Democracy Now! Tuesday, September 8, 2026

0:00From New York this is democracy now. There were so many toxic chemicals in those buildings. People pulverized burning at ground zero for months. The nation's dams would get people in New York City and the Jersey. It was George Bush who personally ordered the reopening of the financial district within a week of the attacks. Sending hundreds of thousands of people back to work into that toxic area. As New York prepares to commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9-11, Mayor Zorhan Mamdani has ordered the release of more than 170,000 records suggesting New Yorkers were as misled

1:02about the air quality and the aftermath of the attacks. We'll spend the hour on 9-11 health with a former firefighter, an EMT, flight attendant Union head Sarah Nelson, journalist Bob Henley, and our own Juan González, author of Fallout, the environmental consequences of the World Trade Center collapse. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org the warrant, peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. Saudi Arabia is vowed to retaliate after a run back toothy forces from Yemen, struck Saudi cities, and energy sites leaving over 70 people injured, including children. The Houthis claimed the attacks were an retaliation for more than 120 strikes launched by Saudi Arabia on Yemen over the last three days. The major escalation and fighting came after the U.S. said Saturday, it struck three Iranian

2:03oil tankers, disabling two of them, sinking a third. Teraan said it attacked three U.S. affiliated vessels in response. The tit for tat strikes come a day after President Trump played down the U.S. war in Iran as, quote, small potatoes, unquote. On Monday, Iran's Supreme National Security Council announced Teraan is planning a maritime exclusion zone outside the Strait of Hormuz, where it attends to stop vessels attempting to transit the waterway without Iranian permission. We are making changes into the straits of Hormuz from now on in Shalah in the coming days and weeks. We're going to announce a restricted prohibited zone outside the Strait of Hormuz, which begins from the blockade line of the U.S. Navy, including the Strait of Hormuz, and extends to the Persian Gulf from the other side. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary Chris Wright admitted in an interview on Sunday that there may not

3:07be an agreement that would prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. There is also no sign of a nuclear agreement. You talk about that, President Trump talks about that, but where's the sign that they're going to have a nuclear agreement? There may not be a nuclear agreement. It may be simply destroying their capabilities to do it. An agreement may await a next administration in Iran. We simply don't know that. U.S. government investigators administered polygraph exams to about 50 people on the military's joint staff in August. And its press reports about shrinking supplies of key weapons, such as long-range missiles and patriot interceptors. That's according to multiple news outlets, which report both uniformed officers and civilian staff were interrogated. Over whether they discuss munitions stockpiles with journalists or pass along classified material, this comes as defense secretary Pete Hegseth has held no briefings with the Pentagon press

4:09corps on the U.S. war in Iran since May 5th, and has moved to restrict reporters' access at the Pentagon. Southern Lebanon is really straggs on Monday killed 11 people, including two children. They follow Israeli attacks one day earlier that killed seven people. Just days earlier, Israel's military announced it had captured a strategic rage overlooking the city of Nabatea. Despite a ceasefire, Israel claims its troops will continue occupying Southern Lebanon until Hasbala is disarmed. This is Mustafa Hawi, who is injured in Israeli strikes. My son, here he is injured. We just came back from the clinic. They did a scanner imaging for him. He had a shrapnel, glass, pebble, or shrapnel in his kidney. So thank God, the same for me. I was hurt in my hands, legs, and head too. They did a scanner imaging because I had a concussion in my head. Israel continues to carry out deadly strikes on the Gaza Strip despite the U.S. brokered so-called ceasefire.

5:10And Sunday in Israeli strike hit a vehicle in western Gaza City, killing Yusuf Akhila and his eight-year-old daughter, Wafa. Six others were wounded. Separately, Israeli strikes killed at least one person in your hotel, the communication site east of Gaza City. And Israeli tank fired on a school, housing displaced families, killing three-year-old Saddi Ghalia. This is the boy's grandmother. They were asleep at night. The shell came at them from that area by the children's heads. Saddi was martyred, jude, malach, and tazni were wounded. Their father fainted, and their mother could not process as she was sitting in the corner, and the shell was spinning and spinning around them. On Sunday, Palestinians held funerals for about 100 people whose bodies were recently recovered from the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza City, say, two neighborhood.

