Director’s Note

The heroism of everyday people (9/11/2026)

On September 11, 2001, my dad headed into work at the US Capitol. The House was in session. Debate started at 9am. 

United Flight 93 – which investigators believe was headed toward the Capitol – crashed in a field in Shanksville, PA an hour later. Heroes on the plane charged the cockpit and wrestled control from the hijackers. The passengers literally voted – knowing they were risking their own lives to try and stop the plane from being used in a terrorist attack.

When I think about 9/11 – and what it means to never forget – I think about the fact that my father’s life may have been saved by strangers who never knew him. Who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect people they never met because of the beautiful, incontrovertible fact of our shared humanity. 

In the years following, the extreme right manipulated the memory of 9/11 to impose a surveillance state, erode civil liberties, and propagate Islamophobia. They tried to tell us that the lesson of that day was to fear our neighbors. 

When the truth is – when you think about the passengers on Flight 93, or the first responders who saved countless lives and sometimes sacrificed their own, the people who donated blood, the way people found ways to care for each other through grief and confusion and pain – that day proved that we can all trust our neighbors a lot more than we think. 

We don’t believe in an afterlife, so we remember people who are lost not so much to honor them but to remind ourselves. I hope today you can find a moment to reflect on the heroism shown by everyday people twenty-five years ago, and remember that we all have those same capacities within ourselves. And someone out there needs them. 

That’s what humanism asks of us – to live with free minds, open hearts, and heroic spirits. 

And it is within all of our abilities. 

That’s the thing to never forget.

For humanity,

Fish

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