Critics Call for Boycott of Memorial Fund-Raising

Critics Call for Boycott of Memorial Fund-Raising

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: July 26, 2005

In the ever fiercer fight over a year-old plan to build a home for the Drawing Center and the International Freedom Center alongside the World Trade Center memorial, some relatives of 9/11 victims called yesterday for a fund-raising boycott.
"We urge you to not donate to the World Trade Center memorial until the I.F.C. and the Drawing Center are eliminated from the memorial plans," said "An Open Letter to the American People." The letter appeared on a Web site, Take Back the Memorial, until questions arose over how many of the 14 relatives' groups that were signed to the letter had approved the use of their names.
Despite that withdrawal, critics of the cultural plan - including two members of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which is charged with soliciting contributions - said the freedom center had to be removed before they would support the use of public money for the overall project. Opponents have objected in advance to what they say will be an anti-American bias to the center's offerings, a charge that the center has just as strongly rejected.
"We owe it to the American people or anyone else who wants to donate to tell them what they're paying for and not mislead them," said Debra Burlingame, a foundation board member and one of the letter's authors. She said financing for the memorial would be intermingled with that for the building at Fulton and Greenwich Streets that is intended to house the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center.
The assertion was disputed by Lynn Rasic, the vice president for public affairs at the foundation. "The first fund-raising efforts are devoted to the memorial and the museum dedicated to Sept. 11," she said.
"It's unfortunate and wrong to block efforts to make sure that our nation and the world remember those we lost during the attacks," Ms. Rasic said.
Asked whether it was a conflict of interest for board members to urge prospective donors to withhold support, Ms. Rasic said any potential conflicts would be reviewed by the governance committee.
Monica Iken, a board member and the founder of September's Mission, which supports the development of a memorial, said she had not approved the use of her group's name on the letter. "I never signed off on anything like that," she said yesterday.
"I have an obligation to fund-raise for the memorial," she added.
But Ms. Burlingame said her objections were in line with her fiduciary responsibilities as a board member. "You can't go out to the public and say, 'We're raising $500 million,' and not tell them they're building on the same site a building so large it will dwarf the memorial," she said.
Lee Ielpi, another member of the foundation board, is also vice president of the September 11th Families Association, which was listed as supporting the open letter.
"I'm fully comfortable asking Americans who shared our sorrow and came to help us in the worst of times to help us honor our dead and the sacrifice they made," he said. "I am not comfortable asking them to play a role in a political, economic or ideological passion play whose ending has yet to be written. I believe the freedom center is a bad idea."
Robert D. Shurbet, the founder of Take Back the Memorial (takebackthememorial.org), said that the open letter was a draft that had been "posted prematurely" and that the link to it was removed "pending final approval" by the relatives' groups.
As to the larger issue of the cultural organizations, Stefan Pryor, the president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, said officials were having "continuing conversations with the two institutions regarding their response" to concerns raised by Gov. George E. Pataki. On June 24, the governor asked for an "absolute guarantee" that programs on the site not denigrate America or offend victims' families.
Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University, resigned from the freedom center's committee of scholars and advisers this month, after a letter from the center to Mr. Pryor that tried to address those concerns. News of his resignation was reported on Saturday in The New York Post.
Alternative locations for the Drawing Center on and off the trade center site are already being explored.