6:12Victims included 55 members of the Malakah family who were killed in an Israeli-air strike November 2023. In the occupied West Bank, a 19-year-old Palestinian was shot dead. Three others were wounded. After armed, Israeli settlers and soldiers converged on the northern village of Haja on Monday. Children said both settlers and soldiers opened fire with bullets, tear gas, and stun grenades, according to the UN, Israeli armed forces and settlers have killed at least 79 Palestinians across the West Bank since the start of the year, including 19 children. The latest attacks came after US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, issued a rare condemnation of Israeli-settler violence, calling their actions acts of terrorism. Unquote. Huckabee's comments came during a rare meeting with Palestinian Americans in the Palestinian town of Termosaya on Saturday, including relatives of US citizens killed by settlers. However, Huckabee did not criticize Israel's government for encouraging settler violence.

7:17In Ukraine, at least two people were killed and ten others injured overnight as Russia's military fire drones and missiles had keve. Authorities report civilian infrastructure was hit in at least 16 sites around the capital region. Ukraine countered with drone attacks on Russian territory that officials said killed one person and injured several others, and attack on the Russian and next Crimean peninsula that reportedly killed a civilian. The violence followed a three-day pause on attacks on Moscow and Kiev that co-incited with visits by US envoy Steve Whitkov and President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Whitkov said after three-hour talks with Putin and Moscow on Saturday that he hopes to revive three-way negotiations to end the war. However, President Zelensky said the talks produced no breakthrough and warned Ukraine's war with Russia is likely continue into the winter. Meanwhile, Ukraine's prosecutor general resigned from his post today days after anti-corruption

8:20agents raided his office. His office is accused of operating a criminal ring that accepted bribes to protect fraudulent call centers while laundering millions of dollars. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is refusing to step down after a center-right Christian Democratic Union suffered a major defeat to a far-right party in a weakened regional election. The AFD, or alternative for Germany party, won 43.8% of the vote in the East German state of Saxony Unhold. It was the strongest showing by a far-right party in a German election since the Nazis. Germany's mainstream parties have pledged not to enter into a governing coalition with the AFD. Rights groups warn the party's rise has stoked fear in immigrant communities. This is undragessler, director of the state network of migrant organizations. As his idea, I have lived with people with migration background in Saxony Unhold.

9:22I have experienced discrimination and racism on a daily basis. They face structural disadvantages in accessing work, education, healthcare, and also dealing with government agencies. And all of this is our reality. This isn't anything new for us. The question is, how will this develop further? The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution encouraging members to adopt maps that more accurately portray the size of continents. The resolution to switch to an equal-earth projection was proposed by Togo, which notes that the more commonly used Mercator projection distorts northern land masses to appear much larger than they really are with Greenland and Africa appearing roughly the same size. Even though Africa is 14 times larger, this is Togo's foreign minister, Robert Dussi. This adoption comes as the historic moment for Africa and for the world.

10:23It affirms the need for more accurate, more balanced, balanced and more geographically faithful representation of our planets. The vote to switch to more accurate maps was 164 to 1, the United States, the sole objector. The Trump administration dismissed the vote as a radical ideological project. The Trump administration's deleted critical references to a Confederate memorial that previously stood at Arlington National Cemetery. The bronze Confederate memorial depicts an enslaved woman carrying an infant child of a white officer as well as an enslaved man following his owner to war. The memorial came down in 2023 under a Congressional mandate requiring military property to be cleared of names and imagery honoring the Confederacy and its leaders. The marker in the cemetery has been replaced by a new sign that omits wording, critical

11:29of slavery and the Confederacy. According to a new marker in Arlington National Cemetery at the memorial's former site, the statue is set to be redisplayed next year. The Trump administration's renewed its appeal to the Supreme Court to allow new restrictions on male ballots ahead of November's midterm elections. The request followed a U.S. district judge's decision to extend an order barring the postal service from carrying out President Trump's executive order ahead of election day. This comes as states have already begun mailing ballots. So feel and liken the director of the ACLU's voting rights project, said in a statement, quote, this administration is racing to the Supreme Court to demand the right to enforce a rule that has no purpose other than to create chaos, undermine election integrity, and rob eligible voters of their essential right to make their voices heard in our democracy, she said. A newly released records from the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on the World

12:32Trade Center, shown New York City health officials were still detecting asbestos up to a half a mile from the site 10 months later. Despite official assurances after 9-11 at the air near the collapsed towers was safe. Over 170,000 pages of air quality reports contamination data and internal city correspondence sat in boxes in the city office for more than 20 years. And city officials say they were only found last year. Mayors O'Ran Mamdani has ordered the material posted to a public online portal. This comes as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former New York governor George Pataki said mayor Mamdani should skip the upcoming 9-11 memorial commemorating its 25th anniversary. Giuliani went on an Islamic phobic tirade on Newsmax, claiming Mamdani as a supporter of a supposed Muslim plot aimed at quote, taking over certain parts of America and certain

13:35parts of Europe. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. Coming up, we spend the hour on 9-11 health as mayor Zoran Mamdani holds a news conference announcing the release of the 170,000 pages of documents. Stay with us. But even stars will say goodbye and fade beyond the edge of life.

