Beverly Hills 9/11 Memorial Garden — How a Community Turned Remembrance Into Action

Beverly Hills Fire Chief Greg Barton stands with a wreath following the city's ceremony which commemorates America's suffering from the jihadist war launched in D.C. and NYC on September 11th, 2001

Hidden just off Little Santa Monica Boulevard, at the corner of Rexford Drive beside the Beverly Hills Fire and Police Departments, stands a solemn yet beautiful space: the Beverly Hills 9/11 Memorial Garden. Two key figures behind its creation—architect Gidas Peteris and project manager Reggie Sully—shared how this landmark came to be and what it means.

A Vision Anchored by History

Peteris designed the garden around a striking centerpiece: a steel beam salvaged from the World Trade Center. “It gives us a little height and more to show—otherwise nobody would know what it was,” he explained. Around it are engraved plaques bearing more than 2,900 names of everyone who perished in the 9/11 attacks, not just first responders. The goal, Peteris said, was to create a focal point that made the loss tangible and unforgettable.

A Hidden Time Capsule

Beneath the foundation lies a sealed time capsule containing deeply personal artifacts: a piece of one of the hijacked airplanes and the ID badge of a pilot, donated through his brother during the memorial’s planning. There’s no set plan to open it; instead, it “memorializes those particular elements” and gives the site a deeper layer of meaning.

Building With Heart and Precision

For Reggie Sully, a veteran expediter with McCoy Construction, this was his first and only memorial project. Normally he manages high-end custom homes, but this garden called for extraordinary coordination: granite imported from China, engravers handling a four-step name etching process, concrete pours, stone masons, and weld inspections. “Timing was everything,” Sully said. Yet he felt as though “angels were looking down” as deadlines were met and materials arrived against the odds.

Community Spirit on Display

Both men highlighted the flood of volunteerism and generosity. Subcontractors and suppliers routinely waived fees. “It was a living tribute to everybody who wanted to participate,” Sully reflected. Peteris added that the board of directors, landscape designer Jim Ply, and local leader Reggie all donated time and services. Together, they turned a vision into reality without a traditional commercial budget.

More Than a Monument

Quotes, inscriptions, and interpretive panels guide visitors through the story of 9/11 and the memorial’s creation. For Peteris, the garden is for “kids, for people that lost somebody, for residents who shouldn’t forget.” Sully hopes visitors take away one message above all: never forget.

B.H. Police Chief Mark Stainbrook
addresses the public ceremony

First Responders and Personal Meaning

First responders pass the memorial daily, and Sully believes they take special pride in it, much as the builders did. On September 11 ceremonies, he’s focused on making sure the steel is coated and the grounds immaculate. “I’m in work mode,” he said, “but I have my private moments with it.”

A Moment That Defined the Project

Sully recounted a moving committee meeting with Brad Berlingame, brother of pilot Chuck Berlingame, whose plane was hijacked on 9/11. Brad told how the FBI returned a singed prayer card from his brother’s wallet—one of the few personal effects recovered. That story, Sully said, deeply moved the entire team and underscored the memorial’s purpose.

Why It Matters

The Beverly Hills 9/11 Memorial Garden is more than a destination. It’s a testament to collective remembrance and civic pride, transforming a corner of Beverly Hills into sacred ground. Thanks to the vision of architect Gidas Peteris, the dedication of project manager Reggie Sully, and the generosity of countless contributors, the city now holds a permanent space for reflection—linking a global tragedy to local hearts.

What western leaders left us ill-prepared for by denying since Sept 11, 2001

Twenty years since the Islamist attacks of September 11th, how aware are we of "political Islam's" quest for the West - and the risk of importing thousands of Muslim Afghani fighters into America?

Islamists crashed 2, hijacked US passenger planes
murdering 3,000 people in WTC Twin Towers

"Celebrating Our Enemies, Twenty Years after 9/11" by Bruce Bawer.
America dives, Islam thrives.   (FrontPage Magazine, Sept 10, 2021)

On 9/11, the world was shown, in one horrific, indelible image, precisely what Islam is all about. Today, to write the previous sentence is to be guilty of Islamophobia. How did that come to be?

