Quote:

---

After the World Trade Center towers fell, a stripper named Chris went to volunteer in the recovery effort for the Red Cross. Nearly 10 years later, she dances just down the street from Ground Zero at the Pussycat Lounge.

Thousands of workers spend their days toiling in the neighborhood around the World Trade Center site, a space that has gained renewed national attention amid controversial plans to build an Islamic center there.

The project, known as Park51, is opposed by a majority of New York residents in recent opinion polls. Politicians both local and national argue that the plan is insensitive to families touched by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, among others, has referred to the area around Ground Zero as “hallowed ground.”

But for Chris, who declined to give her last name, and other dancers at the two strip clubs within three blocks of the World Trade Center site, the neighborhood is just where they go to work.

(more)

---

Hallowed ground.