The Twin Towers Alliance rally at the Bandshell in Central Park was a success on many levels and we’ve set our sail to catch the wind. The cumulative attendance of people who drifted in and out was probably no more than a couple of hundred people, but numbers were not the key to the day. We will explain why we believe that when we lay out our plans for moving forward. We are not wasting our time or asking anyone else to waste theirs. Besides being an extraordinarily busy news day in New York, we learned that, while the right venue for this particular rally, the Bandshell is not ideally positioned to attract passers-by. But we planned, promoted, and executed an event that was notable for the cooperation of those who took part and the lessons learned will be the foundation for future successes. We were particularly fortunate to have the event, the speeches, and the candlelight vigil captured by a British documentary production company and in the next few weeks the footage will be distilled into a polished promotional tool that will take us to the next level. And the producers have already funded the project, a full-length documentary, which is certain to bring the debate into sharp national and international focus. Ed Schramling, the winner of the Team Twin Towers Competition, made the trip to New York from western Pennsylvania to set up his beautiful stainless steel model and, after the rally, easels with other models were assembled around it on the stage and remained up until after 9 PM surrounded by flickering candles. The candle lighting was solemnized by the playing of Joy Goldberg’s “Song of Consolation,” a beautiful orchestral piece that she wrote for the occasion. In the days preceding the rally a few of were appropached for phone interviews and were able to get some exposure on a local Jazz and Talk FM station (WKCR-FM), as well as a five-minute appearance on a national CBS show, which aired on 9/8/06 @ 4:30 AM. A couple of links are included below. There were many old friends of the Towers present and some wonderful new friends. We even had one heckler, who was actually a very instructive part of the experience, to be explained in the near future. All in all, it was a good day, deserving of many more details and much more recognition of those who contributed than there is room to share here. But we came away with a new vision of how we can and must fight this battle and a clear strategy of where to take this struggle. The details will be kept under wraps for another week or so but we promise that when we do say more it will not be disappointing.
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