-SPIKE LEE: COVID-19. -Yeah, it kicked my ass.
That-- Fuck, that hurt.
I heard, I guess it was December 15th
about this new outbreak.
SPIKE: That's when you first heard about it, right?
That's when I heard about this, on December 15th.
Very late December, we started getting reports.
Late December of 2019.
December of 2019.
In December of, uh, 2019.
-Around December. -Late December, early January.
-It was January of last year. -Maybe February.
Early February.
-February... -In late February.
The end of February.
Somewhere in March, I remember
a group of us just talking about it.
I have, uh, officially declared--
done a declaration of emergency.
The virus will not have a chance against us.
No nation is more prepared or more resilient
than the United States.
As of tomorrow, our public schools
will be closed.
So we're going to put out an executive order today,
New York State on PAUSE.
Spike Lee' s short film, New York New York.
Let's take a look.
♪ ("NEW YORK, NEW YORK" BY FRANK SINATRA PLAYING) ♪
♪ Start spreading the news ♪
♪ I'm leaving today ♪
♪ I want to be a part of it ♪
♪ New York, New York ♪
♪ These vagabond shoes ♪
♪ Are longing to stray ♪
♪ Right through The very heart of it ♪
♪ New York, New York ♪
♪ I want to wake up in a city That doesn't sleep ♪
♪ And find I'm king of the hill ♪
♪ Top of the heap ♪
♪ These little town blues ♪
♪ Are melting away ♪
♪ I'll make a brand new Start of it ♪
♪ In old New York ♪
♪ If I can make it there ♪
♪ I'll make it anywhere ♪
♪ It's up to you ♪
♪ New York, New York ♪
♪ I want to wake up ♪
♪ In a city that never sleeps ♪
♪ And find that I'm a number one ♪
♪ Top of the list ♪
♪ King of the hill ♪
♪ A number one ♪
♪ These little town blues ♪
♪ Are melting away ♪
♪ I'm gonna make A brand-new start of it ♪
♪ In old New York ♪
♪ And ♪
♪ If I can make it there ♪
♪ I'm gonna make it anywhere ♪
♪ It's up to you ♪
♪ New York ♪
ANDERSON COOPER: Man, Frank could sing. (LAUGHING)
-Spike, that was awesome. -SPIKE: Oh, boy.
You know, 7:00 at night, when every day I--
-Yeah. -....you know, I'm usually working,
but to hear people, you know,
in their windows, on their rooftops,
on the street, honking horns, clapping,
banging on pots and pans.
You know, I gotta say, I'm-- I-- I'm-- you know...
I'm-- maybe I'm just a softy, but it really--
That is one of those things that's like
I know it was done all around the world and stuff,
but to hear that echoing through the canyons of, you know,
the streets of New York City, it's just-- it's extraordinary.
You know what?
I wouldn't want to be any other place in the world
but here, the epicenter.
-I totally agree with you. -Right here, the epicenter.
Hi, I'm David Angst,
an emergency room nurse at Lincoln Hospital
in Da Boogie Down Bronx.
SPIKE: When the Boston Red Sox come to the Yankee stadium,
ten blocks from Lincoln Hospital,
they know they're gonna be busy.
That is going to be one busy day,
whether it was the daytime game
-or nighttime game. -(CROWD CLAMORING)
We're typically getting a lot of Boston fans.
SPIKE: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not making light of this.
I don't want anybody to get hurt.
-No. -SPIKE: But when you told me
where Lincoln Hospital is in the South Bronx...
(LAUGHING) ...automatically, that came into my mind.
Knowing the rivalry between the Yankees and the Red Sox,
yeah, you don't want to work in the emergency room
that night. (CHUCKLES)
SPIKE: When did you first hear about this virus,
this 19, this 'rona?
The first that I heard about it is when we got the phone call
from someone downstairs in the administration,
talking about the man from Westchester,
the second week in March, that's being taken to Columbia
because he's been known to have this COVID virus.
It's only going to be at Columbia, and it's isolated.
It's from New Rochelle.
We had nothing to worry about.
At some point, we are likely to face another pandemic,
but if we wait for a pandemic to appear,
it will be too late to prepare.
(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING)
And one day, many lives could be needlessly lost
because we failed to act today.
There may and likely will come a time
in which we have both an airborne disease...
that is deadly,
and in order for us to deal with that effectively,
we have to put in place an infrastructure,
not just here at home, but globally,
that allows us to see it quickly,
isolate it quickly, respond to it quickly.
-(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING) -But it's an unforeseen problem.
What a problem.
Came out of nowhere.
My name is Ian Lipkin.
I am a professor at Columbia University,
and I was the consultant on Contagion.
I got a call from the CDC in China, and they said,
"We figured out what it is. It's a coronavirus.
We don't know exactly which coronavirus yet,
but we resolved it,
but it's not highly transmissible."
Well, so much for that, right?
So I flew there second week of January,
and I spent about ten days
consulting with people in the Chinese government,
trying to figure out how they're going to respond,
watching them source personal protective equipment.
Chen Zhu, who's the former minister of health,
couldn't believe that the United States
was not trying to collect masks, gloves, sanitizer,
all the other things that they were sourcing
all over the world.
REPORTER: Forty-five cases have been reported in China,
including two deaths.
The victims are thought to have contracted the virus
in a meat and seafood market.
Isolated cases have also shown up in Japan and Thailand,
where health authorities are already screening travelers.
Dr. Jacquelyn Moline, medical doctor.
Early in January, that Chinese ophthalmologist
who risked his career
to let the world know, and the medical community know,
that this is something serious and bad
that is happening in China, and be prepared for it.
My name is Chuck Scarborough.
I'm a news anchor at NBC 4 New York,
and I've been working there since 1976.
Dr. Li, I believe his name was, he died.
He was 34 years old, and he died of the very infection
he was warning the Chinese government about
and they were suppressing.
I'm Van Jones.
I'm an author, a commentator, and an activist.
And I'm a news nerd, you know.
So I'm always-- and I look, you know, stuff overseas,
right wing, everything.
And I saw that there was a virus in China
that had caused them to lock down a city.
And my heart stopped.
That's something you've never seen before
in your lifetime.
I said, "It's coming here. It's coming here."
REPORTER: Airport alert. Screening starts today
at some US airports
for a deadly mystery virus coming in from China.
We're returning now to our top story.
We now have an official name for the novel coronavirus
from Wuhan, China.
The director general of the World Health Organization
spoke moments ago.
He says the virus has now been named COVID-19,
short for coronavirus disease and the year 2019.
The director general also said a vaccine may not be ready
for another 18 months, at least a year and a half away.
And when I flew back on the last plane flight
that left China,
when I was getting off the plane,
they pulled us aside and interviewed us
'cause they thought we were a risk.
And people were coming in from Italy,
other portions of Europe,
where, in fact, the outbreak that was responsible
for what we had, right, originated.
So all these people coming in from Europe,
bringing the virus in.
And I never got... (CHUCKLES) ...never got sick in China.
And in March,
I got sick from the virus that came from Italy.
There was absolutely no containment early on.
So we got overwhelmed.
It spread like wildfire in nursing homes
because they're communal settings
and people are at greater risk.
And then the elderly people would be brought
to the hospital, putting all the healthcare workers at risk.
And then the healthcare workers went home
and put their family members at risk.
China's deadly, never-seen-before coronavirus
has now been found in four other countries,
including the United States.
Here in New York, uh,
we had 12 cases that were investigated.
Eleven of the 12 turned out to be a negative.
One person, uh, is reported to have the coronavirus
here in New York City.
-No it's not-- Still testing. -Still testing.
-Uh, so the one person is still being tested? -Yes, sir.
So 11 have been negative. The one is still being tested.
New York's-- I think its first case
was in early March. The first reported case.
Um, I think there were people earlier in February
who had just what they thought was a horrible flu
but we had no way of diagnosing them.
I was hospitalized in February.
It turns out that I had COVID before we were told
that we had COVID.
So I was... difficulty breathing,
had a fever, short of breath,
nonproductive cough, achy.
It felt like the worst, worst flu
that anybody has ever had.
And it actually felt like one of those Boston Red Sox
that got beat up by the Yankees after the game
because my whole chest hurt like hell.
That's when I got scared.
Went into the ER, they looked at my blood pressure,
and it was 212 over 150.
-SPIKE: Not good numbers. -Not good numbers.
No, 120 over 80 is good numbers.
At that point, there was-- Nobody's--
We didn't even know about COVID, so nobody's wearing a mask.
Nobody's even thinking-- They're all thinking
-that I have pneumonia. -SPIKE: Hmm.
So I get admitted, and they finally told my husband
that they kind of had me on "death watch" the first night
because I kept not breathing while I was sleeping.
So they had me on a high flow BiPAP machine
that wasn't intubated.
My boss asked me about the intubation.
I said, "If I become unconscious,
do what you have to do.
But if I'm up and around, do not put a tube down me."
Because I've jus-- Even before COVID,
people who are on long-term intubation,
their recovery is always prolonged
because their body gets used to this machine
breathing for you.
So I didn't want to have to even go through that.
And then, they were just throwing antibiotics
and fluids at me.
And over the course of the six days,
I just progressively got better.
My name is Sylvie De Souza,
Chair of Emergency Medicine at the Brooklyn Hospital Center.
So, March 1st was the first time that I knew it was here.
I found out through the New York Times
like everyone else.
So March 3rd...
is when we started triaging patients
in the emergency department.
We came up with a protocol. We read what the CDC was saying,
what the World Health Organization was saying.
They didn't have much guidelines from New York City
or New York State DOH yet.
We started a protocol where we were triaging patients,
meaning we had to separate patients
into two groups, for their own safety
and for the safety of others who were not yet infected,
even though we didn't know really
what we were dealing with.
