Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 14:38:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis Epstein
Subject: WTC Plans...Polls...Feedback chances


3 days to Listening To The City II!!!

CNN,WNBC Channel 4,and WPIX Channel 11
have all started online polls without
offering a none of the above option for
those of us dissatisfied by all the six
proposals currently offered.Their websites:
http://www.cnn.com/
http://www.wnbc.com/
http://wb11.trb.com/
Better to go there and complain than
to give false popularity to their choices.

Given that the polls with a none-of-the-above option
at 1010WINS and NY1.com show it to be a major contender,
the restriction to what Andy Martin has called "a six-pack
of mediocrity" can seriously limit really registering people's
opinions!

Also offering a poll that doesn't give us a chance
to vote that we don't want any of them is the New York Post
(nypost.com).However,they also have a no-registration message
board connected to their poll page and I'm not the only one
to have said we need the Towers back...please join in!

The Talking Point about rebuilding plans is still there
at http://news.bbc.co.uk/ but the editors didn't take my offering.
If you haven't offered comments yet there,please do!

A Quinnipiac poll has just been released that says only 42% of
NYC voters agree with Monica Iken and Pataki and Giuliani that
the footprints of the Twins should never be built on...41%
disagree and 17% are undecided.Looks like there's significant
room for negotiation on what Iken claims is "non-negotiable"!

I can BEAR TO LIVE WITH new at-least-as-tall-as-the-Twins occupied
buildings anywhere within the old superblock,but at least SOME
overlap with the old footprints is preferable.As long as those
footprints stand empty,America is kissing the feet of the murderers.

Post columnist Steve Cuozzo,whose pro-rebuilding comments I
gave the URL to some days ago,has disappointingly favored the
six plans as a good start and called on Governor George "We Must
Never Rebuild Where the Towers Stood" Pataki as an arbiter
to guide improvement of them.

There were open fields in Gettysburg...people fought and died
on them...they are still open fields,with plans to change them
to something else firmly fought.

Pearl Harbor was a military base...it was attacked,and people
died...it is still a military base,and its conversion to something
else would no doubt face strong opposition.

The area between Church,West,Liberty,and Vesey streets was a place
of business,with a tradition since 1908 of being home to twin office
high-rises built as the largest in the world...it was attacked,and
people died...surely its character should not change any more than
Gettysburg's or Pearl Harbor's?

We have certainly made progress...a few months ago Chairmen
Whitehead and Sinagra agreed that 55 stories was pushing it,
now we are looking at plans up to 30 stories higher...another
30 and we're past the old Twins,would be great if it only took
a few more months!

However,we must neither let success make us complacent nor
reversal make us despondent...we must keep up our voices and
our spirits until human feet can again be planted on floors as
high as was possible before the attacks.

See you on the 111th floor on 9-11-11!

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.