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Ghoulish
Business Promotion
at WTC site

by Robert Lederman
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
January 13, 2002

Not only is using one of the
greatest tragedies in U.S. history
as a magnet for tourism tasteless,
but it's hazardous for human health.

Happy Hour on holy ground? Terror-based tourism? Dining out alongside a mass grave? That's the new advertising campaign a coalition of business groups led by the Alliance for Downtown NY are hoping will lure millions of gawking tourists to the World Trade Center [WTC] disaster site.

Police and fire unions, environmentalists, neighborhood resident groups, medical experts and the EPA have all issued repeated warnings about toxic air, poison gasses, asbestos dust, heavy metals and other dangerous substances floating around ground zero and lower Manhattan. Many of the groups have criticized former Mayor Giuliani for consistently hiding the health risks from the public and for failing to provide rescue workers with proper protective equipment.

The main business group behind the new ad campaign is the Alliance for Downtown NY, founded by David Rockefeller around the same time he created the WTC. Despite months of non-stop coverage of the attack there has been a complete media blackout on Rockefeller's crucial part in creating the WTC. The towers were nicknamed David and Nelson, for David Rockefeller and his brother Nelson, who was at the time NY State Governor. Originally, the Rockefellers wanted them to officially be named for them.

For decades Rockefeller's Alliance for Downtown NY has been in the forefront of privatizing public space, attacking the rights of disabled veteran vendors and restricting First Amendment rights on public property. It has long been one of Mayor Giuliani most fervent supporters.

The think tank Giuliani claims to have gotten all of his policy ideas from, The Manhattan Institute (MI), is primarily funded by David Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank, now renamed JP Morgan Chase. MI was founded by Reagan's CIA director William Casey in the 1970's, around the same time the WTC and Alliance for Downtown NY were created.

For three months Mayor Giuliani kept the WTC site completely off-limits to local residents and the media, claiming it was "sacred ground". He even had police confiscate cameras from people taking photos at the closest accessible location to the site, two block away.

Nevertheless, during this same period of time he personally led daily tours of the site for movie stars, sports figures, Senators and Congressmen many of whom are now using photos of them touring the disaster site with Giuliani in their re-election campaign literature and ads. Members of the FDNY and engineers assigned by the Federal government to investigate the causes of the WTC collapse are accusing Giuliani of obstructing the investigation, destroying thousands of tons of crucial evidence and preventing City officials from being interviewed about the disaster.

After repeatedly promising the families of police and firemen who lost loved ones that he would guarantee a meticulous effort in which every single body would be respectfully recovered no matter how long it took, Giuliani abruptly dismissed most of the FDNY observers on the site and speeded up the removal process. Angry FDNY members complained that bodies were being "scooped and dumped"at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island and organized a massive protest against the Mayor.

Numerous arrests of FDNY union officials followed. As in eight previous years of Giuliani's falsely arresting his critics, all the charges were eventually dropped by the City.

Claiming that tourists have a right to see it for themselves, Giuliani abruptly opened the site to tourism a few days before leaving office after having a huge viewing stand constructed there. There are still almost 2,500 missing bodies at the site now that much of the visible wreckage has been carted away. Most of what remains there to see is a vast empty lot where the Twin Towers once stood.

In his farewell address at a historic church next to the site - during which he attempted to compare himself to George Washington - Giuliani proposed that a huge memorial be built on the site, presumably featuring a statue of him as NYC's civic-saint.

Throughout his administration Giuliani has been accused of favoring the rights of tourists over actual New Yorkers. Most of his oppressive "quality of life"policies and falsification of crime statistics were aimed at convincing tourists that a squeegee-free NYC was America's safe destination to visit.

In 1995 the Downtown Alliance joined with the 5th Ave. Association, Madison Ave BID, Grand Central Partnership and SoHo Alliance by filing an amicus brief with the 2nd circuit Federal appeals court in Lederman et al v City of NY/Bery et al v City of NY. Filed in support of Mayor Giuliani's eight year war against free expression, the brief sought to convince the Federal and later the U.S. Supreme Court to completely eliminate First Amendment rights for all visual art in order to prevent NYC street artists from displaying paintings and photographs on public property.

Among the ironies behind the brief's bizarre notion that "visual art does not express ideas"was that David Rockefeller is the owner of the Museum of Modern Art and that 90% of the City's art galleries were located within the territory of the business groups signing the brief.

