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The governors of New York and New Jersey are facing federal pressure to reverse new quarantine rules on medical workers returning from West Africa. Under the policy, arriving passengers with a risk of Ebola exposure will be placed in a 21-day quarantine. White House officials lobbied New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over the weekend, saying the rules would discourage workers from joining the Ebola response in West Africa. On Sunday night, Cuomo announced a slight easing of the restrictions, saying the workers can be quarantined at home. A nurse named Kaci Hickox became the first health worker isolated under the rules after returning to New Jersey from Sierra Leone. Hickox has been placed in an isolated tent inside a Newark hospital despite testing negative for Ebola. She has threatened to fight her 21-day quarantine in court, saying the order violates her constitutional rights. We are joined by Carissa Guild, a nurse with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who has just returned from Guinea, where she took part in the Ebola response effort.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The World Health Organization said Saturday nearly 5,000 people have now died from Ebola out of 10,000 known cases. But health officials say the actual death toll may be significantly higher in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three worst-hit countries. The virus is now threatening Ivory Coast, which shares a border with Guinea and Liberia. The World Health Organization has sent experts to Ivory Coast and Mali to help prepare for a possible outbreak. On Friday, a two-year-old toddler in Mali died after contracting the virus in Guinea.
Meanwhile here in the United States, hospital officials say the first Ebola patient in New York, Dr. Craig Spencer, is in serious but stable condition at Bellevue Hospital. Spencer recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders. As part of his treatment, Spencer received a plasma transfusion from Nancy Writebol, an aid worker who contracted the deadly disease in Africa and survived.
AMY GOODMAN: On Friday, the states of New York and New Jersey announced they would automatically quarantine medical workers returning from Ebola-hit West African countries. A nurse named Kaci Hickox, who recently returned from Sierra Leone, became the first health worker isolated under the rules. She arrived at Newark airport. She was placed in 21-day quarantine in a tent outside University Hospital in Newark. She has threatened to fight her quarantine in court, arguing the order violates her constitutional rights. During a phone interview on CNN, Hickox disputed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s assertion that she’s "obviously ill."
KACI HICKOX: I heard from my mother last night, who called me, concerned, and said, "Governor Christie just said in an interview that you were, quote-unquote, 'obviously ill.'" And this is so frustrating to me. First of all, I don’t think he’s a doctor, and secondly, he’s never laid eyes on me. And thirdly, I have been asymptomatic since I’ve been here. I feel physically completely strong and emotionally completely exhausted. But for him to say I’m obviously ill, which is even a strange statement—what does that mean? Someone define that for me, because I think I don’t quite understand what "obviously ill" means. But I am here to tell you that I am completely fine physically, and being held here is just—I just don’t understand.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was nurse Kaci Hickox being interviewed on CNN. Public health officials and the White House have criticized the plan by New Jersey and New York to quarantine health workers, saying it could impede the Ebola fight. On Sunday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo appeared to soften his stance and said people quarantined in the state who do not show symptoms of the disease would be allowed to remain at home.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about Ebola, we’re going to be joined by a number of guests. We start with Carissa Guild, a nurse with Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF—it’s the letters for the French, Médecins Sans Frontières. She just returned from Guinea last week, where she was helping to respond to the Ebola crisis. In 2012, she worked with Doctors Without Borders in the Congo to address an Ebola outbreak there.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Carissa Guild. First, can you—before we talk to you about your return from Guinea, if you can talk about the treatment of your fellow nurse? Talk about what—the whole issue of how Kaci Hickox is being dealt with right now. She arrives at Newark and is taken from there, ultimately against her will, placed in 21-day quarantine. She now says she’s going to sue over her treatment.
CARISSA GUILD: I mean, I think that it was a decision that was made that was probably not well thought out. Like everyone has been saying, there’s a lot of—it’s not well thought out. There’s no evidence that she’s a risk to anybody in the whole country. So, I obviously don’t agree with putting her being in quarantine. I think that just monitoring your health, like we’re told to do every day, and taking your temperature every day—we can’t give anybody Ebola if you don’t have symptoms. She obviously doesn’t have symptoms. So, it was not a very well-thought-out or rational decision to do, and we’ll see what happens.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Carissa, could you talk to us about what happened to you when you came in the country, when you returned in your last trip from West Africa?
CARISSA GUILD: I mean, I just returned back last week. And I came in, and I was—I went to JFK. And they brought me into a room, and they monitored my temperature, and I didn’t have a temperature, so basically I just went home. And I follow the daily rules of Doctors Without Borders, where I do take my temperature every morning, and I send an email every morning to the Department of Health, and I let them know that I’m feeling fine. And so far I’m feeling fine. So I think that actually this is less of a problem, and what we’re talking about, about ex-pats returning and not treating them well in the United States and ex-pats having Ebola here in the United States, is not really the issue. I think the issue is much more talking about those 10,000 people who have contracted the virus over in West Africa.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what you found in Guinea? Talk about your time there.
