The simple answer to this question is, of course, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who have leased it to Silverstein Properties for the next twenty years or so. But because it's the site of a tragedy of vast if not epic proportions, the site belongs at least metaphorically to everyone: the victims families, the people of New York, everyone who was deeply affected by what happened there. But you'd never know this from the squabbling that's going on about the presence of the Freedom Center on Ground Zero.
If it were an either/or question of the Freedom Center or the memorial, I could understand the rejection of a museum dedicated to exploring notions of freedom all over the world. If the Center were not going to make a point of discussing freedom in the context of 9/11, I could understand the outrage then, too. Neither of these facts are true. The Freedom Center is planned to co-exist with the memorial to the victims, and the first galleries visitors enter will be dedicated to the events that took place on that site. What's at issue seems to be two things: both the museum's vision and its right to occupy space adjacent to the land considered to be the resting place of the victims.
First, let's dispel the latter myth. There are no human remains at Ground Zero. If there is anything left there after the fires, the tons of water applied to put them out, the pulverization from the weight of debris, the mechanical maceration from digging, the natural decay of unpreserved biological matter over time, it's mere undifferentiated molecules. Where bodies were not rapidly recovered and removed from the site for burial, actual remains were only fragments that found their way down a conveyor belt at Fresh Kills. Tons of debris was trucked there in the clean up operation and very little of it was organic. What remains now at what was the World Trade Center is a hole in the ground, nearly down to bedrock. There are not even ashes left and barely dust. It is not a grave site.
What makes Ground Zero sacred ground is what happened there, not who yet abides in its soil. That said, there can be nothing holy to desecrate with the presence of a secular building.
I have a lot of sympathy for the families of the 9/11 victims. Losing people we love is hard enough without losing them violently and with no warning. The grief from violent loses is so much more sudden and agonizing that I find it impossible not to empathize. One of my cousins was murdered several years ago, and I've just lost four people, including both of my parents, in the last ten months. Saying that kind of loss is painful doesn't begin to cover it. I'm not sure people ever get over the sudden loss of people they love, whether it's by accident, violent intent, or the normal course of things. And that kind of pain can make us do and say things we normally would not.
So I am trying to cut the family and friends of the victims who are protesting the museum some slack. (Political naysayers are another matter.) It's getting harder and harder as this protest goes on, because the protest seems both selfish and an attempt to negate the reason these people died. It seems to me they are doing their own loved ones a dishonor by protesting the location of the Freedom Center and by trying to muzzle its message.
Debra Burlingame, sister of one of the pilots, epitomizes this blinkered view. For her, Ground Zero is a personal memorial, divorced from any connection to larger world events. No one else seems to have any right to share in her grief, to be appalled by such a waste of life or the reason for it, to focus on anything but that loss of life, as though what happened at Ground Zero were itself that simple. It's all about her grief and the grief of like-minded families, and worse, all about a certain sector of the U.S. population that feels government actions or American ideology should never be analyzed or questioned:
"So the very first experience that the visitors will get when they come from Cedar Rapids, Portland, Ore., and Tallahassee, Fla., was not how we experienced 9/11 but how the people, say, in Bangladesh experienced it?" she asked. "Imagine erecting an edifice at the U.S.S. Arizona where before we hear their story, we get the world's view, maybe the Axis powers' view of World War II," she said. "I can't imagine how they're thinking."
If this were just an argument about what belongs at Ground Zero, that would be bad enough, but Burlingame has only couched the argument in those terms. One of the points she's making, whether she realizes it or not, is that there is only one interpretation of history, and in this case, that's the interpretation of some of the victim's families and a few other groups. Actually, it's worse than this. In Burlingame's view, there is not even any history to interpret; there is only this isolated event, plucked from history to stand without context. The only event that has any meaning to her is the deaths that occurred on that site, not what lead up to them, or why they happened, which are among the issues the Freedom Center would explore.
Not only is this tantamount to censorship, it's like saying it's wrong to examine the history and causes of the Holocaust on the grounds of Auschwitz. Where better to analyze it than at the scene of the crime, surrounded by the echoes of the victims voices? Surely some of them would want to know why this happened, not just for us to remember that it did.
Neither the Pearl Harbor memorials nor the camp at Auschwitz are the correct comparisons however. The Pearl Harbor memorials are, after all, war memorials to soldiers killed in combat: a tragic but not unexpected or unusual occurrence. Auschwitz, in this sense, is closer to the circumstances of Ground Zero, in that it memorializes innocent civilians caught up in the machinations of an evil ideology. The motto of countless Holocaust memorials the world over is "Never Forget": never forget that this happened, and just as importantly, never forget why it happened. The Holocaust is one of those events that are so appalling that it makes one doubt the humanity of the perpetrators. The same could be said of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but with a difference. In this case, Americans were the perpetrators and to call that act inhuman holds an uncomfortable mirror up to our image of ourselves. I suspect this is part of the reason for the Burlingame crowd's protests.
At the 60th anniversary of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, it's good to remember what sprang up as a memorial in the latter city: not just a memorial to the dead but a museum and monument to peace. Out of the ashes of the ideology of superior races and imperial invasion rose a complex whose message is not just to memorialize the dead and maimed but to spread an ideology of peace, and a clear political message that calls on all nations to disarm their nuclear arsenals so that no one ever again suffers as the citizens of these two cities did.
Not just the Japanese. Not just Americans. No one should suffer. Isn't that what we should be saying with the Freedom Center? No one should ever again suffer such an atrocity ever again. Not Iraqis, not Israelis. Not Palestinians. Not Spaniards, not the British. Perhaps if we keep saying this, if we say it long enough, enough times, ideologues will get the message. But to act as if the suffering endured by the victims of 9/11 is relevant only to them only furthers the sick ideology that we are somehow different from the rest of the world.
An antidote to this attitude is Elisa Salasin's take on September 11th:
We are all wronged until we are able to collectively recognize and articulate the continuity of tragedy, which stretched long before September 11th, and lives on today in Iraq, in Niger, in the destroyed lives of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. This continuity of tragedy is fueled by Martin Luther King’s interrelated triple evils of poverty, racism, and war, and by each of our blindness and indifference to our role in this poisonous relationship. In his Beyond Vietnam address, King spoke of the need to send a message to the world, one of longing, of hope, of solidarity, and commitment: “The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.” This is a choice that requires we do more than bring our bodies to the streets . . . and then retreat back within our own lives. . . .
If we refuse to examine the situation and circumstances that led to 9/11, if we refuse to question the role of our own ideology in the rage of others, we remove ourselves from any responsibility to the human race. We remove ourselves from the human race. If we lack the courage to ask ourselves hard questions about what reactions our actions cause, we are saying that we are nothing but animals who act without thought. And if we do that, those people who died at Ground Zero don't deserve any memorial.
Where we choose to examine our role in the world's suffering is just as important as when and how and if we do it. Who better to speak of that tragedy than the dead? Who better to soften the hearts of world leaders, ordinary citizens, zealots, and fanatics than the spiritual presence of 3,000 innocents? Keep the Freedom Center at the World Trade Center Memorial site. And keep its message free, too.