Relatives of Americans killed on September 11 are circulating a petition to bar New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani from the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero, calling him an "unwelcome guest" at what they consider sacred ground.

The petition, hosted on Change.org, has gathered more than 1,100 signatures, including at least 300 from victims' family members, the New York Post reported. Organizers want the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, the nonprofit that controls the guest list for the annual plaza commemoration, to exclude the city's first Muslim mayor from the September 11, 2026 event. They also plan to press New York City Council members to back the effort.

The petition lays out a bill of particulars against Mamdani. It cites his refusal during last year's mayoral campaign to disavow the phrase "globalize the intifada." It flags his campaign-trail appearance alongside Brooklyn imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It points to his hiring of civil rights attorney Ramzi Kassem, who previously represented detainees at Guantanamo Bay and defended an al-Qaeda terrorist, as chief counsel to City Hall. And it references old social media posts from 2015 in which Mamdani discussed radicalized cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

Mamdani also endorsed Democratic Socialists of America candidates Aber Kawas and Darializa Avila Chevalier, a detail the petition highlights as part of a broader pattern of associations that petitioners say disqualifies him from standing at the site where nearly 3,000 people died.

Giovanni Galante: Mamdani's presence would be 'deeply hurtful'

Giovanni Galante, a real estate agent whose wife was killed on September 11, is one of the petition's organizers. He told the Post that the day carries a weight no political calendar should override.

"His presence would be deeply hurtful and inappropriate, like an unwelcome guest at a deeply personal ceremony."

Galante told reporters the ceremony "is not a platform for those connected to such views." For families who lost husbands, wives, parents, and children that morning, the annual reading of names at Ground Zero is not a civic event, it is a memorial. They want it treated that way.

Cheri Sparacio, whose husband Thomas was killed in the World Trade Center, is also pushing the petition. Monica Iken-Murphy, a founding trustee of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum whose husband Michael died in the attacks, signed it as well. Iken-Murphy told the Post the petition is not about Mamdani's ideology per se. She said the 25th anniversary should be reserved for officials who were part of the recovery, people like former mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, former Senator Hillary Clinton, and Council Speaker Julie Menin, whose small business was destroyed in the attacks.

That distinction matters. The families are not asking for a political litmus test. They are asking whether a mayor with Mamdani's specific record of associations and statements belongs at the most solemn commemoration of the worst terrorist attack on American soil.

Memorial officials say every mayor since 2001 has attended

The 9/11 Memorial & Museum has so far declined to change course. Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit, said every sitting president, governor, and mayor since 2001 has attended the ceremony. Under the current framework, elected officials sit in a designated area and do not speak. The museum has described the arrangement as an effort to keep the commemoration free of politics, treating it as an act of witness rather than a public forum.

That framework was established after earlier disputes over political speeches at the memorial. Wood's position, in effect, is that the museum does not screen elected officials based on their politics, it seats them and moves on. Absent a policy change, Mamdani would attend regardless of how many signatures the petition collects.

Mamdani has already appeared at the memorial since taking office in January. In April, he participated in a wreath-laying alongside King Charles III. In May, he visited the site with the fire commissioner. Neither appearance drew the kind of organized opposition now building ahead of September.

Queens councilwoman prepared to take the fight to City Hall

Republican Council Member Joann Ariola of Queens told the Post she is prepared to help the petitioners bring their case before the New York City Council. Mamdani has drawn bipartisan criticism on multiple fronts since entering office, and Ariola framed the petition as part of a broader reckoning with his record.

"This is a mayor who has endorsed candidates and has been endorsed by individuals who openly said that America deserved 9/11."

Ariola's statement sharpens the families' case. The petition does not rest on a single controversy. It builds a cumulative record: the imam with ties to the 1993 bombing, the City Hall counsel who defended al-Qaeda-linked detainees, the social media posts about a radical cleric, the refusal to condemn a slogan that many Jewish and pro-Israel Americans hear as a call for violence. Taken together, the families argue, these associations make Mamdani's presence at Ground Zero an affront.

Mamdani's tenure has already produced a string of confrontations with federal authority. The State Department blocked one of his officials from a planned meeting with Iran's UN ambassador. He has publicly vowed to resist a Supreme Court ruling on immigration policy, and he used America's 250th birthday celebration to criticize ICE and what he called "supremacy."

None of those episodes involved the September 11 anniversary directly. But they form the backdrop against which the families' petition has gained traction. Each new controversy reinforces the petitioners' core claim: that Mamdani's political commitments are fundamentally at odds with the values the Ground Zero ceremony exists to honor.

A 25th anniversary with no easy resolution

The museum's position puts it in a difficult spot. Its policy of admitting every sitting mayor without political screening was designed to keep the ceremony above partisanship. But the families now argue that the policy itself has become the problem, that treating all mayors as interchangeable ignores the specific record of the man currently holding the office. Mamdani has clashed with federal institutions repeatedly, and his pattern of associations with individuals and groups hostile to the post-9/11 consensus is not a matter of ordinary political disagreement.

Whether the petition succeeds or fails, it has already forced a question that the museum's framework was built to avoid: Does a mayor's record matter when the ceremony commemorates the dead?

The families who lost loved ones that morning believe it does. Mamdani has not publicly responded to the petition. The 9/11 Memorial & Museum has given no indication it will deviate from precedent. And the 25th anniversary is less than two months away.

Meanwhile, the broader fiscal and political consequences of Mamdani's leadership continue to mount. New York's millionaire exodus has drained billions in tax revenue even as the mayor pushes to raise rates higher, a reminder that the costs of his agenda extend well beyond any single ceremony.

The families of the dead are not asking for much. They want one day, one morning, where the people standing at Ground Zero earned the right to be there. That a petition is required to make the case tells you how far the city has drifted from the promise it made on September 12, 2001.