CARISSA GUILD: I mean, there’s a lot of problems in Guinea right now. I’ve been there—I guess that the first time I went was in April. And I basically just have seen the progression get worse and worse and worse with the virus. MSF is basically reaching its capacity. Where I was was in a town called Guéckédou, which is where the whole outbreak began. And we ended up having nearly 100 beds in our facility. Right before I was leaving, we were discussing of what we’d do if we have to start turning patients away, because we were getting patients coming from very long distances away, and we were worried that we weren’t going to have enough capacity to actually treat and isolate the cases. So, there needs to be a lot more work and a lot more help going there to help get this under control.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what do you think will be the impact of what’s happened to Kaci Hickox on the other caregivers thinking about going to West Africa and doing their part to be able to stem the spread of Ebola?
CARISSA GUILD: Well, I’m hoping that not every state takes this decision. And hopefully the decision gets relooked at, so hopefully it won’t have too much of an impact. And it wouldn’t probably impacted me so much going, but that’s also knowing that there’s plenty of other countries in the world which would be happy to have me for 21 days after I came back and would let me hang out at home and not be in a hospital. So, hopefully, the decision will get looked at and it won’t have an impact, because it would be really unfortunate. It’s unfortunate for her. She went over to Africa to help in West Africa for this Ebola crisis. There’s a lot of suffering over there. There’s a lot of people who are really, really scared over there. And to have her welcomed back into her home like we’re welcoming her back is not the best face of America.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you protect yourself? How did people in Guinea protect themselves, both in communities where people had Ebola and in the hospital where you worked?
CARISSA GUILD: We were using the personal protective equipment, so when we were in the center, the treatment center, we were very, very well protected. We had the jumpsuit, the yellow jumpsuit, on and masks and two pairs of gloves and hoods and aprons and everything that you see on TV. So we were very protected while we were inside the treatment center.
Outside the treatment center, though, is basically the passive part of a response to Ebola. And the part that’s very important is the training of people in the community and doing outreach and going into the villages and speaking with a lot of people and teaching health workers. In this, we were protecting ourselves basically by keeping distance with patients or keeping distance with the population, keeping a two-meter distance, washing your hands a lot. There was chlorine everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. I mean, that said, it doesn’t make the risk zero, and there are certainly—there’s plenty of health workers in Guinea who have gotten sick. But there’s many, many precautions that certainly MSF is taking, which is keeping me—I feel pretty confident that I don’t have Ebola and that I didn’t get Ebola while I was there.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to go back to Kaci Hickox, the Doctors Without Borders nurse who was placed in a 21-day quarantine in New Jersey after she returned from Sierra Leone. On Sunday, she called into CNN. This is part of her conversation.
KACI HICKOX: We have to be very careful about letting politicians make medical and public health decisions. And all of the evidence about Ebola shows that if you are not symptomatic, you are not infectious. It’s really inhumane. I just came back from one of the most difficult months of my life, and I am completely [inaudible]. And no one knows—no one can predict if I will develop Ebola or not in the next 21 days. And most aid workers [inaudible] come back will not [inaudible] Ebola. So, to quarantine everyone, in case, you know, when you cannot predict who may develop Ebola or not, and to make me stay for 21 days, to not be with my family, to put me through this emotional and physical stress, is completely unacceptable.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Kaci Hickox talking to CNN. What about this issue of the politicians making decisions that really should be in the hands of medical experts and scientists?
CARISSA GUILD: I mean, I guess I really don’t have too much to say about that. I definitely agree that Ebola is a medical problem. It’s an outbreak. And it should be in the hands of people who know what they’re doing and who understand how the virus works and how to protect yourself. It’s a pretty tricky virus, and there are very specific things that we already know work, and there are people who know those things. And I would trust those people over someone making a decision who is less informed.
AMY GOODMAN: Carissa, what is most needed now in Guinea, where you were? What were people most calling for to deal with the Ebola crisis?
CARISSA GUILD: I mean, in Guinea, there’s a lot of fear, and I’ve seen it spread quite far. So, it started off in one prefecture called Guéckédou. And when I was leaving, we were having cases coming from very far away, in the whole right half of the country, which means that people were waiting until the end. They were being sure that these people had Ebola. They were coming—they were putting them in ambulances for 10 hours. They were sending them to our center for treatment. They were arriving very late, so sometimes you would open up the ambulance door, and there would be three people who were still alive and one or two people who had died on the way. So I think there needs to be a lot of effort in building treatment centers and making access to care bigger and doing outreach and training staff workers and training health workers in how to detect cases of Ebola, putting labs to make sure that we know where Ebola is. And I just—there’s a lot to be done there right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Carissa Guild, I want to thank you for being with us, a nurse with Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF. She just returned from Guinea in Africa, where she was working with Ebola patients. She has come back to this country and is in Cape Cod now. When we come back, we will go to Jeffrey Sachs, a leading economist, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, has a team in Guinea, as well. And we’ll speak with Johns Hopkins scientist Nancy Kass about experimental drugs dealing with Ebola. Who should get them? Who doesn’t get them? Stay with us.
