AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Ground Zero Radio’s War and Peace Report, Free Speech Radio. I’m Amy Goodman. Even before the last of the fires at the World Trade Center have been extinguished, developers and city, state, federal officials are jockeying for control of the rebirth of Lower Manhattan. At a meeting last week with 30 of the city’s largest developers and brokers, local officials insisted the city must direct redevelopment efforts. The city’s powerful real estate developers, meanwhile, are promoting their own plans for downtown, demanding tax breaks to subsidize the construction of new office towers and incentives to lure tenants back to a section of the city which has been devastated by the September 11th attack.

On a smaller scale, the city of New York informed a Brooklyn firehouse that it would be closed. Squad 1 lost 12 of its firefighters as they fought to save people’s lives at the World Trade Center. The city said that all of the remaining firefighters would be reassigned to other fire department houses. The city has tried to close the firehouse before, and community members speculated that the Giuliani administration may have been trying to cash in on the tragedy: The firehouse sits on prime real estate in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

But in a victory for the people, the Park Slope community rapidly mobilized, hammering city officials with phone calls, flocking in the hundreds to a protest outside the firehouse last night. New York City announced yesterday that it never intended to close the station.

Well, we go now to last night’s protest-turned-celebration, where Democracy Now! in Exile producer Kris Abrams was there.

RONALD FITZPATRICK: My name is Ronald Fitzpatrick. I’m a retired fireman from this firehouse, from this unit. I was injured in the line of duty and forced to retire a bunch of years ago. I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, now raising a family. And I just had to come back. This is family. This is brothers. When I saw the names on the list that were missing, this is where I had to be. We live and die together. And you don’t separate us, and you don’t take and hurt one of my people, or we don’t have people that are lost and not found yet, and take us away and separate us. It’s not acceptable.

This city is in turmoil. This city has been hurt. There’s 6,000 to 7,000 people missing. And you don’t do things to create more havoc. You make it work. Why did guys get hurt? Why did guys get lost? Why are guys dead? Because we go into the buildings. We don’t stay outside. It’s not a social event. And we don’t talk about it. We do something. And that’s why we have that many people missing.

MITCHEL COHEN: Hi. My name is Mitchel Cohen. I’m from the Brooklyn Greens. I’m one of the Green Party candidates for mayor. I’m running a write-in campaign in Tuesday’s election.

We heard also that one of the reasons why they were trying to close the firehouse was the real estate. You know, this is a very — you could talk to some of the people around off the record. They’ll tell you that the brass was sort of talking about that off the record, that this is a very expensive real estate property. Instead of saying, “OK, we’ll channel more fire personnel into this area, and we’ll put a new truck here,” they’re saying, “Let’s close it down.”

So, our role is to fight to keep firehouses open all over the city, not only this one, and also to expand it. A few years ago, Giuliani shut down a whole bunch of firehouses, and we need to open them up again, too. I mean, this is defending the community. It’s nonsense. And so, the Green Party, like all the other parties around, strongly supports what the Fire Department is doing. I mean, they don’t go around beating people up. They don’t go around racial profiling. They go putting out fires and saving people, regardless of their political beliefs or what they look like or anything. And we have to defend that. This is essential to the community, and we’re not going to let them shut it down for privatization or any other reasons. And those bastards who try are going to have to meet with the wrath of the community, organized, as they could see now. Well, there were about, say, around 700 or 800 people out here today, at least. And that’s quite a good turnout for seven-hour notice.

GLORIA MATTERA: My name is Gloria Mattera. I live in Park Slope. I’m running for City Council in District 39 on the Green Party line. And, you know, I’m here in support of this firehouse. I’m just very concerned that after a terrible tragedy that they have had to face and still wondering about their men and wondering about what’s going to happen in the city, that they would even get a rumor or even a possibility of being closed down.

And I’m also very concerned that with all the billions of dollars they’re talking about in bailing about corporations, the airlines, what about city services? What about all the things we have been talking about before the World Trade Center? No affordable housing, 1.8 million people with no health insurance, privatizing city services — that’s been going on for a long time. And now it will be the fight for the corporations for the dollars that are going to come into New York City, and we need to elect people that are going to think about the majority of citizens, including the uniformed officers, who are working-class people and will have a harder time.

