MI: I never really said I was going to do anything. The only thing I said was that the families would come out and form a human chain if we felt that our voices weren't being heard. That has changed because of the fact that we can be a constructive voice and we can be heard and the voices are getting louder. We realize that we don't have to do anything because we have to have input first. We realized as the process went on that we'd have to negotiate and realize what's involved in this process. I needed to learn that and originally I didn't have the knowledge. I needed to learn about the memorial process by looking at other cities and countries to get an understanding of how families have dealt in the past or people have put memorials together. I don't think that we need to do anything if we can be constructive voices in the process and advocate for the families. If we can do that properly then there is no need to do any kind of human chain.

MI: If we're not going to be heard and they're going to move ahead with plans without families having input, which they say we have input on... I think the families are developing mistrust now and they're realizing that the powers that be and the stakeholders, the politicians and the government officials are really not listening to us. I think that will create a lot of mistrust and might have families doing things that they wouldn't have done if they were being heard. And that's something we can't control. We don't know what that would mean if the families see that it's not going the way that we thought it would go and they're just going to build and not have constructive dialogue with the families.

MI: The LMDC has only met with the family groups four times since January and every time we meet they just tell us what's going on. They don't ask us for input. They've already made decisions without us. An example would be the PATH and the 1 and the 9 trains. They just said we're going to be doing this and, you know, that runs right through our graveyard. And there was no reasoning for that. They just said we have to do this. Building 7, we have to build it. These are all examples. The blueprints just came out about the guidelines of what's going to be going on in redevelopment of lower Manhattan. And on top of that, we go to another meeting and then we find out that there is an RFP out for proposals for urban planners to come up with ideas for the site which we knew nothing of. And I think the public is being misled to believe that families are having input and now the families are realizing that they haven't had any input on any of these decisions and they're going at a speed that's very fast. It doesn't make any sense. In two weeks, you can't get proposals and then decide to hire an urban planner without having any kind of dialogue with the families. That just doesn't make any sense for any planning of a memorial or the planning of buildings and office and retail in an area. They're taking sixteen acres and putting everything on it: retails stores, services, hotel, roads. It doesn't make any sense and the families are starting to really realize that we're not being heard and that could cause a situation for the families.

MI: I haven't met Alex Garvin directly. I know I'm going to be meeting with him on the next meeting with the LMDC and he's going to be going over those guidelines that came out. He will explain to families -- after the fact -- what they're planning on doing, which really is putting everything on sixteen acres of land. I think that's a lot of land to be able to put all this stuff on, though, without even looking at all the other options they have. They have all of lower Manhattan to look at in terms of where they should be putting office space, residential and cultural venues. But instead we're being told they're going to put everything with our memorial on sixteen acres of land, which just doesn't make any sense for the families because when you start putting everything on one space, it's going to be effectively Disney World and where are we going to go in the future? We're not going to have anything.

MI: The Town Hall meeting was very discouraging in terms of seeing how the families and the residents really felt about what was going on with the memorial process and how they were more concerned about fruit stands and their Borders Book Store as opposed to the lives that were lost that day. I think they thought, "Okay, we lost all these lives, now we need to move on." They don't seem to be taking into consideration the fact that we need to honor those people that were murdered on national TV. They are worrying about the fact that the Borders Book Store is not there and they don't have a bookstore to go to instead of thinking about what really should happen at that site. They were so concerned about things that I would have never thought I would hear from people. They had no remorse, no compassion for the families that had to watch their loved ones be murdered. And what that means for the families that are left, the survivors and the rescue workers who have to deal with that ... it was very discouraging to actually attend a Town Hall meeting of that nature and see how people just didn't understand what we were going through. I had to express that. I think until I expressed it, they really didn't understand how horrific in nature the event that took place on 9/11. I think sometimes people don't realize what needs to take place because they're more concerned about the immediate issues at hand as opposed to the long-term effects of this event.

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