Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-09-08 Tuesday

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Headlines for September 08, 2026; “Toxic Nightmare”: 25 Years After 9/11, Juan González on His Predictions of Worker Illness & Death; Firefighter, EMT, Stuyvesant High School Student Describe 9/11 Exposure & Long Fight for Healthcare; “People I Flew with All the Time”: Flight Attendant Union Head Sara Nelson Remembers 9/11 Victims; 25 Years After 9/11: Cover-Up of Air Quality Risk Proved to Be “Death Sentence” for Thousands

From New York, this is Democracy Now. There were so many toxic chemicals in those buildings. All pulverized and burning at ground zero for months. 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 Zohan Mamdani has ordered the release of more than 170,000 records, suggesting New Yorkers were as misled about 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 Gonzalez, 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 Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Saudi Arabia's vowed to retaliate after Iran-backed Houthi forces from Yemen struck Saudi cities and energy sites, leaving a lot of war and energy sites, leaving a war and peace report. over 70 people injured, including children. The Houthis claimed the attacks were in retaliation for more than 120 strikes launched by Saudi Arabia on Yemen over the last three days. The major escalation in fighting came after the U.S. said Saturday, it struck three Iranian oil tankers,

disabling two of them, sinking a third. Tehran said it attacked three U.S. affiliated vessels in response. The tit-for-tat strikes come a day after present. President Trump played down the U.S. war in Iran as, quote, small potatoes, unquote. On Monday, Iran's Supreme National Security Council announced Iran is planning a maritime exclusion zone outside the Strait of Hormuz, where it tends 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 Hermuz, and extends to the Persian Gulf from the other side.

Meanwhile, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright admitted in an interview on Sunday that there may not be 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,

amidst 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 Corps on the U.S. War in Iran. since May 5th and has moved to restrict reporters' access at the Pentagon. And southern Lebanon, Israeli strikes 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 that it had captured a strategic ridge overlooking the city of Nabatia.

Despite a ceasefire, Israel claims its troops will continue occupying southern Lebanon until Hezbollah 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 in the Gaza Strip, despite the U.S. brokered so-called ceasefire. on Sunday in Israeli strike hit a vehicle in western Gaza City, killing Yusuf Akila and his eight-year-old daughter Wafah.

Six others were wounded. Separately, Israeli strikes killed at least one person near a telecommunication site east of Gaza City. And an Israeli tank fired on a school, housing displaced families, killing three-year-old Saadi Galia. This is the boy's grandmother. They were asleep at night. The shell came at them from that area by the children's heads. Saadi was martyred, Joud, Malak, and Tazin 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's

a tune neighborhood. Victims included 55 members of the Malacca family who were killed in an Israeli irstrike November 23rd. 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 Hajja on Monday. Residents had 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 U.S. 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 Termos Ayah on Saturday, including relatives of U.S. citizens killed by sex. However, Huckabee did not criticize Israel's government for encouraging settler violence. In Ukraine, at least two people were killed and ten others injured overnight as Russia's military fire drones and missiles at Keev. 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, an attack on the Russian-nexed Crimean Peninsula that reportedly killed a civilian. The violence followed a three-day pause on attacks on

Moscow and Kiev that coincided with visits by U.S. envoy Steve Whitkoff and President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Wittkoff 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 agents 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 Meuse is refusing to step down after a center-right Christian Democratic Union suffered a major defeat to a far-right party and a weekend regional election. The AFD, or alternative for Germany party, won 43.8 percent of the vote in the East German state of Saxony-Aanholds. 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 Undra Jassler, director of the State Network of Migrant Organizations. For years, people with a migration background in Saxon-Yan

Holt have experienced discrimination and racism on a daily basis. They face structural disadvantages in accessing work, education, health care, 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 landmasses 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. It affirms

the need for a more accurate, more 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, unquote. 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 of 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 re-displayed next year. The Trump administration's renewed its appeal to the Supreme Court to allow new restrictions on mail 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. Sophia Lynn Lakin, 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. And newly released records from the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center

show 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 that 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 a city office for more than 20,000. 20 years, and city officials say they were only found last year. Mayor Zoran 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 Newsmac.

on Newsmax, claiming Mamdani as a supporter of a supposed Muslim plot aimed at, quote, taking over certain parts of America and certain parts of Europe, unquote. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. DemocracyNow.org, the War and 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. We're afraid of the world.

