"Today marks 25 years since the most acute devastation and heartbreak that our city has ever experienced, a pain repeated throughout this nation and reverberated across two and half decades. Nearly 3000 of our fellow Americans lost their lives to an act of terror, most within our city and many when they ran toward the destruction to bring others out. As a lifelong New Yorker, I will never forget the scale of this tragedy, never stop lifting up the memories of those killed on the day and as a result of it, the heroism of first responders, the grief of survivors, and the needs of those still suffering.
"I often talk about the period of national unity that arose on 9/12, the surge in collective empathy, as a moment to learn from and attempt to carry forward across this quarter-century. Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, though, I fear we are instead recalling and repeating the wrong reactions from that tragic time.
"Today, as then, we are embroiled in war in the Middle East with no clear benefit or strategy. Today, as then, we have hatred and suspicion on the basis of ethnicity and religion rising here at home. We have many suffering devastating health consequences without systemic or financial support. We have a surveillance state ascendant. We have a government is causing and concealing environmental harms. We have dangerous misinformation running rampant. And far from the idealized vision of shared community, we have too much isolation, fear, distrust, and distance.
"On this anniversary, as our grief persists, and as our reverence echoes in the reading of the names at Ground Zero, I hope that we take the echoes of the aftermath and embody the ideals of our local response, rather than proclaiming an idealized version while continuing negative patterns that persist. The memories that we honor today deserve more.
"A question has echoed since that day – Where were you on 9/11?
"I pose another, and with it, an inherent plea – where are we now?"