14:45The edge of life, I Julian Jean Glabs. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York joined by Democracy Now's Juan Gonzales in Chicago, Taiwan. Hi Amy, and welcome to all of our list of reviewers across the country and around the world. Despite official assurances after 9-11 and that the air near the collapse twin towers was safe. Newly released records show health officials were still detecting asbestos up to half a mile from the site 10 months later. Over 170,000 pages of air quality reports contamination data and internal city correspondence

15:51says sat in 68 boxes in a city office for more than 20 years. City officials claim they were only found last year. New York City mayor Zoran Mamdani has ordered the material to be posted to a public online portal in time to commemorate this week's 25th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Mamdani's office budgeted some $34 million as the administration in the coming months plans to review, redact, and publish more previously unreleased documents linked to the environmental and health hazards in the aftermath of 9-11. In the weeks and months that followed the attacks, former New York City mayor Zoridi Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg as well as other city officials reassured residents and workers, it was safe to return to the area surrounding ground zero, concealing the dangers of lingering toxins in the air after the collapse of the twin towers.

16:53Today more people are believed to have died from cancer, respiratory, and other illnesses due to exposure to the toxins than the nearly 3,000 people killed on September 11, 2001. The historic release of the documents comes as part of litigation brought by the advocacy group 9-11 Health Watch, which sued New York City to force the publication of the records. Before we're joined by a roundtable of guests, including a former firefighter and an EMT, including the Union leader, Sarah Nelson and Bob Henley, the reporter. I want to turn to this clip from the award-winning documentary, Steel This Story, Please, about Democracy Now. It's directed by T. Alesson and Carl Diel. We go back to Democracy Now 25 years ago. The broadcast was on air when news of the attack broke.

17:54Our firehouse studio was located in Chinatown, not far from the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. The clip also looks at our very own Hwanga and Salas is outstanding reporting on 9-11 and the toxic nightmare on the ground. I'm going to interrupt this tape conversation. Just a little while ago, we heard a loud, sonic boom like crash and we heard sirens. Well, it appears that planes crashed into the upper floors of both World Trade Center towers. Minutes apart, we're in Chinatown, we're not far from the World Trade Center buildings. This is all unfolding as this broadcast takes place. Fowards of smoke engulfing the World Trade Center. It was actually there the day of the attack covering it for the newspaper, as well as for Democracy Now. All of Long Manhattan turned dark in the middle of a cloudless, sunny day.

18:57You are listening to Ground Zero, the War and Peace Report. We're broadcasting just blocks from what used to be the towers of the World Trade Center. This weekend, not much luck with finding anyone alive in the rubble. We spent last week since the attacks here because we were afraid we would not be able to come into broadcast if we ever left the site. We are in the evacuation zone. That whole area was off limits after the attack. But Amy managed to keep producing the show. Military. There's a lot of smoke around here. There were so many toxic chemicals in those buildings, all pulverized and burning at Ground Zero for months. As nations dance, we're the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Canada.

20:00It was George Bush who personally ordered the reopening of the financial district within a week of the attacks, sending hundreds of thousands of people back to work into that toxic area. Ladies and gentlemen, our heroes will now open the market close. There was a concerted effort of the business community, the national leaders and the local leaders to quell the idea that there were problems at Ground Zero. The air quality is safe and acceptable. Everything we're getting back from the sampling that we're doing is below background levels. And the press bought the official narrative. Test conducted by the EPA say once again no hazardous substances have been detected in the air. If the mayor says it's okay, then I believe it's okay.

