Democracy Now! Daily Digest ~ A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González ~ Tuesday, 29 October 2013
STORIES:
Former Irish President, Climate Justice Advocate Mary Robinson Urges Divestment of Fossil Fuel Firms
As the New York region marks the first anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, hurricane-strength winds are battering northern Europe today. At least a dozen people have already been killed across Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and France. Amidst an increase in extreme weather and storms, we discuss the movement to confront climate change with Mary Robinson, former Irish president and U.N. high commissioner for human rights. She now heads the Mary Robinson Foundation–Climate Justice, where her efforts include campaigning for the divestment from fossil fuels. "We can no longer invest in companies that are part of the problem of the climate shocks we’re suffering from," Robinson says. "To me it’s a little bit like the energy behind the anti-apartheid movement when I was a student. We were involved because we saw the injustice of it. There’s an injustice in continuing to invest in fossil fuel companies that are part of the problem."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Today marks the first anniversary of Superstorm Sandy hitting the East Coast, becoming one of the most destructive storms in the nation’s history. After first pummeling Cuba, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast, devastating parts of New York and New Jersey. The storm ultimately killed 159 people, damaged more than 650,000 homes. Thousands of people remain displaced.
As the New York region marks the first anniversary of Sandy, hurricane-strength winds are battering northern Europe today. At least a dozen people have been killed across Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and France.
Later in the show, we’ll look at the Superstorm Sandy recovery effort and speak to a woman who is still displaced from her home. But we begin today’s show with former Irish President Mary Robinson. She served as president of Ireland from 1990 to 1997 and U.N. high commissioner for human rights from 1997 to 2002. She now heads the Mary Robinson Foundation–Climate Justice. I recently sat down with her in New Orleans at a meeting of environmental grant makers. I began by asking her to describe climate justice.
MARY ROBINSON: Climate justice starts with the injustice of the fact that climate shocks are affecting the very poorest already—poor communities and poor countries, and poor parts of the United States, like Louisiana. Parts of Louisiana are still recovering from Katrina. They’ve been least responsible for what we now know is causing climate change. There was this very important IPCC report last week in New York showing that 95 percent of the scientists are now satisfied and firmly believe that this is human-caused. I know there are deniers, and there’s money supporting these deniers to try to confuse us, but we can’t be confused anymore, because actually the impacts of climate are undermining human rights all over the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Where’s the money coming from for the denial movement?
MARY ROBINSON: I think a lot it is coming from those who benefit at the moment from selling fossil fuel, so the coal and oil communities. It reminds me a little bit of the tobacco problem, and it’s somewhat similar because it’s causing denial of an issue that we should be taking so seriously and working together on. All countries in the world, large and small, should be unequivocal in working to have a transformative leadership to a low-carbon economy.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the whole movement around divesting from fossil fuel companies?
MARY ROBINSON: I’m glad that young people and colleges and others are seeing the need to bring home: We can no longer invest in companies that are part of the problem of the climate shocks that we’re suffering from. And so, I speak openly and encourage students and colleges to be part of that. It’s, to me, a little bit like the energy that was behind the anti-apartheid movement when I was a student. We were all involved because we saw the injustice of it. There’s an injustice in continuing to invest in fossil fuel companies that are part of the problem.
My foundation has joined with the World Resources Institute in a declaration on climate justice. We say unequivocally what the International Energy Agency says and the Carbon Tracker calculation of the carbon budget, that two-thirds of the fossil fuel reserves known now must stay in the ground. And there’s no point in going into the Arctic and looking for new fossil reserves and disturbing that wonderful environment.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting. I just gave the commencement address at Hampshire College, which is one of the centers of this issue of divestment. Jonathan Lash—you mentioned the World Resources Institute—former president of World Resources Institute, now president of Hampshire College.
MARY ROBINSON: Yes, I know Jonathan Lash, and I’m aware that he’s organizing a conference next year on the divestment issue. I think it’s great that somebody who’s so knowledgeable, as he is, is prepared to take a certain amount of political flak. It’s not easy as a president of a college to stand up. And I think he’s aware that he has to give that leadership, and he’s giving it.
AMY GOODMAN: President Robinson, you were active in the divestment movement against apartheid South Africa in Ireland. I mean, young people today maybe came of age when it was President Mandela of South Africa, may not even know what the strategies were, what this divestment issue at the time was all about.
MARY ROBINSON: There was a recognition that it was going to be difficult to get change in South Africa, although the majority of the people, the black and colored South Africans were discriminated against, were imprisoned, including Nelson Mandela himself and his colleagues, and that there should be a real move to stop companies from investing in South Africa and perpetrating that apartheid system. And so, in Ireland, we had a very active, very strong movement. Even we had a kind of mini situation where women workers in one of the stores would not allow—would not handle South African goods. And they were sacked. And there was a big movement—
AMY GOODMAN: They were fired.
MARY ROBINSON: They were fired because they had taken that stand. And they were actually reinstated because there was such an outcry about it. And when Nelson Mandela came to Ireland as president many years later, he referred to these women. And, you know, they knew about the sacrifice of ordinary women, because they believe in justice.
We need young people and women and others to stand up now against the way in which the corporate sector that is engaged in fossil fuel is buying bad science, is spreading wrong information and trying to prevent us from addressing what we really need to address, which is transformational leadership to low-carbon growth.
AMY GOODMAN: What would divestment lead to?
MARY ROBINSON: Well, I think it really would lead to a recognition that we’re talking about stranded assets. And "stranded assets" is a term that many people aren’t yet fully aware of. But I think of asbestos as, you know, a clear stranded asset. We know it’s dangerous, so people won’t use it. And we have to get to the same situation. Now, we’re not going to do it overnight, and we actually need to recognize that developing countries need more time to adapt. So, I would like to see Europe and the United States and Korea and other parts and Japan moving more quickly, as Germany is doing, to renewables, because we have the responsibility. It’s our fossil-fuel-led growth that has caused the problem.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean by "renewables"? I think a lot of people in the United States would have no idea.
