If Edward L. Ayers is right that Fort Monroe, Virginia, is the site of the
greatest moment in American history, then it's quite possible that some
participants in this forum will be interested in this update that I'm
distributing widely this morning. Thanks.
Steven T. Corneliussen
Poquoson, Virginia
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Report for a wide circle of friends of Fort Monroe, site of the greatest
moment in American history:
Political and public pressure is growing for transforming Fort Monroe’s fake
national monument into a REAL national monument or national park.
In 15 seconds visiting http://www.fortmonroenationalpark.org/ you can see a
gaping hole in precious public land at Fort Monroe. Virginia’s leaders,
focused on real estate dealing instead of the public good, deliberately
engineered this huge gap for private development in the national monument.
The gap is marked in red on a copy of a National Park Service map.
Candidates in Hampton’s May 1 city election, led by former state legislator
Tom Gear, are calling for the fake-to-real transformation. Citizens for a
Fort Monroe National Park recently commended Gear for seven years’
leadership as Virginia’s only politician who has always stood up for Fort
Monroe against the parochial but powerful handful who engineered the huge
gap.
Gear calls the gap “the biggest land grab in Virginia history.” So far, city
council candidates Theresa Sellers and Hugh Bassett have publicly agreed
with him about the need for the fake-to-real transformation.
So has mayoral candidate Donnie Tuck. He’s running against the incumbent
Molly Ward, who is known for her ties to real estate. A real estate
overdevelopment focus and a faulty federal base-closure law are the sources
of the original, deplorable misframing of post-Army Fort Monroe.
At Tidewater’s leading newspaper, the Virginian-Pilot, an editorial
(http://hamptonroads.com/2012/04/next-step-fort-monroe) today calls
unambiguously for the fake-to-real transformation, though without using the
words “fake” and “real.” On Tidewater’s leading morning drive-time talk
show, from AM 790 WNIS, Tony Macrini read the editorial on the air.
I’ll be discussing all of this today from 4:10 to 4:30 on the John
Fredericks radio show, 1650 AM in Tidewater. You can listen live online.
(http://www.commonsense1650.com/listen.html)
It is self-evidently preposterous to omit that sense-of-place defining
bayfront gap from the national monument/park. It’s like allowing
subdivisions on Monticello hillsides.
HOW YOU CAN HELP: On the National Park Service’s survey at
http://goo.gl/MxoQ1 please ask for a REAL national park.
EVERY ADDED VOICE MAKES IT THAT MUCH HARDER FOR VIRGINIA’S LEADERS TO
CONTINUE RATIONALIZING THEIR MISTREATMENT OF THIS NATIONAL TREASURE.
For more information, please see http://www.fortmonroenationalpark.org/
Thanks very much.
Steven T. Corneliussen
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