21:01Co-host Juan Gonzales has a cover story in today's daily news. He says toxic chemicals and metals are being released into the environment around Lower Manhattan, dioxins, PCBs, benzene, lead. No one else was following the story and all the government officials were denying what I was saying. My editor was removed just because he continued to defend me. They buried me back in the back pages, the paper. But I continued reporting the story and at Democracy Now, we continue to get information into the hands of the public. No one tested the dust cloud that came down on tens of thousands of people. So no one can say what the impact of such a massive dose of so much. The only thing that I was wrong about was that it didn't take 20 years for people to start dying. Only took five years. The search and rescue workers are experiencing a high level of respiratory illness, but it's

22:02not only the rescue workers. Chronic coughs of respiratory infections, bronchitis pneumonia asthma are plaguing residents and students at ground zero. That was a clip from the award-winning documentary about Democracy Now called Steel This Story Please, which will be available on digital platforms in the United States in October. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzales. One, you were on the ground reporting on 9-11 as people could just watch and hear. You also compiled your columns for the New York Daily News and went further in your book Fallout, the environmental consequences of the World Trade Center collapse. We are speaking today in New York City. On the day that Mayor Zoraan Mamdani is releasing 170,000 pages of documents about what the

23:06city understood about the toxins at ground zero, something you were reporting from the beginning. I'm wondering if you could read what you were writing at that time. Then we're going to go to a firefighter, former EMT, a student at Stivis and High School that was right near ground zero, the Union Chiefs, Sarah Nelson and WBII Head, Bob Henley, who's been reporting on this 25 years later. But Juan, your reporting was prescient. Yes, Amy. It's sad that it's taken all this time for the city officials to finally release the documentation. But back then, my small book on this came out as I compiled the columns only a few months after the attack in April of 2002.

24:07But I wrote back then, Christie Whitman, Mayor Giuliani and the other public officials should have told New Yorkers the truth from the start that no one could guarantee the air around ground zero was safe, because no one had ever confronted a disaster of such proportions. They should have, they should also have released all the raw data on government testing as soon as they had the first results and make clear that safety levels for many of these toxins did not even exist. The early blanket assurances that government officials issued were a grave mistake, and their continued defense of those assurances in the face of widespread, public skepticism was inexcusable. Thousands of people may end up paying for that deception through unnecessary illness or premature death in the decades to come. And they rushed to return New York City and Wall Street to business as usual, these

25:12short-sided officials unwittingly paved the way for a second wave of victims from the World Trade Center tragedy. And scrutinizing the government response to the collapse, I am not suggesting that there was some secret conspiracy to hide the facts or that anyone intentionally set out to mislead the people of New York. But I have no doubt that some officials saw what they wanted to see, and they irresponsibly chose to minimize or dismiss any post-collapse environmental threat. They did so for any number of reasons or combination of them out of ignorance in response to political pressures from superiors, or because they underestimated the environmental threats from toxic releases, something that is all too common in the history of such disasters. Once ordinary citizens questioned their assurances, however, those officials closed ranks, disembled,

26:15hit important information, and refused to listen or alter their policies. My aim here is to outline key lessons of this saga for the general public so that this kind of deception is not repeated should another catastrophe occur in the future. And unfortunately now it's taken 25 years for the officials to finally say, hey, let's release the information that we had at the time and let the public judge whether we acted appropriately. And it's unfortunate that Mayor Giuliani perhaps achieved architect of all of this deception and dissembling is still trying to make public statements in reference to the 9-11 tragedy. And one, the picture on the cover of your book Fallout says so much, explain the irony. Well, Giuliani was the one who assumed complete control for months of the site and would not

27:17allow federal safety regulations, EPA safety regulations to be implemented because he kept insisting that it was a disaster site and not a recovery situation where everyone working at the site, the thousands of people working at the site would have had to follow safety precautions for themselves. And his insistence on being the center of everything in that days after 9-11 I think was a key factor of why so many people ended up getting sick and unfortunately dying at the time. And it's a picture of him wearing a mask and talk about Mayor Giuliani today when it comes to 9-11 health. Yes. And the irony of it all is that he was claiming the air was safe back then and now he's claiming that he has been sickened as a result of exposure to toxins at the ground zero

28:19site. And several other members of his administration at the time also have claimed that they were sick and at the time, yet they were telling everyone that the air was safe. We're joined now by a round table of guests in our New York studio and beyond. Bob Henley, award-winning investigative journalist, broadcast and front reporter for more than 40 years general manager of WBAI Pacifica radio here in New York, host of what's going on, Labor Monday. He broadcasts live during the 9-11 attacks a quarter of a century ago and has been covering the 9-11 development since then. Lyla Nordstrom is with us. She was a high school student at Stuyvesson High School on 9-11. The closest school to the World Trade Center. She's a writer, a public health advocate, founder of the advocacy group Stuy Health, author of the memoir Some Kids Left Behind, an activist account of beating bureaucracy and building a movement which came out in paperback last week. Marianne Pizzitola is with us.