MARY ROBINSON: The huge potential of solar, of wind, of wave power, the—of various forms of renewable energy, where we can actually have good lives. And I think that the science and—we need these new technologies, the organic solar technology that’s coming on stream, to be free to developing countries, because that will help them to adapt, and they need that support. And we can have very good lifestyles. It can also mean that those who haven’t had access to electricity—and there are many of them, 1.3 billion, who have no light in the home, of electricity; they just have dangerous kerosene or candles—we can have that technology to help those communities who are very affected already by climate shocks.
AMY GOODMAN: As the former president of Ireland, you mingle with heads of state around the world, with heads of corporations. I mean, do you have any sense that these heads of corporations, like ExxonMobil, like BP, like Chevron, are changing?
MARY ROBINSON: One of the positive factors now is that I mingle a lot with forward-looking business leaders. There are two types of business leaders in this context: those who are profiting from fossil-fuel-developed profits and want to keep it that way and a very significant number of thoughtful business leaders who know very well that we have to move to a low-carbon economy, that we have to address this issue, because otherwise we will have social unrest and displacement—very bad for business. And a lot of good business leaders are interested in getting away from the short-term quarterly returns to real sustainability. We’ve been talking about sustainability since the Rio conference. And that means economic sustainability, environmental sustainability and social sustainability. And I think that corporations now know they need a triple bottom line, and I’m very much encouraging that.
AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned social unrest and displacement as the real effects of climate change. What do you mean?
MARY ROBINSON: It’s all ready happening that many people are having to leave their places where they were living. We heard from the panel this morning here in Louisiana, in New Orleans, about people who can no longer be in certain places. It’s happening worldwide, but we’re not seeing the full scale of it yet. The prediction is we may have up to 200 million climate-displaced people by 2050, which is only 36 years ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: "Climate-displaced" means?
MARY ROBINSON: Means that it was climate that forced them to leave. We don’t have a good title for it. We can’t call them "climate refugees," like we have other refugees, because there’s no convention. We do need to think about that, and there are people, including in the United Nations, thinking seriously about some way now of ensuring that there will be a safe movement elsewhere. But at the moment, that’s not the case. People move in a very unsafe and insecure way.
AMY GOODMAN: President Robinson, you’re the former U.N. high commissioner for human rights. What’s the connection between human rights and climate justice, climate change?
MARY ROBINSON: I came to the climate issue from a human rights perspective. I’m not a climate scientist, though Climate Justice, my foundation, very much relies on and keeps true to the science. But, for me, the shocks of climate change are going to be, and are already becoming, the worst and most serious human rights issue, because it’s actually about the future of the world. We have to understand that if we go to 4 degrees Celsius, and many people think that’s where we’re heading—
AMY GOODMAN: Translate that to Fahrenheit.
MARY ROBINSON: Seven-point-five degrees Fahrenheit. That will be catastrophic. That will be, you know, Sandys in every country in such a way—and affecting, again, those with least resources to cope. So, I found in our work—after my work as high commissioner for human rights had finished, I went to—actually to New York and had colleagues in Washington and Geneva, focusing on African countries’ right to health and decent work and women, peace and security. But all I heard was: "Things are so much worse because of climate change. We no longer have predictable rainy seasons. Our village, we used to grow—we used to have enough food, but now we have drought and flash flooding." And that brought home to me, this is essentially a human rights issue.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s the connection between poverty, nutrition and climate change?
MARY ROBINSON: Very, very much. My foundation hosted with the Irish government last April a very good conference during the Irish EU presidency. So we had EU commissioners and ministers from different European countries, with the Irish deputy prime minister and others, listening to those who had come from different communities around the world—from Mongolia, from the Arctic, from parts of Africa—all of them very clear about what the problem was and that they were coping, but they needed more support. And they needed understanding that they actually had the knowledge. They were in charge, if you like. And that was very empowering for them and very important to be listening, because we make mistakes if we try to do from the outside what communities themselves know best, as we heard this morning.
AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned the U.N. climate summits. Democracy Now! has been at Copenhagen, Cancún, Doha, Durban. We were even at the People’s Summit in Bolivia. Now the next one is in Warsaw, Poland—Poland a major polluter, coal polluter in the world. Many saw President Obama flying into Copenhagen and really being the one to collapse any kind of binding agreement on climate change. What should be the role of the U.S. And also, what about the fact that it is Poland this year?
MARY ROBINSON: Well, I have followed these summits very closely with my colleagues, and I think we are building towards what we need, which is a fair, equitable, ambitious climate agreement by the end of 2015 to match the post-2015 development agenda. We’re not there yet. We don’t have the leadership for it. The secretary-general has called a summit of heads of state for next September. The United States is going to have to be in there with the right—with the leadership that is needed. The plan of action that President Obama has drawn up for this country is quite innovative. Secretary of State John Kerry absolutely knows the issues, as I think does President Obama. The problem, I think, is a political problem in this country of your Congress. But we need to get over that, because we have no other option. We have to find the political will together and move forward and get that climate agreement.
AMY GOODMAN: The argument against dealing with climate change is it means losing jobs in a troubled economy.
MARY ROBINSON: And that, again, is a false juxtaposition, because I think it’s very clear that as we move to low carbon, it will actually be job creating. I gave the figures that it has been job creating in the United States. There are more green jobs being created than in other sectors. So, we have to recognize it’s very important that it’s a just tradition. We work closely with the trade union movement. Sharan Burrow is on our climate leadership group. And they’re looking to pension funds to invest in futures that are good for everybody, the renewable energies and others. So we need a kind of real sense that this is not them or us, this is all of us together.