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The World Health Organization says nearly 5,000 people have now died from Ebola out of 10,000 known cases. But the actual death toll may be significantly higher in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three worst-hit countries. The virus is now threatening Ivory Coast, which shares a border with Guinea and Liberia. The World Health Organization has sent experts to Ivory Coast and Mali to help prepare for a possible outbreak. Meanwhile in the United States, hospital officials say the first Ebola patient in New York City, Dr. Craig Spencer, is in serious, but stable, condition at Bellevue Hospital. Spencer recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders. On Friday, the states of New York and New Jersey announced they would automatically quarantine medical workers returning from Ebola-hit West African countries. We discuss the latest news in the Ebola crisis with two guests: Jeffrey Sachs, a leading economist and director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, who is working with the government in Guinea to battle the Ebola epidemic, and Nancy Kass, professor of bioethics and public health at Johns Hopkins University.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: To talk more about Ebola, we’re joined by two guests. Jeffrey Sachs is a leading economist and the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Sachs recently authored a piece headlined "We Don’t Need an Ebola Czar." The Earth Institute is working with the government in Guinea to battle the Ebola epidemic and is holding a conference today titled "The Ebola Crisis: What It Means for West Africa and the World."
We’re also joined by Nancy Kass, professor of bioethics and public health at Johns Hopkins University. Her article in the Annals of Internal Medicine is called "Ebola, Ethics, and Public Health: What Next?"
Welcome to both of you. Jeffrey Sachs, I’d like to begin with you. The subject of your recent article, "We Don’t Need an Ebola Czar," could you talk about that?
JEFFREY SACHS: Well, that was a very specific point that I think President Obama should be backing up his real Ebola leader, Tom Frieden, the head of the Centers for Disease Control, rather than appointing somebody who obviously lacks the necessary knowledge and experience to head an Ebola effort. This was politics. It’s a kind of modest point. It’s not really at the center of the fight against Ebola per se, but it was a response to the real disgraceful show in Congress, when congressmen, who know nothing and who had been cutting the CDC budget for years, then went after Frieden, who is one of the world’s most experienced leaders in public health. And rather than the congressmen asking, which they should have, "What can we do for you, Dr. Frieden, to help ensure a quality U.S. effort?" from their, you know, high horse, they start making accusations and stupid statements. And I thought the president should just have come out and said, "Stop it. We have a highly experienced leader of the world’s most important public health institute. Let’s get on with it." Unfortunately, he didn’t do it; he appointed this fellow, Ron Klain, who—I don’t know if he’ll do something useful. I hope he doesn’t do something just to add to the confusion.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeffrey Sachs, I wanted to ask you, as a leading economist—we got a note from Jubilee USA saying right now Guinea is spending more on debt than on public health. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea spend together nearly $200 million a year on debt. Imagine what that money could do for funding healthcare, they asked, in their countries and what it could do—could have done to help stop the Ebola even before it started. They point out, in 2010, the U.S. passed a law supporting debt relief for Haiti after the earthquake. What about doing the same thing with these countries? Do you think that would make a difference? You have a team in Guinea right now.
JEFFREY SACHS: Well, I can tell you, a year ago I tried to raise funds for Liberia for community health workers, before the Ebola epidemic had started. And the answer from all of the international agencies is, "Oh, there’s no money here, anyway. Liberia is not much of a priority. Come back in the next funding cycle," and so forth. There is a fundamental principle both of decency and common sense, which is, we should not leave people anywhere in the world bereft of a basic, functioning primary health system. And it is clear as day that we do that for—with hundreds of millions of people, especially in rural sub-Saharan Africa. The attitude here is, "Well, what difference could it possibly make? Who cares?" which is both shameful, from an ethical point of view, but absurd, from a practical point of view. This isn’t exactly the first epidemic, and it’s not going to be the last one we face. And it’s a similar region, by the way, where AIDS began some decades ago and spread to the world from the forested regions of West Africa. We are so irresponsible in thinking that it somehow is decent for—and plausible for impoverished people to have no access to healthcare.
What you heard from the MSF nurse in her wonderful testimony just a moment ago was that the essential question on controlling an epidemic is the ability to identify people who are potentially infected, test them—if they are infected, to move them safely to a facility where they can both get care and be isolated so as to not spread the disease to others. This is a logistical problem. It’s a resource mobilization problem. It’s not the highest science. Maybe the highest science can produce a vaccine or new medicines very quickly, but the basic public health strategy—of case identification, testing, isolation, treatment—is a workable and will be a successful approach, if the resources are mobilized to do this. We’re scrambling like nothing because the resources weren’t there at all, because the international community did not sound an alarm as Ebola spread, thinking that it would just fade out on its own, as it had in earlier epidemics, but instead it was a wildfire, and now it’s spreading throughout the region and indeed to other parts of the world.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we’re also joined by Dr. Nancy Kass, a professor of bioethics and public health at Johns Hopkins University. Professor Kass, what is your reaction as you’re hearing of what’s going on here in the United States in terms of the treatment of caregivers who come back from West Africa, and also the disparity between federal policy and now some of the local states have adopted their own policies?
