Jeannette Puccio-Pick, who was nine years old when her father was killed in the September 11 attacks, is calling on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stay away from Friday’s 25th-anniversary commemoration, joining more than 110,000 signatories in opposing his attendance as she accuses the democratic socialist mayor of affiliating himself “politically, personally and professionally” with people she says have “minimized and justified the murdering of my father.”
“We don’t want you to come. We don’t want you there,” Puccio-Pick, whose father, Joseph Pick, was killed in the South Tower, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview Thursday.
She is among the 9/11 relatives supporting the effort to keep Mamdani away from Friday’s ceremony over his record of controversial rhetoric and associations, including ties to figures whom the petition says have minimized terrorism, defended extremists, or expressed views at odds with the commemoration’s “unambiguous rejection” of the violence and extremism behind the attacks.
“The mayor affiliated himself politically, personally and professionally with those who have minimized and justified the murdering of my father,” Puccio-Pick told Breitbart News.
She said Mamdani first caught her attention during the 2025 mayoral campaign after he campaigned with radical Brooklyn imam Siraj Wahhaj, publicly praising him as “one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community.”
Wahhaj was named 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 “Blind Sheikh,” who was convicted of plotting terrorist attacks in New York.
Her concerns deepened after Mamdani appointed Ramzi Kassem as New York City’s chief counsel. Kassem previously represented Guantanamo detainee Ahmed al-Darbi, who pleaded guilty before a U.S. military commission to charges stemming from the 2002 al-Qaeda bombing of the French oil tanker Limburg off Yemen. Al-Darbi was the brother-in-law of Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the 9/11 hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77.
The petition lays out a broader case against Mamdani’s attendance, citing his perceived reluctance to “clearly and unequivocally condemn” the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which it says many interpret as endorsing or normalizing violence, along with his support for and associations with figures whose records family members view as dismissive of American institutions or insufficiently critical of extremist ideologies.
It also cites writings by Mamdani’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, whom the mayor has credited with shaping his worldview, including his post-9/11 argument that suicide bombers should be “understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism.” Among other examples, the petition points to Mamdani’s past comments blaming U.S. foreign policy for helping radicalize al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki and his support for political allies who have made controversial statements about the September 11 attacks and the United States.
After discovering Giovanni Galante’s petition on social media in late July, Puccio-Pick contacted the 9/11 widower and began helping spread the effort.
“I am just so heart-warmed and astounded,” she said of the response, adding that the outpouring of support left her deeply appreciative because, to her, “it shows people have not forgotten.”
Yet behind the controversy over Friday’s ceremony is a far more personal reality: Puccio-Pick has spent nearly three-quarters of her life living with what happened that morning.
“It’s been a living hell,” she said.
“I feel as though between the times of 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m., those 17 minutes have defined my whole life from ages nine until now, 34.”
She compared the experience to “Groundhog Day, but like a horror movie version of it,” describing how reminders of the towers surface unexpectedly throughout ordinary life — on television, inside restaurants, or simply in an old image of the New York skyline.
She said she is grateful that Americans continue to remember, but that the constant reminders can also make the loss impossible to escape.
“I’m glad people are never forgetting,” she said. “But at the same point, I feel like I can’t escape it. It’s everywhere.”
Those concerns resurfaced last week when Mamdani signed two executive orders related to the 25th anniversary of 9/11, then handed the ceremonial pen to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and asked her to pass it to Kassem.
“It did seem a bit calculated,” Puccio-Pick said. “What would be the point of that?”
She also said she perceived Mamdani as smirking during the exchange, calling the moment “a little daunting,” although she acknowledged that she could not know his intent.
“Maybe it was an innocent gesture, but I have my doubts on that,” she said.
Mamdani’s office has said Kassem helped draft the executive orders, explaining his presence and involvement at the signing.
Puccio-Pick contrasted Mamdani’s determination to attend Friday’s ceremony with his absence earlier this year from the February 26 commemoration marking the 33rd anniversary of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people. Mamdani sent Deputy Mayor for Operations Julia Kerson to represent his administration while he traveled to Washington to meet President Donald Trump.
“What I don’t get is, you don’t go where you’re invited, but you insist on going where myself and other family members don’t want you to go,” she said.
Her frustration with political figures at 9/11 commemorations is broader than her specific objections to Mamdani, however.
Puccio-Pick said she would personally prefer that politicians from either party stay away from the ceremony, arguing that the anniversary too often becomes a “political circus” or a “photo op.”
“They use 9/11 as a scare tactic to push whatever political agenda they’re trying to endorse at that time,” she said. “And I don’t appreciate that from either side.”
Members of 9/11 families delivered Galante’s petition to City Hall on Tuesday. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who led the city during the attacks, and former Gov. George Pataki have also publicly called on Mamdani to stay away from the anniversary ceremony.
Mamdani, however, has insisted that he will attend Friday’s commemoration, saying he intends to honor those killed in the attacks, their families, and the first responders who rushed into danger that morning.
His presence will not keep Puccio-Pick from returning to Ground Zero to honor her father.
“I’m not going to let somebody stop me from honoring my father at my father’s gravesite,” she said. “That’s not happening.”
Joseph Pick died there, his daughter emphasized, and that is why she chooses to return there to remember him.
“If the mayor shows up, that’s his First Amendment right,” she said, adding that she intends simply to ignore him. “I’m there to honor my father, nothing more, nothing less.”
Asked whether she would say anything to Mamdani if the two came face to face Friday, her answer was simple: nothing.
“I’m there for my father,” she said. “I will be reflecting and praying about my father and hoping that he is at peace.”
Joseph Pick worked for Fiduciary Trust on the 94th floor of the South Tower and was last seen on the 78th floor, according to his daughter. A staff sergeant in the Air Force, he loved football, baseball and tennis, rooted for the New York Jets, and was “obsessed” with comic books.
9/11 victim Joseph Pick,
Among the memories Puccio-Pick treasures most, however, is one from a much happier time.
When she was six, her father surprised her with tickets to the Backstreet Boys’ Millennium tour in 1999, taking her to the concert with a cousin and an aunt.
A quarter-century after her father’s murder, Puccio-Pick said remembering September 11 is about more than honoring those who were lost. For her, “never forget” also carries a warning not to forget the terrorism that produced the attacks — or allow another generation of families to suffer the same loss.
“Never forget and don’t let history repeat itself,” she said. “I want no other child, loved one — whether it be a spouse, aunt, uncle — to go through what I’ve been through, because it is a living hell.”
“I would not wish that on anyone.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
