'Ground Zero mosque': New Yorkers take dim view of rabble-rousing outsiders

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NEW YORK -- On a recent afternoon on the streets around Ground Zero, commuters jumped over puddles to make their trains home, French tourists snapped photos, a homeless man jangled a can, an angry woman cried into her cellphone and Ali Mohammed served falafel over rice.

Mohammed's food cart stands equidistant between the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a planned Islamic center that has become the prime target of national conservatives who, after years of disparaging New York as a hotbed of liberal activity, are defending New York against a mosque that will rise two city blocks from they consider the sacred and reflective ruins of Ground Zero.

Newt Gingrich has argued, among other things, that the Muslim congregation shouldn't build the center because "Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington." Sarah Palin has weighed in, too, in opposing the "Ground Zero mosque." The pain she said, is "too raw, too real."

Mohammed, like many other New Yorkers, has reached his saturation point. "They got nothing to do with New York and they don't care about New York," said the 56-year-old from Brooklyn, igniting a Marlboro Light. "They are trying to create propaganda."

This is a point of consensus for New York's entire body politic, from the center's most vocal opponent to its most full-throated defender.

"Newt Gingrich is talking about Nazis and whatever, I mean, that means nothing," said Rep. Peter King, a Republican who has led the local opposition to Park51, a 13-story Islamic center that would include a prayer space with an imam, a 500-seat auditorium, a pool, senior center and meeting rooms. King, a plainspoken Long Islander, argues that the center would be insensitive to the families of Sept. 11 survivors, but noted that some of the most prominent national opponents to the project had taken their rhetoric too far, and until very recently, didn't seem interested in New York at all.

"First of all, this is real America," said King, sarcastically using Palin's phrase for the homeland. "The people who detached themselves from New York are all of a sudden embracing New York."

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the city's most outspoken supporter of the Muslim congregation's right to build the center, couldn't agree more.

"It's disgusting," he said of the remarks by Gingrich and other Republicans who rarely expressed support for the city. "It is an attempt to exploit for purely political motives a sensitive issue. And to exploit people they obviously don't really care about."

The heated national debate is unrecognizable from the reality in New York, both politically and spatially. For starters, there are the practical questions of whether the Islamic center's politically unconnected organizers have the savvy and know-how to navigate the city's real estate universe or to put together the $100 million they need for their ambitious project. But if they somehow do, the city's entire political establishment supports their right to build on private property.

And no one in New York has any misconceptions about what Lower Manhattan looks like. Red cranes may slowly be rebuilding Ground Zero, but they are surrounded by a vibrant cityscape: doughnut shops and strip clubs and churches and mosques and synagogues and off-track betting parlors and podiatry centers.

"New York is a very unusual place in its density," explained Howard Wolfson, the deputy mayor of New York who, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, wrote the speech that has thus far best articulated the case for the mosque, and which President Obama later echoed at an Iftar dinner with Muslim leaders at the White House. "I do not think the average person knows that you would not be able to see Ground Zero from this building, nor would you be able to see this building from Ground Zero."

On Park Place, the faded brick buildings of the planned facility still bear the ghost ads of "Burlington Coat Factory" and "Coats and more . . . for less!" The stores vacated after Sept. 11, 2001, but in recent months, Muslims who no longer fit into the Masjid Manhattan, on nearby Warren Street, have used the building as a mosque. . Inside the glass doors, a uniformed security guard lazily read the paper in the lobby. Pairs of shoes rested on shelves and on the floor, some suit jackets hung on a coat rack and local Muslims supplicated on a worn carpet.

Television vans and international reporters keep showing up. Earlier this week, Larry Mendte, a correspondent from the local station WPIX, stood in front of the building and practiced his lines. "Three, two, one. And if he really wanted to heal wounds, why open a mosque on or even near September 11?" Mendte said, pausing to ask his cameraman, "How's the light?"

Raheel Sida, a 28-year-old from Queens who works in the financial industry, exited the mosque and expressed some chagrin at the circus around him.

"It's a local matter," he said. "People just need things to talk about."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/19/AR2010081906580_pf.html

[Susita 175]

Yeah I seriously love how people outside of NY think they know what's best for us. I used to work in lower Manhattan... my family and friends still do, and I'm telling you... they honestly don't care. It's not being built at Ground Zero anyway. When they first started with this issue, they made it seem like the thing was going to be built on top of it or something with the way they were talking about. It's two city blocks away. Do you know how many Middle Eastern restaurants and little food carts are in Lower Manhattan within two blocks of the World Trade Center?

At any rate, I heard on the radio today that my favorite person Gov. Paterson is working on providing state land for the developers to move to a new location. Both sides seem to be happy about this from what I'm hearing.

[lostinblue 1,989]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/05/13/2010-05-13_council_members_pushing_for_boycott_of_arizonas_biz.html

New York City Council members pushing for boycott of Arizona as punishment for immigration law

“It's a local matter," he said. "People just need things to talk about."

People in arizona said the same thing a few months ago

[Heracles 417]

Yeah I seriously love how people outside of NY think they know what's best for us.

Is this coming from a city of 10 million that cannot even manage to fix potholes. It's people from outside NY that have fought to secure that shitty city's freedom. It's the rest of America that has paid for that city to beef up its security. It certainly isn't NYers at work.

Come to think of it, apart form bankrupting the country again and again, an annoying nasally accent and bad attitude, ####### even comes out of that stuck in the 20's and 30's city? Certain not R&D... 9/11 was probably the first time in a while a NYer shut their mouth.

Edited August 20, 2010 by Heracles

[Susita 175]

I lost a cousin who was a fireman and 2 friends too in 9-11.

I don't appreciate what you just said.