More than 66,000 people have signed a petition urging New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to skip the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and the families behind it say he has no business standing on what they call their loved ones' gravesite.
Giovanni Galante lost his wife, Grace Catherine Galante, on the 105th floor of the North Tower. She was 29 and worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. Now Galante is leading a Change.org petition drive that has gathered more than 66,000 signatures in less than three weeks, calling on the mayor to stay home from the Ground Zero memorial ceremony this September. The New York Post reported that it contacted more than 150 families for the story. The response was overwhelming, and almost uniformly hostile to Mamdani's plan to attend.
Galante branded Mamdani "an apologist for Islamic terror whose presence would be an insult to the memories of nearly 3,000 people murdered on 9/11." He estimated that thousands of 9/11 family members have signed the petition and warned that if the mayor shows up, families will turn their backs on him in protest.
Mamdani, the Ugandan-born socialist mayor of New York City, has brushed off the growing chorus calling for him to skip the ceremony. The petition cites his long reluctance to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada," his association with chief counsel Ramzi Kassem, who previously represented an al-Qaeda tanker-bombing pilot, and his ties to online commentator Hasan Piker, who once said America "deserved" the September 11 attacks.
The petition itself frames the anniversary as "one of remembrance grounded in shared American values: respect for the victims, recognition of the gravity of the attacks, and a clear rejection of the ideologies that contributed to such violence." The families who spoke to the Post made clear they do not believe Mamdani shares those values.
Angela Pesce's brother Danny worked on the 105th floor of the North Tower at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was 34. After the first plane struck, he called his sister twice from his desk. He told her a plane had just hit the building. He alerted his co-workers. Then the line went dead as smoke filled the office.
Pesce, a Staten Island resident, said she signed the petition and that the movement is growing fast.
"A lot of people are signing. And it's not only the family, it's friends of family, too.... It's getting circulated and growing every day."
She said Mamdani does not care about the families and is focused on scoring political points. That tracks with a pattern of self-serving political gestures that has dogged the mayor since he took office.
Pesce said she fears what will happen at the 25th anniversary if Mamdani insists on attending:
"I'm really afraid for this year. What's gonna happen if he does show up? Everybody's angry. It's a place for mourning, and it's gonna be the 25th anniversary. I want to go there and mourn my brother. I don't want any... craziness. So he should look at that petition and say, 'Wow, I'm gonna upset these families. I'm staying home today.'"
Charles G. Wolf's wife Katherine worked on the 97th floor of the North Tower at Marsh & McLennan. Wolf, a licensed pilot whose story was later portrayed by Stanley Tucci in the Netflix film "Worth," did not hold back about the mayor.
"He doesn't want the United States to exist as it does today. He wants to turn it into a third-world government... and continue the work that the 9/11 hijackers were doing."
Wolf said Mamdani "brings pain" and has "no respect" for the United States. He added that the memorial observation belongs to the families and to "public officials who've supported us all along the way after 9/11", not to a mayor who, in Wolf's view, does not have the families' interests at heart.
The opposition is not limited to family members. Tom Van Essen, who served as New York City's fire commissioner during and after the attacks, said he signed the petition. John Ryan, the retired Port Authority chief of department who helmed the rescue operation at Ground Zero for nine months, signed it too.
Ryan put it plainly:
"Where was the mayor for the previous 9/11s? I have been there every year, and I've seen a steady parade of politicians come and go, who say they support the families and then you never hear from them again. Words are shallow, actions are what counts."
Mamdani's record of controversy extends well beyond the 9/11 memorial dispute. His administration has drawn fire from prominent Democratic veterans who have publicly broken with him over his approach to taxes and Israel.
Christopher Santora was a 23-year-old probationary firefighter with FDNY Engine 54. He grew up in Long Island City, Queens, graduated from Queens College, and briefly worked as a substitute teacher before joining the department. His shift had ended on the morning of September 11, but when the alarm came in from the World Trade Center, he jumped on a fire truck. He died in the South Tower.
His mother, Maureen Santora, said Mamdani has never supported the 9/11 community:
"He has never supported the 9/11 community, ever. And I just feel his presence is detrimental to the purpose of why we gather together: to honor the people who died on September 11th and to remember them in a respectful, dignified... way. This is not a political day. He's a divisive individual as well, and has made comments against many, many different groups.... That is not a person that should be present at a somber ceremony to remember people who were murdered by terrorists."
Santora's assessment, that Mamdani is a divisive figure who injects politics into settings that call for solemnity, echoes complaints that have surfaced across his tenure. His administration recently published a searchable database naming wealthy New York City property owners, a move that drew accusations of reckless doxing and raised safety fears.
