The hierarchy of subway musicians

By RACHEL MORGAN

For Sean Grissom, being a subway musician is a choice, not a means for survival.
Grissom has played cello at private parties, at nursing homes and hospitals, for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and was even an opening act for David Bowie.

But he prefers the audience at Pennsylvania Station.

“The thing about playing in the subway is you have to figure out how to connect with your audience,” said Grissom, 48, is a full-time musician who lives on the Upper West Side. “I love the fact that I get to create the stage – the potential is there, I just have to find it.”

Grissom plays the Cajun cello – his own twist on an old classic. The Cajun cello has a bit of Southern twang with a Cajun influence, a mixture of his Texas and Louisiana roots, he said. It sounds similar to fiddle tunes on the violin.

“I learned how to play fiddle tunes on a cello in Texas,” he said of his home state. An upside down navy blue Yankee cap lies on the station floor as he plays, an assortment of bills and coins inside.

Grissom declines to say just how much he makes in one day of playing in the subway.

“In many ways, the money is decent, but it’s not why you do it,” he said. “But the money, it makes a difference – I have a family to support.” The payoffs often come in other ways - making connections and playing private parties or events, selling CDs, simply getting his name out there, he said.

He supports his wife, Fran, a stay-at-home mom, and his daughter, Jane, an undergraduate student at New York University solely with his music – playing private gigs, parties and playing in the subway.

But subway musician isn’t his only identity – he teaches a rock string music course at Beacon Heights one day a week, instructs improvisation seminars to classical musicians and teaches seminars for teachers on how to make classical music more accessible to their students.

It may seem odd for a man who studied at Juilliard, the Pratt Institute and received his master’s from Hunter College to be playing music underground.

“People perceive street performers as a low-level profession,” he said. “People will say, ‘Why aren’t you in an orchestra?’ They equate success with being in an orchestra. And I say, ‘Do I look like an orchestra guy?’”

He admits he’s a bit of a free spirit. He wears his curly blonde hair in a long ponytail, wears round wire-rimmed glasses and a gold hoop in his left earlobe. He doesn’t have a cell phone or email account and is hesitant to use the Internet.

When Grissom plays, he dresses the part in a multicolored polka dot shirt, blue and white oxford-style shoes and a silver bow tie. A stack of cause rubber bands circles his left wrist. Even his homemade cello is dressed for the occasion - a miniature Santa hit sits jauntily at the top of its neck.

While some may not equate being a subway musician to success, to Grissom it is just that.

“Success is doing what I want to do when I want to do it,” he said. “Playing in the subway is great, because when you want to try out something new, you get immediate feedback from the audience. You can’t do that in an orchestra.”
But he still jokes about his literally bottom of the totem pole venue for performing.

“It’s like Reagan’s trickle down theory - I’m not even gutter trash,” he said, pointing upward toward street level. “I’m lower than gutter trash.”

But Grissom doesn’t just play in the subway, hoping for donations. He has nine CDs on sale for $15 each when he performs. He keeps a trove of business cards on hand when he’s playing on the mezzanine level of subway stations for freelance gigs and averages about 250 performances annually.

Grissom started performing in subway stations in 1983 and is one of the charter members of Music Under New York (MUNY,) an organized group of subway musicians that formed in 1985. Currently, MUNY has about 100 musicians that perform in 25 locations throughout the subway system.

“The goal of the program is to encourage the use of our transit system and improve the mass transit environment,” said Lydia Bradshaw, manager of the Arts for Transit Project and Music Under New York. “If you’re traveling through a station on your daily commute and come across a musical performer, it can be uplifting, can be a cultural experience. It can uplift your day, your mood, can be something new to you – a new kind of musical experience.”

But Grissom admits that capturing the attention of an audience of commuters isn’t always easy.

“Basically, you’re dealing with a non-captive audience,” he said. “They’re not here for me, they’re here to get from Point A to Point B. I have maybe 20-25 seconds to catch their attention.”
MUNY subway musicians like Grissom are identifiable by the Music Under New York banners that are displayed nearby when they are performing. To become a member of the group, musicians must tryout for a panel of judges of MTA officials, professional musicians and other MUNY members. The program also organizes annual scheduled music performances and has a registry of musicians on its website.

“When the public sees a performer and weren’t able to jot down their number, they can call us and we can hook them up in case they want to hire them,” Bradshaw said.

While being registered with MUNY has its benefits, not all subway musicians buy into the idea, like Gio Andollo, 25, who calls himself a devout Christian and is a music instructor at I.S. 230 in Queens.

“There’s something in my spirit that is really opposed to it,” said Andollo, who plays on the platform of the Delaney and Essex station on the Lower East Side. “I don’t feel like I should have to ask permission to express myself and enrich the lives of other people around me. It just seems like a way to marginalize people who maybe aren’t doing things the conventional way.”