When you think of the intergenerational justice—I mean, I often, as I did this morning, talk about being a grandmother with grandchildren who will be in their forties in 2050. What will they say to us? I’ve said this often enough that I can almost hear the echoes of their voices. And at the moment, I hear them accusing us: "How could they be so selfish? How could they be so uncaring?" But we can redress that by what we do by the end of 2015.
AMY GOODMAN: Former Irish President Mary Robinson, she now heads the Mary Robinson Foundation–Climate Justice. As the New York region marks the first anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, hurricane-strength winds are battering northern Europe today. At least a dozen people have been killed across Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and France. We’ll have more on this first anniversary of Superstorm Sandy in a minute.
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Today marks the first anniversary of Superstorm Sandy hitting the New York region, becoming one of the most destructive storms in the nation’s history. On October 29, 2012, the hurricane blasted New York City with a record storm surge as high as 13 feet, as well as the Jersey Shore and New England, ultimately killing 159 people along the East Coast and damaging more than 650,000 homes. The storm caused $70 billion in damage across eight states. Millions were left without power in the New York region, some for weeks. We are joined by two women who have played key roles in the region’s recovery: Terri Bennett, a founder of Respond and Rebuild, one of the first groups to help low-income residents of the Rockaways rebuild after Superstorm Sandy, and also focused on providing free mold remediation that eventually inspired the city’s similar program, and Jessica Roff, a founder of Restore the Rock, a nonprofit created by Sandy volunteers who met while working out of a space in the Rockaways called YANA, or You Are Never Alone, where they operated a free health clinic, legal clinic and trained and dispatched hundreds of volunteers.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Today marks the first anniversary of Superstorm Sandy hitting the New York region, becoming one of the most destructive storms in the nation’s history. After first pummeling Cuba, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, Sandy made its way up the East Coast. On October 29th, the hurricane blasted New York City with a record storm surge as high as 13 feet. The storm also heavily hit the Jersey Shore and parts of New England. Sandy ultimately killed 159 people along the East Coast and damaged more than 650,000 homes. The storm caused $70 billion in damage across eight states. Millions were left without power, some for weeks. Here are some highlights from our initial coverage of the storm.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is a serious and big storm. And my first message is to all people across the Eastern Seaboard, mid-Atlantic, going north, that you need to take this very seriously and follow the instructions of your state and local officials, because they are going to be providing you with the best advice in terms of how to deal with this storm over the coming days.
ORENA ELWOODS: Help! We need help! Seriously.
HAMMEL HOUSES RESIDENT: The most that we need right now is lights. At least you have light, you can see. At night time, it’s pitch black. You can’t even see what’s in front of you.
CATHERINE YEAGER: What’s happening behind me right now is basically we’re working with Sandy Relief and OWS. The people are bringing by the car loads in clothes, food, cans goods, diapers, batteries, flashlights, everything under the sun, you know, that we kind of need right now.
BOROUGH PRESIDENT JAMES MOLINARO: I have not seen the American Red Cross at a shelter. I have not seen them down south shore, where people are buried in their own homes, have nothing to eat, have nothing to drink.
GOV. ANDREW CUOMO: There is a wake-up call here, and there is a lesson to be learned. There was a—there is a reality that has existed for a long time that we have been blind to, and that is climate change, extreme weather—call it what you will—and our vulnerability to it. It was true 10 years ago. It was true five years ago. It is undeniable today.
AMY GOODMAN: Highlights from our coverage of Superstorm Sandy from a year ago.
Well, today we’re spending the hour looking at the state of recovery after Superstorm Sandy. We are beginning with two women who played key roles in the region’s recovery.
Terri Bennett is one of the founders of Respond and Rebuild, which was one of the first groups to help low-income residents of the Rockaways rebuild after Superstorm Sandy, also focused on providing free mold remediation that eventually inspired the city’s similar program. Terri Bennett previously volunteered in rebuilding efforts in Haiti after the earthquake there in 2010.
And Jessica Roff is one of the founders of Restore the Rock, a nonprofit created by volunteers after Superstorm Sandy after they met while working out of a space in the Rockaways called YANA, which stands for You Are Never Alone, where they operated a free health clinic, legal clinic, trained and dispatched hundreds of volunteers.
Jessica, talk about what you did then.
JESSICA ROFF: Well, from the very—
AMY GOODMAN: And where we are today.
JESSICA ROFF: Sorry. From the very beginning, we were really doing direct aid and responding to emergencies out in the Rockaway Park region of the Rockaways out in Queens. The neighborhood was completely devastated. There were feet of sand on the ground. Nobody had hot water. Many people didn’t have running water. Most people didn’t have heat and electricity. So it was really responding to emergency needs, to begin with—food, blankets, heat.
AMY GOODMAN: And you weren’t working for the city.
JESSICA ROFF: No, we all went out as volunteers. I had been doing climate justice work prior to that, and so some of my friends had seen what was happening and seen that Occupy Sandy had been one of the organizations that started in response to the storm. And I just said, "Hey, there’s something I can do." And my actual immediate response was to feed people, and they were doing food preparation. But because I had a car, I wound up in Rockaway. And because of the kind of person that I am, I just wound up staying. And we were—we went from there to actually helping people with negotiating through FEMA and trying to get their insurance and trying to get through all of the red tape of the government. But it was a completely volunteer operation of people who predominantly didn’t actually know each other before anything started.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Terri, you had been to Haiti after the devastating earthquake. Compare what you saw there with what you saw here.
