A Call to Action: From Response to Prevention

In this haunting image from September 11, 2001, we see a fire truck racing toward the World Trade Center as smoke billows from the towers above. The firefighters aboard this engine embodied the highest virtues of public service—commitment, courage, and unwavering intention. Yet for all their heroism, they faced a terrible reality: they had no choice but to respond to a catastrophe already in motion. They were bound by duty to rush toward danger, to attempt the impossible rescue, to pick up pieces that could never be made whole again.

Today, as we witness attacks on our democratic institutions, we face a parallel moment of reckoning. The question is not whether democracy is under assault—the evidence surrounds us daily. We see it in the systematic undermining of voting rights, the erosion of trust in electoral processes, the weaponization of misinformation, and the increasing polarization that fractures our civic discourse. We witness it in attempts to overturn legitimate election results, in the targeting of election officials, and in the gradual normalization of political violence.

The real question is this: What are you doing about it?

Like those first responders racing toward the towers, we can choose to be reactive—waiting until the damage is done, then desperately attempting to salvage what remains. Or we can choose to be proactive protectors of our democracy, acting now while we still have the power to prevent catastrophic collapse.

The firefighters in this image remind us that once the towers began to fall, no amount of heroism could restore them. The same truth applies to democratic institutions: once they crumble, they cannot simply be rebuilt as they were. Democracy, like those towers, requires constant maintenance, vigilant protection, and proactive defense.

Yet too many of us remain distracted, consumed by the noise of daily life while the foundations of our republic show dangerous cracks. We scroll through social media, debate trivial matters, and convince ourselves that someone else will handle the serious work of preservation. We mistake outrage for action, commentary for commitment.

The men and women aboard that fire truck didn't have the luxury of choice when duty called. But we do. We can choose to engage in the political process, to support candidates who defend democratic norms, to volunteer for voter registration drives, to counter misinformation with facts, and to bridge divides in our communities. We can choose to be informed citizens rather than passive observers.

The smoke rising from those towers serves as a permanent reminder: by the time heroes are racing to respond, it may already be too late. Our democracy needs proactive protectors, not just emergency responders. It needs citizens who act before the crisis, who strengthen institutions before they fail, who choose engagement over apathy.

The question remains: Will you be the protector who prevents the fall, or the responder left to sift through the irreparable ruins? The choice—and the time to make it—is still yours.

We cannot know what those brave firefighters would say about today's threats to our great democracy, because every one of them perished that day. They rode that fire truck for the last time ever, straight into the collapse that claimed their lives. Their sacrifice demands that we not waste the choice they no longer have—the choice to act before it's too late, to protect what they died serving, and to ensure that their ultimate commitment to duty inspires our own commitment to preserving the democracy they gave their lives to defend.

By Joe Castagliola, Democracy Is Us Council Member