29:20Retired EMT, emergency medical technician for the New York City Fire Department after the 9-11 attacks she founded. FDNY EMS Retirees Association has since founded in his president of the NYC organization of Public Service Retirees Association. Sarah Nelson is the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, CWA AFL CIO. She's now serving her fourth term in that role. She's been a union flight attendant since she was hired by United Airlines in 1996 and now representing 55,000 aviation first responders from 20 airlines and were joined by Captain Brenda Berkman, a retired firefighter here in New York City. Brenda is the vice president of monumental women and Brenda we're going to begin with you. Talk about what you were doing 25 years ago, what you understood to be the case and safety for the firefighters and for you as a firefighting woman, what that has meant, who has been

30:25left out from being cared for today 25 years later. Good morning Amy and Juan and thank you very much for having us on here today. Excuse me. Yeah, so on 9-11 I was off duty but I responded off duty to the World Trade Center and I had a group of my own off duty firefighters with me. It's a long story. We got there right as the second tower, the North Tower collapsed. So the air was completely full of dust and debris and because we were off duty we came down there without any protective equipment, no respiratory protection, no radios to communicate with really no real tools and we had to do what firefighters do, namely look for anyone

31:25who might still be alive in the pile of rubble and stretch hoses to put out the fires, get water out of the Hudson because the water mains in Lower Manhattan had been disrupted when the towers fell down. It was really complete disaster beyond what anyone could possibly imagine but in those early days we did what we had to do despite the lack of protective equipment because we believe people to still be alive and we wanted to get to them. But as time went on and we realized that no one could still be alive, we went into recovery effort and that meant we were looking for remains and people may not recall but we were digging through the pile and using rakes to spread out all the debris to look for anyone's

32:31remains. We were working alongside really heavy equipment as time went on that picked up big loads of debris and dumped it, creating a cloud. This went on for 10 months and at first there was no proper decontamination at all. We were walking around with this dust really all over the city back to our homes and for instance in the case of my fire truck which we were able to start using again after we got some of the dust out of the engine. It was never properly decontaminated for 18 months so that meant that every time we turned on the AC or the heat system or changed the headlight, poof, dust blew out on us. So this went on but the point I want to really make and the other panel members are really

33:32going to be able to expand on this is that because there was a relatively small number of women first responders so in the New York City fire department only about 25 women were in the fire department in the fire houses out of 11,500 firefighters at the time in 9.11 and half of us were down there on the day of 9.11 and got exposed to all of those toxins that day but also many, many days thereafter for the next 10 months. And in the police it was slightly higher in EMS it was higher but the point being that people don't understand that not every medical condition is covered by the medical monitoring program and indeed for the civilian people who are just now finding out that they should be part of the medical monitoring program. Civilian people have to show a condition before they can

34:38start to be monitored which means they could already have come down with cancer in an advanced stage before they exhibit symptoms or whatever. So women's cancers have been left out of the equation for being covered under the medical monitoring program because the government was arguing that they didn't have the proper statistical comparisons and Lyle has talked about this. I'm sure Mary Ann has also talked about this and Bob knows that you know they weren't, there's certain women's conditions that have never been properly studied so they don't even know what the you know what how many women come down with this stuff in the general population. So they don't have anything to compare it with. I mean it's really, I commend the mayor for

35:42releasing the documents that he has released. I hope that the city continues to do this going forward that they release all of the documents that we have full transparency so we can know. We have no idea how many people, how many women especially have died from 9-11 related conditions. Yeah, I'd like to bring Lyle Nordstrom into the conversation. Lyle, you were a student at Styrus in high school at the time. I remember when I was covering the subsequent events after 9-11 talking often with Mary Lennon, Chris Duda who at the time was the head of the Parents Association at Styrus and who was fighting constantly to get the city to be clear about what the dangers were for the students who were brought back into Styrus and about I think it was a month after the attack. Did you talk to us about your experiences?

36:45Yeah, absolutely. I think you know so often when people want to hear this story they want to hear the story of the day itself which was certainly traumatic but I think the story of Stivocent really most begins on October 9th which is the day that we came back to our original building three blocks from the World Trade Center. Marlena, Chris, Dulu had already been engaged in a long conversation as it has the rest of the Parents Association with the Department of Education about the safety of the building and numerous false assurances were made about the condition that we would find the building in and that included that they claimed that they had done a very deep cleaning that there had been hepa filters installed and that students would find that the building was sort of decontaminated and when we got back it was clear that that was not the case. We went through five police checkpoints on our way into the building on the first day so you know we were essentially being paraded in front of television cameras as part of the messaging efforts to show that downtown was safe but as soon as we got into the building not only did we find that there were no hepa filters and the building had never really been adequately cleaned but also

