#NYC Councilman wants memorial for essential workers lost to COVID-19

City Council Member Mark Levine
Taidgh Barron/NY Post

A Manhattan City Councilman plans to introduce a bill Thursday to create a local memorial to the front-line workers lost to COVID-19.

“They paid a high price, and we have to honor them for their sacrifice,” Mark Levine (D-Manhattan) told The Post about the tribute.

“Unlike almost any other disaster our city or our country has experienced, we have not publicly identified most of the victims. Frankly we have done very little to, in any public way, to mourn them and that’s particularly unacceptable when it comes to our essential workers who are by any measure disproportionally represented among those we have lost,” Levine said.

The coronavirus has claimed the lives of nearly 24,000 city residents, according to the latest data by the Health Department.

The memorial would be dedicated to workers who “took risks to care for us and keep our city moving and running and fed,” Levine said. The honorees would include everyone from MTA workers to police officers, nurses and supermarket clerks.

More front-line workers will likely succumb to COVID-19, Levine said but, “It’s not too son to start planning to memorialize those who would sacrifice for us.”

Levine’s bill would create a task force similar to the one that created the National Sept. 11 Memorial. The task force members would include two frontline workers, city commissioners and other people appointed by the mayor and council speaker. Their report would be completed and made public within nine months.

The task force would be responsible for determining the memorial’s design and location, Levine said.