Twenty-five years after the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, victims’ families are asking a simple question of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani: Step aside from the official Ground Zero ceremony. Their petition has drawn more than 82,000 signatures. Their objection is not a political posture — it rests on his public record long before he took office.
Giovanni Galante lost his wife, Grace Catherine Galante, that day. He and other relatives cite a pattern of associations and deliberate choices that leave them uneasy. Mamdani has declined to clearly and fully reject the slogan “globalize the intifada,” language many interpret as a call to expand violence.
He has praised and appeared with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a character witness for the Blind Sheikh, who was convicted of plotting terror attacks on American targets. As mayor, his executive appointments have reinforced these concerns, including naming chief counsel Ramzi Kassem, who previously represented an al-Qaeda operative convicted in a tanker bombing plot.
A petition led by 9/11 widower Giovanni Galante demands NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani be barred from the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero, and it has topped 50,000 signatures from families and survivors. The petition cites Mamdani’s hiring of a lawyer… https://t.co/LWTRU5yzig pic.twitter.com/aP3LIxLzYL
— Bobby Orr (@BobbyOrrYT) August 10, 2026
These are not isolated footnotes. His father, Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani, wrote shortly after the attacks that suicide bombers should be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as barbarism. The younger Mamdani has explicitly stated that his father’s thinking shaped his own. He has endorsed figures who described the September 11 attacks as the work of “a couple of people” acting amid American capitalism and Islamophobia, and associated with commentators who declared that America deserved what happened on that clear September morning.
Mamdani asked about the petition to ban him from 9/11 ceremony. @NYCMayor pic.twitter.com/MLVeSehnMN
— K🎗️ (@westport60) August 11, 2026
The families argue this consistent record demonstrates insufficient regard for the scale of their loss and the nature of the ideology that produced it. Common decency requires taking them at their word. The anniversary exists first for those who still carry empty chairs at the table and names etched in bronze. Their wishes about who stands with them on the site where the towers fell deserve priority over any official’s desire to be present.
Mamdani has said he will attend and will honor the families, survivors, and first responders, framing the day as one felt by all who call the city home. That statement is easy to make. Civic rhetoric cannot erase the earlier choices that led widows, siblings, and children of the dead to organize against his participation. A ceremony of remembrance is not a platform for every elected official. It is a solemn space defined by the people who suffered the direct cost.
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— Larry Adkin - MAGA, Vet, no DMs (@LarryAdkin) August 11, 2026
GOP senators rally behind 9/11 families in push to ban Mamdani from anniversary ceremony: 'He's a disgrace'
"The petition has gathered more than 82,000 signatures citing claims the NYC mayor has failed to condemn Islamic extremism"https://t.co/2cBKe58bBy #FoxNews
New York and the nation have long insisted on “never forget.” Never forgetting includes more than the date and the death toll. It includes refusing to accommodate or excuse the ideology that celebrated the falling towers. When a public official’s pre-mayoral history repeatedly intersects with those networks, the families have every moral right to object.
Yielding the stage to them on the 25th anniversary is basic human respect. The alternative risks turning a day of mourning into one more political stage. The families should not have to share it with someone whose record leaves them feeling unwelcome on the ground where their loved ones died.
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