37:49the school itself was located next to the barge that they were bringing all the debris from the site too. So that meant that the building was being recontaminated on a daily basis every day for months and months not to mention the fact that fires burned at the site until I think the end of January. Other schools in the area pushed back their returns based on the experience that we were having at Stivocent and they didn't do a full cleaning of the building until the next summer. And what grade were you in? I was a senior and you ended up writing a book what happened to the Stivocent students? Again, Stivocent High School was on the Hudson River. Yeah, and one of the reasons I wrote the book was because I wanted not only there to be an accounting of the story because it felt like the national narrative had really excluded survivors from the conversation but I also wanted there to be a story of the advocacy efforts and the fact that we were involved in the subsequent advocacy efforts that secured this a drug act in three

38:49different occasions. I think there's a perception that you know that was a story that only involved first responders and that the community really didn't play a role in that process but the community which includes 300,000 people that were downtown played a role in that process has access to those programs on a in a different way than responders but was an important part of that advocacy effort as well. And could you talk about the students and even faculty that became sick? I think one one teacher at Stivocent immediately requested a transfer as a result of his illnesses immediately after getting back into the school. Yeah, he was actually my math teacher and I it led to well really the end of my experiences of math student because things fell apart from there but there were a lot of reports early on of you know respiratory conditions, nose bleeds, headaches and that sort of thing. The New York Times reported that the lines for the nurse's office were stretching around the school in the immediate months after 9-11 but we were told oh those will only be temporary,

39:52there will be no long-term health consequences and I think you know as we as we all know that didn't turn out to be the case I started Sti Health in 2006 as a lifelong asmatic who had just been diagnosed with GERD. I was finding it difficult to afford treatment for just those simple chronic conditions and then a classmate of mine came forward and said well I just got diagnosed with lymphoma could that be related and we started to hear from other classmates that some of those earlier cancers that have shorter latency periods were starting to appear in the student population at Stivocent. Obviously now we're seeing cancers that have slightly longer latency periods we're seeing things like breast cancers and other sort of like more common cancers that strike people in middle age because we're now middle aged. Marianne Pizzatola you were a tired emergency medical technician now with the New York City Fire Department you founded FDNY EMS Retirees Association and our president of the NYC organization of Public Service Retirees. Can you explain what happened then and the medical services that are offered and not offered?

40:58So we've found it's very similar to a lily story that illness is weren't getting covered initially EMS personnel were told oh you couldn't be getting sick you're not a firefighter so don't worry just go back to work it'll be okay but as Brenda said we had the same experiences she did as we would get into our ambulances and dust would come out of the vents and we had to fight for the healthcare that we had I ended up founding the first organization FDNY EMS Retirees in order to get healthcare equality just just just initial baseline healthcare for EMS workers and we had to fight for that and moving into the years right after as we started to find consistent diagnoses at our retiree meetings people were telling us I have autoimmune disorders this is going back as 2004 so we were trying to raise the red flags of things that we were seeing as a pattern and my very first spreadsheets of tracking male female age location of zone diagnoses we brought that to the FDNY and they thought we were crazy and it wasn't until I reached

42:02out to a doctor who I've since lost touch with her name was Dr. Jean Fowl out of Libby Montana and I said we're seeing cancers we're seeing asbestosis we're seeing measletheoleomas we're seeing very unusual autoimmune disorders even in men that are typically found in women or people of color why is Libby significant? Libby is a sick town Libby Montana minds other vimiculate minds that is a sick town from the contamination environmental contamination so the doctor said to me I was waiting for someone to contact me and I was like no you don't understand I am like just an EMT I I'm not like some big managerial person to to to expose this I am telling you I'm doing this as a grassroots style because no one's listening to me and I ended up putting her in touch with Mount Sinai and the fire department Mount Sinai was the only group that started to speak with her and over the years we kept pushing for this mental health autoimmune disorders which I am a sufferer from which is still

43:02not covered cardiac illnesses cognitive impairments these are all things that we've been fighting for to get covered and civilians have to go through that same fight if this just doesn't make any sense we're going to go to a break we've been talking with Marianne Pizzatola who is a former EMT with the fire department with Captain Brenda Berkman also with the fire department we've also been talking with Lila Nordstrom a former stivocent high school student when we come back Bob Henley joins us general manager of WBAI has reported on this issue for years and Sarah Nilsson union chief represents the fire the flight attendants stay with us