NANCY KASS: Yeah, yeah. Thanks for—thanks for including me in the conversation. Well, I also want to first give kudos to Ms. Guild and people like here who are going. They are really the heroes. And I think sometimes people think that there’s no harm in putting this kind of isolation, of quarantine, to people like her when she returns. And I think I want to put out the point pretty forcefully that there are pretty significant harms.
Obviously, there are harms to her, and we could hear that through—we could hear that through what you played from Ms. Hickox herself. But there is, first of all, some pretty significant messaging that goes out to the American public when an official says the only thing safe to do is keep people locked up in a tent when they arrive. It turns out that’s an inaccurate public health message. And what we’ve known about public health for a long time is that we need to give the public clear and accurate information consistently. This becomes a confusing message, because the public health people are saying, "Take your temperature. If you’re symptomatic, we then have to isolate you and give you care quickly. If you’re not symptomatic, it’s OK." By putting this out, it’s a very confusing message to the public.
The other concern is that all of our state public health authorities have something that they’ve had for more than a hundred years—called the police power. It’s a really critically important type of power for public health to have. It allows public health to lock up—to close restaurants when they’re dangerous, to lock up animals when they’re dangerous, and even, in extreme circumstances, to confine people if there’s a risk. But ethically, we always have to be assuring the public that we will only do that when it’s the necessary measure. By using police power when it’s not necessary is a very troublesome approach both to how our government’s working and, again, to the public health messaging to the public.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk, Dr. Nancy Kass, about experimental drugs? The anger that has been expressed by many that the two white healthcare workers in Africa, brought back care, given an external drug, of which there doesn’t seem to be any left of, and they survive. And who lives, and who dies? Who gets these drugs? Are they actually—did they save their lives? In fact, the drug, ZMapp, given to others who did die. How do you make decisions about these drugs being available, why they weren’t available, why they’re in the corporate sphere, made available by corporations and not by governments?
NANCY KASS: Yeah, it’s a great question. So, I first want to emphasize that we have no idea whether the ZMapp is what saved Kent Brantly’s life and Nancy Writebol’s life. They received the best supportive care available. And what we’ve seen from other people who have been brought back to wealthier countries, like the United States, is that supportive care is what people really need. People who get sick with Ebola end up vomiting a lot. They end up having diarrhea a lot. They need this supportive care. And we didn’t do a trial with them, for understandable reasons. And even though they, thankfully, have survived, there’s no way to know whether or not the ZMapp or the serum that they got from people who were Ebola survivors were in any way responsible for their recovery.
Now, it’s a really important question to figure out who gets access to this experimental kind of medicine. It certainly is true that when people like Ms. Hickox or Ms. Guild go off to another country, there are certain commitments that we make to them as sort of the international people who go and come back. We make commitments to give them the best protective equipment, that not everybody locally has. We give them commitments that we will fly them back, we will take care of them, we will pay them during their recovery period, and we will give them the best care possible. So the fact that there were certain kinds of privileges given to the first two people who were infected, when they brought back, is not, to me, necessarily problematic. That’s a really different question than "How do we figure out whether these experimental drugs work?" Certainly, right now, the best intervention are all the public health interventions that Dr. Sachs mentioned. But we have to figure out whether the vaccines or the treatments work. And uncomfortable as that may be, we’re going to have to be doing that with larger numbers of people, with people who are sick, in terms of the treatments, and if it looks like they’re not working dramatically well, we’re going to have to make some hard decisions about whether to do a randomized trial, where some people get the treatments and some people don’t.
AMY GOODMAN: I know that Jeffrey Sachs has to leave. Can you tell us what your team is doing right now in Guinea?
JEFFREY SACHS: The basic approach of getting this under control, as I’ve described, is identifying potentially infected individuals—either through contact tracing of those who have come into contact with the earlier Ebola-infected patients, or the people who develop symptoms that are suspicious, even if they weren’t on a contact list—getting them quickly tested, getting them safely taken to a treatment center in the event that they are Ebola-infected, and then having appropriate supportive care, as you just heard.
Well, building that, from almost nothing, in a matter of weeks is the real challenge. The problem with an epidemic is it doesn’t just stand still, of course. It is a chain reaction. It has geometric growth. In the case of Ebola, a doubling period—in other words, the time to double the number of cases—is roughly every three weeks right now. So this is an absolutely ferocious race against time, where the resources have to come from the outside, in financial terms. Much of the equipment has to be flown in. It’s a massive logistical problem. It’s a social problem, obviously, to enter into communities that are scared, fearful, without traditional contacts with the health teams, and to find, of course, the people and train them that can do this safely. So this is exactly what we’re trying to focus on, every aspect of this.
One of the key points that we’re quickly trying to bring to bear is information, through smartphones carried by front-line workers who can quickly put in information about a new patient—what kind of contact, what the symptoms are—get the information flowing so that there is a logical chain of support, of testing, of transport, of arrival in a clinic, of contact tracing. And we’re working 'round the clock right now with the programmers at developing new Ebola applications, working with MTN and Orange, the phone services, with Ericsson, the telecoms provider, with the president's team, and of course, with a bunch of international agencies and with MSF.