A soft-spoken man with a slight build, Andollo plays an eclectic mix of folk music and punk on the platform. He plays the acoustic guitar, harmonica and does vocals for each song.

Andollo moved to New York City from Orlando, Fla., three months ago to join a flagship branch of the Orlando-based church Trinity Grace.

“People tend to have an understanding that religion [plays] a fundamental sort of role to you,” he said. “That’s not my lifestyle. In terms of rituals, I think of lot of those in Christianity are valuable, but a lot of them aren’t.”

Before he found himself playing music under the city streets, Andollo worked for AmeriCorps, a non-profit volunteer based agency, tutoring at a Florida high school. It was during this time that he decided he wanted to become a street performer.

He cites his musical influences as Bob Dylan, punk group Against Me and the Beatles. While the Beatles’ song, “All You Need is Love” is his motto for life, Andollo’s folksy style is more reminiscent of Dylan.

“[Performing] makes me want to create a spirit of peace in our city,” he said. “So I go out and sing about love and peace.”

As a new subway musician, the most he’s made is $7 over several hours. He’s having trouble making rent and paying bills at his apartment in Harlem.

“I am having a very difficult time surviving,” he said. “I can’t pay my rent with what I make here.” Andollo often finds himself competing with other musicians and street evangelists. He’s even had some negative reactions from passersby.

“I don’t know why,” he said. “I think the probably see it as an intrusion on what they’re doing, which I guess is just walking by.”
But in true street performer fashion, he keeps playing.

For Angel Cruz, 32, playing in the subway is simply a stop on the train to a better life.

Cruz, of Buskwick, Brooklyn, is the father of seven and has one on the way. He plays the harmonica on the trains across the city, performing lively Christmas carols and holding a white Styrofoam cup for donations.

“I like playing on the train, cheering people up and playing my harmonica,” he said.

He hopes to one day earn his GED and get an associate’s degree from ASA College in Brooklyn.

“I was thinking of channeling my [energy,] getting my degree, focusing on something else,” he said.

Ten years ago, Cruz saw a harmonica for sale for $7 in a convenience store and bought it on a whim.

“It’s a portable instrument,” he said. “When I came across it, it was sparkling like a diamond in the sky, so I picked it up.” Cruz then taught himself to play with no lessons or previous musical experience.

“I’ve been told that I’m talented and play really well,” he said. His profits agree – he said he’s made up to $350 in a few hours.

Performing and soliciting music on the train is actually illegal, according to MUNY standards. But that doesn’t stop Cruz, who isn’t a member of the organization.

“I’ve never gotten ticketed or anything,” he said of his interaction with the New York Police Department. “I have been stopped, [the police] weren’t rude or abusive or anything. They just said it’s not legal to [play on the train] and I could get a ticket. They checked my ID to see if I had any warrants, patted me down.”

The NYPD DCPI declined to comment on their policy when dealing with subway musicians.

Despite police intervention, Cruz keeps playing on the trains, weaving in and out of passengers, his fingers moving like lighting across the harmonica, his cheeks puffing in and out rhythmically.

Cruz has always been an entrepreneur – not only does he support his entire family through subway performing, he also bought a shaved ice truck and sells shaved ice to kids in Brooklyn.

“I’ve always been trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents,” he said, then put the harmonica back up to his mouth and resumed playing.


CUTLINE: Gio Andollo plays the harmonica and guitar at the Delaney and Essex station on the Lower East Side.

Book review of Buzz Bissinger's "A Prayer for the City"

Buzz Bissinger chronicles the sometimes sputtering, sometimes spectacular, eight-years of Ed Rendell’s mayoral career in his non-fiction work, “A Prayer for the City.” Bissinger, who also penned the widely acclaimed “Friday Night Lights,” chronicles Rendell’s fight to save a city from budget cuts, housing horrors, union strikes and essentially, itself.

Throughout the book, Bissinger has an inside vantage point of Rendell’s first term as mayor of what others saw as a doomed city. Readers grow to know and love the affable Ed Rendell, with his oversize frame and rumpled clothing, and his stoic chief of staff David Cohen. Together this yin and yang pair fights to right the city’s many wrongs, balance a seemingly doomed budget and clean up the messes of past mayors.

Naively optimistic, painfully ordinary, overweight, Rendell emerged as an unlikely hero for the city of Philadelphia. Bissinger saw the potential to tell a unique story from the inside, to tell the real story of America’s cities through the lens of Philadelphia’s struggles and the personal struggles of the newly elected Rendell.
Bissinger’s was moved to write “A Prayer for the City” after he observed just how bad things had gotten within Philadelphia while working as a newspaper reporter.

