Gale Brewer & Zohran Mamdani Memorial Day Addresses, 2026

Following are Straus News’ exclusive transcripts, recorded on site, of the addresses given by Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer, and the Morningside Heights boy who became Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, at Memorial Day wreath laying ceremony at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument on the May 25, 2026.

Council Member Gale Brewer

...I want to thank Peter Galasinao and Neil Burson for their dedication to the Monument and organizing this year’s memorial observance. We’re honored to welcome, when he gets here, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has come to stand with as Mayor Bloomberg often did. De Blasio showed up once—I kept track—and Mayor Adams also, when he announced his allocation—and this is to his credit—of over $60 million for the current restoration of the monument.

I also want to thank Tricia Shimamura, New York City Parks Commissioner, we’ll here from her soon; John Harold, administrator of Riverside Park; Steve Simon, from the Parks Department; Merritt Birnbaum, President of the Riverside Park Conservancy; and Martha Grant, who’s my hero. She’s a landscape architect for Riverside Park.

The monument was 50 years old when Mayor Wagner spent about a million dollars for the full renovation in 1962, when was gasoline was about 25 cents a gallon.

And the Memorial Association found, George Chall, had no idea he would one day be 103 years young, nor that when he and a few others restarted Memorial Day here at the monument in 2004, it would become a large gathering under his inspiring leadership. He joined us here two years ago and today, at 103-years-old, he’s doing well, living in North Carolina, and yesterday he spoke at his town’s Memorial Day service.

A few words about Memorial Day. The solemn grandeur of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument embodies the living memory of the Civil War by those who fought in it. They were among the one in seven New Yorkers who wore Union blue. And the city was at the center of the not only the war effort but the political and social strife that arose when the nation divided into north and south over the issue of slavery 250 years after we fired the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”

Our booksheleves are filled with accounts explaining it all, and of speeches we have a plenty, and the headstones of the fallen stretch to the horizon.

You would suppose that this sacrifice paid by Americans of all races and creeds would be enough to unite us. Yet as we gather this year on a historic anniversary of liberty, what they died for is being overshadowed by political division. It would be wise to remember that the unfinished business of the Civil War took 100 years to acknowledge.

We must not allow a revival of the grievances to obscure why we have a Memorial Day that was born of the carnage of the Civil War. By tradition now it honors each and everyone we gave. Let us ask the living for as much, that those we gave did not die in vain that we might live in peace, one and invisible.

Dr. George Chall welcomed all branches of our armed services as we do today, including the 369th Harlem Hellfighters and Kimlau Korean War Vets, the Tuskeegee Airmen, Hispanic and Jewish war veterans, the sons of Union veterans alongside the Vietnam, Afghanistan, disabled veterans of all wars, the DAR [Daughters of the American Revolution] and the Daughters of the Confederacy and my wonderful husband, who was a Vietnam vet

As George Chall learned while a medic in World War II, the dead and dying were of all kinds of persuasions. And they met their fate because they believed in the meaning of America. If today means anything, so must we. Thank you very much.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani

Good morning everyone. It is an honor to be here together as we pay our respects and remember our nation’s fallen service members. I want to thank the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Association Commander Peter Galasinao and organizers who put on this event every year, truly. I also want to thank Commander Duffy, today’s keynote speaker, for his service and his scholarship, and it is a pleasure to stand here alongside so many other elected leaders in New York City and state government.

I want to acknowledge Council Member Gale Brewer for her leadership in helping to advocate for funds to restore this monument. Assembly Members Linda Rosenthal, Micah Lasher, who are here with us, our Council Member Shaun Abreu, our Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal. We also have our Commissioner of New York City Parks, Tricia Shimamura, who we just heard from. And I also want to acknowledge Merritt Birbnaum, the President of the Riverside Park Conservancy.

Most of all I would like to say thank you to the members of our Armed Forces, to veterans, veterans’ organizations, the military and Gold Star families that are here with us today. So [to] the Gold Star families in particular, will our city and our nation pauses today to those remember those that we have lost.

I know that your grief endures every day and I’m honored to be here alongside you. I grew up not too far from here in Morningside Heights. I’ve spent many hours in this park, passing by this Monument, whether on a walk or gazing up at is Grand Columns as the Sun sets pink through the trees.

New York City is home to many towering, larger-than-life monuments. Yet this one stands apart. One feels a significance, a solemnity in its grandeur. The inscription on the exterior colonnade reminds us why. It reads ‘To the memory of the brave soldiers and sailors who saved the Union.”

One hundred twenty-four years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt led the dedication for the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ that included a parade of Union Army veterans— 36 years had passed since the end of the Civil War. No doubt many of them were old or hobbled and aching as they walked Riverside Drive. And [I] cannot help but think what that moment meant to them on Dedication Day.

To have made great sacrifices in the fight, not only for our country but the for the abolition of slavery, an outcome that was by no means guaranteed, and to have won it not only for themselves but for their children and grandchildren and all those that would still come. Decades later, civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph would put it this way: “Freedom is never granted, It is won. Justice is never given, it is exacted.”

Those veterans knew than winning dignity comes with many great costs: injury, wounds that never heal, and the death of many good men. Gathering on Riverside Drive on that day in 1902, were no doubt families of fallen soldiers, just as there are today.

I think of the straight line between those who stood there then and those who stand here now, at this very same moment. The pain that you each intimately know, despite the gap of generations. And yet sorrow is not the only thing that you share. You also know a rare kind of pride.

A pride for a loved one who sacrificed everything. Pride for a person who answered a call few are brave enough to heed and those who chose service because they believed in something greater than themselves. While Memorial Day lasts just 24 hours in a whole year, I know that there are many here who honor those lost every day.

Not only by keeping their memory alive, but by striving to live with the same courage, the same convictions as those we remember today. This year will mark 250 years since our forebears signed the Declaration of Independence as commemorate that anniversary. Let us honor the memory of the many working men and women throughout our history, who enlisted in the military, and paid the ultimate price.

Let us commit to fighting for dignity for all. That pursuit of dignity becomes all the more important when we consider that here in our home, the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in this history of the world. So many veterans are still living with food insecurity, homelessness and isolation.

Our City Hall refuses to accept that status quo. That is why we will use every level of government to ensure that all who call the city home can afford the basics of a decent life. Whether those basics are rent, their childcare or their groceries, and if we make that commitment, we can never allow veterans to be an exception to it. Because that is the very least that they deserve.

It is how we can pay tribute to those that we have lost by striving, just as they did, to reach a higher ideal for ourselves, for our city, for our nation. I must say thank you again to the families and veterans that here for your sacrifice, for your belief in the ever enduring ideals of this nation. It is a privilege to mark Memorial Day alongside you. Thank you so much.