But the scramble is phenomenal. If you can see how much we’re turned upside down by a few cases in the rich and populous United States, think about the thousands of cases that roiling West Africa right now, with all the impoverishment and the logistical challenges. It’s a very practical, minute-to-minute problem where speed is of the essence.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Nancy Kass, professor of bioethics and public health at Johns Hopkins University, I’d like to ask you about the world response in West Africa, particularly the U.S. response, with this whole issue of how the military is being used and being able to get there to set up centers for treatment, but yet we’re still having problems in terms of the medical—the provision of the number of caregivers that can be mobilized so quickly, either by the World Health Organization, the United States or other advanced countries.
NANCY KASS: Yeah. So, clearly, we need different kinds of people on the ground. And what I think gets the most publicity are the people providing direct care in the treatment centers to sick patients. And obviously that’s really important. And my understanding is that it has been slow for a variety of reasons. Certainly, when the United States finally and ultimately committed that 3,000 people would come through the Department of Defense, that was a good thing. The Department of Defense has the logistical know-how to move operations like that quickly. Unfortunately, my understanding is that those 3,000 people are not there yet, that it’s been fairly slow to mobilize. And despite the amount of work that MSF is doing—and they have really been, again, remarkable heroes from very early in this epidemic, long before the United States was paying attention—there are far too many patients, and we need more healthcare workers.
I certainly have a colleague at Johns Hopkins, just as one example, who was in Liberia last week training—helping to train 1,000 healthcare workers from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Obviously, Congo has experience with Ebola from past outbreaks, and they were willing to send a thousand healthcare workers to Liberia, who were being trained both in the treatment aspects and, to some degree, some of the outreach that Dr. Sachs was talking about.
I do think it’s interesting that we don’t tend to cover as much the outreach that he was describing. And until we have enough treatment beds, what is really going to make a difference is all of the public health outreach. Public health outreach is traditionally, whether in the United States or in West Africa, what has ultimately stopped epidemics from spreading. And fortunately, you can have people who don’t have quite the same sophisticated skill set to participate in that kind of—that piece of the response.
AMY GOODMAN: Nancy Kass, we only have a minute to go, but on this issue of drugs, are you designing trials for drugs? And, for example, the ZMapp drug is—how will the government support getting out there, or should that particular drug be the one that’s used?
NANCY KASS: So, to be clear, I mean, what I do for a living, I’m not the one designing trials. There are people who are designing trials. My understanding is that there are a variety of drugs that are being considered. They each have different sort of kinds of histories. I think the real challenge is how they’re going to be tested. And if it turns out that a drug is dramatically effective—for example, you give it to 10 people who are really sick, and nine of them recover or 10 of them recover—you don’t need to do a randomized trial. If it turns out you give it to 10 people, and six or seven people recover, it’s a little bit hard to tell whether that was the drug or whether they would have recovered anyway. So, to some degree, my own view is that you can start to do some initial rollout, give it to everybody. If you see a dramatic result, you go ahead, and you’re pretty excited—good news. If you don’t see a dramatic result, you may need to do what’s called a more adaptive design, to start to move into some people get it and some people don’t. It sounds inhumane, but we’re going to know much more quickly whether or not these new drugs work or if they don’t.
AMY GOODMAN: Nancy Kass, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of bioethics and public health at John Hopkins University. Her article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, "Ebola, Ethics, and Public Health: What Next?" Also, thanks to Jeffrey Sachs, leading economist, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. He recently authored the piece headlined "We Don’t Need an Ebola Czar." Earth Institute is working with the government of Guinea to battle the epidemic and is holding a conference today up at Columbia called "The Ebola Crisis: What It Means for [West Africa] and the World."
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, Mumia Abu-Jamal, behind bars, responds to a new law that Pennsylvania has just put into effect. Stay with us.
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Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett has signed into law a bill that critics say tramples the free speech rights of prisoners. The "Revictimization Relief Act" authorizes the censoring of public addresses of prisoners or former offenders if judges agree that allowing them to speak would cause "mental anguish" to the victim. The measure was introduced after one of the state’s most famous prisoners, journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, delivered a pretaped commencement address for graduating students at Vermont’s Goddard College earlier this month. The speech was opposed by the widow of Daniel Faulkner, the police officer who Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing. The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania has criticized the new measure, calling it "overbroad and vague," and unable to "pass constitutional muster under the First Amendment." Speaking to us from prison, Abu-Jamal says that "by signing that bill into law, [Gov. Corbett] has violated both of his oaths as governor and as an attorney."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Pennsylvania, where Republican Governor Tom Corbett has signed into law a bill critics say will trample the free speech rights of prisoners. The Revictimization Relief Act authorizes the censoring of public addresses of prisoners or former offenders if judges agree that allowing them to speak would cause "mental anguish" to the victims. The measure was introduced after one of the state’s most famous prisoners, journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, delivered a pretaped commencement address for graduating students at Vermont’s Goddard College earlier this month. The speech was opposed by the widow of Daniel Faulkner, the police officer whom Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing.
