Take Back The 9-11 Memorial
To read about the plans for the memorial--apologies and all--and to sign a petition begun by Debra Burlingame to "take back" the memorial so that it will become the hallowed ground it should be, click here, click the link below, or cut and paste the address into your URL address bar. Look for the Sign The Petition tab and follow directions. It's a crime what the current plans include.***
Originally published on August 21, 2005
How International Freedom Center Risks Fostering Anti-U.S. Sentiment
By DOUGLAS FEIDEN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
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 Daily News has learned.
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.
"If you're going to explore slavery, the Holocaust or women's rights, you should do it at Chelsea Piers or on the East River waterfront - anywhere but Ground Zero," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles, 51, was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
"After all, it was not slavery that caused the terrorists to attack us," said Burlingame, who has led the fight to bar the IFC.
Under fire from 9/11 family members and Gov. Pataki, the IFC on July 6 pronounced itself proudly patriotic, vowed never to "blame America" and said it would celebrate the nation's "leading role in the global fight for freedom."
In April, however, the Freedom Center said on its Web site and newsletter that it had "drawn inspiration" and received "important practical advice" from the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience.
"We have many, many advisers who have given us lots of advice," Richard Tofel, Freedom Center president, said last week. "Some of it we've taken and some of it we haven't - that's the nature of advice."
He said the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington had most inspired the IFC's vision, and that the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Illinois was also offering extensive advice.
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.
Among its suggestions for the place where the United States was attacked and nearly 3,000 innocents massacred: "The Freedom Center must signal its openness to contrary ideas."
Philip Kunhardt, the Freedom Center's editorial director, was in attendance at a session called Bringing Conscience to Ground Zero and was given this advice:
* "Help distinguish between American people and the U.S. government in exhibits ..."
* "Use reports from human rights organizations to examine contemporary abuse of rights."
* "Involve the United Nations, UNESCO and other international bodies."
* "Use the museum as a venue for international meetings, where all views are welcomed and considered."
At the conference, the coalition also leveled barbs at the IFC: "The Freedom Center is a caricature of the typical American response to everything [telling every story from an American viewpoint]."
Members of the coalition also expressed these concerns:
* "It seems that whatever Americans want, Americans get!" the conference report states. "Is the definition of the 'struggle for freedom' simply defined by the victors, or also by those engaged in ongoing struggles? Will Americans really create a balanced vision of freedom?"
* "The WTC was attacked because it was a symbol of power and influence. In building the Freedom Tower, the U.S. reasserts its power in an arrogant way: Does this mean the U.S. will not only build the biggest building, but also define freedom for the world?"
* "Many nonsecular Muslims may be very skeptical about the intent of this museum (e.g. the average Bangladeshi condemns the Sept. 11 attacks, yet at the same time feels his/her human rights have been violated by the U.S.)."
Kunhardt, an ordained Episcopal minister and the writer of the PBS series "Freedom: A History of Us," mostly listened. He agreed with some things that were said, disagreeing with others, an observer said. He didn't return calls.
Tofel said preliminary plans call for an exchange of exhibits with some coalition museums.
"It is hoped and expected that temporary exhibits at the IFC will originate at, or travel to, some of the Historic Site Museums of Conscience - and perhaps vice versa," he said in an E-mail.
___
Sources: News Article--http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/339258p-289735c.html
Cartoon--www.Coxandforkus.com
Petition--www.takebackthememorial.org/
posted by Hairpinandarrow_blog at
5:43 PM
3 Comments:
Perhaps we could build a wall with all the dead from the Iraqi war?
Oooops...sorry....hated to remind you of people actually DYING for that monkey in Crawford you worship.
Jay, Perhaps we could just honor the memory of the innocent people who died on 9-11. It's a burial ground now. Those poor souls didn't even know they were the first to die in this war on terrorism. If you remember, we couldn't conceive of such evil acts (homocide planes flying into skyscrapers) back then.
But if you want a wall of dead, there have been lots of bodies dug up in mass graves in Iraq--killed by various factions of Saddam's regime. Many more than have died since the US got involved.
And as far as calling the President a monkey, what's that about? You don't agree with his policies? You voted for the other side? You think you have a better solution to ridding the world of terrorists? So you choose to belittle the man struggling with resolving the situation (who was voted into office fair and square) and you have no respect for your country and its highest office? What is it you're actually doing about terrorism other than complaining about what the President is doing? H&A
Hi Sam! Thanks for visiting my blog. I absolutely agree with your anaylsis. When money and opportunism get involved, little things like "keeping politics out of the cemetary" get lost.
Debra Burlingame's goal is to make the memorial a true memorial, a place, "...that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take (us) back to who (we) were on that brutal September morning.
Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world.
The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom"--but do not be fooled... To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona... The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? ...
The driving force behind the IFC is Tom Bernstein, the dynamic co-founder of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex who made a fortune financing Hollywood movies. But his capital ventures appear to have funded his true calling, the pro bono work he has done his entire adult life--as an activist lawyer in the human rights movement. He has been a proud member of Human Rights First since it was founded--as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights--27 years ago, and has served as its president for the last 12.
The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Human Rights First that filed an amicus brief on behalf of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the Justice Department believes is an al Qaeda recruit. It was Human Rights First that has called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged torture of detainees, complete with budget authority, subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath.
In fact, the IFC's list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:
• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the worldwide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld's refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable."
• Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.
• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner's statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC's location at the World Trade Center site itself.
• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."
While Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and LMDC are focusing their attention on the economic revival of lower Manhattan, there has been no meaningful oversight with respect to the "cash cow of Ground Zero." Meanwhile, the Freedom Center's organizers are quickly lining up individuals, institutions and university provosts with this arrogant appeal: "The memorial to the victims will be the heart of the site, the IFC will be the brain." Indeed, they have declared the World Trade Center Memorial the perfect "magnet" for the world's "great leaders, thinkers and activists" to participate in lectures and symposiums that examine the "foundations of free and open societies." Put less grandly, these activists and academics are salivating at the prospect of holding forth on the "perfect platform" where the domestic and foreign policy they despise was born.
Less welcome to the Freedom Center are the actual beneficiaries of that policy. According to the New York Times, early renderings of the center's exhibit area created by its Norwegian architectural firm depicted a large mural of an Iraqi voter. That image was replaced by a photograph of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson when the designs were made public. What does it mean that the "story of humankind's quest for freedom" doesn't include the kind that is fought for with the blood and tears of patriots? It means, I fear, that this is a freedom center which will not use the word "patriot" the way our Founding Fathers did...
The people who visit Ground Zero in five years will come because they want to pay their respects at the place where heroes died. They will come because they want to remember what they saw that day, because they want a personal connection, to touch the place that touched them, the place that rallied the nation and changed their lives forever. I would wager that, if given a choice, they would rather walk through that dusty hangar at JFK Airport where 1,000 World Trade Center artifacts are stored than be herded through the International Freedom Center's multi-million-dollar insult."
How do we get a real memorial back?
By taking a little action ourselves: signing Debra's petition and keeping people current--just like you are doing in your blog.
This lengthy quote (sorry about that. I'm not a person of few words, it seems) has been taken from an article written by Debra. You can find it in my Links and Essentials, The Great Ground Zero Heist. Come back! I'll be more brief next time. H&A
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