Sept. 11 Families Request Rival Event Permit
Families of September 11 attack victims, angered by city plans to move an annual commemoration ceremony away from ground zero, filed a permit request yesterday asking to hold the event at the World Trade Center site.
Mary Altaffer / AP
A lawyer representing September 11 families, Norman Siegel, center, speaks to reporters yesterday.
The coalition filed the request with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site. The agency says construction at the site would make a ceremony there unsafe, but family members plan to sue if they are denied.
"This is the place we have. A precedent has been set in letting us touch ground zero," a representative of one of the family groups, Diane Horning, said.
Rosaleen Tallon, of Advocates for a 9/11 Fallen Heroes Memorial, said remains of people killed in the 2001 terror attack are still being found at the site.
"How can we possibly not go there to memorialize these people?" she said. "It is still their resting place, and I want to be there."
