Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 23:42:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis Epstein
Subject: More Opinions Re WTC


There were actually TWO interesting op-eds in the New York Post
today...besides Nicole Gelineau's appeal to bring back the Towers,
there was Andrea Peyser's skewering of the ideology behind the
Listening To The City organizers:
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/53301.htm

As I have noted (including at the resource page
http://www.put.com/wtc/ [now with some bugs fixed])
the organizers are somewhat self-selected from among
those who want to see the city changed.For all their
concern about demographic representation,they are not
as representative of those who don't want things to be
different from the way they were as they are of those
who have axes to grind.

This points up the problems of trying to plan things
on a neighborhood-residents-first basis.If you take an
area whose DEFINING characteristic is that it is NOT
residential,and after its employee "stakeholders" are
driven away in a catastrophe and its landowners are
left without active property,ask neighborhood residents
to decide its future...you are not asking the right people.

I was encouraged to see a transcript of a Gotham Gazette
Java-Chat with Madelyn Wils,an early appointee to the Lower
Manhattan board who was making anti-Towers quotes when
appointed.She was mentioning the problems that would be
involved in making the area more residential...it does not
have the infrastructure to support more people,she says,
and just adding housing would cause problems rather than
solve them.So let's hope she's not a firm vote for pushing
for the reduction in office space that would cause upward
pressure on the bridge and tunnel fares and tolls and the
airport and harbor fees.

Bill Hough has a recent find that shows it's not just the
conservative commentators who want the Towers back:
http://www.amsterdamnews.org/News/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=12947&sID=16
is a column by Wilbert Tatum,the leading figure in black-audience
newspaper publishing,urging that the Twin Towers be restored.

Hough reports that there does seem to be some opportunity for
discreet petition canvassing at the Federal Hall exhibit of the
proposed stunted symbols of surrender.There should be some
coordination,of course,so people aren't offering the same
petitions to the same visitors.

Cecil Shepherd has provided quotes from Ed Koch that qualify him
for this email list...saying he wanted the Towers back "down to
the last screw".Of course anyone who wants off the list goes off;
and anyone who wants reconstruction not an inch shorter than the
Twins,of whatever design,is welcome.I've had some approaches
recently by people interested in seeing Frank Lloyd Wright's
mile-high vision attempted at the site.

I have recently learned of http://rebuildwtc.info/ ...an information
rather than advocacy site.

I continue to urge one and all to register for the online-LTTC
if they missed the in-person version,and everyone should be sure
to send in their comments on the site plans demanding taller,
more impressive towers than recently offered.Addresses are on the
website http://www.put.com/wtc/ and I've given them to the email
list before.

Don't think someone else will do it,
don't think it'll do no good if you do it.
Despondency and complacency are both our enemies.

We seem to have momentum now,but that may spur antis
to greater action..."Oh,no,there's a risk those ugly
too-tall towers will be back after all,we have to fight
harder!"...we have to be the ones left standing.

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.