60 Minutes - Sunday, March 19, 2017

Episode Date: March 20, 2017

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exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. I think for once we're going to stand up as American and say enough is enough. We're not going to take it anymore. He lost his job to a foreign worker like thousands of other Americans every year, laid off because of a program that allows companies to replace employees with foreign laborers. But before leaving, they often are asked to train their replacements. I can't wrap my mind around training somebody to take my position. You know, this is my livelihood.

How am I supposed to feel? I've heard some workers say that this is like digging your own grave. Is that what it feels like? It feels worse than that. A rare famine emergency has been declared in the youngest nation on Earth, South Sudan in East Africa. These are among 5 million people who don't know where their next meal is coming from. They had reached the finish line of a day-long trek

through killing fields and drowning land. Their hope arrived at 700 feet and 190 miles an hour. 33 tons of food scattered in the sky and cratered the earth like a volley of mortars. What do you want? There are not many shows on television that deserve to be called true American institutions. But one of them surely is Sesame Street. Now there's a new kid on the street who's making news. Hi, Julia.

Julia, a Muppet with autism. Not an easy addition. It's tricky because autism is not one thing, because it is different for every single person who has autism. Yeah, we really like Julia. She's really special to us, Miss Leslie. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl.

I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. Protecting American jobs was a signature theme of President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again campaign. A frequent target of candidate Trump was the H-1B visa program. The program, created more than 25 years ago, allows American companies to fill gaps in the workforce from overseas with highly skilled employees who can't

be found in the U.S. Many businesses use the program as intended, but we discovered more and more are taking advantage of loopholes in the law to fire American workers and replace them with younger, cheaper, temporary foreign workers with H-1B visas. But before the American workers walk out the door, they often face the humiliating prospect of having to train the people taking their jobs. Last October, Robert Harrison, a senior telecom engineer at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, was called to a meeting at the university with about 80 of his IT co-workers. What did they say to you? We are sorry to inform you that as of February 28th, you'll no longer have a job.

We're going to outsource your position to this company in India. To a company in India? Yes, sir. Harrison was told he could stay on the job, get paid for four more months, and get a bonus if he trained his replacement. Now I'm being told that I'm not only going to lose my job, but I also have to train these people to take my job. Are you angry?

Pissed. That exceeds angry. I'm really not a violent guy. I love people, but I've envisioned myself just backhanding the guy as he's sitting next to me, trying to learn what I know. And I was like, God, please don't let them send anybody to sit next to me to shout on me. I don't want to do this. I really don't. Harrison and his colleagues staged a protest outside the medical center. His fellow worker, senior systems administrator Kurt Ho, is losing his job too. He had just trained his replacement from India. I think for once we're going to stand up as American and say enough is enough. We're not going to take it anymore.

Thank you for standing up for what you believe in. Their rally was organized by this woman, Florida attorney Sarah Blackwell. This is about the companies making the decision that you are worthless to them. She represents hundreds of U.S. workers who were fired and replaced by foreign workers with H-1B visas. When you tell someone their real reason for getting rid of these jobs is for cheap foreign labor, that should offend everyone. They have to train the worker who is going to take their job. Right. They are told by their company, if you don't train this person in a way that we approve of them being trained, then you don't get your severance.

The UCSF Medical Center is a highly regarded state-run institution. Administrators say outsourcing the IT jobs could save 30 million taxpayer dollars over the next five years. That's a fraction of the university's $5.8 billion annual budget. But to Robert Harrison, it's his job. I can't wrap my mind around training somebody to take my position. You know, this is my livelihood. How am I supposed to feel? I've heard some workers say that this is like digging your own grave.

Is that what it feels like? It feels worse than that. It feels like not only am I digging the grave, but I'm getting ready to stab myself in the gut and fall into the grave. When the H-1B visa was created in 1990, it was intended to help the U.S. attract and hold on to the best and brightest foreign graduates, like engineers and scientists, and provide a pathway to citizenship. At the time, members of Congress promised U.S. workers would be protected. This legislation protects American jobs. Former Congressman Bruce Morrison, then chairman of the Immigration Committee, authored the bill. You came up with this legislation. What do you think of what it has become?

