25 years later, 9/11 is still reshaping our lives

On the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the dying hasn’t finished.

More people have succumbed to illnesses related to the World Trade Center site than died from the collapse of the Twin Towers. And just this week, New Yorkers learned that city officials knew of airborne toxins present in lower Manhattan while telling residents it was safe to return there.

The immediate obligation is to keep monitoring and treating those who were exposed. More than 145,000 people currently are enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program and more than 52,000 have been diagnosed with related cancers. Others, who were children and students at the time, may not show symptoms yet.

Yet, federal officials still haven’t approved necessary grant money. As a society we have a responsibility to keep funding the relevant research and outreach. The long-delayed release of the air quality report is another reminder that we must always demand government release the public health consequences of any disaster.

A quarter-century later, the attacks that hit New York City, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania are still actively reshaping our lives. A majority of Americans tell pollsters they are concerned about another major terrorist attack taking place. All levels of governments assure us they have defenses in place, not only against hijacked aircraft, but more realistically, drone and cyber attacks. We must keep asking them for that reassurance.

We agreed to an enormous amount of personal scrutiny in a trade-off for a feeling of safety. National security became the rationale for massive data collection, monitoring of electronic communications and warrantless searches. Taking off our shoes at an airport screening was a clear consequence of the heightened scrutiny. What remains unclear is what the federal government knows and how it uses all the detailed information it has about our lives.

Generations not yet born on 9/11 will still be paying off the national debt for the War on Terror, the rationale for two decades of Middle East interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our attitudes toward immigration, border security and religious tolerance were upended, planting seeds of fear and distrust toward people of different faiths and from different part of the globe.

Our collective remembrance of what happened 25 years ago will inevitably fade. History will always accumulate faster than memory can hold it. In another 25 years, what most people know about the experience will be passed down rather than lived, much the way Pearl Harbor serves as a reference point for where the world stood in 1941.

The rituals of remembrance matter: the reading of the names, the ongoing health programs, the continued telling of our stories. Perhaps Sept. 11 should be a national holiday, and certainly a state one — both to mourn those lost and to remind us, even for just one day, of a time when this nation came together to bury its dead and help each other heal.