Families of those killed on September 11 have launched a petition demanding New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani be excluded from the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero, citing his record of associations and statements they call hostile to the memory of the attacks.
The petition, posted on Change.org and organized by Giovanni Galante, whose wife Grace died in the attacks, has collected more than 1,100 signatures, including at least 300 from victims' families. It asks the National September 11 Memorial & Museum to reconsider inviting Mamdani to the commemoration, where the names of the 2,977 people killed that day are read aloud each year by their loved ones.
Mamdani, a self-described socialist Democrat born in Uganda, has drawn sustained criticism over his ties to figures who minimized or defended the attacks, his appointments, and his own past statements. The petition distills those grievances into a single demand: keep him away from the ceremony families regard as sacred ground.
The petition's language is direct. It cites Mamdani's "public positions, associations, and responses to rhetoric that many perceive as hostile" to the values the ceremony represents. It asks organizers to "carefully consider whether Mr. Mamdani's participation would align with the intention of the ceremony and the expectations of the families most directly affected by the tragedy."
Galante told the New York Post that Mamdani's presence "would be deeply hurtful and inappropriate, like an unwelcome guest at a deeply personal ceremony."
"For 9/11 families, this is not simply a public ceremony, it is a deeply personal day of mourning. The presence of individuals whose words or associations are perceived as conflicting with the solemn purpose of the event risks detracting from that focus and causing additional pain."
That passage comes from the petition itself. The families who wrote it are not politicians trading barbs. They are people who lost husbands, wives, and children in the worst terrorist attack on American soil, and who spend every September 11 standing at Ground Zero listening to their loved ones' names.
The petition's complaints are specific. Among them: Mamdani's association during his mayoral campaign with Siraj Wahhaj, a Brooklyn imam who once hosted the cleric behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing at his mosque in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Former FBI agents criticized Mamdani at the time for embracing Wahhaj, who had faced scrutiny for failing to condemn the cleric and for past statements about jihad.
Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, outlined those ties in a 2025 op-ed published through his congressional office, describing Mamdani's rise as part of a broader ideological shift. The petition also flags Mamdani's appointment of Ramzi Kassem, an attorney who represented Guantánamo Bay detainees, as the city's chief counsel, a hire that drew sharp criticism from figures who have accused Mamdani of enabling hostility toward Jewish New Yorkers.
Families also point to Mamdani's perceived reluctance to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada," a slogan that calls for extending the Palestinian uprising worldwide and that critics view as an endorsement of political violence. Newsmax reported that petitioners specifically cited Mamdani's refusal to disavow the phrase as one of their grievances.
The petition goes beyond the mayor's own record. It names his father, Mahmood Mamdani, a Columbia University government professor who published a book shortly after the September 11 attacks titled "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror." Fox News Digital reported that the book argued suicide bombers should be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized, and included a passage drawing moral equivalence between the United States and Al Qaeda.
When that passage resurfaced, New York billionaire Bill Ackman posted on X that "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Fox News Digital reached out to both Mamdanis for comment. The mayor did not immediately respond.
The petition also references Darializa Chevalier, a Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed candidate who defeated Rep. Adriano Espaillat in a Washington Heights congressional race. Chevalier once posted on social media that she had wiped soiled hands on an American flag after running out of napkins. The families cite her as part of a broader political circle around Mamdani that they view as dismissive of American institutions.
Mamdani's controversies have driven a growing list of prominent New Yorkers to distance themselves from his administration. Ambassador Charles Kushner publicly blamed Mamdani for rising antisemitism in the city and announced he was leaving New York.
The mayor is not backing down. At an unrelated press conference on Monday, Mamdani told reporters he still plans to stand at Ground Zero on September 11.
His spokesperson, Jeremy Edwards, issued a statement: "Mayor Mamdani will proudly honor the families, survivors and first responders forever impacted by these devastating attacks by standing alongside them at this year's 9/11 Commemoration."
The National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which organizes the ceremony, responded carefully. A spokesperson said the institution bears "the solemn responsibility of leading the nation in commemorating September 11, 2001, and honoring the 2,977 victims killed as their names are read aloud by their families." The spokesperson added that organizers have "intentionally worked to keep the commemoration free of politics because remembering those we lost on 9/11 should never be a partisan issue."
The museum noted that every sitting president, governor, and mayor since 2001 has attended the ceremony. Officials do not deliver remarks and are asked to remain in a designated area. That policy makes an outright ban unlikely regardless of how many signatures the petition collects, a point Newsmax noted in its coverage.
But the families organizing the petition drew a distinction between Mamdani and past leaders. An organizer told the New York Post that dignitaries like former mayors Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, former Senator Hillary Clinton, and City Council Speaker Julie Menin had been "involved in the healing process for years" and would be welcomed. Mamdani, in their view, does not belong in that company.
Cheri Sparacio, whose husband was killed at the World Trade Center, told Newsmax the day "is sacred to us" and that the ceremony "is not a platform for those connected to such views."
The petition lands against a backdrop of escalating friction between Mamdani and New Yorkers who view his record as fundamentally at odds with the city's identity. Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, and radio host Sidney Rosenberg have both called the mayor a "terrorist", language that goes beyond what the petition uses but reflects the intensity of feeling Mamdani has provoked.
A Nova festival survivor publicly confronted Mamdani over a video in which the mayor discussed arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a pledge he later reversed, acknowledging the city lacked the authority to carry it out. That reversal itself became another chapter in a growing record of promises and walkbacks that critics say reveals a mayor more interested in ideological signaling than in governing.
Janlyn Scauso, whose husband was a New York City firefighter killed on September 11, was photographed holding family photos during a rally near the U.S. Capitol. She is among the family members who believe the 25th anniversary should belong to the people who lived through the loss, not to a mayor whose associations and statements have reopened wounds that never fully closed.
The Memorial & Museum will ultimately decide how to handle the petition. Its stated policy gives Mamdani a seat. But the families are not asking for a policy debate. They are asking the institution to recognize that some records are too hostile to stand at the edge of a mass grave and call it solidarity.
When 9/11 families have to petition to keep the mayor of New York away from Ground Zero, the problem is not the petition, it is the mayor.