It began in the days after 9/11 itself, when George W. Bush - by repeatedly insisting that the cause of the jihadists had nothing to do with Islam - effectively ruled out of bounds any criticism of that religion, or any honest education and open discussion about it. Instead, Bush - who had gotten it into his head that all religions are basically good, and who was manipulated by advisors who wanted to project American power in a part of the world about which they knew very little - used 9/11 as an excuse to rein in Americans’ civil liberties and go nation-building abroad. It was a massive folly, doomed to failure. Why doomed? Because Islam is utterly irreconcilable with American-style freedom and incapable of reform, at least not without a far more aggressive effort than America was willing to commit to. Unlike America, moreover, Islam has a long memory. Muslims recall their forebears’ foiled attempts to conquer the Christian West at Tours in 732 and Vienna in 1683; the attacks of 9/11 were part of a history of such actions that goes back to Islam’s earliest days. Yet few Westerners know about this history or are aware that 9/11 was part of it.

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Egyptian Muslim-raised, Nonie Darwish: 9/11 memorials must quit avoiding & start addressing who attacked us and why 
 

Pres.Biden is importing thousands of Muslim Afghanis
with Afghan/US army experience into American cities
(Photo: BBC News)

"One hundred Afghan evacuees flagged for possible terror ties: report" by Kyle Morris. Fox News.com Sept 3, 2021

Two of the flagged Afghans are being sent to Kosovo for further review amid security concerns

An estimated 100 Afghan refugees from Afghanistan to the United States have been flagged for potential ties to terrorist organizations, including the Taliban, according to a new report.

Of more than 30,000 evacuees from Afghanistan to the U.S., about 10,000 needed additional screening as of Friday," NBC News reported, citing two sources familiar with evacuation efforts. "And of those about 100 were flagged for possible ties to the Taliban or terror groups."

The report stated that two of the flagged Afghans "raised enough concern for additional review" and are being sent to Kosovo for further review amid security concerns.

Many of the fighting-trained Afghani that Pres. Biden couldn't (or won't) properly vette for terror-ties in Afghanistan-vicinity are still ripe for Islamist activism and even jihadism inside of America.

Democracy Broadcasting has published more than 50 video news clips about the jihadist domination of the West over the past 15-years. Please subscribe and/or support our educating and sustaining free societies.

Speeches, crowd of 10,000 at Times Square rally to Stop Iran Nuclear Deal call Democrat congressmen, Senators to accountability

Over 10,000 marched on Times Square in opposition to Obama's Iran sanctions / nuclear deal. Experts and luminaries delivered impassioned remarks. 

Watch addresses by Col. Allen West, Alan Dershowitz, Caroline Glick, Monica Crowley, Mort Zuckerman, Steve Emerson, NY Gov. George Pataki, British Col. Richard Kemp, Wiesenthal's Rabbi Abe Cooper, Helen Freedman, and former Manhattan district attorney Robert Morganthau, among others.

Original video by Democracy Broadcasting News.

Protest at Qatari Consulate in L.A. over US privilege to jihad-abetters

Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas with Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Doha on August 21, 2014. (photo credit: AFP PHOTO/ PPO / THAER GHANEM  via Times of Israel)

In a recent report appearing in the UK-based Telegraph, both Qatar and Kuwait were singled out for openly, and even avidly, aiding fundraising efforts for Islamic State/ISIS terrorists who are currently engaged in fierce clashes with the Syrian army alongside Israel on the Golan Heights. (The Algemeiner 9/7)

Qatar and Turkey are accused of taking over as the main foreign patrons for Hamas after Iran and the Sunni organization had a falling out three years ago - over its support for rebel fighters seeking to dislodge Tehran's ally, Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Qatar hosts Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and has pledged $400 million in infrastructure funding for Hamas. ("Congress goes after 'frenemies' Turkey, Qatar" in al-Monitor 9/9)

Arlan Mitnick organized Qatar Consulate protest in LA

In Beverly Hills, California, an ethnically-diverse group of Christians, Jews, a Hindu Sikh demonstrated against the Obama administration's enabling Qatar's influence - which they feel contradicts America's foreign policy interest to defeat the Islamist groups which persecute non-Muslim peoples, like the Coptic Christians of Egypt and the Jews of Israel. The protest was held outside the Qatar Consulate in Beverly Hills on Sunday, September 7th. Many passing cars honked their horns in solidarity with the protestors

