NYC: Where’s the bloody memorial?
Seven years later, ground zero is still a gaping hole in the middle of the city. There’s no memorial, no sign of that freedom tower that’s supposed to replace the two towers that fell that tragic day. Absolutely nothing. After all this time there still isn’t very much, but politicans like George W. Bush at least still have their favorite photo op for one more year. Priorities, right?
The good news is the new stadiums for both the Yankees and the Mets are on schedule and will be ready for opening day next season. These massive projects were started a lot later than 2001, so I guess these projects are considered more important to the city. Priorities people! The Yankees need a new home so they can charge $100 for nosebleed seats! Each!
I don’t think the world, or the city for that matter needs a constant telecast to remind them of what happened every year, everyone needs closure and a chance to move on. In order to do that, Ground Zero needs to finally be taken care of and a memorial needs to be constructed. Whoever is incharge of these projects needs to be fired immediately, and replaced with someone who will get results. Contracts need to be disolved and reassigned. This is clearly atrocious, and a lot more work should have been done by now.
It’s high time New York City did something about that hole in the ground…
Peter
Seven years after 9/11, why no memorial?
Written by Terry McGovern
NEW YORK (CNN) — My son is 7 now. He was just about 7 weeks old when his grandmother, Ann McGovern, my mother, died in the World Trade Center attacks.
My mother was a force of nature — funny, energetic and totally engaged in life. Sixty-eight years old but claiming to be much younger, she was a vice president at Aon.
Over the course of the past seven years, I have missed her commentary the most. I can only imagine what she would have had to say about the circumstances and the exploitation of her death.
After so many years, I long to take my son to the place his grandmother was in the last moments of her life.
Curious by nature, just like his grandmother, he has so many questions. “Where was she that day? Why does everybody talk about 9/11 all the time? What are they building there? Why is it taking so long?” I try hard to answer.
What I can’t answer is why there is no memorial. Still. I will not take him to a gaping hole in the ground, a construction site. I speak to my “9/11 family” — friends who lost their daughters and sons that day — and they wonder if they will live to see a memorial for their children.
The most moving memorials achieve what great art can — they help us transcend the sometimes smallness of humanity.
A poignant memorial reminds us that we are more than violence or destructiveness and that the human spirit can transcend war, terrorist attacks and unimaginable grief. A memorial allows us to remember our loved ones not only in their vulnerability but in their generosity and courage.
We have lived through the political use and misuse of 9/11 for seven years and we still don’t have a place to visit on the site that commemorates our loved ones.
I really don’t care about the leaseholders or the commercial use of the property. I don’t want to look at Rudy Giuliani in front of a towerless skyline at the Republican convention. I don’t care that the two presidential candidates will visit the construction site on this seventh anniversary.
I want to be able to visit a place of peace that allows me to forget the politics and posturing and reminds me of the beauty of the lives that were lived and lost.
How can it be that, seven years later, this great New York City has not offered us such a place?
Reprinted from CNN.com
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One problem might be that real estate is so pricey in Manhattan, so who will sacrifice a sizable area to a memorial that won’t bring in any revenue?
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you’d have to live here to know the stories of bureaucratic pandering to those who feel their loved ones are mis- or under- represented in the memorials because their role, sacrifice, etc was more important than all others. Also, they have already closely spent/matched the stadium costs on the memorial; the original budget has doubled, somehow. “But where’s the memorial?” RIGHT!
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I live in NYC and I feel 9/11 all around me, every day, and I certainly don’t need an oversized piece of concrete to remind me of what happened here seven years ago. Walking the streets of Manhattan this weekend and seeing the Tribute in Light reach toward the sky was more poignant than any monument could ever be. Honestly, I don’t see why we even need some physical symbol to remind us of what will never be solid, what could never be understood.
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Walker Bush is responsible for many things but here in New York state, most of the blame for this has been laid at the footsteps of former Gov. George Pataki. The current governor and legislature are preoccupied with a major budget crisis. I’m sorry but it’s hard to justify a huge chunk of money for a memorial when you’re proposing slashing social services to people most in need.