We change the head because in the world. But even stars must say good good. The Edge of Light by Julian Jean Glabbs. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. Despite official assurances after 9-11,

and that the air near the collapsed 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 correspondences 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. Mondani's office budgeted some $34 million as the administration in the coming months plans to review, redact, and publish more previously on. 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 mayors Rudy 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. Today, 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, steal this story, please, about Democracy Now. It's directed by Tia Lassen and Carl Deal. We go back to Democracy Now 25 years ago. The broadcast was on air when news of the attack broke. Our firehouse studio is located in Chinatown, not far from the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. The clip also looks at our very own Juan Gonzalez's 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. Clouds 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. You 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're afraid we would not be able to come into broadcast if we ever left the site. We are in the evacuation zone. 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. This nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut. 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. These and gentlemen, our heroes will now open the marketplace. 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. Tests conducted by the EPA say once again no hazardous substances have been detected in the air.

If the mayor say it's okay, then I believe them. It's okay. Co-host Juan Gonzalez has a cover story in today's daily news. He says, toxic chemicals and metal. 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 of 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. The only thing that I was wrong about

was that it didn't take 20 years for people to start dying. It only took five years. Search and rescue workers are experiencing a high level of respiratory illness, but it's not only the rescue workers. Chronic coughs, upper 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 Steal This Story, Please, which will be available on digital platforms in the United States in October. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Juan, you were on the ground reporting on 9-11, as people could do. 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 Zoran Mamdani is releasing 170,000 pages of documents about what?

The city 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. And then we're going to go to a firefighter, former EMT, a student at Stuyvesant High School that was right near Ground Zero. The Union Chief, Sarah Nelson, and WBAI head, Bob Henley, who's been reporting. on this 25 years later. But Juan, your reporting was prescient. Yes, Amy. And it's sad that it's taken all this time for the city officials to finally release the documentation. But back then, and my small book on this came out as I compiled the columns only a few months after the attack in April of 2002. But I wrote back then, Christy 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 also have released all the raw data on government testing as soon as they had the first result. and made 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. come. In their rush to return New York City and Wall Street to business as usual, these short-sighted officials unwittingly paved the way for a second wave of victims from the World Trade Center tragedy. In 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, dissembled, hit 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 the chief architect of all of this deception and dissembling is still trying to make public statements in reference to the 9-11 tragedy. And, Juan, 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 allow 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 afterwards. 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 site. And several other members of his administration at the time also have claimed that they were sickened at the time, yet they were telling everyone that the air was safe. We're joined now by a roundtable of guests in our New York studio and beyond. Bob Henley, award-winning investigative journalist broadcast and print 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 broadcast live during the 9-11 attacks a quarter of a century ago and has been covering the 9-11 development since then. Lila Nordstrom is with us. She was a high school student at Stuyveson 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 Stai Health, author of the memoir, Some Kids Left Behind, an activist's account of beating bureaucracy and building a movement, which came out in paperback last week. Marianne Pisatola is with us, retired EMT, emergency medical technician for the New York

City Fire Department after the 9-11 attack. she founded FDNYMS Retirees Association, has since founded, and is 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, now representing 55,000 aviation first response. 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 in safety for the firefighters, and for you as a firefighting woman, what that has meant. Who has been left out? being cared for today, 25 years later. Well, 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 were, you know, we had to do what firefighters do, namely look for anyone who might still. you'll be alive in a 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 a 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 a recovery effort and that meant we were looking for remains. And people may not recall, but we were digging through the, the pile and using rakes to spread out all the debris to look for anyone's remains.

We were working alongside, you know, really heavy equipment as time went on that picked up big loads of debris and dumped it, you know, 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, was never properly decontaminated for 18 months. So that meant that every time we turn 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 going 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 start 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 Lila's talked about this.

I'm sure Marianne has also talked about this and Bob knows that. you know, there there's certain women's conditions that have never been properly studied so they don't even know what the, you know, 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 releasing 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. I'd like to bring Lila Nordstrom into the conversation. Lila, you were a student at Stuyvesen High School at the time. I remember when I was covering the subsequent events after 9-11, talking often with Marilena, Chris Adula, who at the time was the head of the Parents Association at Stuyveson 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 Stuyveson about, I think it was a month after the attack. And you talk to us about your experiences? Yeah, 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 Stuyvesant 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 Krista Dulu had already been engaged in a long conversation, as has had 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, you know, they claimed that they had done a very deep cleaning, that there had been hepa filters installed, and, you know, 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 the school itself was located next to the barge that they were bringing all of the debris from the site to. 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 Stuyvesant. 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 Stuy students, to the Stuyvesant students.

