New York State has a unique relationship with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, of course: 25,000 people were injured in those attacks, and of the 2,996 that died, 2,753 were killed in the World Trade Center and the surrounding area, 184 at the Pentagon, and 40 in Pennsylvania. And those numbers don’t account for the firefighters and first responders who worked night and day in the aftermath to dig through the rubble for survivors or bodies, who we’ve since lost due to the poison that entered their system. It’s a day many of us can remember exactly where we were when we heard the news, and for many New Yorkers, it was an extremely personal experience.

And yet, we have since dedicated the day as one of mourning and remembrance. It seems more timely this year than others when we think on our departure from Afghanistan, and how the imagery of that day has been utilized so flippantly since then. It’s clear to me that another one of our generations’ responsibilities is to impart onto those what it looked like that day. The imagery of the collapsed buildings, the impact on the lives of those in the city, the innumerable families who had empty seats after that day – the picture needs to be more plainly painted, because we aren’t getting the point across today.

It was the introduction of a new kind of warfare that day. One that struck at the heart of our nation, right under our noses. The carnage left behind amounted to 1.8 million tons of wreckage. That took over 9 months to fully clean up, and allow New Yorkers to resume some kind of regularity. It also sent us fully into armed conflict with terrorist cells in the middle east, a campaign which lasted 20 years. To this day, Americans have conflicted feelings about everything that followed. We made mistakes, became hostile and aggressive to those we thought might have any association to the attackers. But we were hurt. The free world was hurt, Americans were hurt, New Yorkers were hurt. And it didn’t matter if you were from Riverhead on Long Island, Cheektowaga out in Western New York, or Plattsburgh up north; New York was in pain.

And now, 21 years later, there are children who haven’t known a life before 9/11. It’s a more mature world, a more sharply attentive world, a less idealistic world, than what we had thought was reality. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the work to make better today. Despite the bad from that day, we continue to strive to good, and ensure that good is as accessible as it can be to all. We fight terrorism in all its forms, we combat evil forces looking to ensnare the world under its thumb. We persevere because we are New Yorkers. And that is something the terrorists were never able to take away from us.