This Land Is Your Land, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

August 28, 2010 Martha Thomases 0 Comments

Thirty years ago this month, my mother died.  She was cremated, and we scattered her ashes in our back yard, where she loved the flowers, the trees, and the overall greenness.    A year later, my father re-married and sold his house.  The new owners promptly dug up the back yard to put in a swimming pool.

I think of this now, not because I’m morbid (or not only because I’m morbid) but because the phrase “sacred ground” is repeated over and over again in the arguments over the Islamic community center.  When the Twin Towers fell, the argument goes, many of those who died were never found, and as long as their remains might be at this location, it is “sacred ground.”  The center (which I like to think of as a Young Men’s Islamic Association facility, a veritable YMIA) is too close to where thousands of New Yorkers died.

If the means-test for where something can be built in New York centers on whether or not anyone died nearby, there will never be anything built.  Just within my own circle, I have a grandmother who died on West 54th Street, a great-uncle who died on East 65th Street, and an aunt who died on West 88th Street.  My friend, Karl, died in Westbeth.  I knew a lot of kids who died on East 68th Street.

Even if we limit ourselves to discussing people who were murdered, or who died due to some capitalist’s criminal neglect, we’re in trouble.  NYU has already plundered the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire area.  They have probably filmed Law & Order murder scenes on the sites of actual murders.

No one asks permission of the loved ones of these victims.  They are given no special standing about the ongoing use of what may, to them, be sacred ground. And yet, for some reason, whenever one talks about anything in lower Manhattan, the feelings of those who lost loved ones at the World Trade Center are supposed to be of premier importance.

I’m very grateful that no one I knew died that day.  If that had happened, I might have different feelings.  However, no feelings, no matter how understandable, should be allowed to trump the Constitution.

And it’s not as if the survivors speak with one voice.  Some oppose Park51, and some are more reasonable.

The discussion is getting out of hand.  While I don’t think those who oppose the community center are necessarily in favor of hate crimes like this, I also think that their torrid rhetoric aroused this disturbed man.  We can’t protect ourselves from every statement that might set off a crazy person, but we can denounce crazy people when they act crazily, set off by something we said.

Unfortunately, there seem to be more crazy people incited by the very idea of Islam every day.

On September 11, I lost my feeling of safety.  My son, who went to school nearby, saw burning bodies falling from the sky.  Eleven fire fighters from my local station were killed.  To me, the greatest tribute we could pay to those who died is to preserve, protect and defend the rights of all New Yorkers.

You got a problem with that?

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, learned all about sacred ground from her father, the real estate developer.