The Battle for Ground Zero, Part XX

The New York Times reports that the LMDC has an $8 million contract to rebuild the Liberty Plaza Park.

For when it is completed next spring, the $8 million reconstruction of Liberty Plaza Park, across from ground zero in Lower Manhattan, will signal more than just the return of a cherished oasis in the forbidding canyons of the financial district. It will also mark the rebirth of another significant fixture of the neighborhood torn asunder by the attack of Sept. 11, 2001.

The reconstruction is made more difficult because the area was used as a staging area during the recovery efforts at Ground Zero. Heavy equipment created sinkholes that need to be filled properly, and new landscaping needs to be installed.

The New York Times finally gets around to the story that The Drawing Center may not come to Ground Zero after all. The story refuses to identify that The Drawing Center regularly exhibited anti-American art following 9/11, and instead focused on the following:

The plan to house the Drawing Center and the International Freedom Center in a building at Fulton and Greenwich Streets has come under fire in the last month by relatives of 9/11 victims and other critics who question the appropriateness of their presence in a quadrant of the site set aside for a memorial. The objections have centered on the possibility that there would be anti-American artwork or programs.

On June 24, Gov. George E. Pataki demanded that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation obtain a guarantee from the institutions that they not mount exhibitions that would offend victims' family members or other visitors. "We will not tolerate anything on that site that denigrates America," he said at the time.

Two weeks later, the International Freedom Center pledged in a letter to Mr. Pryor: "We will not 'blame America' or attack champions of freedom. Any suggestion that we will feature anti-American programming is wrong. We are proud patriots."

Among the possible new locations for all or some of the Drawing Center's programs, Mr. Pryor said, were areas in the trade center site outside the memorial quadrant bounded by Fulton, Greenwich, Liberty and West Streets.

That's right, it was the possibility of anti-American artwork, not that anti-American programs were already being run by The Drawing Center and that The Drawing Center refused to change the content of its programming should it relocate to Ground Zero.

The IFC has pledged to avoid the anti-Americanism, but critics are still skeptical. I don't blame them.

The New York Post reports that Eric Foner, a history professor at Columbia University and adviser to the IFC, has resigned from his advisory position with the IFC.

Eric Foner was one of several academic consultants whom Debra Burlingame, a member of the World Trade Center memorial board, accused of left-wing, anti-American bias.

Burlingame's brother, Charles, was the pilot of the hijacked American Airlines plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.

Burlingame ripped Foner for writing after the attacks, "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."

Foner also took part in a protest against the Iraq war at Columbia at which one of his colleagues railed, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military" and called for a "million Mogadishus."

Foner has said he condemned his colleague for those remarks.

He told the Post he resigned several weeks ago, not because of the attacks on him, but because of a letter written by the IFC's leaders responding to the criticism.

He claims the resignation was to protest the IFC giving in to Governor Pataki's demands for no anti-Americanism at the IFC. Sure he did.

I've got to believe Foner was forced out in order to curry favor with those who want the IFC removed from the site altogther. The IFC figures that if it can purge the most divisive elements from the IFC group, they'd be able to sail through without further scrutiny. I don't buy that rationale either - and neither does Debra Burlingame, who first brought the issue to light. The IFC's agenda isn't compatible with Ground Zero, and people are increasingly cognizant of that fact.

Strange, but the Times didn't cover this particular story. Was it not relevant to the continuing stuggle of the Freedom Center?