By the 11th, the World Health Organization
declared it a pandemic.
March 13th, it was declared a national emergency.
I am officially declaring a national emergency...
two very big words.
Very, very saddened, all of us...
(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING)
...to hear of the death--
the first New Yorker to die related to coronavirus.
This is a very painful moment.
This is a moment we all knew would come,
but that doesn't make it any easier.
Dan Nigro, currently commissioner,
New York City Fire Department.
We started meeting, at least the--
myself and other commissioners with the mayor and OEM
in, I guess, late February, talking about it.
Uh, but it really ramped up in a matter of days
right around St. Patrick's Day, where the city
went from being open to restaurants are closing,
there's no parade, and it's here.
We can confirm in New York City
5,151 cases confirmed of coronavirus.
And to give you perspective, that is now about one third
of all the coronavirus cases in the United States of America.
It is about two thirds of the cases
in the state of New York.
I hate to say this, but it's true.
(READS PROMPT)
right here in the nation's largest city."
I'm Oxiris Barbot, I'm a pediatrician,
and I am the former New York City health commissioner.
Even though we were learning every day
about how the virus behaved, we knew enough to know
that the number of cases that were identified
were just the tip of the iceberg,
and that there was going to be a period of time
where we weren't going to see a lot of hospitalizations,
but that it was brewing, right?
And people were then getting sick enough
to end up in the hospital.
PAULA CLARKE: My name is Paula Clarke.
I work at Elmhurst Hospital. I'm the administrator on duty.
GEORGES LECONTE: My name is Georges Leconte.
I also work at Elmhurst Hospital.
I'm the associates executive director
of ancillary services.
The third week of March was almost like
an avalanche that came in.
It was just like, "Okay, uh, this is very serious.
No, this is not just serious, it's dangerous."
We didn't have a textbook on treating this disease.
We didn't know how to treat it. We simply treated the symptoms.
LAURA IAVICOLI: I'm Dr. Laura Iavicoli.
During wave one of the COVID-19 pandemic,
I was the associate director
of the emergency department at Elmhurst Hospital
and the clinical emergency management director
of Elmhurst Hospital.
I am currently the senior assistant vice president
for emergency management
for New York City Health and Hospitals.
STUART KESSLER: I'm Dr. Stuart Kessler.
I'm the director of the emergency department
at Elmhurst Hospital
and one of the clinical leads for emergency medicine
at Health and Hospitals.
PHILLIP FAIRWEATHER: I'm Dr. Phillip Fairweather.
I'm the associate director of the emergency department
at Elmhurst Hospital.
Carnage. I-- I-- you know, that is a term
that sticks with me, frankly.
And it's, you know, because just the circumstance
was just so dire.
Our waiting room was standing room only.
I mean, there were no chairs.
People were standing shoulder to shoulder,
which isn't what you really want to have going on
when people have COVID.
Basically the closest that civilian medical care
has seen to warfare.
I mean, it was literally warfare medicine
in our emergency department.
STUART KESSLER: You would look out the window, and there'd be ambulances
down the block and around the corner,
just all waiting to bring patients in.
And it just became the epicenter.
REPORTER: The pandemic's epicenter
in the US right now may be Elmhurst Hospital.
LAURA: Elmhurst Hospital serves
the most ethnically diverse patient population
in the United States.
I mean, there are over a hundred different dialects spoken.
We're by two large airports. People fly in, they set up shop.
That's the beauty of the hospital.
You have parents with grandparents
living in a two bedroom, one bedroom.
So if one person is sick, guess what happens?
-Especially with this. -LAURA: Everybody gets sick.
I personally have dealt with a number of families
that lost three to four people at one time.
-(SPIKE WHISTLES) -Yeah.
And then it didn't take very long
for every other hospital in New York City
to be at-- at the brink of just being overwhelmed.
This morning, the death toll in New York State
is nearing 1,000.
REPORTER: Coronavirus battered the Big Apple once again today,
with more than 270 deaths and nearly 4,000 cases
reported here just in the last 24 hours,
numbers that continue to rise ahead of April 5th.
My name is Lillian Bonsignore,
and I am the chief of EMS operations
for the FDNY in New York City.
We called what we call the National Ambulance Contract,
which is an agreement that we have.
And that brought ambulances from all over the country
to New York City,
and they became part of our system.
We folded in over 200 additional ambulances
from other states in a day or two,
something that had never been done.
DAVID: I was on the overnights,
working in the ER from March 20th until June 1st.
One night around in the middle of April,
we had 34 people die on the overnight shift.
In one night. And that's just a 12-hour shift.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ANDREW CUOMO: I am asking healthcare professionals
across the country.
If you don't have a healthcare crisis
in your community, please come help us
in New York, now.
We need relief.
(SNIFFLES)
(SIGHS) Unless you were sick,
you were expected to come to work, and everybody did.
And even if you were exposed to someone who tested positive,
you came to work.
My name is Todd Bilgore. I'm an FDNY EMT.
I'm a 9/11 cancer survivor, I'm also a COVID survivor.
It was inevitable.
-I was expecting it no matter what. -SPIKE: So you knew--
I-- I-- Yeah. There was no way I wasn't gonna get it.
I knew I was gonna get it.
At one point, a quarter of my workforce
was out with COVID.
We've lost, in the fire department,
14 people so far to COVID.
Five of which are EMS.
Out of 17,000, which, you know,
compared to the other agencies in the city, was--
we did very well.
Um, I can't-- I don't know how you can say that
when you lose anyone.
The situation here in the city is dire.
It's so dire, nurses across the hospital system tell me
that they're having to reuse PPE,
personal protective equipment,
that's meant to only be used once.
Leonard Aubrey, president and chief executive officer,
NYU Downtown Hospital during September 11th.
We clearly, we, both New York and the nation,
were not properly supplied with the PPE,
the protective equipment, masks, gowns, visors,
that were needed in order to protect themselves,
as well as to protect
the patients and their families.
My name is Donna Mosley.
I am a clerk
at the Brooklyn Hospital emergency room department.
My job pretty much was to make sure
that the emergency room stayed stocked with supplies
and that the staff had the PPE.
So, you know, a lot of times, other departments
would come and ask for equipment,
but I couldn't give it to them
because I had to make sure that the staff there,
the front line, had what they needed
to get through each and every tour.
The way that this virus came on,
the way it came to the United States,
it hit older white folks first,
because those are the people who have been traveling
and that kind of stuff. And also people in nursing homes.
So we began to say, "Oh, Black people are immune."
Those few words probably killed more African Americans
than the Ku Klux Klan.
RADIO DJ:
Man, I don't think...
They said that--
Hi. My name is LeeAnn Jemmott,
wife of Bronx rapper Fred The Godson.
Fred was kind of a conspiracy theorist,
so I don't think he really believed it.
He thought something else was going on.
He was a sweetheart. He was a great dad.
He loved his family.
And, uh, he just was my best friend.
-He was just a great person. -SPIKE: How many kids you have?
-We have two daughters. -SPIKE: What are your daughters' names?
LEEANN JEMMOTT: Sadie and Sophia.
SPIKE: How old are they?
LEEANN: Sadie's ten and Sophia is five.
SPIKE: When Fred told you, "I don't feel good,"
bring us back to that.
(SIGHS) Well, he was coming from the studio.
Um, he came home, he laid on the couch,
and he told me, you know,
he thought his asthma was acting up.
But he continued to do his music downstairs
-on the table, write his rhymes. -SPIKE: When was this?
Around the 1st of April.
'Cause he went into the hospital April 6th.
SPIKE: What hospital did he go to?
-LEEANN: Montefiore in the Bronx. -SPIKE: Mm-hmm.
And that was the last time I seen him.
SPIKE: And when'd he make his transition?
Um, on April 23rd.
SPIKE: When was the last time you spoke to Fred?
Um, well, yeah, on April 6th, when he went,
I actually stayed on the phone with him the entire time
because they had him on the nose cannula,
just the two that go up in your nostrils,
and he was breathing fine.
His oxygen went up to the nineties.
Um, they told him because COVID was aspiring
from what he had in his nose,
they had to put him on something else,
another kind of breathing machine,
which made it harder for him to breathe.
So we're on FaceTime the whole time.
I'm telling him, "Don't be scared,
just be strong, breathe.
You're going to get through this."
And he was like, "Ma, I can't breathe."
And they said, "You have to get on a ventilator."
And he just looked at me and he was like,
"I gotta get on a ventilator."
And... (SIGHS)
Yeah, so...
I talked to him until...
they put him on a ventilator,
and we just said, you know, we loved each other, and...
he just was like, you know, "I really love you."
That's like the last thing he said to me.
Um, and I told him I loved him.
And that was it.
He was on a ventilator for almost two weeks.
I had a friend... (SNIFFLES) ...that worked
in the emergency room downstairs.
So she would go upstairs to his floor
and put him on FaceTime and I would see him.
Like, the first four or five days,
I would yell his name and he would move.
And even the doctors told me, you know,
he was trying to rip the tube out of his mouth.
Then they heavily sedated him
because they didn't want him to do that.
After they did that, it was just-- it was over for him.
On April 23rd, I got a FaceTime from the doctor
saying that his heart was stopping
and that we had to say goodbye to him.
♪ But real talk, I don't want Y'all to think I'm wilding ♪
♪ My mixtape is really better Than niggas' albums ♪
♪ You know The God flash the gems ♪
♪ I nicknamed your girl Kim ♪
♪ 'Cause every time The car dash, she in ♪
Shit.
♪ Fatboy Fresh the mixtape Got Fatboy Fresh shirts ♪
♪ And Fatboy gon' stay fresh ♪
♪ Till y'all put Fatboy In the dirt ♪
♪ Gordo ♪
SPIKE: How are you holding up?