I'm outraged the H-1B has been hijacked as the main highway to bring people from abroad and displace Americans. Businesses insist the visas are absolutely necessary to compete for the best global talent and that even more H-1B workers are needed to fill job shortages. Nearly every major high-tech company, including Apple, Google, Facebook, has employees here on H-1B visas. Media companies, too, including CBS. The argument you hear from the high-tech firms is that they can't find enough qualified American workers. Well, there are a lot of qualified American workers,

but the companies will do better financially if they hire the foreign worker rather than the American. The American workers are just as skilled as you are, perhaps even more skilled? Yes, that's true. Rajesh works at a major Wall Street bank on an H-1B visa. To protect his job and personal safety, he asked that we change his appearance and name. He was placed at the bank by one of the growing number of outsourcing companies. Most of these global staffing firms are based in India. They've become multi-billion dollar enterprises supplying American companies with H-1B workers like Rajesh to replace American workers.

Rajesh said he was never told in India he'd be taking Americans' jobs. I have to take all of their knowledge and basically I have to steal it. That's my job description. And the American worker is let go? Yeah, the American workers lose their job and they also cry while leaving the job. They cry? They've been working there 20 years and suddenly I've taken their job. If I lose a job, I can go back to India. But where can they go? You must know that when most native-born Americans see this going on, they blame you. Yes, but I'm not the enemy. The main villains are the Indian companies and their American corporate clients. They are exploiting us.

Why can't we just say we're going to give jobs to Americans first? Well, that's what the statute says. But they put in a loophole. And the loophole says if you pay over $60,000, you can do that. And beside that, you don't have to try to find Americans. Well, $60,000 is not high pay for this kind of work. People doing this work today easily make $120,000 to $140,000. Who put in that loophole?

Well, it was done by Congress, but obviously the industry lobbied for it. It's really a travesty that should never have been allowed to happen. It wasn't called training your replacement. It was called knowledge transfer. Craig D'Angelo worked for Northeast Utilities, now called Eversource, and was one of 220 IT workers replaced by H-1B visa employees. D'Angelo says his replacement, a worker from India, told him he was making half D'Angelo's salary

with no benefits. I didn't get laid off for lack of work. I got laid off because somebody cheaper could do my job. To anyone who would say you're anti-immigrant. No. That's a lie. That's a lie. You don't want to have any animosity towards them because they're anti-immigrant. No. That's the law. That's the law. You don't want to have any animosity towards them

because they're looking for a better way of life. We met with this group of workers who all had to train replacements. Leo Pereiro had just received high-performance reviews from Disney. When he was called into a personnel meeting, he expected a raise and a promotion. And instead... I was given the news that in 90 days my job was over and I had to train my replacement. Never in my life did I imagine, until this happened at Disney,

that I could be sitting at my desk and somebody would be flown in from another country, sit at my same desk and chair and take over what I was doing. It was the most humiliating and demoralizing thing I've ever gone through in my life. The issue was getting little notice until it caught the attention of the Trump campaign. Love you. Thank you. Mr. Trump himself had hired foreign fashion models on H-1B visas for his New York modeling agency. But when he saw how the theme of protecting American jobs resonated with his followers, he put Sarah Blackwell and fired workers like Leo Pereiro

on center stage. And there's two reasons, there's two words of why this is happening. Corporate greed. Attacking the H-1B visa program fit perfectly with Mr. Trump's message and tapped into America's simmering anger at the corporate and political status quo. Can you believe that? You get laid off and then they won't give you your severance pay unless you train the people that are replacing you. I mean, that's actually demeaning, maybe more than anything else. What are these H-1B visa workers bringing to the table?