I remember the neither the precise route I took nor the particulars I was supposed to be covering, but I do remember what I saw that day in the city of Philadelphia: an assemblage of vacant houses and boarded up windows and collapsed porches that seemed to stretch forever, one block bleeding into another without relief. (Bissinger, xi.)

It was here Bissinger saw a perhaps a block or two of run down homes and empty storefronts. But what he didn’t realize was that these desolate blocks were a metaphor for the city of Philadelphia as a whole – a city on the brink of death, bleeding profusely through gaping wounds of crime, poverty and unemployment. Through the book, Bissinger raises the questions - is the slow, painful death of cities inevitable in today’s world? Are cities doomed to be the dead, ghetto-ridden epicenters of all modern cities? Then Bissinger heard on an old radio that Ed Rendell was elected to mayor.

And he heard a prayer for a dying city.

During the 21 years that preceded Rendell’s first term, the city lost more than 250,000 jobs and 30 percent of its tax base. Crime rates skyrocketed, public housing was a disaster and unions bled the city dry financially with their demands. Enter Ed Rendell.

Enter Ed Rendell.

Bissinger gained permission from Cohen to accompany Rendell throughout his first four years in office as mayor – and from
there, the story of his term begins.
Bissinger didn’t know how the story would turn out. He didn’t know if Rendell would have a successful term, if he would save the dying city, if he would fail miserably or emerge victorious, but he knew it was a story worth telling.
The theme of Bissinger’s work resonates as just what the title implies – a desperate, last-ditch hope of a city in need of help.

A theme of prayer, if not answered by action, is answered only with hope. Hope interweaves itself through nearly every character in the book. It is found in the lovable, blundering, temper-tantrum-prone Rendell, the struggling great-grandmother of four Fifi Mazzccua, the unemployed Navy shipyard worker Jim Mangan, even city employee Linda Morrison, who struggles to maintain her love affair with a city that has betrayed her.
While all Bissinger’s characters are vivid in their own right, it is “crazy lady” Fifi Mazzccua who steals the show. Readers cannot help but feel a sense of half sorrow, half amusement for the way this determined, stout woman deals with the dark realities of a declining city and how she hopes to save a new generation of children from the streets.

Sixty-one years old, short, and sweetly plump, unabashed about wearing a shirt that said in bold letters on the front, WANTED: SUGAR DADDY WITH CONDO ON THE BEACH AND EXOTIC SPORTS CARS, Fifi had a face with the varied expressions of a summer storm (Bissinger, 225.)

Mazzccua comes alive off the page. One can see her lumbering walk, the sadness in her eyes when she thinks of her son, Tony, in jail for the rest of his life. But her vivacity is apparent too. Mazzccua maintains the hope that things will get better - even with a son in jail for life, a dead grandson and a pastor who simply left her behind.

She was living now in a different part of the city, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, for the days of Olive Street were gone forever. The city had changed so much since the – in the way blacks and whites got along; in the way the young were yielded up in casual sacrifice; in the way crime and drugs owned the streets, providing temptations for those who wanted to take part and showing no remorse for those who wanted to stay away. Fifi has been affected by all of it, and sometimes she hardly had the strength to get out of bed in the morning. But she did… (226).

Fifi Mazzccua embodies all that “A Prayer for the City” is – being beaten down, pushed aside, taking hit after hit, much like the city itself. But she somehow finds a way to keep going. Mazzccua sent up prayers to be answered, what she got in return was hope – perhaps all a dying city had to offer.

While Bissinger is a gifted writer, at times the book struggles to maintain momentum. While the legislative process and the interaction between the city and state governments, unions and other elected officials are key to the development of the story, the real-life characters living in Philadelphia tell it better. Fifi Mazzccua, one of the more riveting characters in the book, only claims a single chapter and a smattering of anecdotes. The same goes for Jim Mangan, who, along with thousands of others, will lose his job if the historic Navy shipyard closes. He embodies one of Rendell’s main battles throughout his first term as mayor, but Bissinger doesn’t explore his character in depth.

Linda Morrison, the city worker who has been mugged twice and lived in an upper-middle class neighborhood just steps from the projects, is another riveting character who does not get much face time. Perhaps one of the most memorable scenes in the book comes the night she and her husband’s neighbor in Queen Village was stabbed on her own front porch.

In 1990, Linda Morrison and her husband of two years, Jim Morrison, learned something wholly new about city life: when someone is stabbed near an artery, the blood doesn’t flow evenly but spurts in syncopation to the beats of the heart (Bissinger, 164.)

For Morrison, this incident was equivalent to walking in on a lover cheating; she felt betrayed by a city she had stood by and been loyal to, a fact that lead to her eventual escape to the suburbs.