TERRI BENNETT: Well, obviously, the destruction is at a completely different scale, but at the same time, there was the same—in the first days after the storm, there was a similar level of—the feeling of abandonment in the Rockaways was really profound. You have in the Rockaways a lot of civil servants. You have firemen. You have police officers. And they didn’t see anyone from their government or from the Red Cross or from FEMA for five or six days. And we were really the first people for the first two weeks that a lot of people saw. We were also wearing things like safety vests and had clipboards, so we were the most official people on the ground—official-looking people on the ground. I don’t know that it’s easy to compare the level of destruction from Sandy to Haiti, but I think that you see a lot of the same inefficiencies in disaster response and the same kind of patterns.
AMY GOODMAN: So, where—
TERRI BENNETT: You know, there are parallels.
AMY GOODMAN: Where are those communities today? This is a year later.
TERRI BENNETT: Well, you know, there are some happy stories, and people have rebuilt, and they’re doing better. And there’s also a lot of people who are still displaced. We think about 70,000 homes were severely damaged, I guess you’d say, and out of those people, up to something like 20,000, we think, may be displaced. We see a lot of people who are really trying to save their homes, but they’re in limbo, and so they’re doubling up with family. They’re trying to live in the second floors of their homes when the first floor is gutted. There’s people who are living in homes that don’t have kitchens, and they’re just living out of the two bedrooms on the first floor—I’m sorry, on the second floor. And people are trying to wait it out, whether that means they’re using their credit cards, loans from family, but—
AMY GOODMAN: How is aid money distributed?
TERRI BENNETT: Well, the hard thing about aid money is that it’s distributed in increments. So, the first you’re likely to get is from FEMA, from the FEMA payout, and the maximum FEMA payout is $37,000—yeah, $37,000 or $33,000, but it’s in the thirties, and it’s not enough to repair a home that’s been damaged. I mean, most of the homes we’ve worked on, the basement was destroyed, and the first floor was destroyed. So, $37,000 doesn’t get you far. Maybe your insurance kicks in a few months later. If you have problems with how much you’re getting from insurance, you may use a public adjuster and a lawyer to try to get a more fair settlement.
And now, the biggest problem is people are still waiting for the Build It Back program, which is supposed to be the most flexible program that the city has offered, but the decisions have not been made very quickly. And we know that people are getting notifications now that maybe they’ve been accepted, but they’re going to be waiting two to four more months for help. And so, you have people who are maybe paying rent and their mortgage on a house that’s been destroyed, and it’s really just exhausting people, and it’s—and it’s bringing people kind of to wit’s end.
AMY GOODMAN: In November last year, award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein spoke in New York about her article, "Superstorm Sandy—A People’s Shock?" in which she argued reconstruction after Sandy provided a way to usher in progressive change. The argument stemmed in part from her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
NAOMI KLEIN: The problems that I call out in the book are not responding strongly to disaster. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re having a crisis, you should respond strongly. It deserves that. It’s these particular ways of using crisis in anti-democratic ways, to hoard power, to centralize power, to circumvent democracy. So what I’m calling for is the opposite of that, is, in moments of crisis, to broaden the democratic space.
And I think thinking about how a community responds after a disaster like Sandy, it’s a great example, because often what you have are very elite-driven reconstruction processes. You know, a committee is struck, filled with industrialists—this has just happened—to come up with a reconstruction plan, often very, very wealthy people who are supposed to attract more donors. And often the affected people are treated as so traumatized and so victimized that they of course could not participate in the reconstruction process themselves. And this is simply not true. In fact, the best way to recover from a trauma is to overcome your helplessness by participating, by helping. And that’s what you see in the extraordinary Occupy Sandy response to this particular crisis, where it comes in a spirit not of the traditional relief organization that just comes into a community, says, "We know what you want," and hands out whatever people decide that they want, and it’s a very much of a client relationship. The volunteers involved in Occupy Sandy are coming in in the spirit of what they call "mutual aid," which is saying—asking people, "What do you want?" you know, and trying to empower communities, not only to respond to the immediate emergency, but also the recovery afterwards.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Naomi Klein talking about her article, "Superstorm Sandy—A People’s Shock?" Jessica Roff, you were nodding your head. You were out in the Rockaways. Talk about what it meant to be in the community figuring out what people wanted, and also what you’re doing today, pushing for a smart grid and renewable energy to be integrated into the rebuilding of the Rockaways.
JESSICA ROFF: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the—one of the reasons we were more effective in our response was because we were out talking to people every day and listening, and we were a flexible—I don’t even want to use the word "organization," per se, because we were really—you know, we were all-volunteer. We were making things up as we went along. But we were seeing each person that we were talking to, and we were seeing their situations, and we were responding accordingly. We were learning what people needed and how the best way to respond to them was. And we were hearing, like Terri was saying, that people were really feeling deserted.
And it’s sort of ironic, in relation to what Naomi Klein was just saying, that the lack of community involvement has really been heightened, I think, by the storm, as opposed to there being a shift in our democratic process. People in the Rockaways have felt, you know, deserted and left out for years and have had not a strong voice in the government and in other organizations. And now that’s really being exacerbated, even though supposedly many of these programs that the government and not-for-profits are running are engaging with community response. But they’re not really impacting the decisions, or it doesn’t seem that way. So, one of the things we’ve been doing is talking to a lot of people about energy and what’s happening out there. People are really upset because the Rockaways—
AMY GOODMAN: The Rockaways is along the beach, the Atlantic Ocean.
JESSICA ROFF: The Rockaways is a long—is a long, 13-mile peninsula, and it’s a barrier peninsula. And it’s got the ocean on one side and the bay on the other. And one of the reasons that Sandy was so devastating was because the ocean met the bay, and there—it was completely underwater in most of the peninsula, so there was massive destruction never seen before.
