'Let us have our peace': Fearing disruption at Ground Zero, 9/11 families ask Mamdani to stay away

AUGUST 29, 2026 02:50Monica Iken and her husband Michael Patrick Iken were set to celebrate the second anniversary of their meeting on September 9, 2001.The newlyweds – married 11 months prior – parted on that Tuesday morning with Michael heading to his work as a bond broker in the South Tower of the World Trade Center in NYC.“He kissed me goodbye and said, ‘I love you; I’ll see you later.’”A few hours later, Michael called Monica from his office and told her to turn on the television. She thought this was strange, as bond traders are the busiest in the mornings and he would not normally call until the afternoon.“I did, and I saw this gaping hole and that a plane hit the building [the North Tower],” she recalled in a conversation with The Jerusalem Post. “He told me: ‘Everything is fine, everything is okay. They said to stay where we are. Don’t worry.’”MONICA IKEN and Michael Patrick Iken. Michael was killed in the World Trade Center’s South Tower on September 11, 2001. ‘To this day, I have no remains,” Monica tells the ‘Post.’ (credit: Courtesy Monica Iken)“Then he said, ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back.’ He called me back a few minutes later and said, ‘Listen, you’ve got to call the family and friends; they keep calling me here, and there’s a lot going on.’”Monica pulled up the phone book while still watching the TV and listening to her husband, who still sounded calm.“I have the phone book in my left hand and the phone in the right hand, and I literally see this thing come out of the corner of the screen on the right side, like a giant jumbo jet.”“I thought: ‘There’s no way.’ Nothing was registering. When you see something like that, your brain is not computing. I literally watched [the plane] hit the [South] Tower, and I was frozen in space because he worked in tower two on the 84th floor.”Monica said she kept thinking Michael would get out, because his best friend did. But by September 12, she said, her “nightmare had begun.”“To this day, I have no remains,” she told the Post. “I have nothing ... not even a ring, not even an ID, nothing.”“I had to digest that I was newly married, trying to have a baby, and he went to work but was never coming home. And even though we went down to look for him and we did all those things, the reality was – I knew he was gone.”Monica starts NGO, September's Mission to preserve siteAfter Michael was killed, Monica became concerned with the idea that the city may build over the site of all the fallen. This prompted her to start her NGO, September’s Mission.It was founded with the primary objective of working with public and private partnerships to secure the acreage of the World Trade Center site and ensure “that we do not build over dead people in America.”Of the approximately 16-acre site of the former World Trade Center complex, Monica and her fellow advocates managed to secure half of the site for the Ground Zero memorial.“The good news is I have a place to go to honor my husband,” she continued. “His birthday is on September 8, so I go there on September 8. He will be 62 this September. We celebrate every year.”“As long as I’m alive, I go to the memorial, and we sit by his name, and we have merlot, his favorite thing, and we celebrate life instead of death,” Monica said.“He took his last breath there, his last step, and for me, that is a sacred and hallowed space. I thank God every day for that place, because if I didn’t have that place to go, I would never have survived the nightmare,” she continued.September mission's second objective is working with families of those killed and advocating for them to receive whatever they need.“I help them with mental health and educational programming. I do a lot of things behind the scenes,” Monica remarked.She doesn’t take a salary, and uses her own funds to keep the organization running.Because of her work with September’s Mission, Monica is very involved emotionally and practically with the families, so when the discussion came up in recent months about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s planned attendance at the memorial, Monica’s main concern was how the families will feel about that.“It’s not political for me. He’s our mayor. I’m a New Yorker. It’s more about the fact that this is our time, and the people who should be there are the ones representing that time with us and were a part of that time,” she said.“I don’t know where he stands exactly, but he doesn’t seem to be on the same page,” Monika continued, adding that she felt that Mamdani was somewhat connected to the people who “murdered our loved ones.”