The immersion journalistic style in which Bissinger writes is similar to that of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s process in writing “Random Family” or Hunter S. Thompson’s in “Hell’s Angels.” But Bissinger reports at arm’s length. While he portrays Rendell thoroughly enough at his office in city hall, the reader is left wondering how Rendell acted when he went home to his wife and son – did he put up his feet on a worn recliner, crack open a Coors Light and watch football? Or did he get down on the floor and play Monopoly with his son, moving a silver top hat around the board, assembling a village of small, colorful houses and quietly plotting his victory?

Instead of diving headfirst into the lives of the five characters that live in Philadelphia, Bissinger only tests the waters. He never learns the real stories of their lives – who they love, what they feel about the disastrous state of the city, and most importantly, why they don’t just move away, leaving the dying, writhing city in the dust. Bissinger fails to explain the enduring love his characters have for Philadelphia. Without it, it becomes unclear as to why they even stay.
After an emotional four-year journey that was Rendell’s first term as mayor, the conclusion of Bissinger’s “A Prayer for the City” can only be described as anticlimactic.

For fifty pages, the reader was kept wondering if the deal with Meyer Werft will go through, thus saving the epic Navy shipyard, thousands of jobs and maybe even the city itself. The anticipation of whether Rendell will win one final victory for the city he loves is palpable. But the resolution of this epic battle is anticlimactic and unsatisfying and only mentioned in passing at the conclusion of Cohen’s time with the mayor.

The book ends focusing on power players Rendell and Cohen and their plans for the next four years. Rendell, elected for a second term in 1994, was in the midst of developing the New Urban Agenda. His honest, heartbreaking words while writing this plan sum up “A Prayer for the City” perfectly.

“The New Urban Agenda is no panacea, nor is it guaranteed to make cities succeed,” Rendell had written. “What is certain, however, is that without it or some other significant help, cities will surely fail.” They were honest words, spoken from the vantage point of someone who had seen the sorrow over and over – the homeless man wrapped in rags on the rim of the perfectly sculpted fountain; the son in the relentless light of the hospital waiting room who wanted to know why, why, his father had been killed in the line of duty, the little girl who had taken his hand on the shabby block of Stella and asked for a swimming pool (Bissinger, 376.)

The angst Rendell feels when trying to save a dying city is palpable, and heartbreakingly real. While it is never stated as to whether Rendell “saved” the city of Philadelphia, after all is said and done, it becomes clear - Rendell may have been that prayer, that last hope for Philadelphia.

Military imbedding exercise at West Point

Tuesday, our class traveled to West Point to participate in an exercise where we were imbedded in Iraq. We were playing a sort of video game with cadets at West Point, as if we were really reporting in Iraq.

The following is my story - the characters are true but the events themselves are just what transpired during the video game.