I think they're bringing a much different skill level. Mukesh Aghi is president of the U.S.-India Business Council. He has been an executive at India-based outsourcing companies, and he was president of IBM India. About 70 percent of the 85,000 H-1B visas given out each year go to workers from India. He says the H-1B visa is just one part of a burgeoning U.S.-India trade relationship that benefits both countries. India has become a buyer of U.S. defense equipment. It's a two-way trade which is taking place, so we can't look at H-1B in isolation itself. You really believe that the Indian workers are better educated, better skilled, have skills the American workers do not have?

No, no, I'm not saying that. With all due respect to the U.S. worker. So why are they getting the jobs and the Americans are losing them? Why are they not being done by American workers? Well, I think you have to ask the companies who are taking those decisions. Because it's cheaper. That's one factor. Every company is out there to make money with the cheapest possible way itself.

And that's what's happening. Well, I would say so. The workers being brought in don't know anything more than the workers they're replacing. They know less. And that's why they have to be retrained or trained by the American workers who are being laid off. This is not about skills. This is about costs. But saving money on labor was not the law's intended purpose. Robert Harrison says the money saved can't replace the dedication of his IT team. So our jobs, they're not menial jobs.

They're very important. Somebody's child is laying in the children's hospital fighting for their life, and they depend on us. I see parents laying up all night long in the room with their child who's fighting for their life. And you're going to bring somebody in here that has no clue, has no sympathy, don't know the urgency to make sure that everything those people need is supplied right now, it's not going to happen. We're Americans. Craig DeAngelo says at Northeast Utilities, the fired workers pressured to stay and train their replacements launched a quiet protest. Every one of us that would be let go had an American flag sticking out of the cubicles,

row after row after row. As we were let go, those flags were taken down. I was the last person let go. I went in and I took the last picture. There were no more flags left. You have a queasiness in your stomach when you look around and you're saying, this can't be possible, this didn't happen. But it did happen to Craig and Don and Leo and workers at hundreds of companies across the country. Former head of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, now president of the University of California, faced a huge public outcry when she got rid of those 80 IT jobs at the medical center. She declined to give us an on-camera interview, but stated publicly that the university quote, didn't use the H-1B process in the right way. She instructed the Indian outsourcing company to stop using H-1B workers.

But that comes too late for Kurt Ho and Robert Harrison. Three weeks ago, they packed up their final day at the medical center. It's going to be a matter of time before everybody else feels the same burden, the same pinch, the same hurt that we're feeling right here at UCSF. It's a matter of time. Welcome to Play It, a new

podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. A rare famine emergency has been declared in the youngest nation on earth. South Sudan and East Africa was brought into the world in 2011 with the help of the United States. But it's one of the world's least developed countries, and now civil war has left it destitute. Five million people don't know where their next meal is coming from, and of them, 100,000 are facing death.

Holding off a catastrophe is the mission of the UN's World Food Program. The WFP was an American idea created in 1961, and the U.S. is still the largest donor. Now WFP has launched one of its largest rescues ever. But in South Sudan, too many people are fighting for life. Josephine is 7 and down to 24 pounds. Hunger left her at the mercy of disease, and now she's being consumed by tuberculosis. This is why TB used to be called consumption. Josephine's mother shooed away the 90 degrees, waiting to be seen by Dr. Moroni Abraham.

How long would a child be in this hospital? Typically, a child will be staying between two to three weeks. Why so long? Because the body is already altered. The function is altered. The anatomy is altered. So it will take days, very slowly, to get back to the original form. Solid food could kill them. Nutrition must be reintroduced through milk-based formulas. The twins were four and a half pounds at birth, and even after days here, they were still less than half their normal weight.

He was critically ill, severely dehydrated, not able to feed, and hopefully will probably reach three kilograms in the coming two to three weeks. Which would be six and a half pounds or so. Yes. The clinic in South Sudan's capital is operated by an American charity, the International Medical Corps. Dr. Abraham was one of two doctors for up to 55,000 people compressed into squalid camps, stalked by disease. A place so much better than where they came from. We headed to the violent region Josephine escaped.

