Retired Port Authority cops tell Mamdani, Hochul to stay home from NYC 9/11 ceremony: ‘would cause profound pain’
Thirty-seven Port Authority names. Six hundred retirees. They asked the mayor and the governor to stay home.
Summary
- The New York Post reports the Port Authority Retired Police Association, 600 members in New York and New Jersey, sent Aug. 11 letters telling Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul they have not earned the privilege to stand at Ground Zero on the 25th anniversary.
- President John McDevitt wrote that Mamdani's presence would cause profound pain and risk turning a solemn day into a political fight, citing Israel-bashing rhetoric and affiliations the group calls hostile to law enforcement.
- The Hochul letter was harder. McDevitt said lighting One World Trade for a January Muslim American Heritage Month proclamation was tone-deaf and an affront to the fallen.
- Thirty-seven PAPD officers were killed on 9/11. A Mamdani spokesman said the mayor will attend to honor families and first responders.
Commentary
A widow still walks cold granite with a paper poppy and tastes harbor wind on a cracked lip. She did not come to hear a campaign under the names.
That is the gap. Thirty-seven Port Authority dead. Six hundred retirees. Two letters. The honest son of a PAPD man still pays the memorial lights. The podium still wants a photo.
Look every working father who still takes his boy to that pit in the eye: if the men who carried the radios say stay home, who still owns the anniversary?
Comments
Profound pain is not a talking point. It is a widow's sentence. Honor it.
I walked a memorial with a campaign hat. A lighting stunt on that tower is a spit on a radio.
No politician has spoken at that ceremony since 2012. The retirees are defending the rule, not a party.
Allied capitals keep a silence at a mass grave. Copy the silence.
Aug. 11 letters, 600 members, 37 PAPD dead, WTC lighting in January. File those nouns.
I still wash grease, not slogans, off a stone I already paid to keep clean.
A kid's first 9/11 should be names, not a mayor the radios asked to stay away.
A city that cannot keep a memorial quiet will not keep a port serious. Start with the pit.
The Post printed 600, 37, Aug. 11, McDevitt, and the WTC lighting. Argue those nouns.
Keep the silence. Keep the names. A campaign is not a eulogy.