By RACHEL MORGAN
BAGHDAD - For some soldiers, being stationed in Iraq is all about waiting.
“This is what the military is all about – you hurry up and get somewhere, then you wait,” said 20-year old Andrew Cavallo, an Army gunner whose humvee is part of a convoy on the lookout for a high-value target – a possible violent insurgent - on the outskirts of Baghdad on Nov. 10.
The humvee driver is 22-year old Rich Rendon, an Army brat born on Fort Belvoir in Virginia who has followed in both his father and grandfather’s military footsteps. Cavallo also has family ties to the military – his father served 28 years in the Air Force and his brother Mark is a student at the United States Military Academy at West Point in upstate New York.
Both Cavallo and Rendon are members of the Army’s 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, deployed to Iraq in Aug. 2009.
In the outskirts of Baghdad, palm trees and clusters of run-down buildings dot the horizon. Very few Iraqis are visible. The only sign of conflict are the three humvees that routinely cruise the 23-square mile piece of land southeast of the city.
Rendon and Cavallo are part of these convoy - they scan the area, then head northeast toward the city. They investigate an abandoned parking lot, a mosque.
“[Mosques] are where the bad guys hang out,” Rendon said. “There might be terrorists there.” But they find nothing.
They sweep the barren, dusty landscape for an uneventful three hours. They plow over fences, kick down doors.
“We’re destroying most of their city right now, but it’s all in the name of democracy,” Cavallo said. “They need a democracy… There are no hajjis here, let’s go,” he said after investigating an empty home.
Both refer to Iraqis as ‘hajjis.’ Traditionally, a hajji refers to a Muslim person who has taken the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, but since the start of the Iraqi War, soldiers use to it refer to any Muslim in Iraq. In that context, the word is derogatory, Renden said.
“After you see your brother, sister, fellow soldier killed by these people in the most cowardly ways, it’s hard to see them as people,” Cavallo said.
They say they actually look forward to conflict, to fighting. It’s better than the alternative – waiting, hoping that death doesn’t knock at your door.
“[Fighting] means I’m doing my job,” Rendon said. “That’s what I’m trained to do.”
“It’s like the night before Christmas,” Cavallo added. For the first time, his youth becomes apparent. “It’s probably going to pick up soon. This is the calm before the storm.”
He had no way of knowing how true these words were.
Their communication with other humvees was spotty at best – many radios lost battery power and quit working altogether. The pair continued on alone. After three hours of driving around the in dusty, 95-degree heat, they approached Checkpoint 5, en route to South Baghdad.
Army soldiers are under strict orders not to inflict harm to Iraqis unless they pose an immediate danger to themselves or other soldiers or are blatantly committing another crime, such as rape. They are not so harm anyone who is removed from fighting due to injury or surrender.
But it’s not always black-and-white.
“I know the rules are if they’re shooting at you [you can kill them,] but if a guy has an RPG, you have to use your head,” Cavallo said. “You don’t want him to engage you first. If they’re unarmed, we just keep an eye on them, but you never know what they’re hiding – bombs, RPG’s, AK47’s.”
He spotted some Iraqis throwing rocks at other soldiers.
“Dude, they’re throwing rocks, should we kill them?” he said.
“Better safe than sorry,” Rendon said.
Cavallo shot the man once, twice, three times. The man’s body crumpled onto the sand. Another Iraqi wearing a red and white checked turban sprinted toward the humvee brandishing an RPG. Rendon presses hard on the accelerator and the man disappears beneath the tank. His crushed body is visible through the back windshield.
“You get used to seeing it,” Rendon said.
Cavallo disagrees.
“You don’t get used to it, you just tolerate it.”
Less than five minutes later, they would both be dead.
They are suddenly surrounded by insurgents. Another humvee rammed their humvee. They realize it’s not one of their own in the driver’s seat.
“OK, we got an insurgent humvee,” Rendon said. Neither have time to react. Chaos ensues, shot after shot is fired from the 50-cal mounted on the back of the now-enemy tank. Bullets ping off Rendon and Cavallo’s humvee, shattering the windows. It’s only seconds before both Rendon and Cavallo are hit, Cavallo multiple times in the chest, Rendon in the face. Seconds later, they are both dead.
They are two of the eight soldiers and two journalists who died Nov. 10, 2009, just south of Baghdad. Most were in humvees with little or no communication, a fact that “absolutely” contributed to casualties, said Battalion Commander Garrett Guidry.
“At the beginning of the [mission,] the company commander and I didn’t have a working radio,” he said. “We got radio about five minutes later, but not enough information was being passed up and down.”

The 2009 ING New York City Marathon

By RACHEL MORGAN
Pavement Pieces

For Lis Anderson, marathons are a family affair.

Anderson, 59, of Denmark, cheered on her husband, cousin and cousin’s daughter at 59th street in Manhattan sidelines of the ING New York City Marathon yesterday.

Anderson and several family members traveled from Denmark just to attend the annual race, which attracts 100,000 runners each year.

“We have just come to Manhattan for the marathon,” she said, while waving a mini red and white Denmark national flag. But this race isn’t the only one this family has attended. They travel together, some to run and some simply to show support, to various marathons around the globe.

“We have also been to three marathons in Berlin and three in Copenhagen,” Anderson said.

She smiles with pride when she talks about her husband, Knud Lindrgaard Nielsen, a marathon runner who began racing at age 50 and shows no signs of slowing with age.

“He is now 65 years old!” she said.

Anderson also shows her support for her cousin, Marianne Randrup, 50, and her cousin’s daughter, Julie Randrup, 18, who are also running in the world-renowned marathon.

She is joined in her support by her sister, daughter, and cousins.

Anderson’s family members all proudly wave tiny Denmark flags and have even draped a full-size flag over the fence.

When Anderson’s sister runs by, she is beaming widely, despite just having crossed the 16-mile mark. Her cheering section erupts in shouts and claps.

Mathias hops the fence and races toward the track to give his sweaty mother a hug before she falls back in with the race’s runners.

“She’s a good mom,” he said. “[Coming to marathons] is fun.”

And will Mathias, who currently plays soccer in Denmark, join the family tradition of running in marathons?

“No, not right now,” he said with a lopsided grin. “Maybe when I’m 18.”

The forgotten Navajo people

By RACHEL MORGAN
Pavement Pieces

CHURCH ROCK, New Mexico — Teddy Nez’s home sits 500 feet from the mouth of abandoned uranium mine.

Since 1982, Nez and his family have been breathing in uranium particles and drinking uranium-contaminated water. They didn’t know the land that surrounded their home in Church Rock, N.M. – located on the 27,000 square-mile Navajo Reservation – was slowly killing them.

“We just assumed this was the way people lived,” Nez, 65, said. “But we came to find out the human risk factor.”