Fortunately for American artists, museums and galleries, Giuliani and the business groups lost. The brief was covered in the Christian Science Monitor 2/14/96, pg. 11 and Art In America, March 96 pg 128, "New Allies for Street Artists".

NY Times January 13, 2002
By DEAN E. MURPHY

As Public Yearns to See Ground Zero,
Survivors Call a Viewing Stand Ghoulish

It is such an emotional topic that Antoinette Rubino cannot talk about it without sobbing. Mrs. Rubino's daughter, Joanne, was killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. She has been inconsolable about that loss, but what really has Mrs. Rubino crying now is the viewing platform at Fulton Street.

"It is like a freak show, these people passing by curious to see if they find a body or a head or something,"Mrs. Rubino said. "It is horrible. That is supposed to be a sacred place now. My child's body is all over that place."

While visitors to Lower Manhattan have swarmed to the first of several platforms planned for the perimeter of ground zero, relatives of the dead and missing say they are deeply offended by it. For many, the sense of outrage is worsened by the city's decision last week to control the big crowds by issuing free tickets at the nearby South Street Seaport.

"It is like they are running the TKTS thing,"said Sally Regenhard, comparing it to the organization that sells discount theater tickets. Her son, Firefighter Christian Regenhard, is among the missing.

Since opening late last month, the 16-foot-high platform has been praised by the tens of thousands of onlookers at ground zero. Many of them are tourists with no other vantage point to see the devastation. By most accounts, the vast majority of the visitors have been respectful, reverent and deeply moved by the experience. It is not uncommon to hear the quiet recitation of prayers from the wooden deck.

But the negative reaction among some of the families of the dead and missing shows how difficult it remains for city officials, now four months after the terror attacks, to balance the conflicting demands and emotions at the 16-acre site.

For the relatives, the former World Trade Center remains an open grave, something they regard as intensely private. For the visitors, it is a place of international significance that needs to be seen to be understood. With the building of the platform, the balance between the two views seems to have tilted toward the visitors.

"We have created a system to assist people in viewing the sacred area of ground zero by also alleviating some of the crowding conditions there,"said Francis E. McCarton, a spokesman for the mayor's Office of Emergency Management, which has overseen the platform and ticket operations. "We feel the system is working."

Mr. McCarton said he was not aware of complaints about the city's arrangements, but several relatives of the dead said they have made their unhappiness known to city officials. One of them, Tim Gray, a lawyer in Manhattan whose brother Christopher is among the missing, said he wrote letters to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and the platform's architects to complain.

"Perhaps I will be lucky and my brother's corpse will be rescued, but if it is, it absolutely sickens me to think that it will be done in plain view of a frenzy of onlookers, who, as I bore witness to earlier, will be readied with all forms of technology to record the event,"Mr. Gray wrote in one of the letters. "I once wished that my brother's body be recovered, now I wonder if I should pray that it remain entombed in Lower Manhattan forever."

For Mr. Gray and the other relatives, the problem is mostly one of timing. They believe the platforms should wait until the site is cleared, all bodies and remains are recovered and a permanent memorial is built. Mr. Gray said it was the only decent and respectful thing to do.

"I feel it is me and the victims' families versus the public, and the public is going to win out,"Mr. Gray said in an interview. "Part of me understands their need to be there, but I don't want them there now."

The tension is not a new one. Becky Lyons, a park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park, said there were ill feelings after the Civil War battle there between people who lived in the area and the outsiders who came to see the carnage.

"People in the town were saying they should be cleaning up the town instead of sightseeing,"Ms. Lyons said.

If more recent places of tragedy, like Oklahoma City, offer any guidance, it could be years before family members feel differently about the hole in Lower Manhattan, according to Kari Watkins, executive director of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which was erected after the bombing in 1995 of the Alfred P. Murrah building.

"It was very hard for family members here who resented people coming,"Ms. Watkins said. "It took two or three years for many survivors and family members to get to the point where they accepted this belongs to everyone."

Ms. Watkins said the authorities posted traffic officers near the Murrah building to keep onlookers moving in their cars and also erected a chain-link fence around the property. The fence became such a fixture that it was ultimately incorporated into the permanent memorial, she said.

Though there were no viewing platforms in Oklahoma City, Ms. Watkins said she understood why they might be necessary in New York City. "They are dealing with so many more people than we were,"she said. "I know the city has done an incredible job of trying to do the right thing."