44:45coming the ruins this is democracy now democracy now dot org i'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzales as we continue our round table on 9 11 health on this 25th anniversary week of the 9 11 attacks we go now to saran nelson the international president of the association flight attendants CWA AFL CIO now serving her first fourth term as president she's been a union flight attendants since she was hired by united airlines in 1996 now representing 55,000 aviation first responders from 20 airlines welcome to democracy now i want to know where you were on 9 11 at the time you were a united flight attendant based in Boston but you were in Chicago where Juan is today on that day you'd flown on

45:46united flight 175 just the week before the plane that hit the south tower of the world trade center yes i was serving as our local vice president and the union and also as our national striped chair and i had just landed in Chicago to go to a union training but uh so i went to our national office and we were getting the briefings from united uh as we were getting all the flights on the ground we were tracking where all the crews were going and making sure that everyone was on the ground we didn't know how many more flights were in the air that could be affected as it turned out i got the briefing partway through that morning that it had been flight 175 that it hit the south tower of the world trade center and of course if you haven't been around and don't follow the the chronology of the events that is the plane that you can see flying into the south south tower because every camera was trained on that site when american airlines flight 11 hit the north tower

46:5017 minutes earlier so there were already first responders on the way responding to the incident and i know the exact moment that my friends died and i say their names every day Amy Michael Amy Catherine Al Alicia uh Marianne Hayesous and Robert and Robert uh was a good friend these are people that have flew with all the time he related some of the first intelligence to that day from flight 175 about what was going on my handbook is in the 9-11 memorial museum that gave us the exact wrong training for that day we were told to keep everyone calm appease the hijackers and so getting that information from those flights was critically important uh because that got to the crew on flight 93 and it was a crew of all women five women um the pilots were killed immediately um the way 93 was the flight flight 93 was the last flight um uh to take off that day and um that had the hijackers on board and it was taken over that flight was planned to hit the white

47:57house or the capital very likely the capital and the passengers of the crew found out what was going on and they organized together to fight back and i i think that this is the five flight attendants they were all women and uh the passengers between the the flight attendants and the passengers there were white black asian latino uh passengers there were democrats republicans and independence i think this is a really important point but in that moment they were just one they were unified to be to fight back with urgency um and they did fight back to try to save their own lives but definitely made it possible to save the u.s. capital and so many other lives on the ground and i think that that is a really really important point that this is what we need right now to fight with urgency to get people what they need we need medicare for all we need to be able to respond because it is these four profit systems that put people in a place of denying the realities of

48:57the problems that we face today and so in the aftermath we were um helping flight attendants we lost 20% of aviation workers overnight furloughed gone those jobs gone we went through a series of bankruptcies eighty one billion dollars was given back by workers in the wake of nine eleven including transferring the cost of health care to us destroying retiree health care destroying pensions and we're still trying to fight to get that back but when we say never forget and i remember in the weeks that followed seeing that sign and thinking who would ever forget this but people do and if it were not for our unions if it were not for the people on the ground the grassroots organization the people who are willing to have the tell the stories we would not only forget but that to me when i think about my friends that is uh that is the biggest betrayals to them they were amazing people that we should certainly remember but in their names we need to

49:58make sure that people are safe today we need to make sure that all of the problems that we created by this and all of the people who took this as an opportunity to redefine the value of workers in that time to to lessen the value of workers and put more into the hands of Wall Street that also is the story of nine eleven and that also is what we continue to fight as a union even today trying to keep federal security from being privatized trying to keep knives off the plane trying to address the fact that we breathe toxic fumes on the planes and no one will identify that so that is really to me this has become obviously my life's work um but nine eleven is alive and well with me every single day because never forget means also understanding that we have to define those problems that we have to fix them and that we have to stand together just like those passengers and the crew did on flight ninety three with urgency to fight the problems that we have today

51:03yeah i'd like to bring Bob Henley into the conversation Bob you were there uh you were been reporting on this issue now for 25 years i'm wondering if you could talk about your own experience that also if you could deal with this issue of mayor julie any developing a national reputation in the aftermath of nine eleven as a medic as a mayor when some of the major decisions that caused so many lives to be lost were made by him including uh the the the radios that the firefighters were using that didn't work and the command center that julie any put in the world's raid center and therefore was destroyed it was not available uh to keep firefighters and police in communication with each other well one first of all i want to thank you for all you did and just uh thank you for keeping on and getting it right right from the very beginning so we can build this legacy forward i will tell you that anyone who really knows the new york city civil service and i spent many years of the chief leader which has been around since eighteen ninety seven

