“We build too many walls and not enough bridges.” — Sir Isaac Newton

The overriding reason why the current effort at the World Trade Center is such a dismal failure is that it doesn’t connect. It doesn’t connect the past to the future and it doesn’t connect us to each other. Gov. Pataki and Executive Director Ward can talk about the significance of the current project until they are blue in the face but the words have no life.

A creation that has to be explained is not art — it is artifice. The Twin Towers didn’t have to be explained. The gaping wound in our skyline and our hearts doesn’t have to be explained. Our need to find meaning in the horror of 9/11 doesn’t have to be explained.

On September 12, 2001, everyone was an American. The attacks of 9/11 had united our nation and drawn friends to our side from around the world, making September 12th the de facto International Day of Unity. Tapping that memory and that inner reality have the power to redeem the horror of 9/11 by takiing our world to new heights of cooperation and creativity.

We at the Twin Towers Alliance believe that annual September 12th celebrations will become a transcendent tradition in the years to come, but in the course of reaching out to like-minded organizations, the consensus was reached that the possibilities for the First Annual Unity Day should not be squandered by trying to rush it. We have therefore signed on to the idea of letting it develop for one or possibly two more years.

What matters now is that the idea of letting-the-cat-out-of-the-bag in the campaign to rebuild the Twin Towers is a model for letting so many other cats out of so many other bags and putting the power where it belongs — in the hands of the people . The fiasco at Ground Zero is the work of a political class that believes their elitist views should overrule the good sense of ordinary people. It isn’t a liberal or conservative agenda — it is totalitarian and un-American to the core. That is what we are fighting and that is what we cannot afford to lose.

This project represents instant solvency, in contrast to a project with an out-of-control budget and no takers. Another advantage it has is that it is predictable — even at this late date, a commitment to marshal our resources and willpower could still mean topping off new Twin Towers by 9/11/2011 and a completed development within four years, while the current project could stretch on for decades. At the same time, what it is not is an attempt to put 20th-century towers on a 21st-century site.

But the most meaningful distinction is that it is tremendously popular, while the current plan is primarily popular with the usual suspects who pontificate in online architecture forums and start foaming at the mouth when anyone disagrees with them or tries to point out that this is about so much more than mere buildings. Even if it were just about buildings, their buildings did a belly flop. But even in the online forums, so much of the disinformation and prejudice would simply vanish if the facts were fully known. So all of our focus and energies at the Twin Towers Alliance are going into the YouTube video and book that is going to Washington, following our press conference. Then it will be clear who is left holding the bag.