So, in the context of that, instead of rebuilding and instead of giving more protection, which is what all of the communities are talking about in every single meeting, in every single hearing, in every opportunity they have to talk with government and other agencies, what is actually happening is they’re building the Rockaway Lateral Pipeline out there, which is a natural gas pipeline, along with—there’s like 30 other infrastructure projects throughout the course of the entire state of New York, including the Spectra pipeline whose natural gas actually goes live on Friday, which is a huge problem. So this is happening. They’re building a natural gas pipeline. They’re dredging the ocean in a very unstable area, to begin with, because, as I said, it’s a barrier reef where there’s been tons of landfill and dumping along the years and years of use. It’s going to bring in this gas that’s radioactive, that’s toxic, that’s highly explosive.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s it for?
JESSICA ROFF: It’s to power our stoves and our heating systems. And it’s really a problem that we don’t have an infrastructure in the city that will allow us to make the renewable shift. And what we need to be doing is actually changing how we’re building out our infrastructure, and building a sustainable and renewable energy process, as well as sustainable communities.
AMY GOODMAN: What would that look like?
JESSICA ROFF: That’s a huge endeavor, but I think it’s a fantastic one. I mean, it means rebuilding our grid. Our grid doesn’t operate in a good way, as we knew from the big blackout that went from all the way from Canada down through, you know, almost to the mid-Atlantic. We would have to rebuild the grid. It has to be more localized. We have to build out infrastructure and storage facilities for wind, for solar, for tidal. And all of those are just begging to be done in the Rockaways, where there’s a ton of all of that.
AMY GOODMAN: One advocate of the new pipeline has been Congressmember Michael Grimm. His district includes Brooklyn. He says it would bring clean energy to New York.
REP. MICHAEL GRIMM: This project will be the first bulk natural gas transmission project in Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens in more than 40 years. The 5.2 million people living in these three boroughs are demanding more and more natural gas. Natural gas, as we all know, is reliable. It’s clean. It’s domestic. And it’s economical. On September 15th of last year, New York City Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway testified before the National Parks Subcommittee in its support—there in support of the Grimm-Meeks bill. I appreciate all the courtesy shown to him on that day. In his testimony, the deputy mayor stated energy demand in New York City is increasing and will continue to grow; therefore, getting the Gateway project done is a major effort that includes the private sector, the city, state and federal governments. The Gateway pipeline project will generate approximately $265 million in construction activity, create almost 300 local jobs, and bring in about $8 million in annual local revenue for the City of New York, providing much-needed short- and long-term boost to our economy.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s New York Congressmember Michael Grimm. His district includes Brooklyn. Jessica Roff?
JESSICA ROFF: I mean, he sounds like he’s speaking for the oil and gas industry. He’s telling you all of the lies that we’ve been hearing forever. The primary fallacy is natural gas is clean. It’s not clean. The process starts—from cradle to grave, it is actually much more destructive than—with its carbon footprint than coal is. And there’s so much more than carbon that we need to be talking about. We need to talk about methane. We need to talk about, you know, the—all of the chemicals that are released in the process, as well as when the gas is shifted through different infrastructure projects. And so, it’s a huge problem. It doesn’t bring in all those jobs they promised. I talked to people working on the pipeline while they were working. You know where they were from? Minnesota. They were from South Dakota. They were not from New York City. It’s not local jobs. It’s not clean. It’s dangerous. What we need to be doing is actually investing in a system that is not going to exacerbate climate change also, because if we’re talking about rebuilding resiliently in the Rockaways, then there has to be a process that is allowing for not making that any worse, not having to deal with more problems, not making extreme weather worse through our energy choices.
AMY GOODMAN: Terri Bennett, that issue of resiliency?
TERRI BENNETT: Yeah, I mean, we’re not dealing with issues of resiliency on a large scale, and we’re also not dealing with it on the issue—on the, you know, immediate scale of rebuilding. The Rapid Repairs program was a great idea. It was done really hastily, and it was done in a way that people were not—didn’t have the choice to maybe upgrade to more resilient forms of heating their homes or—or even raising their electrical panel up into the second floor of their home in case there’s another storm half the size of Sandy that’s going to cause the same amount of destruction. So we think a lot of that money is eventually going to be flushed down the toilet.
We also don’t see a disaster relief industry that is promoting resiliency or sustainability. Nonprofits are often more concerned with numbers, because granters want to see numbers, and not more sustainable methods of building or materials for building. And we don’t think it’s economically sustainable, either, because it’s much more likely that—in terms of being competitive for disaster relief funding, it’s much more likely that an organization based in San Diego with disaster relief experience is going to be more competitive than a more suitable community-based organization in an affected area that is not as desirable to funders because they don’t—they have not been given the resources to be competitive in that. And I think that in coastal regions and in regions, in general, that are prone to disasters, we need to start thinking about making our community-based organizations the ones who deal with the disasters, because, like Naomi Klein said, these are the experts. These are the people who know what the community needs. And right now we don’t have a disaster relief industry that takes that into consideration.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, as we just passed the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, a lot of people said, "What happened to Occupy?" But you both really came out of that. We’re talking about Occupy Sandy. How did that happen?
JESSICA ROFF: Somebody got the bright idea when they saw the storm coming to set up a website and a donation place, actually. I was not heavily involved with Occupy Wall Street. I had a peripheral connection earlier through my climate justice work, but, you know, it was something that was sort of on my radar. And that’s where I saw it come from. And then, from there, it was really the skills of social media and networking that people developed during the Occupy Wall Street sort of heyday that allowed people to set up the right systems to have, you know, volunteers be able to come in, to get donations to come in. Someone set up, you know, a gift registry on Amazon in order for people to be able to donate from around the world and send things directly to us that we needed on the ground. And then, you know, because, like what Terri was saying, we need to invest in the local community, we had—we shifted that to actually be a community business registry and started buying—as soon as doors were open within the Rockaways, we started buying our equipment and all of the materials we needed wherever they were available there. So it was really just that background.