Nez has colon cancer, which he believes was caused by uranium contamination.

From roughly the 1940s to the 1980s, the federal government contracted private mining companies to blast uranium ore out of the rocky terrain of Navajo Nation for the development of nuclear weapons during the Cold War as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project.

During that time, nearly 4 million tons of the radioactive ore were mined from the area.

Decades later, the deadly health risks of uranium mining are starting to materialize. Workers who mined the rock are being diagnosed with cancer, respiratory problems, liver disease and more.

Perhaps most troubling is the effect on young children, who are prone to developing Navajo Neuropathy, a rare degenerative disease of the peripheral nervous system caused by breathing in uranium particles in the air and drinking water contaminated by the deadly metal. Symptoms include the shriveling of hands and feet, muscular weakness, corneal ulcers, delayed walking, infections and stunted growth.

The disease is primarily diagnosed in children in their first year of life – and 40 percent of these children die before they reach their 20s. There is no cure.
Nez said his symptoms began with an itchy rash in 1995. The rash turned into open sores that wouldn’t go away.

“I went to the doctor; he said it was just a rash and gave me ointment,” he said. “I use the ointment, but when it’s gone, the rash is still there.”

Nez soon realized he wasn’t the only one suffering from this rash. His neighbors had similar symptoms.

“We ask (the doctors), how do we treat it? And there’s no answer,” he said.
Nez was diagnosed with diabetes, then colon cancer in 2002. Both are said to be caused by exposure to high levels of radiation.

“At the beginning, I was afraid, scared,” Nez said of his cancer diagnosis. Today, he says a Navajo healing ceremony cured his colon cancer.
“I feel I am 100 percent cured,” he said. “Doctors tell me I still have cancer because I have not been treated by Western medicine.”

The L.A. Times reported in 2006 that cancer rates among the Navajos, once thought to be immune to cancer, doubled from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

According to the EPA, there are four primary ways the public can be exposed to the dangers of these radioactive materials: using uranium-contaminated rock as construction material, drinking uranium-contaminated water, breathing in uranium particles and being in the vicinity of the gamma radiation found in uranium.

Uranium mill tailings, leftover material from mining, are a radioactive, sand-like material that pose a variety of risks to anyone working or living in the vicinity of the mines, the EPA said.

Although Nez never worked as a uranium miner, years of living so close to the mines put him at serious risk of exposure and contamination.

The mine in Church Rock near Nez’s home is the biggest of the nearly 500 mines in Navajo Nation, said Lillie Lane, senior public information officer for the Navajo EPA.

The area around the Nez home was tested for radiation — and it was found to have 120 times the national amount of acceptable radiation.

“We lived with it since 1982,” Nez said. “I thought it was just a regular way of living.”

Nez said his children and grandchildren played in the land around his home, land that is teeming with deadly radiation.

While medical experts guess that approximately half the Navajo population has suffered some sort of health problem as a result of uranium exposure, specific percentages of those who are sick and what ails them are not easily determined. Most Navajos do not have access to health care, and even those who do rarely seek treatment.

In 2007, as part of the government’s five-year plan to clean up uranium-contaminated homes, Nez and his family were relocated to an apartment in nearby Gallup, N.M., so that the Church Rock mining site could be cleaned up.

Today at the site, bulldozers haul loads of uranium-contaminated dirt, and a single worker washes the area with water from a fire hose.

Nez and his family plan to move back into their home Dec. 23.

Nez has since joined the uranium activist movement and is now the president of the Red Water Pond Road Community, working to educate his fellow Navajos about the dangers of uranium contamination.

And he is angry.

“Some of my brothers say that the Indians are expendable,” Nez said. “(The government) can just use us as guinea pigs for anything they come up with. We need to be listened to.”

Anna Rondon, a local uranium activist, wants medical treatment and uncontaminated living quarters for the Navajo people.

According to Rondon, Southwest Research was monitoring the uranium problem in Navajo Country as early at 1971. At the time, Indian Health Services said the radon levels were too low to pose a health risk, she said.

“I just didn’t believe it,” Rondon said. “This is why I sought out other experts who had experience working with radiation.”

According to Lane, the issue gained national attention with the Waxman Congressional Hearings in 2007, led by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif., 30th District). The hearings, which examined the negative health and environmental effects of uranium mining on the reservation, shed light on the plight of the Navajo people for the first time.

Now, the Navajo EPA, the national EPA, the Abandoned Mines Land Program and the United States Army Corps are collaborating to tackle the enormous task of cleaning up the radioactive waste, Lane said.

In the 1980s, the group mapped out the areas with the highest contamination. They are working on cleaning up those areas first, Lane said. Over the years, various governmental agencies have worked to tear down and rebuild homes built with radioactive rock. However, these efforts have never been a centralized effort – a reoccurring problem in the cleanup process.