In a nation as big as Texas, in one of the world's largest swamps, there is only one paved road outside the capital. In the wet season, people in half of South Sudan are marooned. Sudan was Africa's largest nation, ruled from Khartoum by people of Arab heritage. In the south, African tribes have rebelled since the 1950s, and millions have died. In a quest for peace, the Bush administration started a humanitarian and diplomatic campaign. $11 billion went into aid and to train a South Sudanese government and security force. Five years ago, there was hope. Khartoum no longer ruled over them,

and beneath them, there was oil. They voted almost unanimously, 99%, to create their own state, to carve the South Sudan out of Sudan. And within two years, it had crumbled into a full-scale war. John Prendergast witnessed the stillbirth of a nation. He was an Africa specialist in the Clinton White House and now leads the Enough Project, which works for peace on the continent. People living where we are now

have really never known peace. And it isn't just war. Mass atrocities are committed with regularity, almost become routine. Slave raiding, aerial bombing, rape as a tool of war, child soldier recruitment, all the worst of the worst of the war crimes in the Geneva Conventions are perpetrated regularly in South Sudan and have been throughout the series of wars since the independence of Sudan in the 1950s. In 2013, the leaders of independent South Sudan's two main ethnic groups, the Dinka and the Nuer, went to war over oil and power. You can't find a road that's been built. You can't find a sewer that's been constructed. You can't find, very rarely can you find a school that's

actually been as a result of government investment. The health clinics are bare. Money disappears. Stolen. Just stolen. We found no sign of that wealth in a village called Mayom. Thousands of people crowded behind a white strip. Compelled by the promise of food, they had reached the finish line of a day-long trek through killing fields and drowning land. They've survived the War of Independence. They've survived two years of civil war. Many of them have been displaced. The level of orphaned children is just staggering.

It must be one of the highest in the world here in South Sudan. This was an emergency food distribution run by Peter McKay for the World Food Program. Tell me about the orphans. You will meet women who will have half a dozen children of their own, for example. They will have been displaced four or five times from their locations. They will have five or six children of other women who have died or disappeared during the conflict. The husbands of all of those women have been killed in the fighting. That is a terrible legacy for this country.

Hope arrived at 700 feet and 190 miles an hour. 33 tons of food scattered in the sky. And cratered the earth like a volley of mortars. The WFP has chartered most of the commercial cargo planes in the world that are rigged for dropping food. As this crew turned for a second run, they readied boxes of fragile cans of cooking oil, each labeled with an American flag. We lashed a camera on one. Mana from Heaven by Parachute. The World Food Program hired what men it could find to heave the cargo.

Each bag, 110 pounds. Each man, not much more. It's 352 paces from the drop zone. The mud held them up and the heat beat them down, but they shouted, keep going. We noticed their eyes fixed on a place beyond want. They had seen hunger in their children, and so anger, fear, and will moved a mountain. What you see here is about half of one plane load. And each plane load will feed 1,600 people for 30 days. Now, that seems like a lot, except the town of Mayom has 50,000 people who need food.

So it's going to take 27 airdrops. The South Sudan emergency response costs $1.5 million a day. We watched that crowd yesterday wait all day for those airdrops. Right. And at the end of the day, some of those people left with nothing.

I had to personally reassure several people, don't worry, more food is coming. The planes will keep coming. Owen Davies and Brian Langdon are from New York. They lead a WFP team that arrives weeks before the airdrop. They gather every member of every family to register for a ration card. We have to have everybody show up so we know that, you know, the food isn't being misdirected or misused. What do you mean by that? You might have a situation where if you dropped, you know, 100 metric tons of food, you don't know how it's being distributed. It might be distributed to their friends. It might get diverted to another community entirely. They might start charging for it. So really the goal is to reduce that by putting it in the hands of every individual household.

