RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Take Back the WTC Memorial (Victim's Family)

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"Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?"

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the G-man said:

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"Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?"

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Stupid Doog said:
parachutes on every floor!

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The lower Manhattan Development Corp. wants to keep a controversial SoHo gallery in the planned Ground Zero cultural center - but the gallery director says it won't stay unless it has complete artistic freedom.

"The LMDC knows that we would never be able to accept censorship," Catherine de Zegher, director of the Drawing Center, told Crain's New York Business. "Now they have to come to us with their decision."

The gallery and the rebuilding agency have been scrambling since late last month, when Gov. Pataki demanded that arts groups given spots at Ground Zero promise the LMDC to "respect the sanctity of that site," adding that if not, "they shouldn't be there."

The News last month spotlighted some recent works shown at the Drawing Center that outraged the families of some World Trade Center victims.

One drawing, called "A Glimpse of What Life in a Free Country Can Be Like," featured a hooded figure, evocative of Abu Ghraib prison. Another, "Homeland Security," showed four planes swooping from the sky - one toward a naked woman.

Some groups representing 9/11 victims' families say they don't want anything on the site detracting from the memorial.

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theory9 said:
Agreed. I have no problem with the aforementioned art, but it belongs somewhere else. Let the people grieve in peace.

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the G-man said:
To me, it should very similar to the USS Arizona which is, also, technically a mausoleaum.

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First Amongst Daves said:

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the G-man said:
To me, it should very similar to the USS Arizona which is, also, technically a mausoleaum.

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While I agree with that sentiment entirely, the problem with the place is that its the most expensive piece of commercial real estate in the world. People will want to make money out of it, bombings or no.

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A global network of human rights museums is urging the International Freedom Center to downplay America in its exhibits and programs at Ground Zero.

The outrageous request is the latest controversy to torment the Freedom Center, whose leaders have tried to dispel the perception that it would be a home for America bashers.

"Don't feature America first," the IFC has been advised by the consortium of 14 "museums of conscience" that quietly has been consulting with the Freedom Center for the past two years over plans for the hallowed site. "Think internationally, where America is one of the many nations of the world."

Those words rang hollow with some 9/11 family members.

"I can't think of a greater insult than to invite museums from other countries of the world to come and exploit what should be America's memorial," said Jack Lynch, who helped carry the body of his firefighter son Michael, 30, out of the rubble.

The firefighters union already has demanded the Freedom Center be booted from Ground Zero, and state officials have given it until Sept. 23 to satisfy the objections of family members.

Located in nine countries on five continents, the coalition museums chronicle apartheid in South Africa, slavery in Senegal, torture in Argentina, racism in the South and internment of Japanese-Americans in California, along with other historical horrors.

"No one in the civilized world would ever defend what happened on 9/11," said Sarwar Ali, the coalition's chairman and a trustee of the Liberation War Museum in Bangladesh.

"But what happened after 9/11 - with restrictions placed on human rights and the cycle of revenge and the allegations of human rights abuses in prisons - must also be explored," Ali said in a call from London.

Coalition members gathered for their annual conference at a Holocaust site in the Czech Republic in July 2004 - and assailed the United States for "reasserting its power in an arrogant way," the conference report shows.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday dealt a crushing blow to the International Freedom Center planned for Ground Zero, saying she wants the project canned for failing to listen to the 9/11 families.

"I cannot support the IFC," Clinton declared last night in a strongly worded statement in response to an inquiry from The Post.

Her tough comments are Clinton's first significant remarks about the controversy raging at Ground Zero over the Freedom Center, which 9/11 families and other critics fear will become a center of anti-Americanism.

"While I want to ensure that development and rebuilding in lower Manhattan move forward expeditiously, I am troubled by the serious concerns family members and first responders have expressed to me," Clinton said.

"The LMDC [Lower Manhattan Development Corp.] has authority over the site and I do not believe we can move forward until it heeds and addresses their concerns."

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r3x29yz4a said:
While I don't think they should "downplay" America, if they're going to call it the "Freedom" Center than it should be more international than just America and 9/11. If they want it to be a memorial then they should call it that.

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Pariah said:

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r3x29yz4a said:
While I don't think they should "downplay" America, if they're going to call it the "Freedom" Center than it should be more international than just America and 9/11. If they want it to be a memorial then they should call it that.