Barely. But I have kids, and...
Fred was like-- He was my best friend.
Like, the first person I met when I came here.
He gave me my first daughter.
And... you know, it's just not the same for me,
but I have to just keep going on.
SPIKE: Gotta be strong for your daughters.
Yeah.
It's not easy, though. (SNIFFLES)
He's gonna get a street named after him
on February 22nd, on his birthday.
SOPHIA THOMAS: Happy birthday, Daddy.
(CROWD CHEER, APPLAUD)
SADIE THOMAS: Happy birthday, Daddy.
(CHEERING)
FAT JOE: Hip-hop music started right here.
Beat Street was done right here.
When you grow up in this community,
you look up at the street signs, you'll see Fred's name on it,
and they can be inspired by one of their own.
(CROWD CHEERING)
-♪ (MUSIC BLARING) ♪ -ANNOUNCER: (OVER SPEAKER) Live long, Fred!
Let's do it, baby!
Hakeem Jeffries, member of Congress,
8th congressional district in Brooklyn and Queens.
Within our city, the Black and Latino communities
experienced a disproportionate amount of the pain,
the suffering, and the death.
It's just not right that Black and brown people
have health outcomes that are worse than white people.
It has everything to do with economic policies.
It has everything to do with social policies
that are not designed to help people,
but that are designed to keep people apart.
I'm Reverend Al Sharpton,
founder of the National Action Network.
We've been talking all the way through history
about how we had less health services
than anyone in the country.
And all of a sudden, in the middle of a pandemic,
like manna from heaven, they said,
"Oh! You have preexisting conditions?"
Yes. Being Black in America is a preexisting condition.
My name is Fritz François. I'm a gastroenterologist,
and I serve as the chief medical officer
here at NYU Langone Health.
And I'm from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, representing Haiti.
High blood pressure is one of them, right?
It affects the heart. Cholesterol affects the heart.
You have lung disease. You have asthma.
You have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
You got liver disease, you got kidney disease, obesity.
It means that you're chronically inflamed.
You had a preexisting set of epidemics
that the pandemic could then jump on top of.
When I was born in Kings County Hospital,
Brooklyn, New York,
and they put "Negro" at that time on my birth certificate,
I was one that would inherit preexisting conditions
because of a preexisting social order
that deemed me to be in that category.
You were hearing everyone who had it,
and it was almost like everyone who had it
was dying from it.
It scared the shit out of me. (CHUCKLES)
Even with the pain from cancer, this was-- it was unbelievable.
TROY ROSASCO: Troy Rosasco,
9/11 attorney, Hanson and Rosasco.
PHIL ALVAREZ: Phil Alvarez,
older brother of NYPD detective Luis Alvarez,
director of 9/11 outreach and education
for Hanson and Rosasco.
The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the 9/11 community
that are already battling
all these underlying health conditions,
many of which are upper respiratory.
Sinusitis, rhinosinusitis, asthma, COPD.
These are all some of the top conditions
that we see from 9/11 survivors, 9/11 first responders.
Phil Suarez, New York City paramedic.
Like one of the most traumatic things for me on 9/11
was listening to the radio about the people jumping.
The dispatcher screaming, "Can anybody confirm the jumpers?"
We would call "jumper down" somebody that actually jumps.
"Jumper up" is that they're up, "jumper down" is when...
(RADIO STATIC)
And COVID was very similar in the sense that you--
all you kept hearing on the radio,
like, whether you were in an emergency
or you're at the hospital with an emergency,
all you kept hearing is "Cardiac arrest,
cardiac arrest, cardiac arrest. Asking for paramedics.
Is there paramedics available?" And it was just constant.
New York City EMS gets about 3,500 to 4,500
medical emergencies in a 24-hour period
in all five boroughs.
And I remember when we broke the 5,000 years ago,
I think it was a heat wave, and it was like, "Wow,
we broke 5,000."
COVID, we were hitting 7,200.
-SPIKE: What? -Seventy-two hundred a day.
The system just couldn't handle it.
Nobody can handle that.
We're the busiest EMS system in the world.
And not only that, like, every call
was so consuming because the level of sickness
was so high, the acuity was so high.
And then you had to, after every patient,
completely decontaminate your whole ambulance
and yourself. So we had to like literally wipe everything down.
My worst day, I think it was a Thursday
in April, early April.
-(SIREN WAILING) -And we started our day, like, bad,
getting sent to the Bronx.
And that day, I had a 15, a 42-year-old, 56-year-old,
and a 25-year-old, all in cardiac arrest
from COVID, you know?
-And that was like-- -SPIKE: Fifteen-year-old?
Fifteen-year-old. That's how I started my shift in the Bronx.
SPIKE: Start the day like that, huh?
Yeah. Didn't get any easier throughout the day.
And we were able to resuscitate the 25-year-old.
That was it. You know, it's hard.
And so when you think about like those ages,
they're not elderly, they were young people.
AARON RANDLE: My name is Aaron Randle. I am a freelance reporter
working with the New York Times for the Those We've Lost series.
Now working with Spotify as a producer.
PENELOPE GREEN: Penelope Green, a reporter at the New York Times
contributing to the Those We've Lost series.
DAN WAKIN: I'm Dan Wakin, an editor at the New York Times
in the obituaries department.
And I edit the Those We've Lost series
for victims of the pandemic.
One story that I found really compelling
and fascinating was about Margaret Holloway,
who was called the Shakespeare Lady.
-Yeah, that was a hell of a story. -So, she graduated
from the Yale School of Drama, I think in 1980.
And she was this unbelievable talent.
She was just brilliant.
She was a director,
and she was just starting a meteoric career.
And then within three years, mental illness
just broke her down.
KATHERINE BOROWITZ: My name is Katherine Borowitz.
I'm a social worker, and I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
JOHN TURTURRO: My name is John Turturro,
I'm an actor and director
and I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
We met at Yale Drama School.
Kathy was in her last year, her third year, and I was in my first year.
KATHY: You didn't have to say that now.
-JOHN: It doesn't matter. -(KATHY MUTTERING)
-JOHN: Yeah. -KATHY: I'm older than you.
SPIKE: The both of you know or have any dealings
with the late Margaret Holloway?
Yeah, I did.
I've never met anybody like her.
At that time, I had no frame of reference
for somebody like Margaret.
It seemed to me almost like
she was somebody out of a really great fairytale.
She had a ferocity.
I never felt like she was looking at me.
I always felt like she was looking into me.
-And she directed you. -She directed me twice.
JOHN: 'Cause I heard all these stories about her,
about how talented she was and everything.
Well, she was coming from a very personal place.
And fast forward to the '80s, '90s, and 2000s,
she's becomes this fixture on the streets of New Haven.
Ill dressed, seemed to be homeless,
and she would stand on a corner and recite Shakespeare.
...do chase the ebbing Neptune
and do fly them when they come back.
Ariel, seek through the still-vexed Bermoothes.
I feel like I've been through the Bermuda Triangle.
DAN: So eloquent, and memorized long sections of Macbeth.
But she became something of a street person,
and some store owners found her a nuisance.
But other people in New Haven,
particularly in the theater world at Yale,
kind of became her friend
and took her in and found housing for her.
And, you know, in the last years of her life,
she was living a fairly stable, decent life.
But kind of the tragedy of her early life,
and then the ability to find some stability,
and then to have that all end with COVID, really struck me.
It's really hard for me to, um, see these--
the footage of her on the street because...
none of that ferocity is left.
I mean, it really puts, you know, a face
on the brokenness of the healthcare system.
We talked to people who are so fresh with this grief,
and you can't help but to share that, you know,
and to really, you know, just take in
what they're experiencing in a very palpable way.
And that kind of, in a way, helped me
get through the period.
PENELOPE: Yeah, I felt like it was an honor.
And I felt it-- it gave shape to those first few months,
and you were participating in a productive way
in this hideous thing that was happening.
JODI LYNN ROMANO: My name is Jodi Lynn Romano,
and I'm the director of mental health services
at Health and Hospitals, Elmhurst.
(DR. M. PILAR GONZÁLEZ INTRODUCES SELF IN SPANISH)
JODI: There was a team of us that took iPads
and went to the patients' bedsides.
We put on full PPA and we FaceTimed their family
and their loved ones internationally
from eight o'clock in the morning until midnight,
seven days a week, because we didn't want anybody
to be there alone.
And we didn't want anyone to die
without their loved ones saying goodbye.
Human nature, right?
I just want to see my mother and father,
I don't care what happens.
-SPIKE: For the last time. -Exactly.
-Yeah. -So part of our job was to protect them, also.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(SOBS)
During 9/11, if someone was in the hospital,
the family eventually could come and see them, touch them.
Not now, not now.
Bodies were stacking up.
They were in refrigerator trucks for goodness sake.
I mean, it's indignities.
And people couldn't have proper burials.
They couldn't have celebrations in the traditional sense.
I mean, a Zoom funeral.
I mean, you couldn't be comforted by others,
couldn't have the physical touch of others, just a hug.
Seen as, you know, it's hard to do that
over a computer screen.
The gospel of Matthew, "Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted."
My name is Nelson George. I'm a writer, a filmmaker,
and a native son of Brooklyn, New York.
My father is one of thousands of people
who were in their 70s, 80s, that we lost last year.
You know, lost in-- especially April, that really big--
when we didn't know what the fuck we were doing.
And, um, all of that history
of who we are as-- as a people and as individual families
are gone in a... (SNAPS) ...like that.
The connections to all of these different threads
that we maybe take for granted, you know, our parents
who we might not have seen as much, or, you know,
have been in contact with, we never sat down
and really interviewed and got the stories.
And it happened that quickly.
And that struck me as so profound.
So, you know, we had the funeral.
