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It's been six months, enough time for the city of New York to haul a million tons of debris from ground zero, enough time for some New Yorkers to go back to being New Yorkers, but not all. Here is just one story. Twenty-six year old Ivan Almendarez was a maintenance worker at the World Trade Center he barely made out alive on September 11. He now spends his days shuttling between doctors, therapy, his old union shop,and wading through paper work to get some financial help, until things can get back to normal.

Since September 11 many people, many Latinos, have said they're willing to be videotaped, willing to accept racial profiling, willing to accept just about anything to feel safe again. But civil liberties organizations have been fighting, a sometime unpopular battle, to insure the price of national security is not paid with basic freedoms. Joining me in the studio is Antonio Romero, executive director of American Civil liberties Union.

Before September 11 there was a sense that U.S- Mexico relations were to about to be profoundly altered. There was talk of a massive amnesty program for undocumented immigrants, discussions about opening the border slowly for more goods and workers, but the security crackdown triggered by the September 11 attacks has changed all that, even though none of the hijackers who crashed planes into the Pentagon or World Trade Center entered the United States through Mexico. Instead there are now National Guard troops and a $10 billion proposal from President Bush for increased border security. Latino USA's Franc Contreras now on how difficult it has become to cross the line that divides el norte y el sur, the north from the south.

In the six months since the attack on the World Trade Center and the pentagon we have all sought comfort in our own particular ways. For a generation of Americans who came of age with hip-hop, it's the music that sooths them and gives them a place for self-expression, and sometimes it is even a source of news. After two hijacked planes sent the twin towers down into lower Manhattan rapper Alex Mosqueda, known as A.L., found himself speechless unable, like so many other New Yorkers , to express his grief. But less than a week later this independent artist, and member of the nationally recognized Lyricist Lounge, had found his release when he put pen to paper.

[Maria Hinojosa.] For six months I have been a war corresponded in New York City. In the mornings I kiss my husband goodbye, drop my son and daughter off at school, and then I go to work and cry. I've cried less since the beginning of the year. For months I was too afraid to walk inside the train station, afraid of what might happen. Now we just push each other for a seat, the sadness second place to our daily urban commuter survival strategies. But I like it like that. We either die of fear and sadness or we force one foot in front of the other and inch forward with life.