AMY GOODMAN: The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania has criticized the new measure, calling it "overbroad and vague" and unable to "pass constitutional muster under the First Amendment." I spoke to Mumia Abu-Jamal on the phone last Wednesday just after the law was passed. He was speaking to us from SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, Pennsylvania.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: How are you, Amy?
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to be with you. Can you talk about where you are right now? Describe your surroundings, as you speak on the phone to us.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: I am right now, as you hear in the background, in the open area of half of a block on B Block in Mahanoy. There are about 45 men sitting around playing cards, playing dominoes, playing chess, talking, some reading, some watching television at a distant corner. This is population, at least the block-in phase, or block-out phase, where you’re out of your cell.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you are back in the news because of a bill that was just signed by Pennsylvania Governor Corbett that would limit your ability to speak, after you just gave a commencement address, a taped commencement address, to Goddard. Can you respond to the signing of this bill?
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: I think it’s really quite extraordinary that unconstitutional Tom Corbett, a former attorney general of the state of Pennsylvania, as governor, would sign into law a law that he knows is unconstitutional.
OPERATOR: This call is from the State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy and is subject to monitoring and recording.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Moreover, as a governor and as an attorney, right, and a member of the bar, he had to take a sworn oath for both offices, and that oath was to protect and defend the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Constitution of the United States of America. By signing that bill into law, he has violated both of his oaths as governor and as an attorney. As I said, he knows what the law is. He knows about Snyder v. Phelps. I’m sure you covered the case of the church that went around to funerals and, let’s say, harassed people’s families. They were burying their veterans, and they would have signs, within earsight and eyesight of the families burying their dead. Well, it went to the Supreme Court, because there was a similar law passed against them. And every court they went into found it a violation of the First Amendment, including the United States Supreme Court, which ruled eight to one that the First Amendment free speech protection shielded these church members from tort liability for intentional infliction of emotional distress. This is something that I know unconstitutional Tom knows about. So, it gives you a sense when these officials, these legislators, these governors, these elected officials, swear on a Bible to uphold their oath and office, and violate it with such—such freedom.
AMY GOODMAN: This is what Governor Corbett said in expressing his support for the new law.
GOV. TOM CORBETT: While law-abiding citizens are entitled to an array of rights, from free travel to free speech, convicted felons in prison are in prison because they abused and surrendered their rights. And nobody has a right to continually taunt the victims of their violent crimes in the public square.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Mumia Abu-Jamal?
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: My response is, he knows that’s ridiculous, both in law and in fact. I’ve never taunted anybody. As you know, as a journalist, I’ve rarely talked about the events of December 9, 1981. I’ve talked about all kinds of other issues. I didn’t talk about that when I was at Goddard. Most of the people who voted for this bill, whether they were legislators or senators or the governor themselves, they never heard that speech. I invite them to hear it and then say that that madness that Tom said—I called him unconstitutional. Here’s proof of that. Again, the United States Supreme Court, in Simon & Schuster v. New York Crime Victims Board, held the acts of that state agency, and the legislation that enabled them, unconstitutional. And this was, I believe, the full court, ’91. This was in 1991. In my own civil history, you remember me calling you and them coming up and pulling a wire out of the wall.
AMY GOODMAN: Who pulled that wire out of the wall?
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: It was a guard. I was talking to you. I believe it was '96, or around that time. We were having a discussion. It was live. And all of a sudden, the phone went dead. And I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a correctional officer walk down to where my line was plugged into the wall, and he pulled it out. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. You know, I was like, "Hello, Amy? Hello?" because it just didn’t make sense, to me, that he did that. He did that. But, of course, that was shortly after the publication of Live from Death Row, and the Department of Corrections sanctioned me, gave me a write-up, and we went to court about it. The case is preserved as Abu-Jamal v. Price. In that ruling, the Third Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals said I have a constitutional right to write. If I have a constitutional right to write under the First Amendment, then don’t I have a constitutional right to read writings?
AMY GOODMAN: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Maureen Faulkner is quoted in the paper, after Governor Corbett signed the bill, what’s being called the Mumia bill, saying, "To be in your car, driving along in California, only to hear him doing a commencement speech on the radio, it rips open a scab."
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Well, I feel sorry for her, because, you know, when most people hear things that disturbs them, they change the channel, you know, and she could change the channel. They wrote a bill, right, for one man, and they admit that, I’m told, in their discussions in committee. They wrote a bill based on a false reporting of what was discussed at a school that I am a alumni of. I attended and graduated from that college. I was invited by the staff and the students and the administrators to talk to my college about what it meant to get an education from Goddard. I did that. And if the Constitution doesn’t protect that, then it protects nothing. If the Constitution can be used against one, it can be used against all. I didn’t take an oath or an affirmation to support, protect and defend the Constitution of Pennsylvania or the United States. I don’t have to. But of the many people who did, they know they are violating it by signing this law.