We had a COVID funeral.
So we had it at this funeral parlor
up in Harlem, Unity.
And my niece, Jay, my youngest niece, had hooked up
a Zoom thing.
So we had 40 people from the family there.
My father, we had been estranged
pretty much most of my adult life, right?
We hadn't really been close. Um...
Sporadic contact, whatever.
And then about a year-- literally a year to now,
April 2019, I came up to see him
and I made a real effort to connect with him.
I must say, it was-- it was a-- it was the best--
one of the best things I've ever done in my life.
Several friends of mine also died in a row.
My father died in April,
Andre Harrell died two weeks later.
We got in Robert Ford, who was my mentor,
basically, when I was a kid, died.
So I had like three people die in like... a month and a half.
Guys who have been crucial to my development.
But that's our little story
within all of these other stories.
So that's all of these people who haven't had funerals.
Haven't had real funerals.
Haven't had real-- a moment to hug everyone in the family.
And so that's what strikes me, you know.
I look at our-- my story, and I think it's--
there's millions of stories.
Literally now, millions of stories like this
all over the world. And it's both sad as hell,
but also, strangely, you feel connected to the humanity,
that all of us are in this kind of boat together.
My name is Gary Terrinoni.
I am the CEO of the Brooklyn Hospital Center
in lovely Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
Within a couple weeks, we couldn't handle
the amount of people
that were expiring in our morgue.
I think we handle maybe 12 at the most.
So we were dealing with multiples of that.
-And so we're-- -SPIKE: You only have-- You only have
-room for 12 bodies in the hospital? -Right, in--
Yeah, no, for our size, that would be normal
because then what happens, too,
the funeral parlors pick the bodies up
and things like that, so there's a turnover.
In this case, it was just too much.
We had two truckloads of bodies--
-SPIKE: On Ashland Place. -GARY TERRINONI: On Ashland.
And then the city or state came back and said,
"Listen, you have to build within the trucks, a capability
to handle more."
So we ended up having to actually build structure
within the trucks to be able to stack the bodies.
My name is Mariel Sander.
My major was neuroscience and English
at Columbia University. I graduated in May 2020.
I kept getting these emails from New York
saying, "We need people with medical licenses."
And I started emailing hospitals just saying like, you know,
"I have an EMT license. I do have this training.
I'm willing to help."
And eventually a couple got back to me.
I was just doing temperature screenings,
and that was fine.
And then my supervisor at the time
just emailed me out of the blue, and she was like,
"I know this isn't using your EMT license,
but, um, this hospital in Brooklyn, they really need--
they really need people in the morgue."
And I just remember my first reaction,
just being total, kind of, shock. (CHUCKLES)
And just kind of like...
I don't know, I'd never thought about working in the morgue.
And then my second reaction was, you know, "I can do that."
I'm able-bodied, I'm young.
If I get sick, I'll probably recover.
And if they need people, I want to be
where they need people.
SPIKE: Was this during the height of the pandemic too?
MARIEL SANDER: I started working there right around the peak in New York.
-So my first day was pretty overwhelming. -SPIKE: That's a--
Certainly broke you in. (LAUGHS)
-(LAUGHING) Yeah. I think-- -SPIKE: They just threw you into the fire, huh?
My supervisor thought I wouldn't come back
after the first day, honestly. She told me that later.
SPIKE: Tell us about that first day in the morgue.
It was very trial by fire.
So I immediately was helping pick up a body.
Immediately brought me to one of the trailers.
That's one of the first things they show us.
The hospital I worked at did their very best
to keep it discreet. I don't know if it was perfect.
I think they got as close as they could.
I know there were some hospitals where it was just kind of
out in the open.
SPIKE: What did you learn working in the morgue?
(SIGHS) A lot. It actually gave me a lot more hope
-than I think I ever would've. -SPIKE: How so?
It made me really believe that...
this is gonna be very cliché, but it made me believe
that people are basically good.
Just the people I was working with,
the people who, like me,
they did not really sign up for this job.
This was not the thing they wanted to do in life.
This is something they were doing
because, you know, they were redeployed
or because they felt like they needed to,
they feel like they needed to help.
You know, treated each body as if it mattered
and not just an object.
I think it would've been so much easier
if people had said like, you know,
"These are just objects you're packing away."
My name is Anthony Frempong-Boadu.
I'm an associate professor of neurosurgery
here at NYU Langone Health,
and I'm director of the spine service.
My father came down with COVID and almost died.
He was actually at a nursing home
when he came down and he was in very, very bad shape.
He never got intubated.
Um, but at a certain point, he became so confused
that he couldn't even speak English anymore.
It's coming out now that there were a lot of,
you know, people who got it at the nursing home,
a lot of deaths at nursing homes.
They're very tight environments, and they're closed environments.
And they're actually a perfect location
where, you know, this virus can spread.
My name is Ricardo Sarmiento, otherwise known as Rick,
and I've been a cameraman in New York
for the past 30 years.
SPIKE: They call you Latin Lover too.
RICARDO SARMIENTO: And Latin Lover.
-(SPIKE LAUGHS) -RICARDO: Only Spike can call me that.
SPIKE: What was the first film that we worked together?
It was Malcolm X.
-SPIKE: What? You worked on Malcolm X? -RICARDO: Check this out.
You had started shooting already.
So I was a day player. I seconded on C camera,
and I was there in Harlem at the armory.
And I saw what seemed like 3,000 background extras
dressed as the Nation of Islam.
And they were being marched to the set.
SPIKE: Tell me about your mother. Where was she born?
She was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in the '30s.
And she saw Colombia during the hardest times.
My dad and my mom left Colombia after I was born.
And they brought the three of us,
my sister and my brother,
to New York, 1968.
We got to the South Bronx.
March 11th, it was the last time I got to see my mom
in her nursing home, where she was there for about a year
'cause she had Alzheimer's with dementia.
SPIKE: Where's the nursing home, in the Bronx?
In the Bronx, the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx.
On March 11th, my mom was healthy.
No nonmedical staff personnel to enter a nursing home.
Uh, this means no visitors in a nursing home.
If you care about someone in a nursing home,
the last thing you want is to endanger that person.
The nursing home called me on March...
I think it was around March 21st.
They said, "Your mom's not feeling well.
She's got a 101-degree fever."
I thought, like, my mom should get a test right away.
The nursing home said,
"New York City Department of Health says
we're not allowed to test anybody
unless they have multiple symptoms
of the coronavirus."
So I insisted, from that moment.
I said, "You need to take my mom to an emergency room.
I want her to be in a hospital."
And everyone at the nursing home,
from the head doctor, the head nurse,
the social worker, they all said,
"Sir, if you have us send your mom to a hospital,
she'll get the coronavirus there and she won't survive."
So I listened to them. I trusted them.
This had been the group of people that have been
caring for her for about a year now.
They were wrong.
Because, um, I got a phone call,
um, a few days after that
by the manager of all the nurses on that floor,
and he said, "Your mom is hypoxic."
And I said, "What is hypoxic?"
He said, "Your mom's struggling to breathe.
What do you want us to do?
Should we send her to an emergency room?"
I said, "Absolutely, right now."
They got her to Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx.
And my mom survived at the hospital
about-- I think it was about five or six days.
And then I got a call from a doctor, and he said,
"We've done everything we can do.
Your mom's still alive, but barely.
We don't know how much longer she might have."
So I got special permission
to show up at the hospital and visit,
even though they weren't allowing visitors
in hospitals at that time.
I said, "Look, this is the last time
I might see my mom. You gotta let me come."
I wore, like, the N95 masks and a face shield,
full PPE from head to toe,
and got to see her in her room for a 15-minute visit.
(SNIFFLES)
So I went one more time and I saw my mom in the room
and I just kneeled by her bed and held her hand
and-- and-- and told her how much I loved her.
And then I prayed that if it was her time
that she should go, if she was ready to go.
And-- and, um...
I said my last words to her.
And the next day, she died.
That was April 15th.
Fifteen people died at my mom's nursing home.
All around the same time.
Some died in the nursing home.
They never even made it to a hospital.
Some made it to a hospital.
Um...
They didn't have enough body bags.
(SNIFFLES)
And, um, the hospital that my mom was in...
was at capacity in their morgue.
So they told me that my mom's corpse
might have to be put into, like, a truck. (SNIFFLES)
There were two big refrigerator trucks
parked in the parking lot of this hospital.
My name is Ron Kim. I'm a member
of the State Assembly of New York.
I represent parts of Queens, specifically Flushing,
Whitestone, and a little bit of Bayside.
In my district, I had the most number of nursing homes,
so we've had hundreds and hundreds of older adults
who died, um, at the peak of pandemic.
It was nonstop.
Just imagine being outside and you're literally seeing
your loved one dying behind closed doors
because COVID is transmitting and there is no control.
And then you go back home and you turn on TV,
and you see the very person who instituted these policies
joking around on national TV
with his brother on CNN.
Finally, after the New York state attorney general, Tish James,
comes out with this bombshell report,
the truth is coming out, 50 percent undercounting.
So if you are in a nursing home,
you got sick, and you were transferred to a hospital
and you die in the hospital, they didn't count that death.
There was a corporate immunity
where the governor gave to his top donors
in the peak of the pandemic, a blanket immunity from--
that shielded them from criminal and civil liability charges.
These are nursing homes, some of the for-profits,
they got a "get out of jail free" card
by the governor.
We warned them back then, "Governor, this is bad
because they are no longer going to invest
everything they have to hire people, to buy PPE.
You're giving them an out, and people are going to die."
So we get their report, and there are lawsuits for-- to-- for data.
"Give us the data, governor. Give us the data."
And finally, they meet with us, the six lawmakers
that oversee the germane committees,
to oversee nursing homes.
