Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a video this week marking the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, calling the day one of “immeasurable loss” for New York City.
In the video, posted on X, Mamdani sits at a desk outdoors and reflects on what he described as the city’s “darkest day,” while also emphasizing the response of ordinary New Yorkers in the aftermath.
“September 11th was a horrific act of terror,” Mamdani said. “A day of immeasurable loss, 2,753 parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and colleagues — 2,753 universes gone in an instant. In the years since, thousands more have died from illnesses caused by the toxic air they breathed in the months they spent working on the pile.”
He went on to recall how New Yorkers “lined up for hours to donate blood,” opened their homes to stranded travelers, and carried injured colleagues down stairwells before returning to help others still trapped inside.
“Twenty-five years later, we have a sacred obligation to those who were stolen from us: to care for one another as they cared for strangers, to live lives worthy of the sacrifices they made, and to build a city worthy of their courage — a city where we run toward one another. That is how we remember,” Mamdani said.
The video came amid criticism from at least one relative of a 9/11 victim. Jeannette Puccio-Pick, whose father was killed in the attacks, was among those who had pushed for Mamdani not to attend the 25th anniversary commemoration ceremony.
“The mayor affiliated himself politically, personally and professionally with those who have minimized and justified the murdering of my father,” Puccio-Pick said in a statement.
Puccio-Pick said her concerns trace back to the 2025 mayoral campaign, when Mamdani appeared alongside Brooklyn imam Siraj Wahhaj and praised him as “one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community.” Wahhaj was identified by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case and later served as a character witness for Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called “Blind Sheikh,” who was convicted of plotting terrorist attacks in New York.
Puccio-Pick said she supports public remembrance of the attacks but described the anniversary as difficult to escape each year.
“I’m glad people are never forgetting,” Puccio-Pick said. “But at the same point, I feel like I can’t escape it. It’s everywhere.”
