Victims' Families Protest 'Freedom Center' on WTC Site

By Barry Owens

The prospect of politics on display in a portion of the memorial planned for the World Trade Center site has some relatives of the victims killed in the Sept. 11 attacks angry.

Members of more than a dozen groups representing victims' families rallied at the World Trade Center site on June 20 in opposition to the International Freedom Center, a planned museum dedicated to the concept of freedom, with exhibits documenting the struggle for democracy and human rights around the world.

Family members say there may be a place for that discussion, but not at the memorial.

"No one who has come to the World Trade Center in the past four years has asked about world politics," said Edie Lutnick, who lost a brother, Gary, in the terrorist attacks. "Why? Because it isn't the appropriate place. Everyone knows that."

"You want world politics?" she added. "Go to the U.N."

The family groups, who say their concerns are not being heeded by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation [LMDC], which is overseeing redevelopment of the trade center site, are taking their fight to block the International Freedom Center to the public, by seeking signatures on a petition at their web site, www.takebackthememorial.com.

"The International Freedom Center will become a magnet for protest," said Charles Wolf, whose wife, Katherine, was killed in the attacks and who leads the Coalition of 9/11 Families.

Wolf said he was concerned that the museum will be an ideologically-based institution, one that "does not belong as part of a memorial experience."
At a rally on Church Street near the World Trade Center site, family members display photos of lost loved ones in protest over the planned International Freedom Center at the memorial. Photo: Stephanie Keith
At a later news conference, John Cahill, appointed by Gov. George Pataki to lead the rebuilding effort, defended the Freedom Center, saying it would not be allowed to become a place for "left-wing or right-wing politics."

"It's important what we have here is not a place for political polemics," Cahill said, "but a place to memorialize the history of man's march toward freedom and to remember the role that Sept. 11 plays in that important march."

John Whitehead, chairman of the LMDC, said it is a "misconception" that the center will be political in nature. But he expressed concern that the perception, and a vocal opposition to the museum, could hamper private fund-raising efforts for the memorial.

"People will be reluctant to give if they think there is confusion and chaos," he said.

Debra Burlingame, a member of the memorial foundation's programming committee, first stirred the controversy when she wrote in the June 7 Wall Street Journal that the Freedom Center would be dominated by "ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more that a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda."

The Freedom Center is part of a 250,000-square-foot cultural complex planned for the trade center site. A ramp will lead from the building to an underground memorial near the bedrock, slurry wall and reflecting pools that will be part of the memorial to victims of the terrorist attacks.

At the rally, about 200 relatives of victims held up signs and chanted "Take back the memorial" and "9/11 memorial only."

Michael and Teresa Jahn, tourists from Dixon, Ill., crowded in for a closer look. "It should not be about politics," Teresa Jahn said of the museum. "It breaks our heart, and we don't even know the people who lost their lives here."