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CNN Live Saturday

Is Controversy Surrounding WTC Site Part of Healing Process?

Aired January 19, 2002 - 18:10   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: At the World Trade Center site, a sense of unity prevails, but controversy has been no stranger either. CNN's Michael Okwu has more on what some may call part of the healing process.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I never pushed a cop. I never pushed a cop.

MICHAEL OKWU, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Firefighters clash with police after the city scales back recovery personnel at ground zero. The city erects a viewing platform and raises the ire of victims' families, and debate wages about what to do with the site, a blight on the city's landscape, a void in its psyche.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think they should preserve it as a memorial.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I still think it should be built back to the World Trade Center.

OKWU (voice-over): Few would care to admit what many New Yorkers are beginning to notice. Now that the dust has settled, camaraderie has taken a back seat to conflict and controversy.

DR. PAUL CASADONTE, PSYCHIATRIST, NYU MEDICAL CTR.: It's part of the healing process, first of all.

OKWU (voice-over): Dr. Paul Casadonte says this anger may be a stage in the evolution of emotions New Yorkers have experienced since 9-11 -- numbness, shock, a renewed sense of community, trickles and then torrents of anger.

CASADONTE: There's a lot of fear coupled with anger, coupled with a sense of being out of control. The only way that they can feel some sense of control in an out-of-control situation is to make very clear their expression of what they think should be done.

OKWU (voice-over): Controversy erupted after this memorial inspired by a picture of three white firefighters was unveiled to reveal three multi-ethnic men, and families expressed concern about the amount of federal compensation that they would be entitled to.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're telling me that her worth is what, not even $100,000?

OKWU (on camera): Would all these conflicts happen in any other city?

PETE HAMILL, "NEW YORK DAILY NEWS": I mean, they might exist, but they wouldn't be...

OKWU (voice-over): Columnist and lifetime New Yorker Pete Hamill.

HAMILL: They certainly wouldn't happen on the same vehement level. You know, there's something about New York that, you know, when there's an argument over a parking spot, it could escalate into a double homicide.

No, I think in a case like this, there's a very human tendency toward self-righteousness.

OKWU (voice-over): Hamill says in time the toughness of New Yorkers will prevail.

HAMILL: That toughness is what will absorb all this eventually, that these people who momentarily and for good reasons are showing a weaker part of their characters, will be tougher by the time it's over.

OKWU (voice-over): Michael Okwu, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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