a post on Facebook informed me the 9/11 families were petitioning to prevent my mayor, Zohran Mamdani, from attending the 25th anniversary commemorative event. I hate this time of year.When I think back, some faces come to mind. The cut and bruised face of the Sikh taxi cab driver who volunteered to drive me and my eight-week-old son to submit DNA at the makeshift 9/11 family centre. His manner was gentle as he helped me with the infernal infant car seat. His eyes were kind, but encircled by bumps and cuts. I asked him what happened to him. He said he was walking home late from his shift in Queens, and a group of men encircled him, called him a dirty terrorist, and beat him up. “Ma’am, I tried to tell them, I am no terrorist.” It hurt my heart.I see the faces of the South Asian 9/11 widows I visited in their dingy New Jersey apartment complex. Their legal immigration status evaporated with their husbands. They were entirely alone. Their families could not come to America to visit. Despite their status as 9/11 families, they were routinely harassed on the streets by hate-filled stalkers shouting: “Go home, terrorists.” On a work trip to India in 2002, the Delhi taxi driver asked me where I was from. “9/11 never happened,” he said, “It’s all made up.” In the back seat, I receded into the now familiar hole of self-censorship. “Oh, it did,” I said. Another driver on the same trip offered: “The Jews were behind the attacks. All the Jews were evacuated before the planes hit.” My heart pounded. I heard myself say, “That’s entirely false.” My brain flashed with beautiful Jewish faces, all murdered that day. It has been a long 25 years.Late at night, I am weary. That Facebook post about our apparently unwelcome Muslim mayor glares at me. My fingers hover over the keyboard. I finally type: “My mother was killed in the south tower and I welcome the mayor.” The replies won’t be good. I won’t look at them. Losing a family member on 9/11 is a death that keeps generating new storylines. My very funny, unconventional Irish-American mother, Ann, would be appalled by the things that have been done in her name. I have done my best to keep faith with her, but it hasn’t been easy. I was contacted by the 9/11 Museum to do an interview because they were creating voiceovers to accompany the faces of the dead. I agreed, hoping Ann could be remembered for how she lived, not just how she died. The young intern asked questions. “What is your favourite meal your mom taught you to cook?” Ann hated to cook. “Could you tell me your parents’ love story?” They had an unhappy marriage and were separated at the time of her death. I wanted the intern to ask me to describe how funny my mother was, how outrageous, how she coached girls softball in 1967, how she often got in trouble at work for shooting her mouth off, how she loved theatre, women’s tennis, the Bronx and the NY Mets. I wanted them to ask me how was it that she only re-entered the workforce at 52 after her marriage dissolved, and died a vice president at Aon. I wrote a letter and redid the interview. It has been a long 25 years.[ ‘The city covered it up’: New York grapples with 9/11’s toxic air legacyOpens in new window ]Initially, the 9/11 compensation fund, created by Congress to shield the airline industry from negligence claims and compensate families, valued my mother’s life at zero. The administrator said she was 68 and should have retired, that she had no lost income. My mother had shown no signs of retiring. She always lied about her age significantly. My birth certificate was unusable because she had blotted out “mother’s age” with a pen. I heard that her boss was late to work on the 11th and survived. When I called to ask him to testify, he said that he couldn’t face me. I sent him the details anyway and he showed up. He testified that she was wickedly smart, consistently lively, often insubordinate and definitely not retiring. She had listed her age as 55. Thanks to him, the fund gave us an award.I attended every 9/11 Commission hearing. I was there to hear about the many mistakes made by our intelligence officers and leaders, and how our government escorted Saudi government officials to safety after the attacks. I was in the room for Condoleezza Rice’s admission that there had been a memo dated August 6th, 2001, warning of an imminent domestic attack. Finally, I was there for the Commission report’s release, with all classified information edited out. Although the Commission concluded that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, they “found no evidence that the Saudi government ... or senior Saudi officials individually funded the operation”, even though the report states that “Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al-Qaeda funding”. Time passed and US president Donald Trump enacted a so-called Muslim Ban that excluded Saudis. I helped organise the 9/11 families to protest against it. Now, 25 years later, here is my takeaway on this anniversary, and on my mother’s murder: We have to fight the hate that is sweeping America. We have to stop dehumanising each other. Terry McGovern is an adjunct professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the University of Galway, Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences and the Director of the Sexual and Reproductive Justice Hub at the City University of New York