Civic-activist Ted Hayes condemns Obama's embrace of Qatar

Amit Katz: 'Block $11 Bil arms from terrorist hands via Qatar'

Lyric drew flags of peoples Qatar's jihadist funding oppresses

"The Qatari Consulate pays ISIS to kill us all" writes May

"Never Again" means vigilance towards defeating, not appeasing, Jihadism against Judeo-Christianity

The lesson we must recognize and adapt to, this Holocaust & Heroism Remembrance Week 2014.

In the Sultan Knish blog essay, "Never Again," Daniel Greenfield puts into clear terms the big-picture of the west's sacrificing of the Jewish state in hopes of appeasing, rather than thwarting, global Islamism- and the need for Jews to understand and defeat this movement against them.

"When the Jews who fought among the crumbling walls of the Warsaw Ghetto finally made it to Israel, they came just in time to load up their guns and fight once again for their people's survival. The survivors of one genocidal ideology bent on making someone pay for its sense of humiliation came just in time to fight off another version of the same thing.

Holocaust survivor, Jonah Goldrich, facilitates annual Holocaust-lessons gathering in L.A. park


"After 2000 years of running, an indigenous minority that had been kicked around by emperors and caliphs finally made its stand around a handful of farming towns and in alleyways lined by the golden stone of Jerusalem. Men and women who only a few years earlier hid in their homes from Muslim pogroms, covering their children's ears at the cries of "Ibtach Al Yahood", "Kill the Jews", took up arms. They stood alongside the settlers who had drained the swamps, the refugees fleeing Muslim terror in Egypt and Syria and the remains of the original indigenous Jewish population which had survived the conquests of seven empires. They stood and fought for their lives against an ideology that said they had no right to be free because of their religion and the blood in their veins.

Randall Schoenberg, LA Holocaust Museum President, on 2014 memorial ceremony


"Like their Nazi allies, Muslim violence was driven by a need to reverse the humiliations of World War I which dismantled the Ottoman Empire and gave regional minorities like the Jews a chance at rebuilding their own independent countries. But going back to 1914 was only the beginning. Some wanted to go back to 1492 and the fall of Granada. Others in the Saudi desert were dreaming of a return to the 6th century. But what they all had in common was a refusal to tolerate an independent non-Muslim state in their midst.

Jewish Daily Forward editor, J.J. Goldberg


"...So long as the world community accepts the inevitability of Islamic dominance, then Israel will always be the goat. The sacrifice to appease the beast.

If Never Again means anything at all, it is a refusal to be the sacrifice, to be placed on the altar of appeasement for a Holocaust, a burnt offering, to the Muslim Moloch of insatiable rage and genocidal fanaticism."  Read Daniel Greenfield's full article, "Never Again."

Israeli Consul General to U.S. Southwest David Siegel



Dr. Ari Babaknia , Persian doctor publishes Iran-squelched, Holocaust history


L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti addresses Holocaust Remembrance Day 2014



School children's choir perform "Al Shlosha D'varim" at LA Museum of the Holocaust ceremony

Pat Condell - Has fear of Islamophobia-slinging reactionaries cowed democrats into "A Society of Cowards?"

Democracy commentator, Pat Condell, chides Westerners for our self-imposed censorship regarding criticism of Islamism and Islamist intimidation.

9/11 ceremony in L.A. rekindles the memory of victims (civilian & civil-servants) of Jihadist terror attack- and reunites the free-world in resolve to defeat Jihad

Ceremony held 9/11/11 at the Simon Wiesenthal Center was moderated by Director, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, and featured in this video:
L.A. Police Band conducted by Sam Holcum; 
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; 
Rabbi Marvin Hier; 
LAPD Deputy Chief responsible for Counter-terrorism Michael Downing; 
Angeleno survivor of WTC attack, Steve Silva;
L.A. City Officials and foreign diplomats from around the world reciting the names of L.A.-affiliated victims of the jihadist attack on America on September 11, 2001;

Is Islam a threat to democracy? Rabbi Abe Cooper's perspectives:




Rabbi Marvin Hier discusses the media's unwillingness to address Islamist supremacism as a motivation of the terror aspect of the global Jihad movement.