The ration card is supposed to be a guarantee, which prevents panic at the drop zone. But after we left Mayom, the fighting erupted again. The airdrops stopped, and 7,000 left with little or nothing. Three million South Sudanese have been forced from their homes. Some can be reached by water. And the WFP pushed 200 tons of grain through a papyrus swamp called the Sud, Arabic for the barrier. The destination is a refugee camp called Minkeman. About two years ago during the war, 70,000 people were stampeded from their homes and set up the camp. And then

in early 2016, there was more fighting and another 30,000 people joined them, 100,000 people in desperate need of food. It can cost $150 to deliver one bag by plane, but as little as $21 by boat. It is more dangerous, but Sean Hughes, who showed us the WFP's operation, said his budget is falling far behind. Right now, food assistance is the only thing that stands between hundreds of thousands of people and absolute catastrophe. There are 4.8 million people across this country that are very severely food insecure and in need of assistance. We're reaching on a monthly basis just over 2 million.

You're reaching half the people who are in need of assistance. We're reaching on a monthly basis just over 2 million. You're reaching half the people who are in need? Yes. Half until the war intervenes. This was the World Food Program warehouse filling up for the emergency. But the week after we were there, a militia looted everything. $20 million in food and vehicles gone. Several humanitarian organizations think of South Sudan as too dangerous a place to work.

There are certainly risks. There are a lot of risks to the security of our staff. I've personally lost colleagues working for WFP while I've been working here. And yet it's worth it to press on. There are millions of lives that depend on us continuing to do our work. So we will take every measure that we can

to keep our staff safe. But our commitment is very much with the people of South Sudan. That's a commitment the 100,000 people at our destination could not live without. Hoisting those same 110-pound bags like the men, the women were lean from hunger, but stronger for fighting it. Let me ask you, mother, what does this food mean to you? This sustains me and keeps me healthy, she said. And to the people who sent you this food, you say what? To the people who are helping us, we're in a war zone that's hard to reach.

We need everything, food, clothes, plastic sheets to cover my hut, and hoes for farming. For Josephine and the twins we met earlier, food has been enough. This is Josephine now, 42 pounds up from 24. And the twins are up to 13 pounds each. Where does it go from here? Door number one, which most people expect, is that these leaders, the competing factions, the kleptocrats that are running this country, will keep doing what they're doing. Door number two is a less likely scenario, but not impossible. And that is that the leadership here, because of international pressure, because of the citizenry's demands for peace, will start to make decisions that are at least a little more in the broader public interest than just their own pocketbooks.

And so that's the kind of future that I think every South Sudanese wants to see. that are at least a little more in the broader public interest than just their own pocketbooks. And so that's the kind of future that I think every South Sudanese wants to see. For now, they just hope to see another plane. Each sack of food will carry three people for 30 days. But there is no guarantee that there will be another. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. There are not many shows on television that deserve to be called true American institutions, but one of them is surely Sesame Street.

It's been on the air now for almost 50 years. When Sesame Street began in 1969, it was considered an experiment. The question, could television be used to educate young children? Well, research proved the answer to be yes, and the non-profit children's television workshop, now called Sesame Workshop, that created the show, has been refining and expanding that mission ever since. Everything from ABCs and 123s to race and even death. In a few weeks, Sesame Street, which now airs on HBO, as well as its longtime home on PBS,

will take on its latest challenge, introducing a new kid on the street, a Muppet named Julia, who has autism. For many of us, these opening notes are a trip down memory lane. Sally, you've never seen a street like Sesame Street.

Everything happens here. To a street we watched as kids, with our kids, or both. You know that you have a banana in your ear? What was that, Bert? With Muppet characters as known and beloved as any human TV star. Will you just take that banana out of your ear? I'm sorry, you'll have to speak a little louder, Bert. I can't hear you.

I have a banana in my ear. Today, almost half a century later, Sesame Street is shot on a soundstage in Astoria, Queens, with one of the cameramen who filmed the first episode still on the job. One more rehearsal in real time. The Sesame Street set is a vibrant, upbeat place. Here we go. With puppeteers on rolling stools down below.

