Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park & the United Nations

We at Rain Barrel were very pleased to see yesterday’s New York Times front-page article glowingly introduce the new FDR memorial in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park across from United Nation headquarters in New York City.

For the past two years, Robert and I have been lobbying both the Roosevelt Institute and colleagues at the United Nations to join forces to highlight the spectacular Louis Kahn-designed memorial on the tip of Roosevelt Island in the East River.

The partnership is a natural. FDR, of course, was the intellectual father of the United Nations, and Eleanor was instrumental in the drafting of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948. FDR’s famous Four Freedoms include freedom of speech and religion and freedom from want and from fear. Tying the twin sites together as destinations for visitors as well as residents of the metropolitan areas will greatly enhance public awareness of the principles they have in common.

As FDR’s New Deal legacy is under attack in the US and human rights continue to be grossly violated in much of the world, it is especially timely that FDR be celebrated with the creation of the park, which, as NYT‘s reporter Michael Kimmelman writes, “gives New York nothing less than a new spiritual heart”.

We are pleased as well that the Roosevelt Institute and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park officials are planning a special event for the United Nations community at the park on October 18, the day after the memorial is officially dedicated. For more information go to http://www.fdrfourfreedomspark.org/