Israel Defence Forces former chief, Halutz, intimates about defending democracy against fundamentalist Islam

Former IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz intimated on Sept 11th perspectives that Israel and American military leaders face in defending freedom against militant Islam. Address given to American Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, SouthWest Region in Los Angeles.

Muslim Brotherhood-related, Muslim Students Associations West Convention at UCLA Friday-Sunday to 'Take Back Our Narrative'

"Take back our narrative?" From who? Apologist liberal press? Academics? Obama Administration? Which dissenters will be there? Organized or independently?
MSA West is an organization comprised of Muslim Student Associations (MSAs) representing campuses across the west coast, and is a council of MSA National. It will hold its annual convention Friday 14 Jan -Sunday 16 Jan at UCLA's Ackerman Hall. The MSA was started by activists involved with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA) has chapters at nearly 600 colleges and universities across North America. Treated by administrators and student governments alike as a respectable political organization, the MSA has, over the past few years, sponsored a series of vile expressions of Jew-hatred in a variety of campus and non-campus venues.

Photo courtesy BareNakedIslam



On Saturday evening from 5:50 - 6:50, Taher Herzallah will lead a panel about promoting American BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction) from Israel. Moshe Dann has written an excellent analysis of this movement for YNet: Jew-hatred's other face - BDS campaigns promote intentionally ugly, one-dimensional representation of Israel.

 Fighting the Campus War against Israel and the Jews: the Muslim Students Association)

A few examples serve to illustrate the content of the MSA’s character:
In October 2000, the president of UCLA’s MSA led a crowd of demonstrators at the Israeli consulate in chants of "Death to Israel!" and "Death to the Jews!"

At UCLA's annual "Anti-Zionist Week" festivities, rank-and-file MSA members have raised money for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, who are solemnly sworn to the mass murder of Jews and the annihilation of Israel.  (John Perazzo in FrontPage Magazine's

Big Peace published a serialization of Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy Report analyzing Shariah - The Threat to America"

The self-proclaimed goal of the Muslim Brotherhood in the USA (according to court-submitted evidence) is:

"The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization-Jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all religions.

Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who choose to slack."

In this Spring 2009 speech presented at University of California at Los Angeles, self-proclaimed ex-terrorist, Walid Shoebat, advocates for internal political reform of theocratized Moslem societies.



(Background for Mr. Shoebat's remarks are made during first 18 minutes. Please be patient with wireless microphone signal which strengthens after 18:30 minute point in 47 minute program. Thank you).


Know the Front Groups to Know the Networks

The Center for Security Policy's Team B report ("Shariah- The Threat to America") shows that the ties of such groups to the Muslim Brotherhood can nonetheless be readily established by the involvement in their founding and/or operations of individuals associated with other Ikhwan fronts.

In order to be considered by the Muslim Brotherhood to be one of “our organizations” or an “organization of our friends,” all of these entities had to have embraced the aforementioned Ikhwan creed: “Allah is our goal; the Messenger is our guide: the Koran is our law; Jihad is our means; and martyrdom in the way of Allah is our inspiration.”


As we have seen, the actualization of the Muslim Brotherhood creed demands the triumph of shariah globally and the re-establishing the caliphate on a global basis. This end-state will entail subordinating to shariah the governing system of non-Islamic nations like ours (and Muslim nations not currently adhering to Islamic law) and, in due course, the destruction of such alternatives.


Pre-violent Jihad

The inherently seditious nature of the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda and its incompatibility with Western civilization and governments is typically obscured in the Free World by the assertion that the Ikhwan only seeks to achieve its objectives through non-violent means. As a result, the Brothers, their allies and proxies are all-too-often considered to be acceptable and reliable partners for governments seeking to counter violent jihad.

Such openness to the Ikhwan is astounding not only because of the toxic nature of the MB’s ambitions.

It also ignores the fact that Brotherhood doctrine recognizes that violence must be used when needed to achieve shariah’s supremacist objectives. For example, the Brotherhood bylaws call for Muslims to “fight the tyrants” when necessary to establish the Islamic State, indicating violence is approved when the time is appropriate.