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.......You're the UN's gimp aren't you?

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the G-man said:
Yes, and the U.N. has done such a bang up job fighting genocide, terrorism and despotism, not to mention the way it always puts human rights ahead of its members' economic interests.

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Gov. George Pataki on Wednesday ousted a proposed freedom museum from its site at ground zero, declaring that the International Freedom Center has generated “too much opposition, too much controversy” to remain.

The decision follows months of acrimony over the Freedom Center, with furious families and politicians saying that the museum would dishonor the memory of the 2,749 people who died at the World Trade Center.

“We must move forward with our first priority, the creation of an inspiring memorial to pay tribute to our lost loved ones and tell their stories to the world,” Pataki said in a statement.

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Stupid Doog said:
how about rebuilding the goddamn towers?

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magicjay38 said:

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Stupid Doog said:
how about rebuilding the goddamn towers?

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Did you ever spend time in those buildings? They made for a pretty picture but functionally they sucked. The elevator system especially.

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Rob Kamphausen said:
criminy!

i've always been in favor of simplicity for a memorial. it doesn't have to be an artist's (or arteest's) life-long vision, with twisted shapes of steel and repeating loops of music encrusted upon jewels or whatever.

i'm also against setting a somber tale, with dimmed silence and underground chambers, like a trip into hades.

why not make a tribute? something calming and reflectively appreciating what was lost, but something that also strives towards the future and proverbial (and hopefully literal) rebuilding.

i actually really like the tribute in light beams. i think they're simple and amazingly effective. classy, beautiful, and fitting. i'd love to see those every night.

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I think you see a grander vision than I intended. Memorializing the victims and a place is a temporary need. The people who experienced personal loss are short term clients. For them this is "a somber tale". In 50 years most of the people with vivid memories will be dead. Putting that portion underground puts survivors close to remains and also keeps it out of the way as its function diminishes.

The main emphasis of my vision is returning the site to daily use. Restore it to use as a commercial campus.

The holograph is essentialy the same as the light memorial. A bit more grandiose, perhaps, but I'm the kina guy that would love to live at Versailles.

Rosaleen Tallon never thought she would have to camp out on a New York City sidewalk on a cold winter night.
Then again, the soft-spoken mother of two toddlers who holds a Ph.D. in education from Columbia University never imagined living life without her younger brother, Sean Tallon, a firefighter who died on 9/11 at age 26.

Tallon, 34, has vowed to sleep across the street from Ground Zero every night to protest against the planned World Trade Center memorial. She is part of an opposition that has grown more vocal approaching tomorrow's groundbreaking.

"I'm doing this to raise awareness that the memorial we're building, the main part is underground," Tallon said as she sat bundled up in blankets on a blue chair in front of Engine 10 on Liberty St., where her Marine brother had served just eight months before he died.

On Friday, the third night of Tallon's sit-in, she arrived at 10p.m., an hour after she tucked her kids into bed.

"I will be down here as long as it takes," Tallon said, acknowledging that she's an unlikely activist. "I'm not militant. I'm just a regular New Yorker."

Reflecting Absence, the winning design for the memorial, leads visitors several stories underground and has the names of the dead listed in random order - two key points of contention for some families.

"They're asking us to go underground. [But] I'm not dwelling on the void the terrorists created, I'm dwelling on the life my brother lived," she said.

One month before Sean Tallon ran across the street to the World Trade Center, he beamed with happiness at his sister's wedding.

"During the father-daughter dance, my father's knee was bad and it was hard for him, so Sean took my mother on the floor and the four of us were dancing," a tearful Tallon said.

In the nights she has spent in front of the firehouse, several firefighters who knew her brother have stopped by to share silly yet poignant memories.

"I could hear Sean's laughter. It's like he was sharing it with me," she said.

On her first night, Wednesday, she said she gazed at Ground Zero and thought of the people who died there. "I could still feel their spirits," she said with a slight smile.

Tallon and her brother last saw each other four days before 9/11 at a small Irish cafe in Yonkers.

"We were there listening to a band. At the end of the night he said, 'I gotta go.' He walked uphill and that was it," she said, dabbing at her eyes.

"I want the memorial to be up where it's filled with light, like he was going up," Tallon said. "We will never go underground to remember."