AMY GOODMAN: Mumia, Debo Adegbile was nominated to be the head of the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department, but because of the case he was involved with at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a case that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund brought and won, he was barred, senators citing your name. Explain what happened and your response to it.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Well, I can’t really explain what happened, because—
OPERATOR: This call is from the State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy and is subject to monitoring and recording
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: —the truth of the matter is, I never met the man. I never discussed anything with the man, because I never met the man. He was actually acting head of the NAACP LDF after John Payton had died. And he was placed there so—because he was acting head, he was on my brief. Right? But, you know, he never argued a case. We never—I don’t know the man. I saw him in the newspapers. And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t recognize his name, because, you know, I knew lawyers that I knew. I didn’t know him. And I had never heard the name until it got into the papers. This is a man who had his life shredded because of the money and power of the FOP to buy and intimidate those people to do their bidding—and to violate, again, their oaths. You can say he didn’t have a constitutional right to become the head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, but he was the choice of the president, and I presume he had good reasons to choose him. But to use my case to deny him that opportunity is a tragedy to this man and to his family. And it’s based on lies. Again, I never met the man. I don’t know who he is, other than seeing him on TV or in a newspaper. And, you know, from what I’ve been told and what I’ve heard, this was a fine and distinguished lawyer who came from an impoverished background, fought hard to get into college, fought very hard to get into law school, and devoted his expertise as a lawyer to help people vote and to work for people’s civil rights all across the country. You know, [inaudible]—
AMY GOODMAN: Mumia Abu-Jamal, I know we only have a few minutes left before your phone will cut off, with the 15-minute limit, but I wanted to ask you about what it’s been like to move from death row to the general population.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Well, there’s not a day go by that I don’t think about the brothers and sisters—because there are women in Pennsylvania on death row—the brothers and sisters who are still on death row. And this is so profoundly different from their 24-hour experience that it’s hard to connect the two.
Let me leave you with this. There’s a case out of the Eastern District of Virginia called Prieto v.—and I can’t remember the name of the warden, but it’s P-R-I-E-T-O [Prieto v. Clarke]. In the Prieto case, the court in Virginia ruled that the conditions of death row were unconstitutional. Right? They ruled that locking—
OPERATOR: You have 60 seconds remaining.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Locking people up that long, holding them in confinement, just because they have a death sentence, is a violation of the Constitution. I wish that Pennsylvania would live up to the Constitution, not just in my case, but in Prieto and all the men and women who are on death row in Pennsylvania who should be in general population like everybody else.
AMY GOODMAN: You write many commentaries, among them, about war. What is it like to watch war from your jail cell?
OPERATOR: You have 30 seconds remaining.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: It’s not that much different than it is—it’s horrifying and terrifying, and it speaks to me of the kind of impending destruction of the empire. You can’t bomb people to peace; you can only bomb them to death and to war. And, you know, it’s painful. It’s terrifying. It’s all of those things. And it could be better.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Mumia Abu-Jamal, prisoner at Mahanoy, SCI Mahanoy in Pennsylvania, in Frackville, Pennsylvania. This is Democracy Now! If you’d like a copy of today’s show, you can go to our website at democracynow.org. This Saturday night, I’ll be speaking in Oslo, Norway. You can check our website at democracynow.org.
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White House Lobbies Against State Quarantines; Nurse Isolated in New Jersey to Sue
The governors of New York and New Jersey are facing federal pressure to reverse new quarantine rules on medical workers returning from West Africa. Under the policy, arriving passengers with a risk of Ebola exposure will be placed in a 21-day quarantine. Illinois has implemented a similar policy. White House officials lobbied New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over the weekend, saying the rules would discourage workers from joining the Ebola response in West Africa. On Sunday night, Cuomo announced a slight easing of the restrictions, saying the workers can be quarantined at home. At a news conference, Cuomo said he is trying to balance the need to help contain Ebola in West Africa with the protection of New Yorkers.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo: "I understand that some people may believe the 21-day home quarantine is a burden. I would ask for their cooperation and understanding, and remember what we’re trying to balance. We’re trying to balance aid to West Africa and protection and the public health of New Yorkers and addressing the fear and concern of New Yorkers."
A nurse named Kaci Hickox became the first health worker isolated under the rules after returning to New Jersey from Sierra Leone. Hickox has been placed in an isolated tent inside a Newark hospital despite testing negative for Ebola. She has threatened to fight her 21-day quarantine in court, saying the order violates her constitutional rights.
WHO: Official Ebola Toll Nears 5,000 in West Africa; Ivory Coast at Risk
The World Health Organization says nearly 5,000 people have now died from Ebola out of 10,000 known cases. But the actual death toll may be significantly higher in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three worst-hit countries. On Sunday, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, kicked off a visit to West Africa in Guinea.
Samantha Power: "I want to say to the Guinean people, on behalf of President Obama, that we stand with you, and we will be with you ’til the end, until we have ended this horrible epidemic in your country. Together, we can beat this epidemic. We have beaten every Ebola epidemic in history, and we will do so if we dramatically increase our involvement and our engagement."
The virus is now threatening Ivory Coast, which shares a border with Guinea and Liberia. The World Health Organization has sent experts to Ivory Coast and Mali to help prepare for a possible outbreak.
