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Boston Armenian Heritage Park to Be Completed by Fall 2010
BOSTON, Mass.—The Armenian Heritage Park on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway is slated to be completed by the fall of 2010, reported Armenian Heritage Foundation president James M. Kalustian at a recent Board meeting.
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Readers of this article may not know that there was a deliberate effort on the part of Turks and certain of their friends to make sure that the Armenian Heritage Park was never built.
The most vociferous opponent of the Armenian Park was Peter Meade, a board member of the New England ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and a former VP of Blue Cross Blue Shield. He was instrumental in bringing the ADL’s so-called No Place for Hate program into Blue Cross, and getting Blue Cross (using your health premiums) to fund No Place for Hate. As readers of the Armenian Weekly know, the ADL denies the Armenian genocide and works with Turkey to defeat the Armenian Genocide resolution in the US Congress:
Please visit http://www.NoPlaceForDenial.com
Here is an article about the Greenway (the Armenian Weekly, to its credit, and others also published it):
http://www.wickedlocal.com/newton/archive/x357268519
I also wish to say that elected officials who are often regarded as our “friends”, such as Senator Ted Kennedy, Cong.Michael Capuano, and Mayor Tom Menino, were against the project from the beginning and acted as adversaries, not friends. The Boston Globe (owned by the NY Times Company) also flat-out misreported, and withheld vital facts about the Armenian Park in an effort to sabotage the Park, and the Boston Herald (editor Rachel Cohen) was also hostile. These are facts, even if they are not generally known .
Finally, what will the wording of the Park’s plaque on the Armenian genocide say? We don’t know, but the word is that it will be watered down, per the request of Turks and certain – shall we say, “others.” Draw your own conclusions.
Sorry, but this park doesn’t really excite me.
If only the Armenian organizers put more time and energy into democratizing and developing Armenia, and seeking reparations and restorative justice for the Armenian nation and people, especially the descendants of the Armenian Genocide.
After all, why should Bostonian Armenians rally around a “heritage” park (pieces of cement, glass, grass, metal, stone, trees, water, wood, etc. put together) when their own heritage — as ancient people condemned to live far away from their occupied Western Armenian and Cilician lands — is gradually assimilating and dying off, and when sovereign Armenia is depopulating as we speak?
Aram:
The Armenian community is going to collectively wait for you to do something that is going to excite it. Your right as the Boston community builds a park everything else is in flames. Perhaps you need to move to Armenia and start a revolution.
The Heritage Park project has become unexciting because the Armenians involved in the project felt compelled to remain silent and compliant so as to not upset “the delicate process” of seeing this project to fruition. So what if the delicate process meant that the word “Genocide” was removed? So what if the delicate process meant that those hostile to justice for the Armenians were allowed to keep working behind the scenes to foil this project? So what if the delicate process meant that detractors said the Armenian Park’s message had to be diluted because the Greenway allegedly has a “no memorials” policy, even though there are plenty of other memorials, including one paying tribute to the Holocaust? Does not the concept of “delicate process” sound familiar to you?
Both David and Aram’s comments make very good points and are commendable. I write to add my thoughts to Aram’s question ‘why should Bostonian Armenians rally around a “heritage” park…’ for the same reason Jews across the globe do so, to remember their Holocaust and force the world to acknowledge it, to bolster their image and to remind the world of such injustices and prejudice. Armenians would behoove themselves to emulate the Jews, learn from them to promote one’s own history and because perhaps the majority of non-Armenians in the United States have no idea who the Armenians are or how it is that they came the United States. They best know what they are marketed by the Turkish lobby and its supporters. At least this type of memorial helps to put the word ‘Armenian’ before the American people. Yes, we do have to support the homeland too and as such once again learn from the Jews.
I’ll fill in the blank for David’s comment ‘per the request of Turks and certain – shall we say, ”others.”’ While there are many Jews who sympathize and support Armenian matters, there are more in powerful positions nationally and internationally who favor/aid the Turkish perspective. The Jews had an oft repeated expression, ‘the friend of my enemy is my enemy,’ the Armenians are entitled to repeat the same sentiment.
Let the memorial be built and to be a seed planted for the words ‘Armenian Genocide’ to grow and be remembered by more than only the Armenians.