AMY GOODMAN: I have a quick question. We were talking about spying in the headlines, and surveillance. This very odd situation just recently developed, and people all over the country and the world may have seen this weird video on the West Side Highway of an SUV and a bunch of motorcyclists, and they bashed the SUV, and then there was this fight, and one by one these guys have been arrested. But it turns out that an undercover New York City police officer arrested in the infamous motorcycle gang incident on the West Side Highway has found—was found to previously have spied on Occupy Sandy. Isn’t that right?
TERRI BENNETT: Yeah.
JESSICA ROFF: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, they—the city couldn’t get people out to the Rockaways, but they were already spying—
JESSICA ROFF: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —on these relief efforts? Spying?
TERRI BENNETT: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Not helping people?
JESSICA ROFF: Yes.
TERRI BENNETT: It’s true.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you know about this?
JESSICA ROFF: Just what we’ve read in the papers.
AMY GOODMAN: Terri?
TERRI BENNETT: Just what—yeah, just what we’ve read in the papers. I mean, I—it was—people had talked about the possibility of there being people infiltrating the group, because no one knew what to expect from Occupy Sandy, right? People didn’t know if they were going—if we were going to be doing relief work for how long and what kind of political direction that was going to take. So, it doesn’t really surprise me that people would be placed—that undercovers would be placed in that position to see what kind of metamorphosis Occupy Sandy might take. But it’s kind of amazing to us, because we had this immediacy, we had this urgency to everything that we were doing. And frankly, although we are—disaster capitalism is on our radar—you know, we’re expecting to see land grabs, we’re expecting to see different kinds of injustice hit—in the first days after the storm, we were worried about whether people had food or water and whether they were sleeping in a moldy home. And so, it’s an interesting—it’s interesting that, you know, the resources were given to that cause rather than our cause.
JESSICA ROFF: Yeah, it was ages before—I mean, the Department of Health didn’t even get there 'til the eighth day. We had already canvassed half the peninsula, and we had, you know, doctors out, and we were filling people's prescriptions with—we had a volunteer who came out with a motorcycle and literally rode up and down the entire peninsula going to any open pharmacy to get medication that was available. So we couldn’t get meds to people that needed them for desperately—you know, desperately for their medical conditions, but, you know, we can get undercover agents watching us and seeing what we’re doing.
TERRI BENNETT: Right.
JESSICA ROFF: Makes sense.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there, but we’re going to talk about housing next. I want to thank you both for being with us. Terri Bennett is with Respond and Rebuild; Jessica Roff, Restore the Rock—both part of the overall umbrella Occupy Sandy. And if you want more information on it, I guess you could apply under the Freedom of Information Act and see what kind of transcripts you could get of conversations. But we’ll be back in a minute talking about housing a year later.
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One year after Superstorm Sandy, many of those impacted by the storm remain without a permanent home and dependent on diminishing relief funds. New York Magazine reports at least 22,000 households are still displaced. We are joined by two guests: Shawn Little, a healthcare worker who has been living in hotels with her family since Sandy devastated their neighborhood in the Rockaways section of Queens, and Judith Goldiner, attorney in charge of the Civil Law Reform Unit at the Legal Aid Society.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: As we continue our coverage of the first anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, many of those impacted by the storm remain homeless and dependent on diminishing relief funds. New York Magazine reports at least 22,000 households are still displaced.
Joining us here in our New York studio, which a year ago there was no power here or anywhere else — in fact, Democracy Now! — I was on the road on a hundred-city tour. We were in St. Louis—all the media was watching St. Louis yesterday for the Red Sox-Cardinals game. Red Sox won, but that wasn’t what was important a year ago. So, as I was broadcasting from a St. Louis PBS station, my colleagues here in New York were going out to the Rockaways, to Brooklyn, to Queens, to Staten Island, to the Lower East Side, because the whole area was devastated.
We’re joined here by Shawn Little, a healthcare worker who lived in the Rockaways section of Queens when Sandy hit. She and her family have been living in hotels for the past year. We’re also joined by Judith Goldiner, attorney in charge of the Civil Law Reform Unit at the Legal Aid Society.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Judith, let’s begin with you. Give us the overall picture of housing today a year after Superstorm Sandy.
JUDITH GOLDINER: Well, unfortunately, what we saw with Superstorm Sandy is it destroyed a whole area of low-income housing for people that has not been replaced. And in fact, the housing that’s been rebuilt in places like the Rockaways is now unaffordable to a lot of people who used to live there. So what we’ve seen is losing this category of housing and not rebuilding so that people who lived there can afford to go back.
We at Legal Aid have been representing people who were homeless and in the hotels for—you know, really since the storm, and trying to make sure that they at least are going to get permanent, affordable housing. But really, the bigger picture is that so many people still don’t have housing, are marginally housed, are doubled up, are in hotels, and we don’t have good options for them.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean that the—some—many houses were wiped out, and then they—how was it set up? How was the building done so that people with lower incomes could not go back?
JUDITH GOLDINER: Well, many times people who were able to rebuild rebuilt and started charging more rent than people could afford for those apartments. Some apartments weren’t rebuilt, and there was many less options, especially in places like Far Rockaway. And we’ve been hearing over and over how people are seeing rents that are far, far higher than they ever were. And remember, Far Rockaway was a place where there was affordable housing. It’s pretty far away from Manhattan. It takes a long time to get there. And as a result, many of my clients could actually find places to live there. And that’s not the case anymore.
AMY GOODMAN: Shawn Little, explain what happened to you. Where were you a year ago, before Superstorm Sandy?
SHAWN LITTLE: A year ago today, I was home. I was home in Rockaways, Auburn.
AMY GOODMAN: Mm-hmm.
SHAWN LITTLE: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happened when the storm hit? You had had Irene, but nothing really had happened.