Even more dispositive is the fact that the U.S. State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, Hamas, was formed out of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. In addition, jihadi organizations such as al Qaeda sprang out of the Muslim Brotherhood and have among their leaders senior Muslim Brothers.

These realities underscore the inadvisability of any “outreach” to American Muslim organizations that espouse shariah, whether or not they acknowledge a tie to the Muslim Brotherhood.

When leaders neglect 9/11, patriotic citizens pony-up to fill public demand, staging 9/11 Memorial Tribute; Accuse gov't leaders of neglecting civic responsibility over paralyzing stigma of 'Islamophobia'

Los Angeles' primary 9/11 memorial of 2010 was organized not by the county or city, but by San Fernando Valley Patriots' coordinator, Karen Kenney, at the Van Nuys Fire Station. She presented a memorial for the victims of the World Trade Center attacks of 2001 at the fire station which, as the first Californian responders to travel to join the NYC rescue effort, was rewarded with a remnant of the fallen towers, which is displayed in a memorial statue in front of the Sepulveda Boulevard station-house. Batallion Chief Jerry Mallay offers a special, "10-bells" tribute to the intrepid, fallen firefighters. Letters from the victims families were read in a dramatic reminder of the West's obligation to oppose and defeat the Islamist revolution.



Ms. Kenney calls for federal state, and city leaders to commemorate the events of 9/11 by declaring it an official day of mourning - and to assume responsibility to provide memorial activities for the public.

(If you'd donate a token of appreciation, you could help sustain the Democracy Broadcasting media resource. Thank you).

N.J. man ignites Koran pages at Ground Zero declaring, "Americans should never be afraid to give their opinion"

N.Y. Daily News reports: "A man ripped pages from a Koran and lit them aflame at a protest near the proposed site of a community center and mosque near Ground Zero on Saturday.

"If they can burn American flags, I can burn the Koran," shouted the unidentified man. "America should never be afraid to give their opinion."

The man was led away by police but did not appear to be arrested."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/09/11/2010-09-11_man_ignites_koran_near_ground_zero_apparently_prompted_by_florida_pastor_terry_j.html#ixzz0zGkziuSQ

Update: 14 Septembe:: Koran burner Derek Fenton booted from his job at NJ Transit
NJ Transit said Fenton was fired but wouldn't give specifics.  "Mr. Fenton's public actions violated New Jersey Transit's code of ethics," an agency statement said.  "NJ Transit concluded that Mr. Fenton violated his trust as a state employee and therefore [he] was dismissed."  Fenton was ushered from the protests by police on Saturday and questioned, but he was released without charges.
If Fenton was fired for burning the Koran while off-duty, his First Amendment rights probably were violated, Chris Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union said. "The Supreme Court has recognized a constitutional right to burn the flag. As reprehensible as it may be, burning the Koran would be protected as well."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/09/14/2010-09-14_koran_burner_derek_fenton_fired_from_his_job_at_nj_transit.html#ixzz0zarNHtXf

"The Unfought War on Islamism" by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, narrator of "The Third Jihad"

American’s educational system has seemed unwilling to enlighten our children to the nature, history, and implications of the war that has been declared on us and on free people in general by Islamist theocratic totalitarians.

At best, the subject is entirely avoided in America’s classrooms; at worst, it is ascribed to causes that facts prove are untrue — such as poverty or American foreign policy.

We have come the seventh anniversary of 9/11, and sadly, our educational system is still in a collective paralysis over “the Islamist threat.” No issue better encapsulates the long overdue battle of ideas domestically and globally against the Islamists than the woeful coverage our schools give 9/11 and the theology of political Islam.

In short, “political Islam” is a belief that Muslims have both a duty and obligation to promote the public application of their interpretation of sharia, and where possible, establish Islamic states. Terrorists do this by any means necessary; non-violent Islamists do it through patient advocacy and slow societal change.

Many have said that the primary solution to this conflict lies within the Muslim consciousness. This is true. The only antidote to the cultivation and corruption of theocratic pre-modern Islam is a liberal post-modern Islam.