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The public funding for the new baseball stadiums are an absolute scandal. North of the state capital near me, they are offering $1 BILLION in tax breaks to a microchip company to maybe come up here and create 1,000 jobs. That’s $1 million in subsidies per job. That’s where my money is going.
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RYN: I don’t disagree that an appalling amount of money has been spent on the project; I just believe that our resources are better spent. Any investigation will unnecessarily cost more money, and to what end? So that we can eventually build what is essentially a billion-dollar gravestone? I’m not interested.
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Both of you guys make great points, but what I’m saying is at thist point… the feds should be footing the bill. They after all have been milking this tragedy for quite a while. Let them take over the project and any investigations into where the money has gone so far…
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Youre impatient for a 9/11 memorial, and I sort of understand. But its a big deal. Lots of people have differing visions of the memorial, lots of people have funded the memorial, that piece of land is still major prime real estate, and how can you do this tastefully? How do you balance everything you hate about the US against the worst terrorist attack in the US? Nine eleven oh seven yousaid, Compared to that horrific piece of genocide [Rwanda], 9/11 is a fart in the wind. Yet for some reason the lives of those who perished in the towers are apparently worth more than the million who perished in Rwanda. Go figure…. So you tell us how we should proceed memorializing a fart in the wind. You draw up the blueprints. Not before you block me, of course.
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The whole point of the entry, as you so eloquently pointed out is the hypocrisy of everyone’s ‘mourning’ of 9/11. Many people claim to be distraught over this, but put up with the feet dragging that is the reconstruction despite that a lot of money has been dumped into the project. I’m not outraged that there is no memorial, personally I wouldn’t care if they made the place a park or a parking lot. I’m just finding it amusing that the people who claim to take it seriously don’t care enough to push the project ahead… but instead have baseball stadiums scheduled to complete on time where as the tower and the memorial are over funded and way behind schedule. Regardless of what the project is, I have a problem with people taking money and not producing results… which is clearly the case here. After all the money that has been dumped in, you’d think you would have seen something by now… right??
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What money? I liked that your RYN admitted that 3000+ lives lost, which you STILL equate to a fart in the wind, was more valuable than a few promised baseball stadiums, but that was a weak concession and you still demand a 9/11 memorial. What do you care? I can assure you that no money you pay in your Canadian taxes will go towards building one.
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Dude, I never mentioned anything about false mourning over 9/11. 9/11 was no joke. I don’t think it was a fart in the wind. You do.
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Search: I let it go the first time but now that you insist on slapping me with it over and over, let’s get to it. I’m not going to deny it… Compared to other world tragedies, 9/11 truely is very puny. Right now as I type this, ongoing genocides climb past extraordinary numbers (think Congo and Dafur) and no one cares about that. People claim to care about life, but that compassion seemsto stop at the border for most people. Since you asked, I think all of ground Zero should be made into a public park. Make two foot prints in the part to memorialize where the towers used to stand so people can visit anytime they want. That’s what I would do. I wouldn’t even approve of a new tower, just declare the entire ground historical so no one can develop it and make it a place everyone can access and remember. That’s what many of the victims want. It would be cheap, finished rather quickly just like the memorial in Oklahoma City was…
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People run around claiming to care about 9/11, but don’t seem to when it comes to cleaning up and moving on. that’s the hypocrisy I was pointing out. If you don’t share that claim, that’s fine… but that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of public money has been spent with no results and the City deserves to move on rather than be a yearly photo op. It doesn’t matter if the memorial is for one person or for a million, of someone takes public money to build it… they should be given a timeline and strictly forced to keep it. The fact that New York seems to be efficent when it comes to building baseball stadiums faster than the new tower/memorial gives the rest of the world mixed signals on what you guys consider your priorities to be. That was the focus of the entry… and it should be addressed. Seven years is a long time to wait for little or no progress, and if I ever hear of a contractor/politician who did that to a memorial in any other nation… I wouldn’t hesitate to post an entry to rip them and their disrepect for their tragedies too.
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