At an annual event in Roosevelt Island’s FDR Four Freedoms Park, Freedom was more than an overworked cliche. It was dramatic and visionary. Friends and supporters gathered for a special Sunset Garden Party in New York City’s most serene space.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
In a Special Year, the Emphasis on Freedom
With the creative imagination of Four Freedoms Park Conservancy CEO Howard Axel, the annual keystone event – The Sunset Garden Party – is never a routine exercise. But this year, it stepped out a little further, teaming with the IIE Scholarship Rescue Fund, highlighting the perilous state of freedom across the globe.

Rescue Fund Chairman Allan Goodman offered a brief but stirring speech about the plight of liberty today. He then introduced a pair of scholars who shared their experiences where freedom is violently suppressed.

Developing this year’s breakthrough program, Voices of Freedom, Axel drew on a realistic portrait contrasting President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s carefully drawn declarations with the reality the world faces today.
Highlights from FDR’s 1941 State of the Union address emerge from speakers nested inside the linden trees. Roosevelt’s bust gazes back. To this, Axel and his team added contemporary accents in partnership with the IIE Scholarship Rescue Fund.


The Voices of Freedom


As the sunset deepened, visitors drifted out of the park. But the freedoms voiced by President Roosevelt got a contemporary update. The fight we can’t take for granted goes on.
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