NYC area construction workers, vendors and planners nationwide pledge to put down their tools and deny their labor to construct the 13-story mega-mosque overlooking the battlefield at Ground Zero.
The 911 Hard Hat Pledge is one American's response to the proposed construction of a mosque at Ground Zero. That American is Andy Sullivan, a life-long resident of NYC and an American "hard hat".
Andy and a growing number of American's agree that the controversy surrounding the mosque being planned by the Cordoba Initiative to be opened on September 11, 2011 is NOT a "rights" issue but an issue of respect , sensitivity, transparency and responsibility.
As Americans, we acknowledge Imam Feisal Rauf's "right" to build a mosque. That is not the issue. But for most Americans, it is wholly contradictory of the Ground Zero Mosque developers to claim that it will be a center of “inter-faith” relations... when implicit in the term “inter-faith” is the fundamental notion of respect and sensitivity to those of other faiths and to those who view the Ground Zero area as a cemetery.
Most Americans are equally troubled by the Imam Feisal Rauf's well-documented anti-American statements and his established relationships with Islamic terrorist organizations like Hamas. To this day, Imam Rauf refuses to denounce Hamas... an organization that our own State Department has designated as a "terrorist" organization. Why is that?
It seems obvious to plain-spoken Americans who aren't cowed by "political-correctness" that Imam Rauf and the Cordoba Initiative's motivations, associations and apparent lack of transparency, are a cause for legitimate concern.
And so, while politicians waffle or hide, Andy and the country's hard hat contractors ARE taking a stand.