“If I go to a funeral and the murderer comes, I don’t think that’s acceptable. And I’m not saying he is a murderer. I’m just saying that he wasn’t involved. I think he needs to just respect us and let us have our time, and then he can do whatever he wants.”New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during an announcement on the Standing Up to ICE outreach program at the governor’s office in New York City, US, August 12, 2026. (credit: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado)Mamdani's attendance would be disrespectful due to who he supports, husband of victim saysGiovanni Galante, whose wife Grace Catherine was among those killed by al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001, told the Post that Mamdani’s intention to attend the ceremony was “a slap in the face... Not because he is Muslim – because of who he supports. He represents values that are not ours.”Florida real estate agent Galante was responsible for launching a petition last month, alongside other family members of those murdered on 9/11, calling for Mamdani to be excluded from the 25th-year memorial events on account of his association with extremism and refusal to condemn antisemitism.According to the petition, concerns have been raised about Mamdani’s public positions, including a perceived reluctance to “clearly and unequivocally condemn phrases such as ‘globalize the intifada,’ which many interpret as endorsing or normalizing violence.”Further, the mayor’s “associations with individuals whose public statements or records are viewed by family members as dismissive of American institutions or insufficiently critical of extremist ideologies,” the petition read.It also noted that Mamdani’s own father penned a book shortly after 9/11 in which he said that suicide bombers should be “understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism.” Mamdani has previously said that his father has been influential in shaping his views.The mayor has also praised Brooklyn Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was named as an alleged co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and served as a character witness for the Blind Sheikh, Omar Rahman, who was convicted in 1995 of plotting terror attacks against the United States.More recently, Mamdani appointed Ramzi Kassem, who previously represented Ahmed al-Darbi, a man convicted in an al-Qaeda tanker bombing plot, as New York City’s chief legal counsel.The petition has gained over 93,00 signatures in less than a month, as well as hundreds of comments, many of which are from survivors or family members.“For 9/11 families, this is not simply a public ceremony; it is a deeply personal day of mourning,” Galante wrote. “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.”Mamdani acknowledged the petition by saying he will attend the ceremony and “proudly honor the families” by standing alongside them at Ground Zero.“I will proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year’s 9/11 commemoration, reaffirming that we will never forget the solemn day felt by all of us who call this city home, and frankly, by all of us who call this country home.”Galante told the Post that “the memorial is like our house, because it’s where our loved ones died. Everyone knows someone that was lost.”He said the “right thing” would be for Mamdani to respect the families’ wishes and not attend. “But there is nothing else we can do,” Galante added.Monica seconded Galante’s concerns about the area being, in a sense, hallowed ground, and the potential that Mamdani’s presence will addle the families.“If the families are going to be upset, I have a problem with that because I don’t want them to be upset. I want them to go there and have their time. And if they’re disrupted, we lose sight of why we’re there, and that’s not good,” she said.“My idea for the 25th [year since the attack] is for us to go there and commemorate our loved ones, and thank God we can still do that – not be in a political war with someone or having to worry about some of these families feeling that [Mamdani is] affiliated with people that killed our loved ones. That will stress them out and make them angry, and I don’t want anger at the memorial.”“The memorial needs to be a sacred and hallowed space where there is peace. It’s got to be peaceful. And already I see families are getting upset, and I don’t like that. It really bothers me,” Monika went on to say.She noted that the question of Mamdani’s attendance had recently become a religious matter too, with US Catholic League president Bill Donohue writing an open letter to Mamdani “respectfully [requesting] that he not attend the 9/11 ceremony.”Donohue noted that, as mayor-elect, Mamdani did not attend the Veterans Day Parades, and as mayor, did not attend the Israel Day Parade.“Given that this is the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and that your presence would clearly be divisive, that is why there is a petition seeking to stop you from going. It would be best for everyone involved if you skipped this event,” Donohue wrote.In addition to the emotional needs of the families, Monica spoke of her own needs to grieve and mourn, which she said she cannot do if she is taking care of and advocating for the others.“Because there’s such contention going on and anger, I can’t mourn properly. I can’t mourn when I have a family member who’s crying or angry. I’m not going to be able to have my own peace because now I have to worry about those families who are going to come to me and be crying and upset.”Her final message to the mayor? “Just let us have our peace.”“Don’t stress out these families. Don’t be arrogant and go because you feel like you should go because you’re being defiant now. That’s wrong.”“Just respectfully say: ‘I see what’s going on. I am the mayor. I’ll take it into consideration. I’m not going to take it personally. Let them have their time.’”“That’s it. Simple.”Follow us on Google