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Rebuild the Twin Towers for all the brave men and women who rushed into those burning buildings on 9/11. Rebuild them for those who never made it out – and for those who did, but will never be the same.
Rebuild the Twin Towers for the servicemen and women who enlisted after 9/11 and would love nothing better than to come home and salute those icons rising.
Build them for the victims’ families who believe that new Twin Towers would be the best memorial of all. Build them for the victims, who walked into towers they loved and never walked out.
Build them for the children who grew up with the nightmare vision of the crumbling towers, to reassure them that we can make anything better if we have the heart.
Build them for the construction workers who offered to work for free if only they could rebuild the Twin Towers.
Build them for all who still look into the sky from around the city and across the harbor, trying to will them back to life.
Build them for those who hurt when they encounter them every day in the movies, on the sides of vans, and on diner walls.
Build them for the people who never climbed to the Top of the World and would dearly love another chance.
Build them for the residents and workers of Lower Manhattan who have endured a gruesome eight years and want a normal life.
Build them for the people in other lands who saw the Twin Towers as the goalposts of a great country.
Build them for all the people who say the announcement of new Twin Towers would mark the happiest day of their lives.
Above all, build them for the cynics who think that America is nothing but a giant corporation and that democracy is a fable, or worse yet, a farce.
As we stand at the threshold of another summer, we have forty days between this year’s Memorial Day and July 4th to reflect on how faithful we are to those who have given their lives for this country from its start and exactly what kind of a country we want it to be. New Twin Towers would be stunning proof that our democracy is alive and that it is well.
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The excerpt above appears in an open letter addressed to the individuals attending the initial WTC Summit on May 21st. As the future of the World Trade Center looks more pathetic all the time, new Twin Towers is the only option that makes sense. We need to be able to count on the media to stand up for the public’s right to ask officials reasonable questions and get reasonable answers, because that is the only way a free society can function.
The two op-eds below advance a real solution at a time when all the official options are deeply flawed, but editors have shown no interest in the free flow of ideas. We can’t understand why.
