Take Back the Memorial--10 days until Rally

The rally will be held Saturday, September 10, 2005, at 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. The site is at the corners of Church and Liberty Streets at the World Trade Center Site. Rain or shine, this rally will be held. Here is the e-mail I received. I want to share it with you.

We ask our fellow 9/11 family members, Americans and friends from around the world to stand united with us to save Ground Zero from endless controversy. Together, we can ensure the integrity of our nation's 9/11 memorial for future generations.

America, we stood together during our nation's darkest hours and now we must ask you to stand with us once again. Political discussions have no place at Ground Zero and the International Freedom Center honors no one by making excuses for the perpetrators of this heinous crime. The memorial should be about what happened that day, about the brave heroes who risked their lives so selflessly, and about the innocent lives that were lost...nothing more. For more information, please visit www.takebackthememorial.org/

*** POLITICAL ACTIVISTS KNOCK AT THE DOOR OF A MEMORIAL ***
Editorial Commentary by 9/11 Family Member Tim Sumner of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America:

"While Americans attend 9/11 memorial events around the country and 9/11 family member gather at Ground Zero, nearby an “international cultural summit” will be hosted by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, September 8-11, 2005. Board members of both the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and organizers of the International Freedom Center will attend. The summit will conduct panel discussions about cultural protests and presumably which of them are “appropriate” for downtown and display political “art” that disparages our country. On 9/11 itself, the summit attendees will be taken on a walking tour of the World Trade Center site while below them, in The Pit, 9/11 family members will be at bedrock remembering the 3,000 they lost. This is how some of the caretakers of Sacred Ground, on the anniversary of the worst attack in our country's history, chose to treat the memory of that difficult day. The summit will even honor the late Susan Sontag, who, less than two weeks after the attacks, called the murderous 19 courageous:

"Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions... f the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): Whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards." -- Susan Sontag, New Yorker magazine, September 24, 2001.

This is the kind of moral equivalency which denigrates and disrespects those who died, those who gave their lives to save them. It declares "morally neutral" the kind of "courage" required to sacrifice one's life to kill as many innocent men, women and children as possible, with the willingness to die in order to save as many as one can. Do we entrust Ground Zero to people who cannot recognize the difference?

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If you are able to attend, please send a blank email to: Rally@TakeBacktheMemorial.org