February 10, we have a private meeting
with his top aides,
Secretary Melissa DeRosa,
the commissioner of Health Department, Howard Zucker,
and two other top people.
It's a two-hour meeting, and everyone's grilling her
and-- and the staff.
"Not good enough.
Where was the data for seven months?
We don't believe you. This is not--
this is complete-- you know, unacceptable."
And all of a sudden, Secretary DeRosa...
In my mind, this is what I was thinking at the time,
this feels like A Few Good Men.
-You want answers? -I think I'm entitled--
-NATHAN JESSUP: You want answers? -I want the truth!
You can't handle the truth!
"You want the truth? This is it."
(ATHENA JONES READING PROMPT)
That was an admission of obstruction of justice.
And then no longer became a private meeting.
Now I had a public duty to say publicly
that they committed in a cover-up
and they need to be held accountable.
You can't hide information
because you think you could be politically hurt.
The suppression of data went back
to all the way in July of that summer.
They issued a self-auditing report
to exonerate themselves of any wrongdoing.
And four days later-- four days later, after that report,
Cuomo came out and said, "Oh, by the way,
I'm going to write a book about my leadership."
SPIKE: Whose idea was it for the governor
to write this book about the great job...
(LAUGHING) ...he was doing during the pandemic?
That should've been shot down from the get-go.
It's not-- It wasn't a good look.
Yeah. I think that in retrospect,
the governor probably regrets that decision.
And I think it was his decision.
You know, six months later,
in that six-month period after that book came out,
more than 15,000 New Yorkers died.
So, that is a ton of people, right?
And for the book's premise to be,
"This is leadership lessons.
This is how I steered this state through this crisis,"
and then you look at that number,
15,000 people,
that's a very harsh juxtaposition.
I think one of the hardest things
of going through that time is that I live in SoHo.
And I remember hearing ambulances every night,
all night long.
Every five minutes, you could hear an ambulance.
Sirens, nonstop.
Sirens, you know, going off every night, all day, all night.
There were sirens constantly, nonstop, day and night.
Ambulances all night. I mean, all night.
And the ambulance, like, every-- every 15 minutes,
every half an hour, just racing down the street.
Those sirens were nonstop.
It's a hard place to be in New York
in April and, uh, March.
(SNIFFLES)
(SIGHS)
A third of all deaths in this nation
are from nursing homes.
New York State, we're only about 28 percent-- only--
but we're below the national average
in number of deaths in nursing homes.
But who cares?
Thirty-three, twenty-eight
died in a hospital, died in a nursing home.
They died.
And...
I dealt with the loss of my father.
Mariel, were you ever worried about getting sick,
-getting COVID? -All the time, all the time.
SPIKE: Tell us. Talk. Tell us about it.
(CHUCKLES) I mean, it was-- it was on everyone's mind.
We had an entire workforce that didn't want to go home
and bring this disease to their families.
And what does that mean?
That means that the place where you find
the most amount of comfort is no longer an option.
I isolated myself from my family.
Some late nights, I stayed in a hotel
because I didn't think it was a good idea to go home.
When I got home, I literally got down
to my, uh, birthday suit outside.
My wife would meet me with masks
and put everything in a garbage bag
and I would run to the shower and just loofa.
Went straight to the shower.
-I showered. -Take a shower.
Go right into the shower
and hope that you were doing the right thing.
-I was scared. -I had this constant fear
that I was gonna bring this virus home to them.
And I would see my kids briefly.
And I really didn't want to be home, honestly, that much,
because I didn't want to expose them.
And I kept saying, "The second I have any symptoms,
I'm going to go to a hotel." And I wouldn't let them kiss me,
and I wouldn't let them hug me,
and I would just say good night from the door.
And, yeah, it was a lot of unknown.
It was just a lot of unknown.
I was constantly scared that I was gonna get sick,
I was gonna infect other people,
I was gonna go home and then bring it back to my family.
♪ (MELANCHOLY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I'm Eliza Shapiro, and I'm an education reporter
at the New York Times.
The largest public school system in the country by far
with well over a million kids,
just imagining the off switch for that system
was-- was almost impossible for me.
But as February ended and we got into March,
all of a sudden, the question became
not if these schools are gonna close, but when.
So I regret to have to announce that as of tomorrow,
our public schools will be closed.
Finally, the dam broke and the mayor relented
basically to pressure.
I am Zakiyah Ansari, and I am an educational activist.
So I'm an activist, but I also consider myself an organizer.
My thing is education, education for liberation.
-And so if folks-- -SPIKE: Repeat that again?
-Education for liberation. -SPIKE: I like that.
Yeah. So if folks are out there in the street
and they're saying they want more funding for schools,
we need to have laptops and computers,
I need to be organizing them to take action.
Calling their legislator to say, "We need to do something else."
Going to City Hall or the Department of Education
to say, "We, as parents and community,
demand that these things happen."
Otherwise, it's just an action in the street.
I walked to Albany with a bunch of other parents.
From City Hall to Albany.
-It took us nine days, 150 miles. -(PROTESTERS CHANTING)
Almost there, and guess what Governor Cuomo's office says.
It was a "publicity stunt."
My organization, the Alliance for Quality Education,
has been bringing people up to Albany
before coronavirus hit for 20 years.
The governor repeatedly,
at almost every big decision point,
and these are some of the biggest decisions
that are possible in local government,
has contradicted the mayor or said the mayor is wrong.
Understanding the amount of suffering
and compounding it with all this uncertainty
because the mayor and the governor
weren't talking to each other.
And after very careful consideration,
I announce today that the New York City
public schools will remain closed
for the remainder of this school year.
REPORTER: Are you saying that it's your legal authority
to make the decision on New York City schools,
not Bill de Blasio's?
It is my legal authority in this situation, yes.
REPORTER: The mayor of New York City is saying
schools are going to be closed two hours ago,
and you're saying, "No, no, no. That's not the case."
I think for parents, that might be confusing and-- and unsettling.
Well, then we just clarified it.
At the end of the day, the governor
has more power than the mayor of New York City--
SPIKE: It's always been like that?
It's always been like that, for years.
The governor wants to make the decision.
You know, the governor wants to be the decider
and he wants to get the credit, too, you know?
And this is a famous political trick that, you know,
we've seen again and again and again is, you know,
you take credit for the good stuff. (LAUGHS)
And then when bad stuff happens, you're like, "It wasn't me."
♪ But she caught me On the counter ♪
-♪ It wasn't me ♪ -♪ Saw me kissing on the sofa ♪
♪ It wasn't me ♪
And so, I think with the coronavirus cases,
you know, there were times when there were
unpopular decisions that Cuomo was like,
"You know, I, you know, it's up to the--
it's up to the mayor to make this decision."
And then, when there were popular decisions,
like, you know, reopening stuff,
you notice that that's always Cuomo making those calls.
I'm Bill de Blasio, 109th mayor of the City of New York.
SPIKE: Do you ever think Boston will elect a mayor
-who's a Yankee fan? (LAUGHS) -No.
No, no, no, no, no. Not possible.
SPIKE: So why's it happened in New York, then?
You see, this is-- we are the open city, Spike.
-City for everyone. Come on. -SPIKE: We're not open for the Red Sox, though!
SPIKE: You and Bloomberg.
All people are tolerated and respected in New York.
-SPIKE: Not Red Sox fans. -It happened.
I was out in the open. They knew.
SPIKE: You're right. I give you-- you di--
You didn't try to hide it.
Nope. Integrity, Spike. Integrity.
SPIKE: So Boston doesn't have integrity? (LAUGHS)
You can't give it up, can you? You can't give it up.
No, I'm saying you gotta be who you are.
I told the people who I was, and they still accepted me.
SPIKE: All right.
Well, I had to get that away because--
I know, that was on your mind.
Yes, you and Bloomberg. (LAUGHS)
They hated Red Sox!
SPIKE: What's up with your paisan, in Albany?
(BOTH LAUGH)
SPIKE: You guys couldn't work it out? What's up?
Paisans, have a bottle of wine or something.
What happened?
You know, uh...
SPIKE: I mean, you guys go way back though, right?
We go way back, but things changed a long time ago.
There's over 100,000 kids who live in temporary housing.
A lot of them live in shelters, a lot of them are doubled up
in these cramped apartments.
What on earth are these families going to do?
-This wasn't new-- -SPIKE: What's the number again?
It's 110,000.
-SPIKE: Kids? -Kids.
-That go to public school? -Go to public school...
-SPIKE: In New York City? -...in New York City
who do not have temporary homes, who are unsheltered,
or who are sleeping on couches at a friend's house
or an uncle's house or a grandparent's house.
This is, at this point, a five-year-old phenomenon.
And people just couldn't believe it.
We have homeless shelters, family shelters,
that have no cell phone service, no Wi-Fi.
KAYINDE HARRIS: ...in NYCHA buildings because of the concrete
of the walls are so thick--
-SPIKE: The projects, huh? -KAYINDE: Yes.
That it's hard for the transmission
from the Wi-Fi and the broadband to get through.
My name is Kayinde Harris.
I'm a New York City public school teacher,
and I've been teaching for 19 years.
How do we get all of our students equipped
to be able to come online and to do the work?
And then not only that, but they're still trying
to adjust to what's going on.
And now they have to learn how to learn remotely.
So some of them use their phones,
but for the ones who didn't have any kind of technology,
the schools provided iPads.
And so students were able to come up and pick up
either Chromebooks or iPads.
-I know for a period of time-- -SPIKE: What if you didn't have Wi-Fi, though?
Um, so, for a period of time, there was some company
that was allowing Wi-Fi.
-You know, they provide Wi-Fi-- -SPIKE: Free Wi-Fi.
Free Wi-Fi for students.
End of April, mostly all the kids
had some form of technology.