I love it! And the furry and feathery creatures they bring to life in the sometimes crowded space above. It was a little awkward. I'm sorry. The puppeteers figure out how to position their Muppet by watching the scene on monitors. Here we go. The day we visited, they were filming the debut of the new Muppet character, Julia,

who has autism. The story begins with Julia's friends, Muppets Elmo and Abby Cadabby, introducing her to Big Bird. Hi, Julia. I'm Big Bird. Nice to meet you. Oh, Julia. But Big Bird is confused when Julia doesn't respond. I think the big discussion right at the start was how do we do this? How do we talk about autism? Christine Ferraro has been a writer at Sesame Street for 25 years, during which time the frequency of autism diagnoses has multiplied. The chances of a little kid two, three, four years old having some kind of a relationship with another kid with autism is pretty high. Exactly. Especially once they hit school age, because they'll be in their classrooms. Julia, you're so creative. But how to portray autism? It's tricky because autism

is not one thing, because it is different for every single person who has autism. There's an expression that goes, if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. Sesame Street has always based its characters and content on extensive research. They regularly bring in educators and child psychologists. In the case of Julia, they also worked with autism organizations to decide which characteristics she should have and how best to normalize autism for all children. So that when they encounter them in their real life, it's familiar. And they see that these can be their friends too. Hi, Miss Leslie. You look very shiny and beautiful today.

Well, so do you. During a break in the filming, Julia and her friends did for us what they're hoping to do for millions with this episode. And hi, Julia and her friends did for us what they're hoping to do for millions with this episode. And hi, Julia. Help the audience understand when a child with autism doesn't react the way one might expect. Big Bird, when you first met Julia, she didn't answer you either. Yeah, that's right. And I thought that maybe she didn't like me. Yeah. But you know, we had to explain to Big Bird that Julia likes Big Bird. It's just that Julia has autism. So sometimes it takes her a little longer to do things.

You're explaining her because you've come to understand her so well. Well, we're pretty good at understanding people. We live with a grouch. What do you want? understanding people, we live with a grouch. Sesame Street has been around so long now that it's hard to remember a time before children's television was educational. But Sesame Street's creator, Joan Ganz Cooney, remembers it well. It was just nutty cartoons with no purpose at all. I mean, I would watch them and just be appalled. As you're talking, I'm seeing a cat slam against a wall,

be reduced to nothing, slide down, and come back to life. Yes, that was commercial television. Gans Cooney, then a public television producer, was asked by the Carnegie Corporation to study whether television could be something different. The question being, do you think television could teach children? Ironically, she says the answer was right in front of her and everyone else in beer. They were singing beer commercials, children were.

Well, so obviously they had learned, they learned the jingle. So if a commercial could teach beer, couldn't it teach 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. And that became the model Dance Cooney spelled out in her 50-page report proposing what would become Sesame Street. And we did. We created little commercials. Boys and girls, have you met? 26 letters for the alphabet. The new show had a particular target, low-income children who were arriving at school less prepared than their middle-class peers. So Gans Cooney deliberately made the set a gritty New York street urban kids could relate to, with an interracial cast that got

the show banned early on in Mississippi. Nationwide, though, it was a hit. Kids and parents love Jim Henson's Muppets. Eight, nine, ten. Ten. Eleven. Eleven. You got pretty eyes. So do you. And testing showed kids who watched were learning. Got the letter M.

Sometimes the lessons were about real life. I'm your neighborhood friend, Mr. Hooper. As when the actor who played beloved friend, Mr. Hooper. As when the actor who played beloved shopkeeper Mr. Hooper passed away and the show decided to address the subject of death head on. Ta-da! Oh, look at that one! I can't wait till he sees it. Say, where is he? You could have changed actors. Yes, but we decided Sesame Street had always dealt with the real, and it was real. So we decided not to, just replace him, and called the man Mr. Hooper and hoped they didn't notice.

Don't you remember we told you Mr. Hooper died? He's dead. Oh, yeah, I remember. Well, I'll give it to him when he comes back. Big Bird, when people die, they don't come back. Ever? Over the years, Sesame Street did segments about other challenging subjects, like skin color, disabilities, and prejudice.

