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Governors Island, not Battery Park on Manhattan
Island, is the origination point of substantive American and New York State history and could be a national symbol and public
memorial to a legacy of consequence. When politically recognized thus, Governors Island would be situated in a National Heritage Triangle of fundamental American values: Tolerance, Liberty and Welcome (click Governors Island Preservation and Education Project.) Namely, the active precept of religious tolerance as the basis for ethnic diversity and as a moral force
and reciprocal dynamic in the concept of personal freedom was delivered first in the Western Hemisphere to Governors Island
in the year 1624.
That this active notion of toleration involved mutual respect can be deduced from instructions
to the colonists of 1624 that they were to respect the consciences of others that is, natives and non-believers didn't have to submit to the settlers'
religion. The policy was to try ‘to attract' them 'through attitude and by example'
only.
On the other hand,
natives and non-believers, when falling under the settlers' immediate authority, could be induced by the director and his
council to respect the colonists' faith when expressly slandered only. Religious conversion, however, couldn't be forced on
anyone.
So far, Albany (the Governor and
State Legislators) has ignored this critical role Governors Island played in 1624 in the founding of the State
of New York and the State's contribution to America's culture of freedom while implicitly dignifying a faulty history as insisted
upon for years by the Battery Conservancy and the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation ("GIPEC') on
their web sites. Currently, GIPEC, which
is entrusted with the development of the Island, is [publicly] pursuing plans for a generic park made of recycled materials
and has chosen the latest straw man, the architectural firm of "West8," to lead this project.
The anticipated park is economically unfeasible, financially unsustainable and has no meaning to the nation, New York
State or New York City. Additionally, West8's
promulgated mandate is conditioned upon the omission of any reference to the Island's historical importance and national symbolic
value respecting American liberty. Furthermore, in December 2008, GIPEC started to solicit ideas from the public (!) for the
naming of a section of the proposed park on Governors Island without ever having recognized or considered State Legislative Resolutions No. 5476 and No. 2708 of May
2002 which affirm the Island as the birthplace of New York State and
the origin of American toleration.
The
"winning entry" was Picnic Point so that in September 2009 a few [official] visitors and their guests can have a
picnic and party during a New Island Festival within a New York City Harbor Festival. These festivals are the highlight of
a 2009 quadricentennial celebration in honor of three legendary dead men: the American Robert Fulton, the Frenchman Samuel
de Champlain and the Englishman Henry Hudson. These parties had been called into being by the New York State Legislature to
generate broad popular excitement and to mobilize the State's population in celebrating the 2009 year!
This [inconsequential] vision for New York State’s joyful tribute in 2009 was signed into
law by Governor George Pataki in February 2002 in a political nod to the grandiose but spurious tri-centennial celebration
of 1909. It was an express effort to eradicate the factually accurate, historical national meaning of the year
1609 in a 2009 quadricentennial commemoration thus denying New York State its authentic cultural patrimony of historic
substance which is shared bilaterally by the primary histories of the United States of America and the Netherlands
(click Lifeblood of American Liberty.) In the absence of the New York State Legislature's
unequivocal acceptance of this fundamental American history with respect to Governors Island, the National Park Service, which
has jurisdiction over a portion of the Island, also has been unwilling to accept the Island's and the State's legacy of toleration
as the basis for ethnic diversity and central to American freedom. One
may conclude, like The Tolerance Park Foundation, that the current state of affairs, wherein Governors Island is denied politically its
irrefutable place in primary American history as a national symbol and as the historical locus of a profoundly momentous
message which has been recognized by the United States in its Constitution and by the United Nations in Article 26-2
of its 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Education...shall promote...tolerance...among all
nations, racial or religious groups," is indeed misfortunate; although not irretrievable. Would or could the United States, New York State and New
York City find it of any importance that, at least on their web sites, with respect to Governors Island's development,
some reference exists to the nation's primary history of current and enduring relevance which is New York State's cultural
inheritance, New York City's identity and Governors Island's legacy to American liberty as we understand it
(click Governors Island National Symbol)?
The Tolerance Park Foundation, 139 East 79th Street, 15th floor, New York, NY 10075, U.S.A. Phone: (212) 737-3216 - President@TolerancePark.org
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