Remembering 9/11: Twenty-four Years Later
Twenty-four years have passed since that September morning when the sky was impossibly blue, and then turned to smoke and ash. In the days and weeks that followed, we were broken, but we were together. Neighbors reached across fences, strangers held one another in crowded vigils, firefighters became our heroes, and compassion rose like a second flag over ground zero. Our grief was immense, but so was our unity.
Today, that spirit feels far away. We are no longer a people who instinctively lean toward one another in times of pain, but a nation divided against itself—sharpened by anger, weaponized by politics. Violence has become routine, and each new act of bloodshed is not met with collective resolve but with polarization. Gun violence, once unthinkable at this scale, has been politicized into endless arguments, and the blame is always placed elsewhere—never on us, never on our unwillingness to act.
America was once known, however imperfectly, for its compassion, its courage, and its sense of social justice. On 9/11, the world watched a nation gather its wounded heart and hold it tenderly, refusing to be defined only by tragedy. Now, we seem defined by division. The ashes of ground zero remind us not only of lives lost but of a unity that has itself turned to ash.
If this anniversary means anything, it must be to remember that in our darkest hour we found one another—and to ask if we are still capable of that kind of grace.