field trip

On November 12 my class and i went on a trip to the Museum of the City of New York. There we saw Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao photo’s and we learned why the photographer was different from other photographers. while we were there we also saw a timeline of different social activism in New York City. For example in the beginning of the exhibit it started with social activism in the New Amsterdam when Peter Stuyvesant was governor. The people of New Amsterdam were fighting for different religions. This exhibit also had woman's rights movement, Civil rights movements, park51 etc.

The social activism station i chose was park51. Park51 is a plan building to be built in lower Manhattan. This building is going to be built to promote different faiths and backgrounds and bring them together. This plan was constructed by Imam Feisal Abdul and Sharif El-Gamal two New York Muslims. the two Muslim Americans that were developing the idea park51 heard from many Muslim Americans that wanted prayer rooms in the twin towers before 9/11. So they took it in consideration to have prayer rooms in the building but still have the big picture as a community center. When other New Yorkers heard about his idea they were outraged because they thought that a center close to the ground zero that had Islamic prayer rooms was terrible. People believed that they would be promoting terrorism. But as time went on there have been groups that were created for people to stop fearing Islamic people and to stop racism for Islamic people that live in the U.S. There was also a debate for park51 (New York City) and people against park51 (New York City Tea party) to either build or not to build park51.

While i can see why people could be suspicious about a building that has prayer rooms muslim American, people are taking it in a bad way. while this community center has muslim prayer rooms, this building also has other groups and organizations. For example they have an organization to stop “islamophobia” called September 11th families for a peaceful tomorrows.