52:06knows that mayor julie any's presidential bid was ended to a large degree by a caravan of buses that were filled with widows of fdny and fire fires and people closest uh to the people that gave 343 lives on that day and subsequently six hundred of parish both retiree and active there's kind of a split screen reality the corporate news media portrays him as america's mayor but the reality is that he had a corrupt administration then and what he's doing now is corrupt one of the things that's most tragic as we look back in a time is short the nine eleven world traits are a health program is a wonderful program that is keeping many people alive and that's wonderful but the truth is so in the aftermath of uh nine eleven the city of new york fought under mayor bloomberg's tenure any recognition there was an occupational hazard i was working at wnyc and mayor bloomberg spoken to my margaret friend when james and droga passed he was an n ypd

53:08detective who had worked at the fresh kills landfill he had uh been disabled towards the end of his life he had gone to uh basically just die into his as father's home at the juries he sure when he passed mayor bloomberg said people are looking for a hero and sometimes they don't exist uh james and droga was a drug addict and i just about couldn't believe it but fortunately for posterity and for the survivors and people that were responding that day uh jose drug as far as joseph the drug of his uh zodrow's father was able to make sure that he was taken to a medical examiner in new jersey who wasn't connected into new york city politics and it was discovered that he indeed his body was riddled with this contamination and mayor bloomberg issued an apology but the damage have been done for years i mean two or three four years the city resisted this now way the nine eleven world trade center health problem is created as a droga act with carameloni as congresswoman

54:12pushed for during that now their champion there was a bipartisan eventually support for it it is flawed it is flawed fundamentally because it makes as my foreign mentor uh doctor joseph finally the chief medical ethicist for the joseph medical society when i shared within the parameters he said once you as a medical professional recognize a risk to public health you can't create a hierarchy of people in the unit from horeka pile they are going to get annual screening whereas oh you went to high school there or you worked there and you're not on the pile let me know if you have a call and of course the pile is the actually the sixteen acre side of the world and so what's happened is we created this hierarchy where it survivors and that includes by a several thousand civil servants there was no zoom back then as you know amy we were both working people ordered back to their desk in lower Manhattan uh with it which turned out to be a a desense and then the city of new york subsequently tried to undermine the quality of the health

55:13care these retirees had by selling it out for Medicare advantage so never forget they had been forgetting every day since i mean right now as we speak talk about dearest regarding ems there are in some days a hundred ambulances it don't roll 25% of the rolling stock because the city of new york including this administration won't pay EMTs a living wage they're paying eighteen dollars now you get paid more to shovel snow in new york city at thirty dollars an hour so when you say never forget they've had an eja since then and bob in terms of the uh the the ability of the the labor unions of the of new york city to protect the municipal workers what's happened with that well what happened was under uh mayor bloomberg they had so many contracts that weren't settled and so he really had it out for public unions and that created a situation where um they just lost so much ground you know all this it was a generation of lost ground and then when mayor de blazio came in he had to settle a hundred contracts in like a short period of time and that's

56:18where the idea came oh listen we have these retirees are getting a free ride on with Medicare you know we could sell it out to somebody at a medic uh to edna and we could realize six hundred million dollars they said a year so they sold out the retirees who had kept the city of new york and including several thousand of them who were civil servants ordered back to their deaths who were not first responded to what we're dealing in some cases with terminal cancer diagnoses that's the city of new york the wounded city that this young mayor is dealing with right now and Juan i have to end with you because your reporting was so critical um the fact that you were writing columns about the toxic zone when all of the officials were um saying that it was clean to go back to work uh the new york daily news who you wrote for at the time ultimately would

57:18win the Pulitzer Prize for its reporting but you won you should be the one who won that Pulitzer prize warning people nonstop at the risk of your own job about the toxic zone at ground zero one in this last minute your final comments on this week of the anniversary of uh the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks well Amy uh prizes and recognition don't really mean anything to me to me the failure was to get the information for all of the media to have gotten the uh the vital information to the public at the time that more illnesses could have been prevented so i see it ultimately as a failure on my part and failure of the profession of of journalism and and the especially of the commercial media to rise to the occasion when it was needed any anyone can

58:21look back and say oh this should have been done that way or uh or another way but the issue is when the when the crisis is at hand how do you deal with it how do you get information to the public that they can use to protect themselves and unfortunately in this we all failed well and the result is uh for all the people who have died since then one in this people can judge for themselves read one Gonzalez's book fallout the environmental consequences of the world trade center collapse um i also want to thank our guests bob henley saran elson uh as well as lila nordstrom from stivacin high school and marianne paisitola i made me good man with one consulate