Several of the 9/11 family members met one another in person when they participated in the “Walk for Healing and Peace” from Washington, D.C. to New York City beginning just before Thanksgiving, 2001. It was organized by Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness (now Voices for Creative Nonviolence).
After their arrival in New York on December 2, 2001 this core group of family members decided to unite in order to strengthen their message and voices, and drafted an initial mission statement and set of goals. In the weeks that followed, they benefitted from the support of a temporary fiscal sponsor, the Fellowship of Reconciliation – USA, considered a variety of names and drew theirs from a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech delivered during the Vietnam era: “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.” They began to design a web site and made plans to launch their new organization on Valentines Day, February 14, 2002.
