Mayor Spano to Host Assyrian Flag Raising Ceremony at Yonkers City Hall

By Michael Lazari

I’ll be honest with you — this one isn’t just an assignment for me.

I’m a first generation born Assyrian. I was baptized in the church. My family has been part of the Yonkers Assyrian community since the 1950s, and probably earlier than that. Some of my earliest memories are of walking through the doors of Mar Mari as a little kid and being surrounded by people who treated you like family the moment you walked in. The food, the activities, the holidays — it wasn’t just a church. It was home.

So when I tell you this ceremony matters, I’m not writing from the outside looking in.

Mayor Mike Spano will join members of the Yonkers Assyrian American community for the annual Assyrian Flag Raising Ceremony on Thursday, April 16th at 4:30 p.m. at the Unity Fountain in front of City Hall. It is a tradition that has grown into one of the most meaningful gatherings on Yonkers’ calendar.

The celebration marks Kha b’Nissan, known also as Akitu, the Assyrian New Year observed every April 1st, a spring festival with roots stretching back to ancient Mesopotamia. In Yonkers, the community honors it by coming together at City Hall and raising their flag for the whole city to see.

It’s a small ceremony. But it carries the weight of a very long history.

The Assyrian community in Yonkers has been here since the late 19th century, with many families settling here after fleeing the Ottoman-led campaign of 1915 — an event the community considers genocide. Generations later, their children and grandchildren still call Yonkers home. My family among them.

Around 1953, the community converted a three-family house into a chapel. As more Assyrians made their way to Yonkers, that space grew into the Mar Mari Assyrian Church of the East on Lake Buena Vista Avenue — a place that serves not just as a house of worship, but as the cultural heartbeat of the community. Language classes, youth programs, holiday celebrations — it is where the culture stays alive and where the next generation learns who they are.

The flag-raising tradition itself took root around 2014-2015, with the help of Assyrian American attorney Mark Constantine, at a time when the Islamic State was actively persecuting Assyrians in their ancestral homeland. Raising the flag at City Hall was a way of saying: we are still here. We are not forgotten.

That message hasn’t lost any of its power.

For the families who gather each year at that fountain. The grandparents who remember where they came from, the kids who are just beginning to understand what it means — seeing the Assyrian flag rise over Yonkers City Hall is more than a ceremony. It’s proof of survival. It’s a community that has refused, generation after generation, to disappear.

I’m proud to be part of it. And I’m proud to write about it.

The Flag Raising Ceremony takes place Thursday, April 16, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. at Yonkers City Hall, Unity Fountain, 40 South Broadway. The public is welcome.