This sign was in front of Cheryl Stewart’s Red Hook home for six years. She took it down on Monday, May 2, 2011. (credit: Marla Diamond/WCBS 880)
Reporting Marla Diamond
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - Brooklyn sculptor Cheryl Stewart posted a large sign with red letters outside her Coffey Street home as a protest of the Iraq war.
WCBS 880′s Marla Diamond: It Became A Community Project
It listed the number of years and days since 9/11 and asked, “Where is Osama Bin Laden?”
“[It was] one simple question that no one else was asking,” she said.
For nine years and 232 days, she marked each day.
“3,000 of my neighbors were killed and my whole city was changed and I took it very personally,” she told WCBS 880 reporter Marla Diamond.
Sometimes neighbors helped.
“This was symbolic. Once it got started, the snowball had to keep rolling,” Michael Hornstein, who lives across the street, said.
“It’s kind of made people aware of it,” neighbor Izzy Hornstein said.
Her Red Hook neighbors took down the sign yesterday after someone put “dead” over the numbers – following the killing of Bin Laden at the hands of a U.S. Navy SEAL team in Pakistan.
“I am relieved not to change the numbers anymore. It’s actually become a part of me, but I’m very glad to let it go,” said Stewart. “It’s a great day for everyone that this criminal is gone. It just should have happened a long, long time ago.”
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