Hi, my name is Janet Dillon-Kowalczyk.
I worked for the New York City Fire Department.
I currently work as a schoolteacher
for the New York City Department of Education,
and I work for PS 132,
the Shining Star of Williamsburg.
We went from being teachers, teaching curriculum,
to being IT specialists and helping families log on,
from translating in Spanish, to doing three-way calls,
to sending emails to tech people
just to get answers for families.
What we're doing to children in this moment
is sending a really powerful message,
which is they're not worthy of us doing everything
we need to do to ensure that they are successful.
And it's not every child.
It's Black, brown, and poor children once again...
who we are sending the message to
that they are not worthy.
But guess what? Predominantly Black and brown parents
are the ones who chose to keep their kids out of school
-and remote-- -SPIKE: And why is that?
-Why is that? -You know why?
Because they don't trust the system. Rightfully so.
A system who has failed their children many, many times.
Kids dropping out can be the difference
between everything in their lives,
between going to an Ivy League school
or going to jail, going to Rikers Island.
I mean, the gap is so-- is so wide.
My name is Monica Klein, and I am a political consultant
and co-founder of Seneca Strategies.
How do I even start with the governor?
So, the governor is holding these press conferences,
and he understands that people just want someone who's strong,
who's resolute, who is going to say, "This is a real virus,"
who's not gonna deny it. And people fall in love.
Now, the local media press corps, I would actually say,
has been covering him this whole time,
saying, "Okay, but you know,
funding is going down for health care."
He is cutting Medicaid funding,
he's cutting beds from hospitals in the middle of a pandemic.
But the national media is watching this man
and they're just saying, "This is great TV."
He's like hanging out with his brother,
they're like doing their shtick. And so he becomes beloved.
REPORTER: So what's going on? Does the city still have
the ability to close its schools?
Are you now taking control and saying
that you have the power to make this decision?
And for the millions of parents who want to know,
are the schools going to open tomorrow in New York City?
All right. First of all, let's try not to be obnoxious
and offensive in your tone...
because you're 100 percent wrong.
I get a call, um, from my cell phone.
Eight years in office, the man has never called me.
-Never. -SPIKE: Never, huh?
-Never. -SPIKE: Ever, ever?
Never, never. So, he calls me...
Um... It's silence.
Like, I'm saying, "Governor? Governor?"
I think I must've asked twice.
And then all of a sudden, he was like, "Mr. Kim,
are you an honorable man?"
That's how he opens up. It was a bizarre question.
How do you-- What do you say to that?
So I remember kind of, with a question mark,
"Yes?" Like, "I am?" Right?
Um, and then, you know, he spent the next ten minutes
berating, yelling, and laying out
what he would do to me, and threatening me,
my career, my political career, my life.
It will be all over, ruined and destroyed.
And ultimately, what he was trying to do--
um, after asking me specifically,
"Are you a lawyer?"
I was like, "No, I'm not,"
"Then you must have heard this wrong.
Let me explain to you what happened."
Explaining in his own words, what Melissa
was supposed to say, which she did not.
And telling me, ordering me,
"You need to issue a statement that reflects
what she-- what I just told you."
They need to address the federal government first,
and then we'll get to the state. That's what Melissa said.
"Do it tonight. Not tomorrow. Tonight."
And he repeated that twice at the end.
The moment he transitioned into using the threat
to order me to cover up for his administration,
that's when I realized
he's trying to implicate me into this.
And I think many politicians and many people
had similar phone calls.
A lot of people in New York State
have received those phone calls.
Uh, you know, the bullying is nothing new.
And if it was just me,
I think I would have acted much differently,
but seeing my kids and my wife.
So it was her strength,
ultimately, that led me to push back.
"You don't have a choice now, Ron,
because I married..."
(CHUCKLES)
(CHUCKLES) Sorry.
Yeah. 'Cause, you know, 'cause she--
you know, she was sure, you know,
"When I married you, you know, I married a man of integrity."
(SOBS)
(CHUCKLES)
SPIKE: Made you guys stronger, though, right?
-Going through this? -Yeah. (SNIFFLES)
Yeah. I mean, that's what-- (SNIFFLES)
I mean, it was really her, you know, that--
that gave-- led me to regain my strength
and really push forward
and say, "I can't-- I'm not gonna stand for this."
It's no longer just about him bullying,
but it's about him escaping accountability.
He did something wrong. (SNIFFLES)
My uncle, my-- thousands of people died, right?
And he cannot escape accountability. (SNIFFLES)
And I was not going to compromise my values,
my integrity... (SNIFFLES) ...for this man.
His policies are failing us on the ground.
And for many months, lot of people, lot of the--
even the corporate media circles,
they didn't want to hear it.
They were just so concerned about taking down Trump,
they're willing to prop up
even an abusive governor to get there.
So I think there's a lot of lessons learned.
I think there's a lot of similarities
between Cuomo and Trump.
Well, new trouble for Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Another woman has stepped forward,
accusing him of kissing her without consent.
This is a man who governs
through fear, through intimidation,
now we've learned through sexual harassment.
This is how he keeps people quiet
and, like, fights for his agenda.
An agenda that really supports his corporate donors,
his billionaires, people like the folks
that want to have nursing homes have immunity.
This is not someone that has been fighting
for working people, communities of color
in New York for the past ten years.
WOLF BLITZER: We put up on the screen
the New York congressional Democrats
who are now calling for his resignation.
That's from the House of Representatives.
Now we have both New York state senators,
Schumer and Gillibrand, also calling for his resignation.
The mayor of New York City calling for his resignation.
Is there anyone in a serious leadership position, Errol,
who's standing by the governor right now?
ERROL LOUIS: Um, not that we have seen.
When you're in politics that long, you know,
they say that friends flee and enemies accumulate.
And right now, he's got a lot of enemies.
He's burned a lot of bridges.
He's pissed off a lot of people over the years.
He's made a lot of people very angry,
and he doesn't have a lot of friends rushing to his side
saying, "Hey, oh, you know what, he's a good guy,
you know, he could never have done this."
No one's saying that.
In some ways, unfortunately, representing the worst
of New York City, in my view.
This place is a beautiful place,
I love this place, but there's an undercurrent.
A undercurrent, a kind of negative...
nasty, aggressive, disrespectful undercurrent.
You see it in Giuliani, you've seen it for years.
You see it in Trump.
But that same current runs through Cuomo, too.
So in trying to confront that,
of course I sought common ground,
but this-- this was the break point for me.
A few weeks into it, it became clear to me.
I talked to doctors, I talked to scientists.
But if you're under 50 and you're healthy,
which is most New Yorkers, there's very little threat here.
This disease, even if you were to get it,
basically acts like a common cold or flu.
It became clear to me,
we needed to do shelter-in-place.
We had to do something radical.
I think New Yorkers should be prepared right now
for the possibility of a shelter-in-place order.
Uh, I don't think shelter-in-place really works
for one locality.
As a matter of fact, I'm going so far
that I don't even think you can do a statewide policy.
When you call it out, then they have to deal with it.
First few days, Cuomo resisted. Like four, five days,
six days later, he had to do it. And he did.
In retrospect, we were way too late to close the city.
And by the time things shut down,
so many people were already sick.
We know it's dozens
of members of the Teachers Union
died in the spring.
The first public school teacher to die from COVID
was this beloved third grade teacher
at Public School 9 in Brooklyn.
Her name was Sandra Vizcaino.
And just looking at the universe around that one teacher
and thinking about how many other universes
were just destroyed and depleted.
This was the kind of teacher who,
when someone asks you 30 years later,
"Who's the best teacher you ever had?
It was Sandra, it was this teacher.
VIVIANA SANTOS-VIZCAINO: My name is Viviana Vizcaino.
I am the daughter of Sandra Santos-Vizcaino.
VICTOR SANTOS-VIZCAINO: And my name is Victor Vizcaino,
and I'm the son of Sandra Santos-Vizcaino.
SPIKE: Are you related to a Major League baseball player,
used to play for the Yankees?
VICTOR: That's the cousin. That's the cousin.
There's a few rings in the family as well.
SPIKE: You ever check him out at Yankee Stadium?
-Uh, no, actually. -SPIKE: No?
So, growing up, my dad had us as Red Sox fans.
SPIKE: Oh! All right.
-(LAUGHING) -SPIKE: Cut, cut!
Cut the cameras!
SOUND ENGINEER: Sound's good.
CAMERA ASSISTANT: Vizcaino, take two.
-SPIKE: Action! -We're actually Yankee fans.
-We're actually Yankee fans. -SPIKE: All right.
There's gonna be some trouble up here in a second.
-(SPIKE LAUGHING) -(LAUGHS)
-Oh, man. -SPIKE: Look, I'm so happy
that you took time out today.
-Tell us about your mother. -VIVIANA: My mother...
had a deep, deep heart.
Just almost endless capacity
for love and understanding and forgiveness.
When she had a class, she took those kids seriously.
Like, there was love for them.
And I have so many memories of her talking to kids
and talking to their parents
at like nine, ten o'clock at night.
Last year was my last year of medical school.
This year was the first one where, like, you find out
-where you're gonna work. -SPIKE: You're at med school?
-VICTOR: I just finished. -SPIKE: Where?
Um, in St. George's And I found out yesterday
I'll be working at Mount Sinai.
-And-- -SPIKE: What kind of doctor?
-Anesthesiologist. -SPIKE: Yeah?
Yup, yup.
I know Mom-- I know she's proud for you.
-But I'm done, I just have to-- -Yeah, yeah.
SPIKE: Now, she's looking down, and she said, "That's my baby!
-That's my son." -VICTOR: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
VIVIANA: She went to the hospital March 25th
and, you know, we weren't expecting
she wasn't gonna come home. We were expecting,
"You should've told us you weren't feeling well.