Lane said that mapping and data collection are a necessary part of the process, which takes time.

“We got a handle on what’s out there,” Lane said. “It takes a lot of money to clean up water, and it’s going to take a lot of money to clean up the old mines.”
It’s only in the last two years that any serious cleanup has gotten underway.

“The problem with uranium mines and mining is that it involves a lot of communities,” Lane said. The wide scope of the problem has slowed down the process, she said.

But 40 years is a long time to wait.

“They knew (the danger),” Nez said of the federal government. “All they were interested in was money. It’s like what’s been happening to the native people since 1492. We have just been pushed aside.”

While Rondon agrees that some progress is being made, she says it has stalled over the years.

“(Rebuilding) is going on,” Rondon said. “But not as much as it should. They’re always making the excuse that they don’t have the funds. But it’s been almost 40 years of waiting.”

But Lane said the Navajo EPA is doing what it can with the resources available.
“I think the (Navajo) EPA is doing as much as they can given the funding they’re given,” she said. “I think the government does not realize how big the problem is … because we’re so remote and our nation is so big.”

Rondon adds that “institutionalized racism” is a major barrier to the cleanup and relocation of Navajos away from contaminated land.

“Public policies either work in your favor or work against you, depending on the color of your skin,” she said.

Perhaps the most concrete example of “institutionalized racism” was in 1979 when there was a massive uranium spill in Church Rock, Ariz., on Navajo land – the largest peacetime release of radiation in history. A dam holding back thousands of gallons of uranium-contaminated water burst, and 94 million gallons of radioactive water was released into the Rio Puerco. This massive spill occurred the same year as the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, which was cleaned up almost immediately. But 40 years later, the Navajos are still waiting.

The Navajos’ spiritual connection to the land, which is as sacred to them as Jerusalem is to the Jews, Christians and Muslims, compounds the problem of cleanup.

“We must do (cleanup) in a sacred manner,” Rondon said. “This industry has stepped on us so much. All we really have is our spirituality.”

Most Navajos won’t leave the reservation, even if it’s slowly killing them.

“We’ve been here for seven generations,” Nez said. “We’re not leaving. We’re connected to Mother Nature. That’s how it always was, and that’s how it’s always going to be.”

As a uranium activist, Rondon understands the danger of uranium; as a Navajo, she recognizes her people’s unbreakable ties to the land.

“It’s not that easy for us,” Rondon said. “We’re really connected to it. We can’t just get up and leave. We have such a deep connection to the land, the earth. It’s like, (if) we go somewhere else, (we) die.”

The Nez family's story

BY RACHEL MORGAN
Pavement Pieces

BLUE GAP, Ariz. – As a young husband and father, Leonard Nez was proud to work in a uranium mine near his home in Blue Gap, Ariz. For the two years he worked in the mine, he made a good living for his family and was able to buy food and goods from the local trader. Because he lived so close, he even allowed the mining company to store their tools in his family’s shed. Oftentimes, he would come home with rocks so his children would see what kind of work he was doing.
But Leonard had no way of knowing that these rocks would poison his family.

“I never knew the risk I put myself in by working for the uranium,” he said in his native Navajo language, as translated by his daughter Seraphina. “I know I returned home to my family contaminated with the uranium dust. I know I brought it home to my children. There were times I brought home rocks that were uranium, and I would put it on my windowsill for my kids to see the work I was doing. But I was unaware of the risk.“
Since then, Leonard and his wife Helen have lost seven of their 11 children — all before they reached the age of 36.
Six died from Navajo Neuropathy, a rare disease caused by exposure to radiation that primarily affects Navajo children. The disease attacks the peripheral nervous system. Symptoms include the shriveling of hands and feet, muscular weakness, stunted growth, infection and corneal ulcers. Forty percent of children affected die before they reach their 20s. The seventh child died from a miscarriage.

Many Navajo children were afflicted with the disease as a result of exposure to high levels of uranium in the air and water in and around their own homes.

From the 1940s to the 1980s, nearly 4 million tons of uranium ore was mined from Navajo land as part of the United States’ effort to develop a nuclear bomb during the Cold War.

When the miners left, uranium tailings and contaminated water and air were left behind on tribal land. Like the Nezes, many Navajos were unaware of the health risks caused by exposure.
Helen, 71, and Leonard, 74, lost their first child in 1968.

“(Dorenta) never walked; she had unusual puffiness in her face, her cheeks,” Helen said through her daughter Seraphina. “And she was very thin in her extremities. Her abdominal area — her stomach — had enlarged.”

Dorenta was just 3 years old when she died.

John was born in 1967 and died in 1970; Claudia was born in 1970 and died 1972; Euphemia was born in 1975 and died in 1978.