But Jeannine Gist, whose daughter Karen Gist Carr was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, said it was a mistake to make the World Trade Center site so accessible to public viewing. Mrs. Gist said she understood the desire of people to visit ground zero - she did so last month at the invitation of some family members of the missing - but she said there should be no hurry.

"I am sorry, they should have them wait,"Mrs. Gist said. "I think the victims and the survivors should have first priority and when all of the loved ones are recovered, let the whole world see it. Until then, they need to stand back."

Mrs. Gist said one of the things she was most sensitive about in 1995 was the frequently heard claim that the tragedy in Oklahoma City "happened to the entire country."She has heard the same thing said about the World Trade Center attacks, she said, and though true at one level, she finds it quite false at another.

"I would love to have not lost my daughter,"she said. "The same is true for the people in New York. It did affect all of us, but you can't put all of us in the same category."

One of the widows of Sept. 11, Christine Huhn, said she was resigned to the fact that big crowds will converge on Lower Manhattan, regardless of when all the dead are recovered. Ms. Huhn said she has also come to consider the platform as a potential friend rather than a determined enemy.

"My husband's ashes are scattered throughout those 16 acres, and it will make me very upset if anything but a memorial is built on the site,"Ms. Huhn said. "I just hope that the people on the platform, when they see the enormity of this open hole, will realize the whole site should be devoted to a memorial."

Others, like Mrs. Regenhard, said they would be consoled if the authorities scaled back their plans and did not build the three other platforms. Mr. McCarton, the emergency office spokesman, when asked if the city might reconsider its plans to build the other platforms, said, "They are still very much in the early planning stages.

NY Post
By SUSAN EDELMAN

WALL STREET BIZ GROUP'S MISSION:
RESCUE DOWNTRODDEN DOWNTOWN

January 6, 2002 -- Downtown business groups are grappling with the thorny issue of how to get tourists and New Yorkers to spend money in the area after they spill off the viewing stands around ground zero.

Merchants are using discount cards, dinner deals and patriotic pitches to get gawkers to patronize the stores, restaurants and museums around the area devastated by the terrorist attack.

Wall Street Rising, a new nonprofit business group that formed after Sept. 11, hopes to drum up downtown shopping, dining and tourism - as visitors stream into the area to mourn and pay their respects.

"Patronizing downtown businesses is not about celebration. It's trying to support a community that has been devastated,"said Julie Menin, president of the group, which is made up of major finance and law firms.

"It's saying a community is in need, and itself has been victimized by these attacks."

The group is launching a Wall Street Rising discount card offering price reductions at local shops and restaurants.

It's also planning a Wall Street Weeknights dinner program, with restaurants offering $30 "I love New York"menus.

Baker Billy Baldwin, whose shop is at the base of one of the viewing stands opened last week, is one of the few merchants doing well.

"They're walking down the viewing platform in shock,"said Baldwin, whose Cookie Island shop on Broadway opened recently after its Sept. 12 debut was delayed.

"I can't tell you how many people come in and say, 'I just needed a smile.'"

The tourists want a pick-me-up from the warm, gooey cookies. But many, Baldwin said, also declare they want to spend money to help downtown rebuild.

One of the business groups, the Alliance for Downtown, is displaying subway posters that appeal to that desire.

"Happy Hour Special! Drink all you want downtown, wake up feeling great!"says one.

"Buy 1 dinner downtown, Get 1 free warm, fuzzy feeling,"says another.

Valerie Lewis, spokeswoman for the seven-year-old alliance, said ground zero tourists should make more of their trip downtown by exploring the city's history.

"New York has proven it can triumph over hardship again and again, and by visiting these sites, people can learn more about it,"she said."

2/24/97
Radio interview on
WNYC's syndicated business news show,
"Marketplace"

Elizabeth Freedman, an attorney speaking on behalf of the N.Y.C. Corporation Counsel's office [Mayor Giuliani's lawyers], explained the City's anti-art position. "Visual art...does not express ideas", Ms. Friedman said, "and as such is not entitled to First Amendment protection.

Giuliani appeal brief against
street artists having First Amendment protection
Giuliani v Lederman et al and Giuliani v Bery et al
filed with the U.S. Supreme Court 2/24/97

An exhibition of paintings is not as communicative as speech, literature or live entertainment, and the artists' constitutional interest is thus minimal.

