Debate over Mamdani’s 9/11 memorial attendance reveals persistent bias 25 years later
TheGrio...
Black New Yorkers chime in on the discourse surrounding Mayor Zohran Mamdani attending the 9/11 memorial ceremony.
Today marks 25 years since two planes struck the Twin Towers in New York City. And every year, Americans around the country honor the lives lost in the tragedy that drastically changed life as many Americans knew it in 2001. However, ahead of this year’s annual memorial ceremony in New York City, the news was filled with headlines of communities and former politicians telling the city’s sitting mayor, Zohran Mamdani, that he is “not welcome” at the ceremony.
In the days leading up to the ceremony, former mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Newsmax that “it would offend him” if Mamdani attended this year.
“Frankly, whatever he’d like to say, he doesn’t agree that September 11th was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America, one that is, in terms of war or effort, continuing today, and maybe even worse today. Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming,” Giuliani told the outlet before using anti-Muslim and Islamophobic rhetoric.
Similarly, former New York Gov. George Pataki echoed these sentiments, noting that Mamdani “should not be” at the memorial site. These Republican officials’ commentary seemingly aligns with the beliefs of over 100,000 people who signed a Change.org petition launched by the family members of 9/11 victims calling for Mamdani not to attend the memorial ceremony at Ground Zero.
“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,” the organizers wrote citing issue with a number of Mamdani’s affiliations and past comments. “Given these concerns, we respectfully ask that the organizers 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.”
Mamdani, who attended the ceremony this morning, told reporters that his focus is on honoring “the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11th” and “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” in response to the growing chatter. Though the Mayor has not directly responded to Pataki and Guilliani’s comments, on September 8, his office released 170,000 pages of previously undisclosed records about air quality showing that officials like Pataki and Guilliani reportedly knew about the unsafe conditions while reassuring the public that things were safe.
However, a number of communities have called out the underlying bias in the calls for NYC’s first Muslim mayor to skip the memorial ceremony that every other city official has attended since 2002.
“I speak as a 9/11 widow who was eight months pregnant on that day. @nycmayor is not only welcome, he is essential. We need unity as we honor our loved ones,” LaChanze Sapp-Gooding wrote on Instagram. “This is not the day for division or distraction or racism. We need the space and grace to grieve our loved ones 25 years later.”
“Every Mayor since the September 11th attacks has attended the memorial ceremony — including a Mayor who lied about the safety of the air quality in the months that followed, which continues to impact the health of New Yorkers. The calls for our first Muslim mayor to stay away from the ceremony should be recognized for what they are: unveiled bigotry,” NYC Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams told theGrio.
For years, 9/11 has been seen as a day that tragically united Americans as the country collectively grieved the thousands of lives lost from the attack. However, as New York Times Bestselling author Fredrick Johnson points out, it also marked the beginning of a wave of discrimination that persists today.
“The calls for Mayor Mamdani not to attend the memorial are just blatant Islamophobia. September 11 is not just a day. It’s also an era, one marked by bigotry against people who are not at fault for what transpired on that day, but still also have to carry the scars of it,” Johnson, who was a 12-year-old middle schooler in Yonkers, New York at the time of the attacks, told theGrio. “As we can see with how the mayor is being treated. This is the worst of us, and if there was one thing that that day was supposed to inspire, instead [was] how we can come together and be the best of us. That’s the actual promise of New York and the promise of America.”
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“What it says is that the country is still reckoning with its greatest sins. There is nothing complex nor justifiable about how the mayor is being treated. This is the same sort of bigotry that perpetuated the wheel of violence that caused and predated September 11th. And [as a] Black New Yorker, I’m appalled by the treatment that he’s received,” he continued.
Fordham University professor and senior policy fellow at Brooklyn Org, Christina Greer underlined how these biases have and continue to impact Black communities.
“The hyper-surveillance of Muslim communities, of which many Black people are members, did not go away, and so now we see the vestiges of it in the hyper-surveillance of not just Black communities but immigrant communities, of which many Black people are also immigrants,” she told theGrio. “There are these multi-layered effects of how the Black community has been affected post-9/11 because of hyper-surveillance of various communities that has only gotten worse over time, and we know what happens to Black people will ultimately happen to everyone else, which many people don’t realize. Black communities were already hyper-surveilled before 9/11, and it’s only increased over time.”
While critics claim Mamdani’s presence at the ceremony would have distracted from the sacred solemnness of the quarter-century anniversary of the tragedy, Prof. Greer argues that the discourse is a “bad faith effort by Republicans to distract New Yorkers from what we should be focusing on, which is the families and survivors.”
“Instead of them focusing on demanding more funds for New Yorkers who are dying of miscellaneous cancers due to 9/11, instead of demanding that from Washington D.C. […]they themselves are the main culprit of this distraction,” she continued.
Ultimately, as we honor the weight of this date, the discourse is a sobering reminder of the ways in which discrimination and biases continue to permeate through society.
“25 years since the attacks, we’re reminded of the dangers of voices who peddle fear, misinformation, and distrust over the shared humanity of remembering the lives we lost to an act of terror,” Williams concluded. “We owe it to those we honor today, and to our city that lived through this devastating tragedy, to come together in remembrance in spite of the division that these voices aim to sow.”