There’s rumors that some politicians are supporting the idea of investing union pension funds into the stock market to help boost the stock market, while the city government bails out corporations and gives tax breaks for corporations to move back into some towers they think they’re going to build. But I hope that that’s not going to happen and they’re going to put something significant to memorialize the people who died in the World Trade Center on that site.

REP. MAJOR OWENS: Hello. I’m Congressman Major Owens. And I want to associate myself with all the great remarks that have been made already. And I won’t repeat them. I’ll just say what a difference a day makes! At midnight last night, I was told they were going to close this firehouse tomorrow. I couldn’t believe it. I was out here at 7:30 this morning to see for myself, to hear for myself. I went back to my office. We started a barrage of calls to City Hall and letters, etc. At about 3:00, I got a call from City Hall saying it was a great mistake. We don’t — I think the decision was made, and we don’t tangle with the folks in Park Slope!

KRIS ABRAMS: Can I ask your reaction to Washington’s response to what’s happened on September 11?

REP. MAJOR OWENS: Well, Washington’s response is embarrassment, because we are the leaders who are supposed to protect our citizens and make them secure, and in a very big way it was demonstrated that we have not done that. So, Washington, unfortunately, is bordering on hysteria now. You know, there are things that have to be done, but I think that the great danger is that there will be an overreaction. And we’d like to see to it that we keep our eyes on the prize.

There are fanatics. There are madmen in the world, and we need to concentrate on ways to root them out, ways to make the environment that they survive in uncomfortable, ways to cut off the organized terrorism that appears to have roots that spread all over the world. We can deal with that. And we should deal with that with a more competent set of intelligence agencies and more competent law enforcement agencies. In many ways, the CIA and the FBI have demonstrated that they lack that competence. And for a long time, many of us have complained about the fact that they were so incompetent. And partially, part of what has happened here did not need to happen. I don’t think they could have been so successful, had we had a more competent set of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. And that’s the first thing we have to do.

The military invasions and the larger actions tend to be for show only. They may get us into situations where we are demonstrating the anger of the nation and the resolve of the nation in ways that will only complicate matters. And there are many of us who are trying to make certain that we keep our eyes on the prize. The first thing to do is to really come to grips with the fact that we spend $30 billion on our CIA, and it does not do the job it’s supposed to do, and partially because of the fact that it’s not racially integrated, it’s not diverse enough. The problems of its own biases have come home to hurt the effort to keep in touch with the people of the world. And a lot of practical things have to be done. But we must stay on guard against hysteria, that might really do a great deal of harm.

KRIS ABRAMS: There seems to be quite a bipartisan consensus on what to do since September 11th. Democrats seem to be voting with Republicans on almost everything. What is your response to that?

REP. MAJOR OWENS: Democrats have reported — voted Republicans, because a lot of it is symbolism. You know, the War Powers Act gives the president all the powers that he needs to deal with the situation. The resolution we passed in Congress was a way to say to the public that we’re all on the same playing field. We all reaffirm the fact that the president does have the power. He had the power already. He has the power. A lot of it is symbolism.

And a lot of it is mixed in a way where we can’t avoid it. The airlines bailout bill that I voted for last week, I was not happy about the fact that it didn’t take care of airline workers that were being laid off, and I almost voted against it. But on the other hand, it’s established a victims’ fund, unprecedented. The federal government has taken responsibility for every victim of that catastrophe. You know, from the guys who are CEOs down to the level of cafeteria workers, they don’t have to fight the insurance companies. Their families don’t have to fight the insurance companies. There’s going to be a fund. And I could not vote against that. That was unprecedented. And we have to take in consideration that we have all these tremendous losses of life.

KRIS ABRAMS: Finally, the anti-terrorism legislation could make it possible to detain immigrants indefinitely with no public evidence.

