Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, a coalition of victims' families don’t want New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani anywhere near the ceremony marking the anniversary at Ground Zero.
A Change.org petition urging Mamdani to stay away from the September 11 memorial has collected more than 66,000 signatures in under three weeks and organizers say the mayor's own history of rhetoric and associations makes his presence at the site an insult to the dead.
“This anniversary is 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. For many families and community members, participation in these ceremonies carries an implicit expectation that those present uphold and affirm these principles without ambiguity,” the petition reads.
“Concerns have been raised about Mr. Mamdani’s public positions, associations, and responses to rhetoric that many perceive as hostile to these shared values.”
The petition's organizers describe the anniversary as a day to honor the dead and reject the ideology behind the attacks rather than a platform for a sitting mayor.
The petition cites a specific set of grievances.
Mamdani has repeatedly declined to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada," a slogan widely understood as a call for violence against Jews and Israel. His chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, once represented a pilot convicted in an al-Qaeda tanker-bombing plot. Mamdani has also aligned himself with commentator Hasan Piker, who told his audience in 2019 that America deserved the September 11 attacks.
Giovanni Galante, the petition's lead organizer, estimates that thousands of the signers are relatives of the 2,977 people killed that morning. His wife, Grace Catherine Galante, was 29 years old and worked for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of the North Tower. Cantor Fitzgerald lost roughly 658 employees that day, more than any other firm in the towers. An FDNY captain told the New York Post the anti-Mamdani petition is circulating widely inside firehouses across the city, and former Fire Commissioner Tom Van Essen, who ran the department during and after the attacks, signed it himself, joking about wanting a word with the mayor at the ceremony. The FDNY lost 343 firefighters.
Charles G. Wolf lost his wife, Katherine, just two weeks into her new job at Marsh & McLennan on September 11. Wolf argues that Mamdani has spent his career alienating the families of the dead through an agenda hostile to the country and friendships with people who minimize what happened that day. Wolf said officials who supported families over the years, including former Gov. George Pataki, are the ones who belong at Ground Zero this year.
Maureen Santora's son, Christopher, was 23 when he died in the South Tower, the youngest firefighter killed that day. His shift with Engine 54 had already ended when the alarm came in, and he went anyway. Santora said Mamdani has never shown support for the September 11 community and called him a divisive figure whose presence would undercut the entire purpose of the gathering.
Monica Iken-Murphy, whose husband Michael Iken died on the 84th floor of the South Tower and who helped lead the effort to build the September 11 Memorial and Museum, framed her objection around Mamdani's years of absence from the community rather than his politics. Officials who supported families from the beginning, she said, naming former mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, belong at this particular anniversary.
Not every family contacted by reporters backs the petition. Retired NYPD officer Jim Smith, whose wife Moira was one of two female NYPD officers killed that day, declined to sign, saying the day should stay focused on victims rather than politicians of any stripe. Dennis Warchola, whose firefighter brother Michael died two days before his planned retirement, said he turned against Mamdani after learning about his statements on terrorism but stopped short of signing because he does not believe in silencing anyone.
Those dissents were the exception. Reporters reached more than 150 families, and most had signed or planned to, with dozens asking to stay anonymous over retaliation fears.
Mamdani has said he plans to attend anyway.
Galante said many family members plan to turn their backs on Mamdani if he shows up. "They don't want to look at him," he said.
Tyler Durden Sun, 08/02/2026 - 15:45Authored by Christopher F. Rufo, Austen Hufford via Christopher Rufo's Substack,
As governor of California, Gavin Newsom has repeatedly supported "harm reduction" policies, which enable drug use in the name of making it "safer." He created the state's Harm Reduction Initiative, which funded "syringe services programs" for "people who inject and smoke fentanyl and/or methamphetamines." His Department of Public Health has endorsed distributing syringes, glass pipes, and "[c]ontainers for mixing injectable drugs" to drug users. Newsom argued earlier this year that harm-reduction tactics "increase the likelihood of people entering substance use treatment."
