Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani's Legacy

[A student in one of my classes last spring, Kojo Davis, <kojodavis@mac.com> was a worker on the "pile" as it was known by those doing the cleanup and more than confirmed this report to the horror of our class. He showed us an ugly letter from the Mayor with one sentence thanking the workers and an additional full page of legal threats should any try to benefit from their work there -- many in fact had not even received full payment from subcontractors to the 4 major contractors running the work who had been fully compensated by the city.

The student explained that in addition to asbestos the World Trade Center buildings had contained tanks of toxic substances that were mixed in with the debris, adding to its deadly properties. Thousands were thus poisoned -- unknown thousands, as so many were volunteers who have returned home many states away not realizing that they had been terribly poisoned. A deputy mayor, Rudy Washington, who had been lung damaged lobbied to get state workman's compensation deadlines extended somewhat to accommodate workers who began to discover the damage to their lungs (and widespread depression) a year or more after their labors were completed.

Billions of dollars were spent to compensate the families of the 3,000 originally killed on 9/11. But so far most of the tens of thousands injured in the cleanup have been left with minimal compensation if any at all.

This truly is the major NYC scandal of 9/11 and an injustice not yet rectified by an ex-Mayor who has made millions in his subsequent financial ventures and who is running ahead of the pack for the Republicans as their presidential candidate. None of those who worked on the "pile" would trust this man to run a garbage truck, let alone a major military or security operation. Ed Kent]

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Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani's Legacy
By ANTHONY DePALMA
As more workers become sick, many regard Rudolph W.
Giuliani's leadership after 9/11 as having come with a
human cost.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/nyregion/14giuliani.html?th&emc=th

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