SHAWN LITTLE: We had Irene, and nothing happened. So, basically, we was unprepared, because we figured it was the same, it was going to be the same. So, Irene, I, you know, was ready and prepared, but nothing happened. So Sandy just took us back. We wasn’t prepared, and we didn’t prepare for anything. So we was there. And we evacuated eventually, you know, and we ended up in a gym, gymnasium, in Kew Gardens.
AMY GOODMAN: For about 10 days or so?
SHAWN LITTLE: For 10 days.
AMY GOODMAN: And then where did they put you?
SHAWN LITTLE: They put us in a shelter in the Bronx. We went to a shelter in the Bronx for a few days. And then from there we went to the hotels.
AMY GOODMAN: And what hotels were they putting you in? And for people who have kids, their kids are supposed to be in school. I mean, that’s—
SHAWN LITTLE: Sure, sure. Well, people—you know, people was traveling. They was back and forth, you know, to the Rockaways, to different parts of Queens. They offered different schools to place the kids in, you know, if you rathered that. My son was not able to go back to school, because his school was in the Rockaways.
AMY GOODMAN: How old is he?
SHAWN LITTLE: He’s 15 now. He was 14 then. So, he went to Beach Channel, and—there on the bay in the Rockaways, Rockaway Park. So he was out of his school for like four months.
AMY GOODMAN: And you’re still in a hotel today?
SHAWN LITTLE: Yes. I’m in a different hotel, actually. We just relocated to Brooklyn from Manhattan, which is a blessing. It’s OK. I’m here.
AMY GOODMAN: And how are—how do you get out of a hotel and actually live in an apartment or a home?
SHAWN LITTLE: Well, now I’m getting ready to relocate, actually. I’ll be moving in my new place in a few weeks or so, through the grace of—Legal Aid helped us out. DHS helped us out.
AMY GOODMAN: You have an autistic foster child?
SHAWN LITTLE: Right, I do.
AMY GOODMAN: How did he bear this?
SHAWN LITTLE: Well, as long as he was with me, he was fine. You know, anything other probably would have set him back. You know, he came a long way. And, you know, to keep him where he is today, as long as he’s with his family—you know, me, myself—me, my son, my daughter, that’s all he knows. So, he’s doing great.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Judith Goldiner, how typical is this, a year later people still living in hotels?
JUDITH GOLDINER: Well, we are still working with 80 households, about 150 people who are still in the hotels. Unfortunately, the city has not moved quickly to give many of those people the housing assistance that they need in order to move in. You know, we worked very hard with Ms. Little, and we were able to get her a housing coupon, but there are many others for whom the city has not acted yet. And despite our efforts, they’re still slow. And it’s really concerning to us.
AMY GOODMAN: New York Magazine says 22,000 people are still displaced.
JUDITH GOLDINER: Right. There are 80 people still in the hotels. There are 22,000 people—
AMY GOODMAN: Households, that’s more than even people.
JUDITH GOLDINER: Right, 22,000 households who are still doubled up, tripled up, living in substandard conditions. Absolutely. There are so many people like that. And there’s been so little effort to make more housing available to them.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think is the most important issue for people to understand right now?
JUDITH GOLDINER: How little affordable housing there is. We knew that in New York City before, but Superstorm Sandy really illuminated how little housing there is for people who really need it.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you foresee being able to move into—back into an apartment or in a house, Shawn?
SHAWN LITTLE: Sure. Yeah, absolutely, as long as I’m comfortable, I basically have what I was used to, I’m fine. You know, there was times where they tried to place us in, you know, places that we wasn’t used to, you know, we didn’t come from. You know, I’ve worked hard to get my family in a middle-class home. I had no program, no public assistance. And to just lose that and go somewhere that we’re not used to would have been really, really hard, you know.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but we will certainly continue to follow this. Judith Goldiner, attorney at Legal Aid Society; Shawn Little, displaced from her home in Rockaways when Hurricane Sandy hit a year ago today.
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HEADLINES:
U.S. Drone Strike Kills 2 in Somalia
A U.S. drone strike in Somalia has left at least two people dead. The strike hit a vehicle reportedly carrying top leaders of the militant group al-Shabab. One of the victims was said to be the Shabab’s top explosives expert, known as Anta. It was the first known U.S. military action in Somalia since a failed raid on a seaside villa earlier this month.
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Obama Admin May Halt NSA Spying on Foreign Leaders
The Obama administration says it is considering halting the National Security Agency’s spying on leaders of U.S. government allies. The news follows a diplomatic uproar over leaks of Edward Snowden showing the NSA monitored the phones of at least 35 foreign politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In a statement, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, said the White House told her it will stop spying on friendly heads of state. But the White House later issued a denial, saying no final decision has been made. There are also no reported plans to stop the mass surveillance of millions of citizens in the countries involved. In an interview with the new U.S. cable network Fusion, Obama declined to answer whether he was previously aware of U.S. spying on foreign leaders.
President Obama: "Well, first of all, I’m not confirming a bunch of assumptions that have been made in the press, but what I have said is that the national security operations generally have one purpose, and that is to make sure that the American people are safe and that I’m making good decisions. And I’m the final user of all of the intelligence that they gather. But they’re involved in a whole wide range of issues, and we give them policy direction, but what we’ve seen over the last several years is their capacity has continued to develop and expand, and that’s why I’m initiating now a review to make sure that what they’re able to do doesn’t necessarily mean what they should be doing."
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Senate Intel Chair Opposes Spying on U.S. Allies
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein said she opposes spying on allied foreign leaders, saying: "I do not believe the United States should be collecting phone calls or emails of friendly presidents and prime ministers." Feinstein also suggested the National Security Agency’s spying on the world leaders was kept from Congress, saying her committee "was not satisfactorily informed." She also announced what she promised to be a "major review of all intelligence collection programs." Feinstein to date has been a key supporter of NSA surveillance. Speaking at the White House, Press Secretary Jay Carney acknowledged the United States may have to curb some of its surveillance operations.