In my neighborhood, birds only play with birds, so I'm not playing with a snuffleupagus. Oh, that hurts my feelings. Little children. Less well-known is a branch of Sesame, separate from the TV show, that creates online videos like this and other materials. They're called social impact initiatives, and they're targeted at specific communities of kids. This one is where I live with my mommy, and this one is where I live with my daddy. Like children of divorce, kids from military families,

It's like a parent incarcerated. My dad's in jail. The focus on autism began as one of these social impact projects with videos My son Louis is 6 and he has autism. and an online animated storybook about a little girl named Julia. The initiative was so well received, Sesame decided to bring Julia to the broadcast, which meant designing a new Muppet. This is our eye drawer.

Look at that. This is where Muppets are born, at the Jim Henson Workshop at the workstation of master puppet creator Raleigh Crewson. The male eyes have no eyelashes and the female eyes have eyelashes. Oh, because Julia has autism, were there special challenges in building her? Yes, actually, because when she gets upset, she flaps her hands. So she has two separate sets of arms. She has a set of arms that does this, and then she has a set of arms when she's fine and okay.

So they would switch on set. High five, Julia. And of course, every Muppet needs a puppeteer. But not every puppeteer has the connection Stacey Gordon does to the role. Gordon is the mother of a son with autism. She traveled all the way from Phoenix to audition for the part. The idea that there will be a child with autism on Sesame Street, tell me what that means to you. It means that our kids are important enough to be seen in society. Having Julia on the show and seeing all of the characters treat her with compassion.

And like her. And like her. That's big. Yeah, it's huge. Gordon told us she channeled her son's experiences for a tough scene where Julia's heightened sensitivity to noise triggers a meltdown. Noise, noise. The sirens are bothering you? It's important for kids without autism to see what autism can look like.

Break, break. Had my son's friends been exposed to his behaviors through something that they'd seen on TV, before they experienced them in the classroom, they might not have been frightened. They might not have been worried when he cried. They would have known that he plays in a different way and that that's okay. He didn't have that. He didn't have that. He didn't have that. But maybe kids from now on will.

And that's the beautiful thing. You want to play now, Julia? Play, play. Also beautiful to Gordon, the message of inclusion at the heart of one of the episode's most memorable scenes. They decide to play tag together. But Julia's so excited, she's jumping up and down. That's the thing that can be typical of some kids with autism. Oh, Julia, you're bouncing like a

rubber ball. Boing, boing. And then it turns into a game where they're all jumping like her. So it was a very easy way to show that with a very slight accommodation, they can meet her where she is. Boing, boing. And get something out of it themselves. Boing. This is fun, shorty. Hey, it's a whole new game. It's Boing Tag. Boing, boing, boing, boing.

Now I'm it. You know, I think I'd like to be a friend of Julia, too. She is going to be a recurring character. That's the hope. And will she become a major character? We'll see. You'd like to have her become a major character. I would love her to be. I would love her to be not Julia, the kid on Sesame Street who has autism. I would like her to be just Julia. Yeah, we really like Julia. She's really special to us, Miss Leslie.

Julia, are you having fun with your new friends? Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. That's a yes. In the mail this week, viewers had strong opinions on last Sunday's story about Prisoner 760. Holly Williams interviewed former Guantanamo prisoner Mohamedou Salahi. viewers had strong opinions on last Sunday's story about Prisoner 760. Holly Williams interviewed former Guantanamo prisoner Mohamedou Salahi. A stunning report. Holly's interview gave us a comprehensive and in-depth insight into what really went on at Guantanamo.

But most of the comments were not favorable. Why didn't you contrast that one misguided terrorist with another freed terrorist from Guantanamo Bay who went back to his country and blew himself up with a suicide bomb? You cherry-picked one guy trying to make us look bad. Why not report on the whole bunch at Gitmo to get an accurate accounting of all those detained terrorists? I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.