The Governor's Proxy


For the past few weeks, Gov. George Pataki has been putting pressure on the founders of the International Freedom Center, hoping to force them to decide - as if on their own - to abandon their plans to be part of the ground zero development. This is a fight over far more than the future of one proposed institution. It is a battle to determine whether the area where the World Trade Center towers once stood will become a vibrant tribute to the American spirit or a place of grief only, a public cemetery with no possibility of renewal or regeneration and no vital connection to the city around it.


Mr. Pataki, who is clearly terrified of offending a vocal cadre of families of 9/11 victims, has totally abdicated his role as a leader in this controversy. Remarkably, the public official who has shown that he has the spine to say the right thing is Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Even though Mr. Bloomberg is engaged in a re-election fight, he has been the one who has not been afraid to say the obvious: both the victims and the survivors of the terrorist attack are best served by making Lower Manhattan a place that honors the dead but belongs to the living.

Mr. Pataki has not been able to force the founders of the Freedom Center to back out, but he has managed to talk the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which includes several staunch defenders of the center, into establishing a new six-week process for approving its plans.

There is nothing wrong with asking the Freedom Center to provide more detail about how it intends to govern itself and what programs it intends to create. And everyone presumes that a center so close to the memorial for the victims of 9/11 will be sensitive to its location. But this new appraisal of the center's plans may mean little more than subjecting them, essentially, to the veto of Debra Burlingame, the family member who began the Take Back the Memorial movement.

No one questions the emotional legitimacy of Ms. Burlingame's cause, or the fact that for most families of victims, ground zero will never be anything but the place where their loved ones died. The relatives have rightfully been the central voice in the planning of the memorial that will be built on the site. But neither Ms. Burlingame nor her followers can be allowed to dictate the future of the entire area. That has a place in the heart of the nation as a whole, and its use must reflect not only the nation's spirit, but its commitment to its basic principles.

At the core of the attack on the Freedom Center is the assumption that any debate or dissent near ground zero will dishonor the dead. One of the concerns about the center's plans, for instance, is whether it will include an auditorium - in other words, a place where people will be able to engage in free speech. To us, this attempt to stifle discussion at the site of the 9/11 attacks is utterly at odds with the spirit that should be embodied in this sacred place. It also ignores the fact that the memorial itself, with or without the center, will inevitably become a locus of debate and even protest. The Take Back the Memorial group seeks to void the public process that led to the current master plan for ground zero.

There is no strength or affirmation in forbidding debate and discussion, not even in the name of honoring the dead. There is only weakness and denial. Governor Pataki may believe that he is doing the right thing by giving Ms. Burlingame his proxy. But the governor's job is to represent the interests of the public. It would have been possible, even a few weeks ago, for Mr. Pataki to have acknowledged the dissent of some 9/11 families, and yet to have stood up for Daniel Libeskind's master plan and with it the rebirth of Lower Manhattan, the quintessentially American principle of free speech and the role of culture, in this most cultural of cities, in helping us understand 9/11. But when it comes to the International Freedom Center at ground zero, Mr. Pataki has sacrificed any illusion of leadership.

I think this is the third, yes, klinkenborg again.
- selma 8-17-2005 8:06 pm [add a comment]