Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 23:52:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis Epstein 
Subject: WTC Rebuilding #219:Libeskind slammed,Pataki panders again


Reminding everyone periodically:

WTCRM resource site:
http://www.put.com/wtc/
email list archive:
http://www.put.com/wtc/archive.html

Anyone can be immediately and permanently removed from the
list on request!

Our opponents have not been doing well lately,
but that has not swayed them from their indefensible course.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/58686.htm
tells of Bloomberg's plummeting poll ratings.
Just how deeply should the city's future be shaped by a
barely-elected very unpopular mayor?

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/58640.htm
and a NY Times story each tell of Whitehead's first
indicating that there would be flexibility on Libeskind's
pit,and then a quick backtrack.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/58576.htm
slams Libeskind's plan and urges its being discarded...
it quotes some incompetent and somewhat anti-American
poetry Libeskind wrote.
A review of the 1997 poetry book has been posted to NYCS
but removed from nypost.com site.

http://www.wnbc.com/news/2270683/detail.html
and other sources tell of Pataki's pandering to
the family-group activists and essentially taking
away the planners' right to put the bus garage
underneath the memorial...unless McGreevey can
possibly be induced to show some backbone on this.
Right now,the PA,where McGreevey has a voice,is
leaving the site of the garage to the development
corporation that only Pataki and Bloomberg control.

The NY Times article on this quotes Pataki as sucking
up to the activists' sacred-down-to-bedrock definition
of the tower footprints,echoing their determination that
no American ever dare undo the destruction the killers of
their loved ones achieved.

The family activitsts are actually trying to have the bus
garage placed at 15th street,an absolutely absurd distance
from the WTC site.Of course,this inconvenience would diminish
over time as fewer and fewer people cared to visit the memorial,
but they certainly don't care to hear that.

It's amazing that a million people attended the dedication
of Grant's Tomb in 1897.These days it takes ten years for it
to have as many visitors as it had on that one day.(Some may
care to read http://www.lib.siu.edu/projects/usgrant/tomb2002.html
in which a Grant descendant speaks of symbolism and mentions the
WTC).

Pataki's pandering is part of bigger political pressure he is
exerting to make the cornerstone-laying of Libeskind's tower
part of the Republican convention festivities next year...partisan
political advantage being something he'd like to milk a matter of
significance to the whole free world for.

He is trying to make sure that the environmental review process
is speeded up,and when Libeskind was selected the planners indicated
that the environmental hearings would be the only opportunity we had
for public comments,despite the earlier promise of public hearings
on the selected plans as such.(The only exceptions are the web
comment opportunities at imaginenyideas.org and renewnyc.com and
we all know how badly they listen!)

This review process is our friend to the extent that it can delay
bad plans,but our enemy to the extent that it can delay good ones.
I think we need a good environmental case for preferring fewer,taller
towers to make as part of the process.

The NYCS board has switched to new software that I hope will make
it harder for malicious erasure attacks to happen in the future....
a good deal of the rebuilding movement's historical dialogue has been
destroyed by the unknown web vandals.

Don't forget that June 28th is the rally!!
We are going to be speaking on the theme of Libeskind plan
as problem rather than solution,as well as the proper solution
of immense towers.

Libeskind's email is (as ever) info@daniel-libeskind.com
though I'm not sure what influence we can have on him.

See you on the 111th floor on 9-11-11!

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.