REP. MAJOR OWENS: Well, that’s the most frightening part of the legislation, because we’ve seen COINTELPRO, and we know how an already incompetent FBI and already incompetent CIA are likely to abuse those powers. In order to score hits in terms of public relations, in order to have somebody to punish, they’ll go off cocked and punish innocent people. And even large numbers and groups of people will be profiled in ways that have been done in the past. And they’ve spent a lot of time chasing people who were totally innocent, had nothing to do with anything, but it was good public relations for them. So, that’s a great danger. We are very concerned about the anti-terrorism provisions as they affect the domestic situation.

AMY GOODMAN: New York Congressmember Major Owens, speaking to Democracy Now! in Exile producer Kris Abrams at the Park Slope firehouse. The people won a victory yesterday. Squad 1 lost 12 of its firefighters as they fought to save people’s lives at the World Trade Center, and then the city moved in to close that firehouse, which sits on prime real estate in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Park Slope.

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AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. Among other things on this program, we are documenting the peace movement in all of its expressions. At 12 noon on Saturday, September 22nd, over 100 artists, all wearing black, filed onto Union Square in Manhattan, where many people have been gathering for the last 10 days to grieve and to try to make sense of what happened on September 11th. When the people filed in to Union Square, a hush fell over the crowd as the artists took their places in a semicircle. For one hour, they stood in silence wearing face masks and placards silkscreened with “Our grief is not a cry for war.”

D’Lo now joins us. She is with the group Refuse & Resist!, an artist in New York.

Tell us about that moment when you all stood there.

D’LO: It was really incredible. Like you said, you know, a hush fell over the crowd. But what was really important was that people were — we had one person going through the crowd to sort of answer questions and to get people’s addresses and emails or whatever. And people were just thoroughly moved indeed. The people were crying coming up to our spokesperson and just saying how dope it was that artists were — or, these people were actually taking a stand this way and doing it in a very impactful manner. The silent — it being a silent protest really made a difference than anything else that was going on that day at that time. And, you know, just to be a part of it and to be a part of something that was put up by other artists was just incredible.

AMY GOODMAN: Who came up with the slogan, “Our grief is not a cry for war”?

D’LO: One individual, in particular, who is part of the Artists Network of Refuse & Resist!, he came up with the slogan, and we sort of like made it our statement, a brother named Dred Scott.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us what happened afterwards. You all had stickers that you gave out?

D’LO: Yeah, we took up this slogan as our sort of nugget to put out there. And basically, we put it out over a website, and lots of people nationally have taken it and made their own copies about the sticker — on the sticker. And we’ve just been, you know, handing them out, putting them up places and just really trying to get that statement out there to change the climate of what’s already out there, you know, as how the government is basically using our grief and the grief of those who have lost family members in the bombing as an excuse for war. So, this was sort of like our way to, like, change up that climate.

AMY GOODMAN: D’Lo, artist with Refuse & Resist! Again, that slogan, that sentence that’s being repeated and seen in placards all over the city, “Our grief is not a cry for war.” And that does it for today’s program. If you’d like to email us, send your mail to mail@democracynow.org. Democracy Now! in Exile is produced by Kris Abrams, Brad Simpson, Miranda Kennedy, Anthony Sloan, our music maestro and engineer, Errol Maitland at WBIX.org, where you can hear Democracy Now! online, as well as webactive.com. Special thanks to Chase Pierson, Tony Riddle, Rick Jungers, Hoy No [phon.], Karen Ranucci, DeeDee Halleck, Tom Poole, Lenny Charles, Lizzy Ratner, Sam Delgado, Orlando Richards, our hosts here at Downtown Community Television, Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno. Thank you to the Pacifica stations, especially KPFA and KFCF in Fresno, and of course to all our affiliate stations around the country. We are Pacifica. You can see the program in New York on channels 34 and 56 on Manhattan Neighborhood Network, on Free Speech TV, channel 9415 of Dish TV satellite network. We’re in the historic firehouse of Engine 31, Chinatown, in the evacuation zone, just next to ground zero. In exile from the embattled studios of WBAI, from the studios of the banned and the fired, from the studios of our listeners, I’m Amy Goodman.