Jay Carney: "We recognize that there need to be additional constraints on how we gather and use intelligence. And it’s in the context of this dynamic technology environment that the president has directed us to review our surveillance capabilities. What I’m saying is, we’re acknowledging the tension that this has caused. We understand that this has caused concern in countries that represent some of our closest relationships internationally, and we are working to allay those concerns."
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European Lawmakers Press U.S. on Surveillance
A group of European lawmakers is in Washington this week to press their concerns over U.S. surveillance. Germany and France are now seeking a firm "no-spying" agreement with the United States. European Parliament members Axel Voss of Germany and Teresa Barrio of Spain spoke to reporters on Monday after a visit to Capitol Hill.
Axel Voss: "There’s a big discussion, a deep disappointment, and of course we are not considering our chancellor as a terrorist, and so, therefore, I would say they have to think about or to reconsider what data they really are interested in."
Teresa Barrio: "I think we came here with a good will now and also with a strong message of our citizens saying that we don’t accept this. So we have to find the way of keeping the security of our citizens without breaking the privacy in this massive way."
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NSA Director Faces Congress Amid Surveillance Row
The European delegation met with lawmakers including Mike Rogers, the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Rogers said he hopes to address European concerns while still maintaining the U.S. capacity to conduct surveillance.
Rep. Mike Rogers: "We think we’ve made some progress. We’re starting to highlight some areas where we think we can work together to cover our differences. We are on a world wide web and information and people are flying across that web all at the same time, so they may be in our country in this second and they may be in France or Germany the next very second in their communications, and that’s, I think, the framework that we are all trying to figure out what is the best way forward and how do we do this that still maintains a mutual trust that we’ve developed, really, in the past 70 years."
The nation’s spying apparatus will remain in the spotlight on Capitol Hill today when top officials including National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander appear before the House Intelligence Committee.
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U.N.: Syria on Pace to Meet Chemical Deadline
The United Nations says Syria is on target to meet a deadline for destroying production equipment for its chemical weapons stockpile. Inspectors say they have been able to verify 21 of 23 chemical weapons sites, with the remaining two unreachable because they are located in a conflict zone. Syria is slated to destroy chemical production and mixing facilities by November 1, a key milestone in the U.N. Security Council deadline for the chemical program’s full destruction by June 30.
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Child Polio Outbreak Confirmed in Northern Syria
A polio outbreak has been confirmed among children in northeast Syria. At least 10 children in the province of Deir ez-Zor have been paralyzed with the disease. The World Health Organization says it is Syria’s first polio outbreak since 1999. With thousands of Syria refugees fleeing their homes by the day, health workers are warning the disease could spread.
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U.S. Blames Shutdown for Failure to Answer on Guantánamo, NSA
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has asked the United States to explain alleged abuses at Guantánamo Bay and grant immediate access to investigators. Citing the force-feeding of hunger-striking detainees, one panel member said the available evidence indicates a "general and systematic violation of human rights." On Monday, the U.S. ambassador to the commission, Lawrence Gumbiner, was also asked to answer questions over NSA spying worldwide. On both Guantánamo and the NSA, Gumbiner said he couldn’t provide an immediate answer because the government shutdown left his team without enough time to prepare.
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Brazilian Judge Halts Construction of Belo Monte Dam
A Brazilian judge has ordered a halt to construction of a major hydroelectric dam in the Amazon rain forest, citing the violation of environmental commitments. The $11 billion Belo Monte Dam project was initially approved over the objections of indigenous communities who have warned of ecological damage and mass displacement.
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Federal Judge Strikes Down Key Part of Anti-Abortion Law
A federal judge has ruled a key portion of the recent Texas anti-abortion law is unconstitutional. On Monday, District Judge Lee Yeakel struck down provisions that required onerous hospital admitting privileges for abortion doctors. The restrictions would have forced at least a dozen abortion clinics to close their doors. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has vowed to appeal. The rest of the law goes into effect today, including a ban on abortion at 20 weeks post-fertilization. The initial bill inspired a people’s filibuster and a stand from Texas State Senator Wendy Davis that thwarted state lawmakers’ first attempt to pass it.
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Ohio To Use New Drug Combination in Execution
Ohio is planning on using an unprecedented drug combination for an execution after a Danish company banned its sedative from involvement in the death penalty. Ohio officials say they will be forced to use midazolam and hydromorphone on a death row prisoner next month. The combination has never been tried in the United States. Ohio says it has run out of pentobarbital, made by the Danish firm Lundbeck and now banned from U.S. prisons that carry out capital punishment.
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Comey Orders FBI Employees to Visit MLK Memorial
President Obama appeared at FBI headquarters on Monday to welcome new director James Comey. Obama told FBI staffers he will fight to restore the agency’s budget constraints under sequestration.
President Obama: "I’ll keep fighting for those resources because our country asks and expects a lot from you, and we should make sure you’ve got the resources you need to do the job, especially when many of your colleagues put their lives on the line on a daily basis, all to serve and protect our fellow citizens. The least we can do is make sure you’ve got the resources for it and that your operations are not disrupted because of politics in this town."
Comey was sworn in at a private ceremony last month. He has instructed all new agents to visit the memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Capitol Mall, as a lesson of what he called "the dangers in becoming untethered to oversight and accountability." King was subjected to extensive FBI surveillance and harassment in the years before his death.
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Penn State to Pay Nearly $60 Million to Sandusky Victims
Penn State University has reached a nearly $60 million settlement with 26 victims of the child sex abuse committed by former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Up to six other victims are not a part of the settlement and remain involved in talks with school officials. Sandusky is serving a sentence of 30 to 60 years for sexually abusing 10 young boys. Three former top Penn State officials are facing trial for their alleged role in the cover-up of Sandusky’s crimes.
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