It Is What It Is…
There is a clash of values going on in Lower Manhattan that could have far-reaching consequences. The Twin Towers Alliance has spent years challenging the assumption that false economies and phony “facts” trump the popular will for the WTC. Officials’ apparent strategy from the beginning has been to do as they please, insist they had public support for policies that were never actually debated, and then refuse to answer questions or listen to reason merely because, in their opinion, “it’s too late.”
For some curious reason, officials seemed confident that the media would not interfere. What logical reason is there to explain all the information that was never delivered to the public — which meant the people could not react? The 9/11 documentaries that failed to mention the strong public support for building better-than-ever Twin Towers are just one glaring example.
In July of 2002, when New Yorkers were still reeling, a New York Post poll found that half of us wanted the Twin Towers rebuilt. The other half was splintered in what they wanted. But popular opinion, by a margin that elects the President of the United States, has been dismissed for ten years, while expediency trumped the democratic process and slick lies were all it took.
We don’t presume to know what motivated Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, and their select circle. We are certainly willing to assume that they thought they were doing what was best. But short-circuiting democracy is never for the best. No one should get away with ruling by fiat when the people are willing and able to decide their civic matters openly.
By 2009, when an MSNBC online poll found that over 90% of Americans preferred the “Twin Towers II” plan to the “Freedom Tower” project, George Pataki was still insisting on national TV that 10 million people took part in the process that produced the Libeskind Master Plan. But why then has the Twin Towers Alliance been waiting since January, 2010, for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to answer our Freedom of Information request with a shred of evidence to back up that claim?
A related example of official hubris is the recent disclosure that the mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware disposed of body parts of some victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks by burning them and dumping the ashes in a landfill. The Congressional hearing into the treatment of unidentified remains that has been called for by 9/11 families would be a wake-up call for many Americans. But why has it taken so long?
As a recent op-ed in USA Today by a woman who lost her mother on 9/11 pointed out: “For many of us, this is not new news. Sadly, New York City has done the same… The difference between what happened at Dover and in New York is the Pentagon agrees dumping human remains in a landfill is wrong… In New York, when outraged families asked for their loved ones’ remains to be properly treated, the city went to court to fight to keep the remains in a landfill.”
The decision to abandon the particles of those killed on 9/11 to a bubbling landfill instead of going to the expense of moving them elsewhere on Staten Island will never be acceptable. And planting flowers in topsoil will never lessen the offense. If the public had been consulted, it is likely that most would have objected to the abandonment of the 9/11 victims that were too small to recover. That didn’t make them garbage.
The clean-up of the site cost the city over $660 million. But the workers who valiantly cleared away the destruction months ahead of the projected schedule saved millions off what was budgeted — which certainly would have covered relocating the tons of debris to a respectable place elsewhere. Why would a city government that acts in the name of the people choose over and over to spend millions in court fighting its own citizens, when they appealed to common decency?
And as if that were not bad enough, the same scenario is being inflicted on 9/11 families again. The effective confiscation of the unidentfied remains by locating them in a crypt within the museum, as a “programmatic element”, is highly offensive to many of the victims’ families. And again, they were forced into court because the Bloomberg administration refused to release the contact information for all of the other families, so that they could be polled as to their wishes.
The city objected on privacy grounds, but even when the victims’ families suggested that officials poll all the families directly regarding the final resting place of the remains, they still refused. But certainly, just because remains are unidentified doesn’t mean they belong to a museum or the government. They still belong as a whole to the victims’ families and no one else. That is indisputable. Therefore, the only possible resolution would be to determine what most of the families prefer.
Why isn’t that obvious to officials? Because they want what they want and there is a clear pattern of officials saying or doing whatever advances their agenda — not the public’s. Everything that has gone wrong at the site since the attacks of September 11th could have been avoided if the people had been consulted and the matters debated. The names that are engraved around the memorial footprints are a good example. They are there in spite of the Memorial’s designer — not because of him.
Otherwise, those names would be seven stories below ground — because all the efforts of 9/11 families members to to have a dialogue with officals over their concerns were rebuffed. The ones we have to thank instead for the powerful engraved tribute are the victims’ families and supporters who held a frigid overnight vigil outside the firehouse across from the site and “slept” on the sidewalk for three wintry weeks in 2006, until officials relented and agreed to bring the names above ground.
Everything of value does not have a price tag. The April Atlantic Monthly — out this week — includes an article that asks “What Isn’t For Sale?” When expediency offends the public’s sense of decency, it costs too much. Even worse is the mounting pwer struggle between the people and their government. The pattern is unmistakable and when officials get away with one abuse they are empowered to get away with the next one.
“It is what it is” is not a verdict, reason, or excuse. And when used as a strategy to defeat the popular will, it is a crime.
The New York Times | “9/11 Victims’ Remains Disposed Of in Landfill“
NorthJersey.com | “9/11 families call for congressional hearing on treatment of remains“
USA Today | “Column: Is this any way to treat 9/11 remains?“