You would think that a victory like this, 15 years in the making, would earn the warriors a little time off. Nope. There is so much more to do. While all of our guests say it’s hard to celebrate the win when so many people have died, and so many more will die, they are here to say they see this as the long first step in an even longer journey. For one thing, now that the plan is authorized pretty much forever in terms of the victims and survivors, they begin the process of reaching out to everyone who was down there and hasn’t signed up for the fund. They will also talk about why the most important part of this may be outreach to the students of Stuyvesant and other schools in the area, told by the EPA and the city that the air was clean enough to breathe. It’s vital, they say, because those students have not even been monitored. They have no more than anecdotal evidence of how many have died, are ill, or will become ill in the future. And, they say, the residents who may have gone home while the air was still toxic? They haven’t begun to be counted. And John Feal talks about his next step. Working alongside Jon Stewart, he will be fighting for the Burn Pits Bill, designed to collect data and get the same health care and compensation for troops who served in Iraq and are now, even years later, showing the same symptoms of those who worked on rescue and recovery after 9/11.
Reaching Out to Victims and Survivors
PUBLISHED August 5, 2019 @2:29 PM