Now you're a couple of days behind.
You're gonna have to take some medication
and work it out," right?
Honestly, I did not take the time that I needed
to slow down and stop and just like be a human.
-SPIKE: And grieve? -Yes. (CHUCKLES) Um...
But you understand that, one, you're young,
and two, like, life just happened.
Like you need-- You can't just push past it
and like put these kinds of things on the back burner.
Like, you have a family.
It's really nice knowing that if I want to go
into his room and give him a hug,
-I can have a hug. -VICTOR: Even if I'm playing 2K
and I'm losing, I'll accept a hug.
-And-- -SPIKE: Hold on, hold up.
And you have to answer-- Think very carefully
-before you answer this question. -(BOTH LAUGHING)
Knicks or Nets?
-Spike, Spike, Spike! -SPIKE: Carefully! Carefully!
Why is this such a hard question?
SPIKE: Carefully.
Coach Thibodeau on the Knicks.
All right, thank you. (LAUGHS)
I was also applying to graduate school this year,
-and I got in everywhere. -SPIKE: Where'd you apply to?
Before you give us where you got in,
where'd you apply to?
I applied to NYU, UPenn, University of Chicago,
University of Michigan, and UCLA.
-SPIKE: Grad school for what? -Um, urban planning.
SPIKE: Now, I want you to think very carefully.
(ALL LAUGH)
SPIKE: Because we have four people right here
-from one of the schools-- -You're gonna like my answer. You're gonna like my answer.
-SPIKE: One of the schools you mentioned. -Okay.
SPIKE: So who'd you accept from?
-Um, I'm going to NYU. -SPIKE: Oh! (CLAPS)
-Because-- It gets better. -SPIKE: Operators, give it up.
Hands off the camera.
-(SCATTERED APPLAUSE) -(BOTH LAUGHING)
-Thank you. -SPIKE: NYU Violets, all right.
I'll be part of the inaugural cohort
of the Bloomberg Fellowship there.
I'm expecting even bigger things from you than your brother.
-Exactly, exactly. -SPIKE: Later for him.
-Later for him. (LAUGHING) -Definitely.
SPIKE: Well, he's gonna be a doctor. He--
-So what? -Exactly.
Well, he wants special treatment.
He'll say he's my brother, not the other way around.
SPIKE: All right, there you go.
Well, congratulations to the both of you.
You made the right choice with the Knicks,
and you definitely made the right choice going to NYU.
(SPIKE LAUGHING)
SPIKE: With this whole thing happening with the governor,
I come to the song by the great James Brown,
and title's called "The Big Payback." (LAUGHS)
-You are so mischievous. -SPIKE: And when I read you talk about the guy up there...
-BILL DE BLASIO: You're mischievous. -SPIKE: ...I'm thinking about
the James Brown song, "The Big Payback."
Truth.
There's something-- It's a kind of corruption
that is...
so normalized
to the point of thousands of people died
and we don't know why,
to the point of...
families who can't get answers, can't get the truth,
or the facts being covered up to sell a book.
I mean, we've never seen anything like this.
So the underlying reality, why our leaders
get so much ability to run wild...
that's a bigger thing we got to confront.
My name is Michael Lomonaco.
I was the chef-director of Windows on the World,
the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center,
Tower One.
The restaurant business during the pandemic
has taken a hit.
The hundreds of thousands of people who are out of work
are the people who are suffering the most.
The porters, the cooks, the line cooks,
the prep cooks, the wait staff, the bussers.
You know, these are people who really work
from week to week, you know, from check to check.
It's been tragic.
What's up, party people? My name is Rosie Perez,
representing Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
Actress, activist, and Puerto Rican icon.
The origins of Brooklyn For Life,
nobody knows the real story.
And that's because Jeffrey Wright's involved.
Jeffrey Wright, here in Fort Greene.
SPIKE: You're an actor, activist.
Man. Come on, man. Entrepreneur?
Oh, I don't know. I'm just, you know,
-I'm just a citizen, Spike. -SPIKE: All right, here we go.
You know, talking to Mike, I said, "Hey."
Over at Brooklyn Moon, I said, "Listen, uh,
I'll help promote the word that you're going delivery,
you know, 'cause the lockdown's coming,
and, you know, um, see what we can do," you know?
So he said, "bet," you know?
So he, you know, he went on lockdown,
and, you know, I said, you know,
on Instagram and Twitter, "Hey, Brooklyn Moon," you know.
(LAUGHING) "Delivery's on."
I said, "Mike, how'd you do at the end of day?"
He said, "Bro, I got five orders, man."
I was like, "Oh, okay.
-That's not going to work." -(SPIKE LAUGHS)
Then somebody hit me on Twitter,
and he's friends with Vito Randazzo
over at Graziella's, and he said, "Hey,
Vito's got this Operation Pizza thing.
He's got customers paying for pizzas
to take 'em to Brooklyn Hospital."
Um, uh, "You want to help us?" I said, "Oh, wow. Okay.
Yeah, definitely. That's the move."
So two of them working together,
you know, a hundred meals each, 200 meals each,
and then of course it's like, "Well, hey," you know,
"Let's try to expand it."
You know, Vito said, "Hey, I got some friends,
you know, restaurant owners, they could use some help.
You know, let's try to pull them in."
And I said, "Okay, cool. Let's see what we can do."
Then Brooklyn Borough president,
his office reached out to me, Eric Adams,
who helped us shoulder this thing, you know,
from the gate.
And he said, "Can you take it Brooklyn-wide?"
And I said, "Oh." (LAUGHING) I said--
SPIKE: Lead the force! Take it to the rest of the borough, right?
-Exactly, exactly. -And he calls me up,
"You know Vito? You know Brooklyn Moon?"
I said, "Yeah." He goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brooklyn For Life.
How's that sound?" I said, "I don't know
what the fuck you're talking about."
(SPIKE LAUGHING)
(LAUGHING) Like what?
Finally explains it to me.
"Why don't we help the community help each other
and give a handout to these healthcare workers?
And let's not take our time with this.
This is emergency."
He says, "So whatever money you got, you give."
I said, "Okay." And he says, "I'll call you back.
I'ma hit up Daniel Craig." (LAUGHS)
He calls me back and he said, "Daniel Craig is in."
I said, "What the hell does Daniel Craig
have anything to do with Brooklyn?"
-He goes, "He lives in Brooklyn." -Brooklyn for life.
I was like, "Wow, 007 lives in Brooklyn. Holla."
So I start hitting it up on Twitter,
you know, social media, and everything.
And it just kept getting bigger and bigger.
And he's like, "Call people." I started calling people.
-I called you. -Brooklyn for life.
-Bobby Cannavale. -You know they're ready to step up.
-Rose Byrne. -Spread love.
Called Michael K. Williams.
Like them, I'm Brooklyn for life.
Everybody was in. Everyone said yes.
You know, Rosie, as you said, uh, you know, stepped up.
Everybody came together.
And Jeffrey goes, "Will you--
Do you think Spike will direct us?"
I said, "Hell, yeah.
Even though he dipped out on Brooklyn,
at least he still works in Brooklyn."
SPIKE: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! (LAUGHS)
I had to make a choice, Rosie.
I know, the whole neighborhood knows the story.
(SPIKE LAUGHING)
The entire neighborhood know the story.
That they were dragging you,
you with your nails in the Brooklyn cobblestones
like... (SCREAMING)
SPIKE: But here's the thing, though.
Everybody in Brooklyn knew where we lived.
-Everybody. -SPIKE: Everybody.
And they were ringing the bell 4:00 a.m. in the morning.
-It's understandable. -As far as infrastructure,
it was just Mike's daughter, Camille Thompson,
who was like locked up in her apartment ultimately,
coordinating the delivery of 2,500 meals a day
from her apartment, never left.
Hitting, you know, the circle of 50 restaurants,
ten hospitals across the borough,
all ten EMS stations,
even some police stations here and there.
And she was just killing it.
SPIKE: Do you know how much money you were able to raise?
First, the goal was to 5,000, and we surpassed 5,000.
And then the goal was, I think, 15, then 25, then 250,
and then 500, and then a million.
And it just kept going.
We ended up raising
-a million and a half dollars. -SPIKE: God bless.
And we delivered 170,000 meals.
(SPIKE WHISTLES)
On average, about 2,500 meals per day.
We got up to like 5,000 meals per day.
It was like, "Hey, everybody chill." (LAUGHS)
Not only did it really help the healthcare workers.
The reason why Jeffrey goes, "We need other restaurants,"
'cause they were like, "Listen,
we can only eat so much pizza every day."
(BOTH LAUGHING)
"You got something else on the menu?"
So it helped, specifically,
Clinton Hill and Fort Greene stay afloat.
-SPIKE: Mm-hmm. -It really, really did,
because the message was, don't only help the hospitals,
help the businesses that are struggling.
-Please frequent your businesses. -SPIKE: Right.
-ROSIE PEREZ: So people started doing it. -SPIKE: Mm-hmm.
ROSIE: And it really, really helped out the neighborhood.
I give Jeffrey Wright so much credit
'cause a lot of people were just either depressed
or in a panic. And he was proactive.
The CDC's advising the use
of nonmedical cloth face covering
as an additional voluntary public health measure.
So it's voluntary. You don't have to do it.
They suggest it for a period of time.
But, uh, this is voluntary.
I don't think I'm gonna be doing it.
From the beginning, his primary interest
was in ignoring and dismissing it,
as opposed to confronting it with the fierce urgency of now,
which is why we find ourselves in a situation
where hundreds of thousands of Americans have died.
Many of them unnecessarily
because of the lack of leadership
coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
We're working very closely with China and other countries.
And we think it's going to have a very good ending for us.
