On the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, crowds gathered at the Memorial Plaza in Lower Manhattan to pay their respects and watch “Tribute in Light”, a public art installation featuring twin light beams rising above the skyline from dusk until dawn on every night of September 11. Open to the public, the event followed an earlier private ceremony attended by high-ranking current and former officials, including all living former U.S. presidents and the families of nearly 3000 victims whose names were read aloud by their loved ones. 

Roughly a quarter of the U.S. population today was not yet born when the 2001 attacks happened but grew up with their cultural impact. For these young Americans, attending the public tribute was a chance to feel the attacks’ emotional weight up close.

“When you walk in here [Memorial Plaza], you can still feel the air is heavy,” said Elliot Sanson, a 19-year-old from Florida who was visiting the 9/11 memorial for the first time. 

“You feel it in the silence, in the air, in the water; you can smell it in the scent. You definitely feel the weight of everything.”

On the bronze parapets of the plaza, the victims’ names were covered in flowers, poems, notes in multiple languages, and flags from countries all over the world. 

“I remember coming when I was a little girl with my family. I was too short to look at the names. Now I’m old enough to understand and feel the empathy and take it in,” said Victoria Baez Garcia, a 19-year-old who was born in the Bronx and later moved to Florida. Garcia’s aunt had a meeting inside one of the twin towers the day of the attacks, but “missed it by a minute”. 

“Coming here just always reminds me of how precious life is, because she missed [the attack] there. But unfortunately she did pass away a week later,” she added. “But this here shows you how precious life is and how it can go in a second.”

9/11 is rarely spoken about in Garcia’s family because of how painful it is, which made it even more important to come to the memorial. Because New York is “a melting pot” where “everyone is from everywhere”, she sees 9/11 as “a human moment” when “the world came together, united in pain”. 

The victims themselves came from 99 countries, highlighting the global reach of the attacks. However, she believes that “we are transitioning into a world where this [memorial] is going to become a division.” 

The 9/11 attacks’ immediate effect was an unprecedented wave of unity. Many young people at the event learned and heard first-hand stories about the mobilization and selflessness of first responders and ordinary civilians, who relentlessly searched for bodies, cleared debris, and donated water, food, and medical supplies for nearly 9 months after.

This strong sense of unity seems to have overtaken politics with overwhelming force. A review by the Pew Research Center on the evolution of U.S. public opinion in the 20 years following the  9/11 attacks recorded that in October 2001, Americans across the political spectrum expressed more trust in the federal government than in the three decades prior. An overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans at the time also approved the way that U.S. President George W. Bush was handling his job in late September 2001. 

Madeline Reath, a 25-year-old from New Jersey, believes that the initial unity around the attacks “wasn’t political”, but that has changed over time. “I also think that, unfortunately, people have selective unity. Sometimes I don’t think it extends to what it should,” she added.

The same Pew Research Center review documented the “short-lived” impact the attacks had on unifying public opinion in the years after 2001, with growing partisan divergence on Islam-related views and whether defending the country from terrorism should be a top priority. 

“I think the problem we’re facing today with this 9/11 memorial, and in general, is the balance between: is it going to unify us, or is it going to divide us further?” Sanson said. 

Polarization symptoms also flared up during this year’s remembrance events. In the private reading of victims’ names on Friday morning, Terry Strada, whose husband was killed in the attacks, said that “the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fomented a rancid culture of anti-American terrorism around the globe” and asked for justice from previous and current American administrations, who she said withheld evidence and “chose to protect the Saudis, instead of standing with the 9/11 families”. 

Meanwhile, Michael Massaroli Jr., who lost his father and spoke last at the ceremony, denounced Islamophobia and told the audience: “You do my dad’s legacy and the legacy of all these victims no honor by using this tragedy to spread hate.” 

At the public event, some attendees made public declarations about the urgency of protecting American freedom from “sharia law”, and criticized New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani. 

Some young attendees expressed feeling uneasy with the lives of the victims being used as “weapons” to spread political messages at the memorial, no matter which party it came from, describing it as “wrong”, “insensitive”, “sad” and “opportunistic”. 

“I think it was such a human moment that the world had. For people to use that for political gain or advantage, I think it’s so sad what the world has become,” Garcia said. 

“I don’t like the people who are trying to use this space on this day to make a statement about modern politics. I don’t think it’s relevant,” said Madeleine Soenens, a 23-year-old from California, who feels “very familiar with the emotional weight” of the attacks because of her parents, who met while working in the Twin Towers. 

“I think the part that resonates with people and makes it so meaningful to people who identify as Americans is not the politics; it’s the death and the fear, and that’s the stuff that I think we should carry over.”

“This day, you could take many things from it,” said Rohan Afflick, a 27-year-old who visited the memorial for the first time on the 25th anniversary. “Mine would be just helping, being there for somebody, even if it’s to get somebody a bottle of water. Do whatever you can to assist because you never know. We’re all going to need somebody to lean on.”