But do California's harm-reduction programs encourage addicts to enter treatment? We visited the Skid Row Care Campus, a homeless-services site in Los Angeles County, to witness "harm reduction" in action. We discovered that, instead of directing addicts to get clean, the taxpayer-funded program doles out free paraphernalia, enabling addicts to get high - no questions asked.
We arrived at Skid Row in the morning. The campus, bounded by pastel-colored buildings and a metal gate, looked like an apocalyptic wasteland. Homeless people and addicts were splayed across the common areas, with some smoking what seemed to be hard drugs with impunity.
We stepped onto the courtyard connected to the street. No one stopped us, asked for identification, or searched us for weapons or drugs. This is apparently by design, judging by the Skid Row Action Plan and its implementation outline, which, singly or together, inspired the creation of the campus, denounced the "racist and classist war on drugs," and called on local officials to create hubs "free from monitoring by law enforcement" and staffed by people with histories of "substance use and sex work."
We entered campus and found a walk-up counter, where an attendant sat before shelves of drug paraphernalia. Users come to this counter to get free needles and crack pipes, with which they can inject or smoke hard drugs.
"What can I get you?" he asked. "We have oil burners, we have spray shooters, we have socks, we have petroleum jelly."
EXCLUSIVE: California is giving taxpayer-funded meth pipes to the homeless. We went undercover to get one. pic.twitter.com/ZUTmuHIHGr
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) July 29, 2026Across several visits, we obtained drug-testing strips, syringes, and crack pipes. One worker told us that while drug use isn't allowed on-site, we "wouldn't be bothered" if we got high just outside - unless we overdosed.
The entire campus takes a "low-touch" approach. In addition to staple items that many homeless shelters offer - food, laundry, some medical care - the site offers services like doggie daycare, meditation on the lawn, and "valet" cart parking. Around midday, we saw homeless people lining up in the cafeteria for Doritos and instant ramen, while around two-dozen sat in reclining chairs to watch the movie 127 Hours.
The Skid Row site launched in 2025. The campus and its services are run by a group of nonprofits committed to harm reduction, including one that laments the "long-standing criminalization of substance use."
For these left-wing groups, the site has become a massive cash cow. The campus is listed as a federally funded health center and reportedly pulls in around $26 million a year in local, state, and federal dollars. One of its service providers, Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, has seen its revenue more than double since 2020, jumping to $27 million last year. Another, Wesley Health Centers (JWCH Institute), has seen revenues more than double to $200 million in five years.
Estela Lopez, executive director of the L.A. Downtown Industrial District, thinks the campus has been a disaster.
"You want a meth pipe? Here you go. You want needles? Here you go," she said, describing the campus' "harm reduction" approach. "Everything that you need in order to get high, stay high, is provided, no questions asked."
Lopez said the site has caused chaos on the nearby street. An LAPD source told us they've totaled 1,200 "radio calls for service" and four murders in the area so far this year. One of the site nonprofits' employees told us that drug dealers were "fighting over the guests."
All of this raises questions about federal funding. Last year, President Trump signed an executive order ordering reviews of federally funded drug paraphernalia distribution sites. The order took a negative view of "so-called 'harm reduction' or 'safe consumption' efforts that only facilitate illegal drug use."
The named nonprofits and the mayor's office did not respond to our requests for comment, and the governor's office did not offer a responsive comment. L.A. County claimed that they adhere "to all local, state, and federal laws," and said the campus "is funded by L.A. Care Health Plan," a public health plan, "and Health Net," an LLC. (In a 2024 press release, Health Net claimed that the two entities' investment in the campus's launch "was the result of California's Housing and Homelessness Incentive Program, which the state launched with the help of matching funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.")
Our trip to Skid Row made one thing unmistakably clear: in California, harm reduction facilitates drug abuse. The state's leaders may think that it's compassionate to let people waste away, smoking hard drugs and prodding themselves with needles. But these behaviors lead only to ruin, and, finally, death.
Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America's Cultural Revolution. Austen Hufford is a senior investigative reporter at City Journal.
Tyler Durden Sun, 08/02/2026 - 15:10