Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 22:58:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis Epstein
Subject: WTC Rebuilding News...


There was news coverage of the Staten Island hearing,
reportedly attended by only 70 people,but none that I
saw last night of the Brooklyn hearing.I have not gotten
a report from Jen Thorpe or anyone else who attended...
though someone posted to the NYCS board that the consensus
there seemed pro-Towers.

No word yet on tonight's Bronx hearing,
all reports welcome!

The Gotham Gazette Java-chat with Anita Contini yesterday
afternoon was an exercise in frustration for pro-rebuilders;
at least five of us were there,but the moderators failed to
ask Contini any question relating to the implications of
rebuilding or not rebuilding giant office towers to replace
the lost ones.Whatever we submitted was filtered out.

Contini indicated that she had been in touch with the memorial
people from the Pentagon and Shanksville,who planned memorials
to those who died in those places...but the Families Advisory
Committee and those who wrote in to her office wanted the memorial
at the WTC site to commemorate those who died everywhere.I feel
that the memorial at the WTC site should be primarily concerned
with those who died THERE.But the egoes of the WTC family groups
appear to want as much memorialization as possible as well as
as much land as possible.

Governors Pataki and McGreevey held a news conference at the WTC
site to make the scarcely connected announcement that they wanted
the Port Authority to change the name of Newark International
Airport to "Liberty International Airport at Newark",supposedly
as a tribute to those killed on September 11th.The Mayor of Newark
is opposed to this and said he would block it.(Newark owns all or
most of the airport land,just as NYC owns Kennedy and LaGuardia;
I am not sure if the city of Newark owns the part that's in Elizabeth).

The land swap between NYC and the Port Authority seems to have
run into rough sailing...it was Doctoroff's brainchild,perhaps
that's why he cancelled his GG Java-chat date...will his influence
be reduced?

We can expect him at future public hearings (Queens next week and
Manhattan September 5th...those in the area should attend,especially
Manhattan!)

A new viewing wall is being built around the site at Liberty and
Church Streets,and has a picture of the Twin Towers on it...let's
hope it's interpreted as an artist's rendering of what is to be
built!:)

Saturday approaches,I plan to be at Federal Hall and meet up with
some of our petition/literature volunteers...who's coming along?

EVERYBODY get your site plan comments in,
read http://www.put.com/wtc/ for where to send them!
Other recent links include to Gary Taustine's petition
for a vote on the site's future.

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