By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — Opponents of the mosque and community center near Ground Zero are planning a large protest for this year's 9/11 anniversary.
The group Stop Islamization of America, which organized the June 6 protest that drew hundreds people to Zuccotti Park, announced the new demonstration on Monday.
"If you feel this mosque is an insult, a stab in the eye to those Americans who lost their lives in the largest attack on American soil in history, now is the time," wrote Pamela Geller, executive director of Stop Islamization of America.
Geller has not set the exact time and location of the protest, but she said it would take place near Ground Zero in the afternoon of Sept. 11, after the annual memorial ceremony for the victims in the morning. Politicians and 9/11 family members will speak and Taps will sound.
"This is a solemn protest," Geller wrote on the SIOA website. "Please, no inflammatory signs."
Geller initially planned to hold the protest on Sept. 12, but that conflicts with the 9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington, a major Tea Party event that will likely draw a similar crowd.
Commenters on the SIOA website are already giving each other advice on how to travel between New York and Washington for the two demonstrations.
Geller is also urging mosque foes to make a stand at Tuesday night's Community Board 1 meeting.
Geller and others are fighting to landmark 45-47 Park Place, which is slated to be torn down so the new 13-story, $100 million mosque and community center can built. Landmarking the building could slow the project down or even stop it entirely.
"We need to be there! ALL OF US," Geller wrote on her blog last week, referring to Tuesday’s CB1 meeting.
"It is critical that the world sees we will not go away and that we won't back down. We need to be orderly and civil, but we need to let these people know we will not back down."
Community Board 1 already voted in May to support the secular components of the project, and the board’s Landmarks Committee gave the project another boost earlier this month with an advisory vote that 45-47 Park Place is not significant enough to landmark.
The city Landmarks Preservation Commission, which will make the final decision in August, held a contentious three-hour hearing on the building July 13. The public comment period ended July 20, a commission spokeswoman said, so it is unclear whether tonight's CB1 vote will have any weight.
The planned Islamic enter, recently renamed Park51, has received a flood of national and international attention in the past couple weeks as everyone from Sarah Palin to Newt Gingrich weighed in.
Last week, a telephone poll by Rasmussen Reports found that just 20 percent of Americans support the mosque portion of the project, while 54 percent oppose it. Republicans and adults over the age of 40 were more likely to oppose the mosque.
Rasmussen polled 1,000 adults around the country, with an error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
A June poll by Quinnipiac University found that Manhattanites support the project 46 percent to 36 percent, though residents of the outer boroughs oppose it.
Also on Tuesday, Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio challenged state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to a debate about the mosque to get to the bottom of "funding" issues.
"Your position on this issue is so wrong and I recognize you may not want to defend it but all the same I am asking you to do just that," Lazio wrote.
A Cuomo spokesperson did not immediately return a call for comment.