Years later, Cedar died at the age of 36, followed by Theresa, who died at the age of 26 in 1996.

All died of Navajo Neuropathy.

“All of the symptoms were identical,” Helen said. “Today, I still agonize and think about the past. To have six children die of the same symptoms and not know what it is. … One doctor in Albuquerque said, ‘Well, if you live in some sort of contaminated area, that might be the cause.’ ”

The Nezes’ home still sits half a mile from the mouth of the abandoned uranium mine.

And the Navajo government officials say the issue is not theirs to resolve.

“This is a federal government issue,” said Patrick Sandoval, chief of staff at the office of the Navajo president and vice president. “People can always do more in every effort. The federal government should have left uranium alone. It shouldn’t have been bothered. The Navajo people didn’t know what was happening when (the miners) came in. For our part, a bigger effort could be done, but we are doing the best we can with what we have.”

Gary Garrison, public officer at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said the BIA is not responsible either.

“The Bureau of Indian Affairs is not involved with providing outreach to the communities on this particular issue, funds for cleanup, or health care to residents of the Navajo Nation,” he said. “Those areas are being handled by other tribal and federal agencies responsible for carrying out those actions.”

As for federal government efforts, programs to clean up the contaminated areas are in place.
The Environmental Protection Agency began working to solve the problem of contaminated homes in Navajo Nation in 1994 with the Superfund program, which has provided $13 million to assess contaminated areas and develop a plan of action. In 2007, the Superfund Program finished a comprehensive atlas of each contaminated site and the level of contamination.
Since then, four yards and one home in Church Rock have been cleaned up at a cost of $2 million, paid for by the U.S. government.

In 2007, the EPA initiated the Five-Year Plan in conjunction with the BIA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Indian Health Services and the Department of Energy. These groups also worked closely with the Navajo EPA.

The Five-Year Plan lays out a procedure to assess the severity of the contamination and a plan of action to address it. It was the first coordinated effort of federal and local groups to deal with the problem. One of the first initiatives was to require the owner of the Church Rock mine to conduct a cleanup.

Regardless, these programs came too late for the Nezes.

Helen remembers the uranium mining all too well.

“I do recall the blasting,” she said. “I recall the dust filling my dishes. We didn’t have laundry close by. Sometimes I washed my children’s clothes with (my husband’s) contaminated clothes.”

When their children first became sick, Helen and Leonard visited doctor after doctor, searching for answers.

Instead, they were faced with accusations from local doctors.

“The indication was, ‘Is there incest?’ ” Helen said. “ ‘Is your husband related to you? Is he your brother, your uncle? Is that the reason your children have these symptoms?’ They never apologize, only the speculation of incest.”

Further complicating matters, Leonard’s involvement with the mine was off the books. Miners were paid in goods and food for their families. They never received either paychecks or cash for their work. Now, there is no record whatsoever of Leonard’s time in the uranium mines.

“Working for the uranium, I was only given a piece of white slip, a piece of paper, to take to the local store to purchase food and other things,” Leonard said.

With no record of his work history, there is little hope for the Nezes to gain compensation for the loss of their children.

“My heart is broken and I blame the government,” Leonard said. “I think back now, if I didn’t expose my children to the uranium, I could have had a big family. Now I am surviving only four children. This is my biggest regret, to work for the uranium.”

Chris Nez, 44, is one of Leonard’s surviving children.

He is angered at the way the Navajo Nation is treated by the federal government.

“This has been going on for quite some time,” he said. “One thing that really bothers me is we say ‘our land,’ but technically it’s not our land, this so-called Navajo Reservation. We do not own anything on it at all. Not even the land. All we got is probably three inches of topsoil. If there’s any oil, if there’s any kind of water, it belongs to the government. And yet, they contaminated the whole area. And now they’re just playing hush-hush.”

The legacy of Navajo Neuropathy spans generations in the Nez family. Helen’s great-grandson died in June of the same disease that claimed six of his aunts and uncles.

Even 17-year-old Floyd James Baldwin, Helen and Leonard’s grandson, sees what uranium has done to his family and to Navajo tribal lands.

“Well, growing up, I saw some pretty weird things,” he said. “When I was a child … getting my diaper changed next to my uncle — my own uncle, who’s a full-grown man. And I was just a little kid. I didn’t know it was wrong or anything. But as I grew up, I noticed that’s not normal. That doesn’t happen.” Loss of kidney function is another side effect of Navajo Neuropathy.

Floyd worries about the same thing happening to him. Still, he can’t imagine leaving the reservation.

“I think about (the effects of uranium on me) every time I drink anything,” he said. “(But) this is where my family’s at, and we’ve always been here. I can’t just leave this place.”

Navajo Nation: Part 2