New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani attended Friday’s 9/11 remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero despite a petition signed by more than 110,000 people urging him to stay away, drawing sharp criticism from victims’ families and other mourners who gathered at the site.
Walter Matuza, whose father Walter died at the Carr Futures brokerage after American Airlines Flight 11 struck the north tower just above the firm’s 92nd-floor offices, told Fox News Digital he helped organize the petition to keep Mamdani from the ceremony.
“He showed up anyway. It does bother us,” Matuza said.
Matuza pointed to Mamdani’s association with streamer Hasan Piker, who once said America “deserved 9/11,” and to the mayor’s appointment of Ramzi Kassem as chief counsel. Kassem previously represented a Guantánamo detainee linked to an al Qaeda terrorist plot.
A former New Jersey police officer identified only as Mike, who said he came to Manhattan on 9/11 to help relieve exhausted NYPD officers, said he believed Mamdani should not have attended given his past rhetoric.
“Based on the rhetoric that he’s used in the past. Yeah, he probably should have skipped it,” Mike said, adding that Mamdani could have handled the Kassem appointment “a whole different way.” “But, he did it and unfortunately people aren’t going to forget it.”
Another mourner at the ceremony called Mamdani a “communist” and said the memorial was “not supposed to be a political event.” A man named Steven, who traveled from Hobe Sound, Florida, to attend, called Mamdani’s presence “disrespectful” and “offensive.”
“I’ve been following that over the past couple weeks and I saw that I think they had upwards of 700,000 New Yorkers requesting him not to be here. I mean, as the mayor, I would assume he has the right to be here…. But who he represents and the people he’s affiliated with… I feel that he should stay away. I don’t feel that his presence here is wanted, and I think he should honor that as a human being,” Steven said.
Steven also called Kassem’s appointment “hideous” and said he plans to make sure his own children understand what actually happened on 9/11 rather than what he described as “incorrect information” circulating among younger generations who did not live through the attack.
Not every attendee objected to Mamdani’s presence. A man identified as John, who said he lost friends at Cantor Fitzgerald — the firm that lost more than 650 employees, the most of any company in the Twin Towers — said Mamdani has a right to attend and that he was “fine” with it so long as the mayor remained respectful toward those being remembered.
Former New York Republican Gov. George Pataki and 9/11-era FDNY Commissioner Thomas von Essen were among those who had publicly called on Mamdani to skip the ceremony before it took place.
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani for comment. In a prior statement, the mayor said he is proud of the city and “love[s] this city [and] country,” adding that he wanted the week focused on “the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11, and a focus also on the first responders who gave everything they could to this city and to the people who came together to try and help their fellow New Yorkers.”
Footage from the ceremony showed Mamdani approaching and greeting his predecessor, former Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, exchanging brief pleasantries before Giuliani sat down. All living former U.S. presidents reportedly attended the New York ceremony. President Donald Trump instead visited the Pentagon’s remembrance before departing for County Clare, Ireland, from Andrews Air Force Base.
