In a scene of just how bizarre the battle over the Freedom Center has become — and a warning of problems ahead — Republicans circled the wagons to defend the Center and the WTC Memorial Foundation Head said Debra Burlingame will be on the board overseeing the Center.
911memorials.org has objected for two years to the Freedom Center not only because of its fuzzy non-911 mission but also because it will be the dominant building at Ground Zero that will be larger than either of the footprint voids and will come within a tree of two of the memorial walls — space that would be better served by a park atmosphere.
George Pataki’s chief of staff and newly appointed Downtown Building Czar John Cahill held a press conference after the demonstration.
Cahill was quoted by Bloomberg
Americans own this piece of land down here…I don’t think Americans want to place on sacred ground a place that attacks American history.
Cahill repeated the mantra that the Freedom Center will buffer the memorial from the rest of the city. Our standard mantra has been repeatedly that this is ridiculous. The memorial will face the city on three sides and the Center in fact cuts it off at its most visible location — all part of the ill conceived plan to sanitize and hide the memorial.
Meanwhile John Whitehead, President Reagan’s Deputy Secretary of State and World Trade Center Memorial Foundation Chairman said
…Burlingame is a member of the memorial foundation’s programming committee, which will oversee the freedom center’s agenda.
Further he said:
We think we have given her a place to express her views and to have a say in what is done there…[the center] is not a place where the right wing or the left wing is to be reflected or even discussed.
Showing just how bizarre this whole debate is, the targeted villain is Tom Bernstein, President of Chelsea Piers — who is an intimate friend of George W. Bush from their days at Yale and owning the Texas Rangers (although he is a Democrat).
Bernstein is Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the International Freedom Center.
Attention to the issue arose when Burlingame wrote an op-ed piece in the June 7 issue of the Wall Street Journal calling the Center a “Blame America Memorial.” It instantly caught fire with the right oriented blogs (ironically Richard Tofel the President of the Freedom Center was a major editor with the WSJ).
My Commentary
This all goes to what we’ve been saying for two years. The Center should not be at Ground Zero. With these kinds of battles going on, it diverts attention from efforts to raise funds for the memorial. It speaks volumes that there is no concrete plan to raise funds for the memorial. The only organization to sign up so far is the State of New York which will donate $300 million in FEDERAL FUNDS to the memorial. All major memorials in the country were initially built with private funds.
As push comes to shove more major battles loom on all aspects of the memorial, we constantly wonder why don’t they just cover the 16 acres up with a “temporary” park while the battles are fought.
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http://911memorials.org/archives/2005/06/21/republicans-circle-wagons-to-defend-freedom-center/
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