Jeannette Puccio-Pick was nine years old on September 11, 2001. She attended school in Hoboken, New Jersey, directly across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan. She watched the South Tower come down with her father, Joseph Pick, inside it. Pick was a 40-year-old vice president at Fiduciary Trust International on the 94th floor, a former Air Force staff sergeant. The last time his daughter saw him was September 9. Their last activity together was watching the premiere of the Cartoon Network show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force."
Now 34, Puccio-Pick is furious about Mamdani's ties to Piker, who she noted said in 2019 that America deserved 9/11. She directed her frustration at the mayor himself:
"I don't understand. It's like, 'Dude we don't want you there. What don't you get? The families just want one day to themselves. Shouldn't we, the loved ones, get to choose who we want or don't want there?'"
Walter Matuza Jr. was a 39-year-old analyst for Carr Futures on the 92nd floor of the North Tower. He was on the phone with his wife Denise when the first plane hit. He tried to calm her. That was the last time they spoke.
Denise Matuza told the Post what happened to their eldest son, who was ten at the time:
"My oldest son was 10 at the time, and from the stress of losing his father, he went blind and he lost his eyesight."
She said Mamdani should not be allowed to speak at the ceremony. "It's all about the families, the names of the [people] who perished there.... This is our gravesite for our husbands and wives."
Her son Walter, now an adult, struck a more measured tone but arrived at the same conclusion. He said he does not mind politicians attending the ceremony as long as they are respectful, but he considers Mamdani's attendance disrespectful because of the people the mayor has associated with.
The mayor's associations have generated controversy on multiple fronts. Immigrant business owners have prepared a lawsuit against one of Mamdani's signature policy initiatives, adding to a growing list of legal and political challenges facing his administration.
Frances Haros was 76 years old and worked as a receptionist at Keefe Bruyette & Woods on the 89th floor of the South Tower. Her husband had already passed away. She had recently returned to work after a grueling recovery from eye surgery. Her son, Nicolas Haros Jr., said he kept urging her to retire, the commute was long, but she refused.
"She saw everyone come and go. The young men shared their stories with her and got advice. She was the office mom, she loved it."
Haros said Mamdani's presence at the ceremony would be "worse than a slap on the face" to grieving families. He called for a ban: "He should skip it as he did the Israel Day parade."
Lori Schertzer Brody was an assistant vice president at Deutsche Bank and also worked in the North Tower. She got her younger brother Scott, 28, a job in human resources at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 101st floor. She had learned he was about to receive a promotion he did not know about. She told him to stay.
"The irony is, I told him to stay [at the investment firm] because I found out he was going to get a promotion which he didn't know about. I told him, 'No, no, just wait, just wait till December. It's going to be great, I promise you.'"
Brody made it out of the North Tower alive. Scott did not. She signed the petition and did not hold back about Mamdani:
"I am Jewish, I find him to be very antisemitic. I find him to incite violence wherever he goes. He thrives on division. I find that he has proven over and over again where his loyalty on September 11th stands, his loyalty stands with the terrorists. He could do the proper thing and bow out. He won't because he likes to inflict pain on those he can."
Jim Smith, a retired NYPD officer, lost his wife Moira on September 11. She was one of only two female police officers who died that day. Smith chose not to sign the petition, but not because he wants Mamdani there.
"I didn't sign the petition because Sept. 11 should not be about politicians. It should be about the people that we lost that day and continue to lose, and their families. Petitions like this just take away from those heroes. The honorable thing would be for people who are distractions not to show up."
Even Smith's dissent lands in the same place: the ceremony belongs to the families, and a mayor who is a distraction should have the decency to recognize it.
Louis Massari's wife Patricia worked in the accounting department at Marsh McLennan on the 98th floor of the North Tower. She was 25. The couple had been teenage friends whose friendship turned into a love story. On the morning of September 11, Patricia learned she was pregnant. Her last words, after the first plane struck, were "Oh my god."
Massari, now 50, described his wife simply:
"She definitely lit up a room any place she went to.... We knew her as somebody that had the most beautiful smile, and it's not being biased as her husband."
He signed the petition and said Mamdani should bow out to help de-escalate the situation.
Monica Iken-Murphy, whose husband Michael was a 37-year-old bond broker at Euro Brokers on the 84th floor of the South Tower, also signed. She is a leading advocate in the creation of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. She said her objection was not about Mamdani's politics specifically but about who belongs at the ceremony: "I don't want families to feel uncomfortable. Others can come a different day, but let the families have their time." Michael had been married to Monica for just 11 months. He was adopted, never knew his father, and dreamed of becoming a dad. That dream was taken from him.
Mamdani has given no indication he plans to back down. The petition continues to grow. And the families, the people who buried husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons, mothers, and an unborn child, are left asking a question that should not be hard to answer: Can they have one day?
A mayor who has to be petitioned to show basic respect for the dead has already answered the question himself.