Kurdish, Iraqi Forces Regain Territory from Islamic State
Kurdish and Iraqi forces have made gains on the Islamic State with the backing of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. The strikes continued over the weekend with dozens of attacks in the cross-border area under ISIS control. The Iraqi military regained control of a town south of Baghdad while the Kurdish Peshmerga ousted ISIS fighters in the northern town of Zumar. Meanwhile, Kurdish forces in Syria say they have thwarted a new ISIS push on the besieged town of Kobani.
U.S., British Troops End Combat Role in Afghan Province
U.S. and British forces have formally ended combat operations in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. On Sunday, the NATO occupation handed over formal control to the Afghan military. British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Afghanistan is poised for a more stable future.
British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon: "There is a better chance of a more stable future in Afghanistan because we have a government there of national unity and an army that is supported by the local population that represents all parts of Afghanistan — you don’t have the sectarian divide that we’ve seen in Iraq — and an army that’s already proved itself over the last couple of years that it is prepared to tackle the Taliban in some of the more difficult areas of north Helmand, and therefore there is a greater chance that Afghanistan will be more secure."
Helmand is the center of Afghanistan’s drug trade, housing more than 80 percent of the poppy growth used for heroin. The New York Times reports "the Taliban have never been stronger in [Helmand]," claiming large areas around government centers and rural districts. The handover comes amidst the deadliest six-month period for Afghan forces since the war began 13 years ago. The handover also marks the end of British combat operations inside Afghanistan, while around 10,000 American forces will remain.
Egypt: Pro-Democracy Activists Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison
In Egypt, 23 pro-democracy activists have been sentenced to three years in prison for rallying against the government’s anti-protest law. The activists took part in a June demonstration calling for the release of political prisoners and the annulment of a law that only allows government-approved demonstration. The group includes Yara Sallam and Sanaa Seif, deemed by Amnesty International to be "prisoners of conscience."
Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian-American Teen in West Bank Shooting
A Palestinian American has been killed in the latest shooting of a young teenager by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. The victim, 14-year old Orwah Hammad, was shot in the head in the village of Silwad. Hundreds of people marched Saturday after his funeral. The killing comes days after a Palestinian man slammed his car into a group of Israelis in Jerusalem, killing an infant and wounding eight others. That attack followed the running over and killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl by an Israeli settler in the West Bank. The Israeli military ruled the death an accident.
Dilma Rousseff Wins Re-election in Brazil
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has won re-election in a runoff contest. On Sunday, Rousseff defeated pro-corporate candidate Aécio Neves with just more than 51 percent of the vote.
2nd Washington State High School Shooting Victim Dies; 2 in Critical Condition
Two people were killed and three severely wounded on Friday when a student opened fire at his high school in Washington state. The shooter was identified as 14-year-old Jaylen Fryberg, a freshman. He opened fire in the school cafeteria before taking his own life. One girl died at the scene, while another girl succumbed to her wounds on Sunday night. Three others remain hospitalized, two of them in critical condition. A female teacher has been credited with preventing more deaths by wrestling the shooter to the ground as he tried to reload. There have been more than 75 school shootings since the Newtown massacre that left 26 dead in December 2012.
2 Officers Killed in California Shooting
In California, two sheriff’s deputies were killed and another wounded Friday by a shooter wielding an AR-15 assault rifle. The suspect was arrested after a police chase.
Report: Foley Suffered Worst Abuse in ISIS Captivity
New details have emerged on the captivity of several Americans and other Westerners by the Islamic State in Syria. The New York Times reports the hostages were subjected to months of psychological and physical torture.
According to freed survivors, the six American and British male hostages were subjected to the worst abuse, because of the militants’ political grievances and their governments’ refusal to negotiate a ransom. The American journalist James Foley was subjected to the worst treatment, undergoing mock executions and repeated waterboarding. Foley was among four people — another American and two Brits — executed in beheading videos since August. A number of European hostages have been released after their governments paid a ransom. The United States says its policy of not paying ransoms ultimately protects more Americans by making them less valuable targets.
Reports Call for Probe of Human Rights, Press Freedom Abuses in Ferguson Police Crackdown
Amnesty International is calling for an investigation of potential human rights abuses in the police crackdown on protests in Ferguson, Missouri. In a new report, Amnesty says police committed violations in the weeks that followed the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson. Amnesty researcher Justin Mazzola said the militarized crackdown raises major concerns.
Justin Mazzola: "They came out in a presence that only served to intimidate. They used tactics such as the use of tear gas, rubber bullets, oftentimes when it probably was not justified, considering what was happening on the ground at that point in time. Then you had local officials imposing policies restricting people’s rights to actually go out and protest, whether it was the imposition of a curfew, the imposition of a five-second rule, people had to continue to keep walking, designated assembly areas where there’s like a free speech zone within Ferguson, but anywhere else you have to keep walking. And these all go to show that basically there needs to be a national review both of use-of-force policies as well as policies in policing protests."
In a separate report out today, the advocacy group PEN American Center calls on the Justice Department to investigate a police crackdown on journalists covering the Ferguson protests. PEN says its compiled more than 50 cases of press freedom violations, culminating in the arrest of 21 journalists.
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