Young American Patriots Ensure Future Generations Never Forget 9/11

Young Americans today often get a bad rap.

They’re dismissed for their age, their lack of experience, even their politics — especially when their politics are not in line with the Left.

Yet conservative organizations such as Young America’s Foundation (YAF), headquartered in Reston, Virginia, are making sure people never forget the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people and triggered an enormous U.S. effort to combat terrorism. Tomorrow is the 17th anniversary of those horrendous attacks.

“Young America’s Foundation launched the ‘9/11: Never Forget Project’ in 2003, when we discovered that most college campuses were either completely ignoring the anniversary or holding a politically correct event instead,” YAF spokesman Spencer Brown told LifeZette recently.

“Students want to remember those who died and join with hundreds of other schools across the country to boldly show they have not forgotten and that they continue to stand for our freedom that came under attack on September 11.”

While many students today do not have memories of where they were when they first saw images of the World Trade Center being struck — or how they felt seeing icons of America’s greatness turned to rubble — Brown says students unite on the anniversary of this tragic event each year to inspire commitment to defending our freedoms.

“While these memorials created by students today provide an important marker for the importance of September 11 for those who don’t have first-hand memories, this wasn’t the original cause for the project’s inception,” explained Brown. (Students are placing flags on a campus in remembrance in the photo at the top of this article.)

Students who sign up to participate in YAF’s “9/11: Never Forget Project” receive a kit with a guide containing helpful tips for setting up a campus memorial, made up of 2,977 American flags to remember those killed. The kit also provides information on organizing a school-wide moment of silence or prayer.

“Additional materials include ‘Never Forget’ buttons, stickers, and information on how to push back against criticism from campus leftists whose intolerance has at times led them to target conservative students and their memorials,” noted Brown.

It seems incredible, but campus leftists even decry memorializing 9/11 victims.

“In recent years, administrators at Southern Methodist University attempted to block the SMU Young Americans for Freedom flag display, ridiculously citing concerns that the 2,977 American flags would be ‘triggering’ to some students,” said Brown.

“In other cases, intolerant leftists were desecrating memorials by ripping American flags out of the ground and throwing them in trash cans.”

Never ones to back down, YAF activists fearlessly work to ensure their campuses honors the memory of the innocent Americans who were killed by radical Islamist terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since Young America’s Foundation launched the “9/11: Never Forget Project” in 2003, students and others have placed more than 10.4 million American flags in hundreds of memorials across the country — it has grown to become the largest nationwide campus initiative in America.

Brown and his organization feel that President Reagan would be proud.

Related: Conservative Ideals Have a Presence on Campus, Thanks to This Group

“Young America’s Foundation is the principal outreach organization of the conservative movement, reaching and inspiring the rising generation with the ideas of individual freedom, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and traditional values,” said Brown.

“Through life-changing student conferences, Young Americans for Freedom chapters, breakthrough campus lectures, iconic activism projects, and the preservation of President Reagan’s beloved Rancho del Cielo, Young America’s Foundation reaches thousands of students each year, empowering and equipping them to be bold advocates for conservative ideas,” he said.

See more on the project to remember those who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001, in the video below.

Chris Woodward is a reporter for American Family News and OneNewsNow.com. He is based in Tupelo, Mississippi.