[Nettime-bold] Clay Shirkey on a Manhattan "Peace Park"...

["R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>]

--- begin forwarded text


Status:  U
Delivered-To: fork@xent.com
From: Clay Shirky <clay@shirky.com>
Subject: Re: Unconscionably Callous? New building proposal for WTC sight.
To: savamutt@hotmail.com (Tom Sweetnam)
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 10:21:43 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: fork@xent.com, savamutt@hotmail.com
Sender: fork-admin@xent.com
List-Id: Friends of Rohit Khare <fork.xent.com>

> Larry Silverstein, the man who owns the leasehold on the former World Trade
> Center complex, has apparently been very busy with his architects in the 10
> days since the worst act of terror in America history.

Go Larry!

Every major city in the world has a big, invisible motto hanging
overhead -- "Dream Factory", "You'll Leave a Winner!", "Laissez le bon
temps roulez", "We're still pissed about Elian."

Over New York City hangs the motto 'Business is business.'

It may be hard to understand if you don't live here, but after 10 days
where we've been out of our minds with grief and shock and
disorientation, living in a world where there are military checkpoints
at Canal and Broadway and phone booths turn into xeroxed shrines, the
news that some asshole developer isn't gonna let a little terrorism
get in the way of his trying to grab a few extra simoleons just means
that we're back in business.

The sound of breathtaking unsentimentality is the sound of NYC.

> The New York City Port Authority was quick to respond that it is "far too
> early" to consider any future plans for the sight, perhaps entertaining the
> radical notion that an international peace park and memorial...

Peace Park? *Peace Park*! Are you out of your mind? Do you have any
idea what real estate in Lower Manhattan is worth? You wanna build a
park, go to Nebraska -- I hear land is cheap there. Out here, we
prefer to use our land for the living.

> So if Mr.  Silverstein gets his way, has he proved the terrorists
> correct?

The terrorists *are* correct -- never forget that.

We are not being unfairly targetted here, as if this was all some sort
of misunderstanding. We are being targetted because we do exactly what
they say we do.

We are freedom loving, secular, democratic creators of a world where
people are allowed to do as they like to an extent unheard of in the
history of the world. That is so completely corrosive of any attempt
to corral a populace into a single way of living that we are hated by
everyone for whom cultural stasis is more important than freedom.

> I had to wonder on hearing Mr. Silverstein's pronouncement, if there
> might be some mystical plateau [...] before no consideration of
> profit would ever again be factored into considerations of what to
> do with the former World Trade Center site.

God forbid. Not in my town.

If you want to let al-Quida freeze you into some sort of contemplative
aspic, go ahead, but my homeboys ain't going out like that -- we got
shit to do.

-clay



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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'


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