Congress and our political class have been letting 9/11 families down for 25 years

I was in my early 20s when I lost my father on Sept. 11, 2001. I have spent most of my adulthood without him or his guidance, the milestones we should have shared and the future our family expected to have together.

My father never got to meet his grandchildren. I am raising children who will never know him, but who have had to continuously absorb the horror of how he died, carrying the same sadness and injustice I have lived with for so long into another generation. His death left a hole from which we will never fully recover.

I share that not for sympathy, but because it is the lens that I cannot help but look through every year in late August and early September, when the anniversary coverage begins, and the politicians start booking their travel to New York.

This year, a few 9/11 families have publicly asked New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani not to attend today’s commemoration ceremony. I disagree. I have no issue with Mayor Mamdani being there. He was nine years old when the towers fell. Whatever one thinks of his politics today, he bears no responsibility for what happened that day, or throughout the 25 years of broken promises that have followed.

In fact, he is the only politician who has honored this anniversary appropriately, by providing long overdue truth about the air quality to survivors who have been fighting for it for so long.

I would ask that anyone reading this understand something: the families who’ve called for Mamdani to stay away speak for themselves. They do not speak for me, or for the many other 9/11 family members who see this........

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