Again, Stuyvesant 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 the Zedroga Act in three different 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 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 teacher, as Tivison, 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 it led to, well, really the end of my experience as a math student, because things fell apart from there. But there were a lot of reports early on of, you know, respiratory conditions, nosebleeds, headaches, and that sort of thing. The New York Times reported that the lines for the nurses, office were stretching around the school in the immediate months after 9-11. But we were told,

oh, those will only be temporary. There will be no long-term health consequences. And I think, you know, as we all know, that didn't turn out to be the case. I started Stye Health in 2006 as a lifelong asthmatic 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 Stuyvesant. 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. Mary Ann Pisatola, you were a retired 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? So we've found, it's very similar to Lila's story, that illnesses weren't getting covered. Initially, EMS personnel were told, oh, you couldn't be getting sick. not a firefighter. So don't worry, just go back to work. It'll be okay. But as Brenda said, we had the same experience as she did as we would get into our ambulances and dust would come out of the vents. And we had to fight for the health care that we had. I ended up founding the first

organization, FDNY, EMS retirees, in order to get health care equality, just initial baseline health care 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 retiring 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 out to a doctor who I've since lost touch with. Her name was Dr. Jean Fowell out of Montana, and I said, we're seeing cancers, we're seeing asbestosis, we're seeing mesotheliomas,

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 mines, or the vermiculite mines, 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 am not like some big managerial person to expose this. I'm 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 not covered, cardiac illnesses, cognitive impairments. These are all things that we have been fighting for to get covered. And civilians have to go through that same fight. 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 Stuyvesant High School student.

When we come back, Bob Henley joins us. General Manager of WBAI has reported on this issue for years. And Sarah Nelson, Union Chief, represents the fire, the flight attendants. Stay with us. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. as we continue our roundtable on 9-11 health on this 25th anniversary week of the 9-11 attacks. We go now to Sarah Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendance, CWA AFL-CIO,

now serving her fourth term as president. She's been a union flight attendant since she was hired by United Airlines in 1996, now representing 55,000 aviation. first responders from 20 airlines, Sarah. 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 United 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. also as our national strike chair, and I had just landed in Chicago to go to a union training. But so I went to our national office, and we were getting the briefings from United. 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 had hit the South Tower at the World Trade Center. And of course, if you haven't been around and don't follow the chronology of the events, that is the plane that you can see flying into the South Tower because every camera was trained on that site when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower 17 minutes earlier. So there were already first responders on the way responding to the incident. And I know the exact moment that my friends die.

and I say their names every day. Amy, Michael, Amy, Catherine, Al, Alicia, Marianne, Jesus, and Robert. And Robert was a good friend. These are people that I flew with all the time. He relayed some of the first intelligence of 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 the those flights was critically important because that got to the crew on Flight 93. And it was a crew of all women, five women. The pilots were killed immediately. The 93 was the flight. Flight 93 was the last flight to take off that day and that had the

hijackers on board. And it was taken over. That flight was planned to hit the White House or the capital, very likely the capital. And the passengers and the crew found out what was going on. And they organized together to fight back. And I think that this is... The five flight attendants were all women. They were all women. And the passengers, between the flight attendants and the passengers, there were white, black, Asian, Latino passengers. There were Democrats, Republicans, and independents. I think this is a really important point. But in that moment, they were just one. They were unified to fight back with urgency. And they did fight back to try to save their own lives,

but definitely made it possible to save the U.S. Capitol 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 for-profit systems that put people in a place of denying the realities of the problems that we face today. And so in the aftermath, we were helping flight attendants. We lost 20% of aviation workers overnight, furloughed, gone. Those jobs gone. We went through a series of bankruptcies. $81 billion was given back by workers in the wake of 9-11, 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, and I remember, 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 tell the stories, we would not only forget, but that, to me, when I think about my friends, that is the biggest betrayal to them. They were amazing people that we should certainly remember, but in their names, we need to make sure that people are safe today. We need to make sure that all of the problems that were created by this and all of the people who took this as an opportunity to redefine the value of workers in that time, to lessen the value of workers and put more into the hands of Wall Street.