Excerpt from the 30 page brief signed by
The Alliance For Downtown NY,
Madison Ave. BID,
Grand Central Partnership
and SoHo Alliance

The sale of artwork does not involve communication of thoughts or ideas....the dangers...of allowing visual art full First Amendment protection...An artists' freedom of expression is not compromised by regulating his ability to merchandise his artwork...the sale of paintings and other artwork does not reach this high level of expression (the guaranteeing of First Amendment protection)...

4/20/2001
Weekly column by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani

Because we are a City that loves and supports artistic expression so generously, New Yorkers have a unique understanding that the First Amendment protects the right of artists to express their diverse and sometimes controversial views.

5/9/98
Washington Post

An exhibit of the mayor's photographs opened today at a downtown Manhattan gallery, displaying 23 of his color and black-and-white pictures taken over the last two years. Panning the exhibit altogether were the sidewalk protesters, who are fighting a city requirement that they need permits to sell artwork in parks and in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Since his first day in office, Giuliani has been waging a war on artists and artists' rights,"said painter and printmaker Robert Lederman. "He's doing this show purely to change his image, posing as an artist in the arts capital of the world."

NY Daily News 1/4/2002
By JOE CALDERONE
Daily News Chief of Investigations

Firefighter Mag Raps 9/11 Probe

A respected firefighting trade magazine with ties to the city Fire Department is calling for a "full-throttle, fully resourced"investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center. A signed editorial in the January issue of Fire Engineering magazine says the current investigation is "a half-baked farce."The piece by Bill Manning, editor of the 125-year-old monthly that frequently publishes technical studies of major fires, also says the steel from the site should be preserved so investigators can examine what caused the collapse. "Did they throw away the locked doors from the Triangle Shirtwaist fire? Did they throw away the gas can used at the Happy Land social club fire? ... That's what they're doing at the World Trade Center,"the editorial says. "The destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately."Fire Engineering counted FDNY Deputy Chief Raymond Downey, the department's chief structural expert, among its senior advisers. Downey was killed in the Sept. 11 attack. John Jay College's fire engineering expert, Prof. Glenn Corbett, serves as the magazine's technical editor. A group of engineers from the American Society of Civil Engineers, with backing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been studying some aspects of the collapse. But Manning and others say that probe has not looked at all aspects of the disaster and has had limited access to documents and other evidence. A growing number of fire protection engineers have theorized that "the structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers,"the editorial stated. A FEMA spokesman, John Czwartacki, said agency officials had not yet seen the editorial and declined to comment. Norida Torriente, a spokeswoman for the American Society of Civil Engineers, described her group's study as a "beginning"and "not a definitive work."Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has joined a group of relatives of firefighters who died in the attack in calling for a blue-ribbon panel to study the collapse. "We have to learn from incidents through investigation to determine what types of codes should be in place and what are the best practices for high-rise construction,"Manning told the Daily News. "The World Trade Center is not the only lightweight, core construction high-rise in the U.S. It's a typical method of construction.

NY TIMES - December 20, 2001

City Had Been Warned of
Fuel Tank at 7 World Trade Center

Fire Department officials warned the city and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 1998 and 1999 that a giant diesel fuel tank for the mayor's $13 million command bunker in 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story high-rise that burned and collapsed on Sept. 11, posed a hazard and was not consistent with city fire codes. The 6,000-gallon tank was positioned about 15 feet above the ground floor and near several lobby elevators and was meant to fuel generators that would supply electricity to the 23rd-floor bunker in the event of a power failure. Although the city made some design changes to address the concerns - moving a fuel pipe that would have run from the tank up an elevator shaft, for example - it left the tank in place. But the Fire Department repeatedly warned that a tank in that position could spread fumes throughout the building if it leaked, or, if it caught fire, could produce what one Fire Department memorandum called "disaster."

NY TIMES December 25, 2001

THE TOWERS
Experts Urging Broader Inquiry
in Towers' Fall

In calling for a new investigation, some structural engineers have said that one serious mistake has already been made in the chaotic aftermath of the collapses: the decision to rapidly recycle the steel columns, beams and trusses that held up the buildings. That may have cost investigators some of their most direct physical evidence with which to try to piece together an answer. Officials in the mayor's office declined to reply to written and oral requests for comment over a three- day period about who decided to recycle the steel and the concern that the decision might be handicapping the investigation...Interviews with a handful of members of the team, which includes some of the nation's most respected engineers, also uncovered complaints that they had at various times been shackled with bureaucratic restrictions that prevented them from interviewing witnesses, examining the disaster site and requesting crucial information like recorded distress calls to the police and fire departments..."This is almost the dream team of engineers in the country working on this, and our hands are tied,"said one team member who asked not to be identified. Members have been threatened with dismissal for speaking to the press. "FEMA is controlling everything,"the team member said...Dr. Frederick W. Mowrer, an associate professor in the fire protection engineering department at the University of Maryland, said he believed the decision could ultimately compromise any investigation of the collapses. "I find the speed with which potentially important evidence has been removed and recycled to be appalling,"Dr. Mowrer said.

