New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani skipped Brooklyn's annual Columbus Day Parade on Saturday and never answered an invitation to a similar event in Queens, organizers said, in the latest flashpoint of his rocky relationship with the city's Italian American community.
The Federation of Italian American Organizations of Brooklyn, which stages the parade along 18th Avenue in Bensonhurst, said the Mayor's Office confirmed Thursday that Mamdani had declined its invitation, which was sent weeks earlier. Organizers of the Queens Columbus Day Parade in Astoria said they never received a reply at all, leaving them hanging as their event concluded Saturday near the Columbus statue on Astoria Boulevard.
The mayor is also considered unlikely to attend the larger Manhattan Columbus Day Parade on Fifth Avenue on Monday, sources told the New York Post, despite the Columbus Citizens Foundation extending him an invitation in an olive-branch gesture that drew criticism from other Italian American groups.
The snubs land amid a broader set of tensions between the socialist mayor and Italian American organizations, dating back years, and come as Columbus Day itself remains contested nationally. The weekend parades went ahead in Brooklyn and Queens regardless, with organizers saying the mayor's absence would not define the celebrations.
