Sierra Club Chronicles: 9/11 Forgotten Heroes
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Category: News & Current Affairs
Regions: North America
Topics: Personal Development, Political Institutions / Systems, War / Violent Conflict
9/11 Forgotten Heroes
The terrorist attack on 9/11 was one of our country’s most horrific moments, however, for many, the tragedy continues. At ground zero, many New Yorkers gave everything they had to the search and rescue effort. Told there were no health hazards in the aftermath, many of them have now developed serious health problems.
Soon after 9/11, John Feal, a construction supervisor, and his co-workers started experiencing serious respiratory problems, a condition they now call “The World Trade Center Cough.” Feal spent two months in the hospital last year. Steelworker, Jonathan Sferazo, can’t climb a flight of stairs without doubling over in pain. Paramedic, Marvin Bethea, suffers from permanent sinusitis as well as post traumatic stress and asthma. Also featured is Mike McCormack, the firefighter who found the American flag that had been on the top of the Trade Tower in the rubble.
Hundreds of rescue workers are sick and that number is expected to rise sharply over the next several years. Because of an arbitrary technicality in the law Feal, Sferazo, Bethea and many more search and rescue workers no longer qualify for help from the 9/11 relief fund.
We travel with Feal, Sferazo, McCormack and Bethea as they have one last chance to hold their government accountable. They are banding together to lobby congress – traveling via caravan to Washington DC where Congress is considering an amendment to a bill, the Walsh Amendment, that will set aside $125 million of unspent 911 money to help New York State residence with the current and future 911-related health expenses. If this amendment doesn’t pass, Congress will reclaim this unspent money and John Feal and his friends will be left out in the cold again.
Sierra Club Chronicles
In the planetary struggle to protect the environment, we often forget that this is a war waged every day on neighborhood streets, fishing boats and in firehouses by people fighting to protect their homes, their health and their jobs.
Sierra Club Chronicles, a new monthly television series produced by award winning filmmaker Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films in association with Sierra Club Productions captures the dramatic efforts of committed individuals across the country working every day to protect the health of their environment and their communities. Molly O’Brien co-executive produces and Richard Ray Pérez serves as director and supervising producer on the series.
For more information about the Chronicles series, visit the Sierra Club TV website.
Just days after September 11, 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency assured the public that there should be no concern about any health hazards associated with exposure to smoke and debris in lower Manhattan.
This disturbing documentary asks whether the EPA’s pronouncement was based on science or politics. Now many of the first-responders who risked their lives within that toxic chemical soup are seriously ill or dying.
Filmmaker Heidi Dehncke-Fisher and producer Bruce Kennedy reveal how 9/11′s latest victims are America’s forgotten heroes.
The Silent War 
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