NY TIMES November 5, 2001
THE FIREFIGHTERS

Second Union Leader Is Charged With Trespassing in Demonstration at Ground Zero

"This comes right from the top,"Capt. Peter L. Gorman, head of the 2,500-member Uniformed Fire Officers Association, said after surrendering - under the threat of forcible arrest, his lawyer said - at a police station in Manhattan to be booked on the misdemeanor charge. Kevin E. Gallagher, president of the 9,000-member Uniformed Firefighters Association, also blamed the mayor after his arrest Saturday night. "The message the city is sending is that if you don't agree with what a union says, you simply arrest its president,"Tom Butler, Mr. Gallagher's spokesman, said..."The mayor fails to realize that New York City is not a dictatorship, where if you don't like what a union is doing you can just go and lock up a union's president,"the firefighters' union said. "The message being sent from City Hall is that if you don't agree with this administration, we will get you."Captain Gorman, a firefighter for 28 years, called his arrest an outrage. "They're putting me through the system like I'm a thug,"he said. He called the mayor a "fascist"and referred to Mr. Kerik and Mr. Von Essen as "Giuliani's goons.

NY Post 11/5/2001

KERIK BLASTS BRAVEST IN MELEE

Union lawyer Steven Rabinowitz said Gorman was arrested because he had the courage to publicly attack Giuliani for allowing the other firefighters to be busted. "In the mayor's view, these men are heroes as long as they shut up and do what they're told,"Rabinowitz said. City union leaders backed up the firefighters and demand an immediate apology from Giuliani. Brian McLaughlin of the Central Labor Council, said the mayor "treats these people like they're bums - with no respect."Union officials said they may sue the city for false arrest and malicious prosecution.

Daily News 11/5/2001

Nab 2nd Fire Union Chief

Yesterday, the heads of the two fire unions, joined by other labor leaders outside Manhattan Criminal Court, charged that Giuliani was unfairly retaliating against unions. "The families are suffering, the firefighters are suffering, and the mayor refuses to sit down and discuss this with them,"said Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers. "Because these folks have the temerity to say, 'We don't agree with you, Mr. Mayor,' they are thrown in jail. That is a violation of anybody's basic right to speak and represent people.

To a Directory of Mr.Lederman's Essays

Robert Lederman is an artist, writer and activist and is also the President of the street artist advocacy group, A.R.T.I.S.T.
Click here for an archive of A.R.T.I.S.T. related news articles on the Freedom Forum website

His essays and Op-Eds have appeared in hundreds of alternative publications as well as the Daily News, Penthouse, Africa Sun Times, Street News and The Shadow.
Lederman was falsely arrested 41 times for his anti-Giuliani activities and was never convicted of any of the charges. As a result of the arrests, he's won four Federal lawsuits and overturned three laws.
He is best known for having created hundreds of paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator which were carried in demonstrations throughout the eight years of the Giuliani administration. Images of his paintings and articles about his arrests and lawsuits have appeared on all of the major television networks hundreds of times as well as frequently appearing in the NY Times, Daily News, NY Post, Newsday, Newsweek, People, The Washington Post, LA Times and NY Magazine.

Robert Lederman,
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net

For a detailed exposition on the West Nile issue
http://www.nospray.org/
For an article on the Manhattan Institute go to
http://www.konformist.com/2000/rudyg.htm

If you would like to help oppose the spraying,
please write to the
No Spray Coalition
PO Box 334
Peck Slip Station
NYC, NY 10272-0334
or call the No Spray hotline at (718) 670-7110.

Any funds you can send to help continue the lawsuit
and this work are greatly appreciated.

Important Note:
Mr. Lederman has explained that his articles posted here are not to be taken as official statements by the No-Spray Coalition of which he is a member or of the "No-Spray" lawsuit in which he is a plaintiff.

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