That also is the story of 9-11. 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. But 9-11 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 93, with urgency to fight the

problems that we have today. I'd like to bring Bob Henley into the conversation. Bob, you were there. You have been reporting on this issue now for 25 years. I'm wondering if you could talk about your own experience, and also if you could deal with this issue of Mayor Giuliani developing a national reputation in the aftermath of 9-11 as America's mayor when some of the major decisions that caused so many lives to be lost were made by him, including the radios that the firefighters were using that didn't work and the command center

that Giuliani put in the World Trade Center and therefore was destroyed. It was not available to keep firefighters and police in communication with each other. Well, Juan, first of all, I want to thank you for all you did and just 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 in New York City Civil Service, and I spent many years as the chief leader, which has been around since 1897, knows that Mayor Giuliani's presidential bid was ended to a large degree by a caravan of buses that were filled with widows of FDYN and firefighters

and people closest to the people that gave 343 lives on that day, and subsequently 600 of Paris, both retire 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 it's most tragic as we look back and no time is short, the 9-11 World Trade Center on Health Program is a wonderful program

that is keeping many people alive, and that's wonderful. But the truth is... It's funny what that is for the global audience. In the aftermath of 9-11, 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 spoke into my microphone when James Adroga passed. He was an NYPD detective who had worked at the Fresh Hills landfill. He had been disabled towards the end of his life.

He had gone to basically just die into his father's home at the Jersey Shore. when he passed, Mayor Bloomberg said people are looking for a hero and sometimes they don't exist. James Zedroga 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, Joseph Zedroga, his, Zedroga'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 had been done for years. I mean, two or three, four years, the city resisted this. Now, way the 9-11 World Trade Center Health Program was created, the Zardroka Act with Karamolini, as Congresswoman pushed for, Jerry Nadler champion, there was a bipartisan eventually support for it. It is flawed. It is flawed fundamentally because it makes, as my former mentor, Dr. Joseph Fennelly, the chief medical ethicist for the New Jersey 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 a uniform who work a pile. They are going to get annual screening, whereas, oh, you went to high school there or you work there and you're not on the pile?

Let me know if you have a cost. And of course the pile is. Actually, the 16-acre site of the World Trade Center. And so what's happened is we created this hierarchy where survivors, and that includes, by the way, several thousand civil servants. There was no Zoom back then, as you know, Amy. We were both working. People ordered back to their deaths in Lower Manhattan with it,

which turned out to be a death sentence. And then the city of New York subsequently tried to undermine the quality of the health care these retirees had by selling it out for Medicare Advance. So never forget, they have been forgetting every day since. I mean, right now as we speak, talk about deers regarding EMS. There are on some days, a hundred ambulances that 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 $18 an hour. You get paid more to shovel snow in New York City at $30 an hour. So when you say, never forget, they've had annesia since then.

And Bob, in terms of the ability of the labor unions of New York City to protect the municipal workers, what's happened with that? Well, what happened was under 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 they just lost so much ground. You know all this. It was a generation of lost ground. And then when Mayor de Blasio came in, he had to settle 100 contracts. in like a short period of time. And that's where the idea came, oh, listen, we have these retirees who are

getting a free ride on with Medicare. You know, we could sell it out to something like Edna, Medicare, to Edna, and we could realize $600 million, they said a year. So they sold out the retirees who had kept the city of New York running, and including several thousand of them, who were civil servants ordered back to their desks, who were not first responders, is 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. The fact that you were writing columns about the toxic zone when all of the officials were saying that it was clean to go back to work,

The New York Daily News, who you wrote for at the time, ultimately would win 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 the 25th. anniversary of the 9-11 attacks? Well, Amy, prizes and recognition don't really mean anything. To me, the failure was to get the information

for all of the media to have gotten 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 the failure of the profession of journalism and the especially. especially of the commercial media, to rise to the occasion when it was needed. Anyone can look back and say, oh, this should have been done that way or another way.

But the issue is 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. And the result is all the people who have died since then. One, in this, people can judge for themselves. read Juan Gonzalez's book, Fallout, The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center collapse. I also want to thank our guests, Bob Henley, Sarah Nelson, as well as Lila Nordstrom from Stuyvesant High School, and Marianne Pizzatola. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.