25 years later at Ground Zero.
While families stood at the memorial reading the names of the nearly 3,000 people murdered on September 11, 2001 - and while others nearby were visibly breaking down - Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani were captured smiling and laughing.
This is the 25th anniversary ceremony. Family members spend hours reading every name. The tradition exists so the dead are not reduced to a statistic. The photo and circulating video cut from grieving relatives to these two sharing a laugh.
Mamdani’s attendance was already contested. More than 100,000 people signed a petition from 9/11 families asking him to stay away, citing his associations and past comments around the attacks. He showed up anyway and then produced this image during the name reading.
Whatever private joke they were sharing, the optics at that moment are indefensible. A memorial is not a networking event. If you cannot keep a straight face while the names of the murdered are being read, you have no reason being there.
#NeverForget911 #Shameful #AOC #Mamdani
@libsoftiktok@UTKnoxville They don’t care. Colleges have become farms of mental illness. They grow the crop that treats political assassination like a holiday, then send it out into the world.
@GuntherEagleman Is it just me, or have crashes like this been happening a lot lately? I swear I have seen three other airplanes overshoot the runway in the last month.