Joyce Day's mother was one of the nearly 3,000 people killed on September 11, 2001. Twenty-five years later, a reverend who has never missed an opportunity to insert himself into someone else's tragedy is telling her she's a bigot.

Her crime: not wanting New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani at the memorial ceremony.

Reverend Al Sharpton took to X to scold the families and the more than 100,000 people who signed a petition opposing Mamdani's attendance at the 25th anniversary commemoration. "There are more than one million Muslim New Yorkers," Sharpton wrote. "They are just as much a part of the fabric of this city as anyone else. Anyone demanding that the Mayor not attend a day of solemn remembrance because of his faith is motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry."

He followed it up with a second post: "September 11th is a day of remembrance and unity. It's time we act accordingly."

Remembrance and unity. From the man who has built a career on neither.

The families aren't objecting to Mamdani's religion. They're objecting to his record. Chiefly their upset with Mamdani's decision to appoint Ramzi Kassem as his Chief Counsel. Kassem is an al-Qaeda sympathizer who defended al -Qaeda terrorists, specifically one whose brother-in-law was one of the 9/11 hijakers who flew a plane into the Pentagon. Mamdani also received fierce backlash this week after signing 9/11 disclosure paperwork and publicly gifting the ceremonial pen to Kassem in some kind of pen prank being dubbed a soft jab at the American people.

Actor and NYC native Michael Rapaport, not exactly a card-carrying member of the conservative movement, responded on X: "It ain't because he's Muslim it's because of who he is and what he says & actually does."

Tony Katz was more direct: "We were attacked by Islamists, and Mamdani embraces them. The families are right to tell him not to show up."

And then there was Joyce Day herself. "My mother was one of the nearly 3,000 killed and he does not belong there!"

Sharpton's framing is the same move he's run for decades — take a legitimate grievance, strip out all the context, and repackage it as bigotry so that anyone who disagrees with his position has to defend themselves instead of making their point. The families aren't demanding a religious test for attending a memorial. They're demanding that the man who used the ceremony as a prop for an Al-Qaeda sympathizer's lawyer not be welcomed back to do it again.

The "anti-Muslim bigotry" charge falls apart the moment you look at the petition. Over 100,000 signatures. From New Yorkers. From families who buried people in that rubble. They watched the towers fall from their office windows and kitchen tables. They're not asking Sharpton for a lecture on tolerance.

But that's always been the pattern. Every 9/11 anniversary has been hijacked to become about Islamic hate and not about the 3,000 people who were horrifically murdered that day and the thousands more who died afterwards from 9/11 related diseases. The people who actually lost something on that day are expected to perform unity on command, and if they refuse — if they have the audacity to remember who attacked them and object to a mayor who cozied up to the attackers' legal defenders — they get called bigots by a man whose own history of racial incitement could fill a semester's worth of case studies.

Three thousand people were murdered. One hundred thousand survivors and family members signed a petition. A reverend who wasn't in any of those buildings called them bigots from his phone.

September 11th is a day of remembrance. Some people just remember different things.