In April when it gets warm,
uh, historically that has been able to kill the virus.
The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus.
This is their new hoax.
It's an unforeseen problem.
-What a problem. -(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING)
Came out of nowhere.
Our country wasn't built to be shut down.
You have suicides over things like this
when you have terrible economies.
And then I said, "Supposing you brought the light
inside the body," which you can do
either through the skin or in some other way.
And then I see the disinfectant by injection
inside or... or almost a cleaning.
'Cause you see, it gets on the lungs.
This is gonna go away without a vaccine. It's gonna go away, and...
Everybody was saying, "Don't wear a mask."
All of a sudden, everybody's gotta wear a mask.
REPORTER: A thousand Americans are dying a day.
They are dying. That's true. And you have-- It is what it is.
-(CROWD CHEERING) -It affects virtually nobody.
Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID.
-(CROWD AGREEING) -You know that, right?
They've used the pandemic
as a way of defrauding the people.
He's got more blood on his hands than you know.
I'm Athena Jones. I'm a CNN national correspondent.
It's very concerning because it is baked in.
This idea that some people just don't believe
that this virus is a real thing. They think it's a hoax.
They think it's just like a flu or a bad cold.
-SPIKE: How do they think that? -They think that because
they're listening to the wrong people.
There are people who think that the world is flat.
My name is Jo-Ann Yoo, and I'm the executive director
of the Asian American Federation.
SPIKE: Can you give me a estimate of the total population
of the Asian community here in New York City?
-The five boroughs? -Absolutely.
We are 1.3 million strong.
It's almost 16 percent of our city's population.
Hi, my name is Chris Kwok.
I'm a mediator and arbitrator in New York City.
I grew up in Queens and Flushing,
and I'm here to represent the Asian American community.
SPIKE: (LAUGHING) My man, I got to fess up.
-Before the pandemic... -Yeah.
SPIKE: ...when I would see Asians wearing masks,
I'd be like, "What they wearing a mask for?"
-(CHRIS KWOK CHUCKLING) -SPIKE: So I gotta fess up.
I was wrong, I was stupid,
and the Asian community was hip to that
before everybody else about wearing a mask.
I mean, for sure. I mean, like, if you went to Japan,
'cause that's where they kind of first wore the masks,
like every flu season.
And then it went to like Korea and Hong Kong.
You saw that a little bit. And people just did it
'cause it was like a way to protect others.
My parents made me wear a mask to school
because it wasn't to protect me, but it was courtesy.
Because when I had a sore throat, my dad--
you know, my parents would say, "Are you getting sick?"
So you need to wear a mask to protect your classmates.
But you put a mask on here before COVID-19,
people looked at you funny.
I'm Christian Cooper.
I'm a freelance writer
and a board member with New York City Audubon,
and a long-time birder.
We are in the middle of the Ramble.
It's a protected area of Central Park
because there's a lot of wildlife here,
there's a lot of delicate plantings,
and habitat for birds,
especially migrating birds who are exhausted,
have traveled hundreds of miles.
And this is where, when they hit New York City,
they see Central Park, this big swath of green
with plantings and with waterways
and in particular, the Ramble,
where there's a lot of undergrowth,
and they just all-- they pile in here.
SPIKE: I have never, ever heard of the Ramble.
The Ramble is famous for some of the, um,
oldest things in the book. I'm a gay man myself,
and back in the day, the Ramble--
-SPIKE: Back in the back-back, right? -Back, back in the way back,
the Ramble was famous for gay men hooking up
because back then, there wasn't a lot of ways
for gay men to meet. They were all on the down low.
They couldn't have publicly known,
so a lot of them would come
to this part of the park in particular,
where they would cruise each other and meet
and sometimes just get it on in the bushes.
-Um, that was of course before-- -SPIKE: Them bushes over there?
Prob-- yeah, sure.
-(SPIKE LAUGHS) -Actually, there's a name
going all the way back to early 1920s
for this area right here.
It was called the Fruited Plain, because this is where
a lot of the gay people would come to meet each other.
SPIKE: When we met here for the first time,
I said, "You are one of a kind.
A Black gay male, Harvard edumacated,
-that's a birder." -Hear the blue jays?
(BLUE JAYS SQUAWKING)
-SPIKE: The what? -CHRISTIAN COOPER: The blue jays?
-SPIKE: The Toronto Blue Jays? -CHRISTIAN: No-- (LAUGHS)
-(SPIKE LAUGHING) -No. The blue jay, blue jays.
When they yell like that,
um, often it means that they found a predator
like a hawk or an owl.
They're putting the word out to the rest of the neighbors.
"We got a predator in the neighborhood,
and we gotta gang up and chase them
out of the neighborhood." So that's what that was.
SPIKE: So let's go back to Memorial Day.
I had pretty much wrapped up my birding,
planning to work my way out of the park
the way I normally do, and I hear...
this woman yelling for her dog,
which is a sure sign that the dog is off leash
here in the Ramble.
So I waited until she was right next to the sign.
And I said to her, "Excuse me, ma'am,
but dogs in the Ramble
have to be on the leash at all times.
The sign's right there,
you're standing right next to it.
But all you have to do is take your dog
a couple of yards that way,
cross the drive, and you're out of the Ramble,
and you're in a different part of the park
where you can have your dog off the leash
to your heart's content until 9:00 a.m."
And she says, "Oh, but that's too dangerous."
It was quite clear that the point here was that,
"I'm gonna do what I wanna do, and that's that."
I said, "Look, if you're gonna do what you want,
I'm gonna do what I want, but you're not gonna like it."
And she's like, "What's that?"
And I start to call her dog to get it out of the shrubs.
And at this point, it's tearing across the lawn.
And she says, "Oh, my dog won't come to you."
Well, what she didn't know is I carry dog treats.
(SPIKE LAUGHING)
'Cause I've been birding the park for 35 years,
dealing with this for 35 years.
So I pull out the dog treats.
I didn't even get to toss them. I never got that far.
'Cause as soon as she saw the dog treats come out...
she spiraled out of control.
But whatever was going on with her,
she was not behaving rationally.
She ran over to the dog,
and instead of putting the dog on the leash,
she picks it up by the collar
and is dragging the dog around by the collar.
And I'm like, "Well, that's not the desired response."
So I switch up tactics, and I'm like, "All right, that didn't work."
So I pull out my cell phone. That set her off.
AMY COOPER:
CHRISTIAN:
AMY:
CHRISTIAN:
-AMY: -CHRISTIAN:
AMY:
CHRISTIAN:
AMY:
At that point, I'm like, "Oh, she's going there with this."
Because up until then,
it's been a conflict between a birder and a dog walker.
You know, happens all the time.
But now she's taken it to a racial place.
And it was clearly an attempt to racially intimidate.
You know, she was gonna play the race card
to try to get me to conform to what she wanted me to do,
which was stop recording her.
And I made the conscious decision at that point
that I was not going to participate
in my own dehumanization.
(DOG PANTING)
CHRISTIAN: And then she gets increasingly performative
as she's not getting the urgency of response
she feels she should be getting from the other end
of the line on 911. And then finally,
she puts the dog on the leash,
and I say...
AMY:
CHRISTIAN:
I turned off the video and she says,
"Oh, now that I called the police,
you stop recording." And I said, "No.
Now that you put your dog on the leash,
I stopped recording."
And I start to walk away 'cause I'm done with her.
-SPIKE: Done, right? -No, well, I mean, you know,
I did not get up at 5:30 in the morning
to deal with the likes of her. I got up to look for birds,
and that's what I'm gonna go back to doing.
It is over. The second her dog was on the leash,
it was done for me.
What she did was unmistakably a racist act.
And it was a crappy thing to do to anybody.
But all of that said,
maybe because I was there,
I can't help but see her as a human being.
SPIKE: So you had some empathy for her, right?
Yeah. I mean, she's a deeply flawed human being. Um...
Uh, but I can't help but see her as a human being,
and I think a lot of people who were not there,
'cause nobody was there but me and her,
you know, it's easy to objectify her into a villain,
a cardboard villain. It's on her.
She did it to herself.
She pulled the pin on the grenade of race
and tried to lob it at me.
And instead, it blew up in her face and in her hand.
The same day as what went down here in Central Park,
later on that afternoon in Minnesota,
ironically, the same state where Philando Castile happened.
OFFICER JERONIMO YANEZ: Pull it out.
-(GUNSHOTS) -(SCREAMING)
DIAMOND REYNOLDS: You just killed my boyfriend!
PHILANDO CASTILE: (CRYING) I wasn't reaching...
It was when that white police officer
put his knee on George Floyd's neck.
-GEORGE FLOYD: Mama. Mama. -OFFICER: Get up and get in the car.
GEORGE: I can't.
(GEORGE SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)
(GEORGE SOBBING)
I get this call in the middle of the pandemic
from Attorney Ben Crump.
And Ben Crump said,
"You heard about what happened in Minneapolis?
This man, George Floyd?" I said, "Yeah."
He said, "The family wants you to get involved.
Would you go to Minneapolis
and lead a vigil or something and focus on this?
'Cause they don't want it to be violent."
I said, "Okay, tell the family I'll try to work it out."
I called Eric Garner's mother.
Why'd I call Eric Garner's mother?
'Cause the tape showed where George Floyd said,
"I can't breathe."
That's the same thing Eric Garner had said
while he was being choked to death by a police officer
in New York that plant him in a chokehold.
And I wanted to show this was systemic.
This wasn't isolated.
Six years ago, it was Eric Garner
saying, "I can't breathe."
Six years later in the gutters of Minneapolis,
same thing, George Floyd, "I can't breathe."
When are y'all gonna stop this?
GWEN CARR: I think about that day that I was told
that Eric was murdered.
It's like an echo from the grave.
And even when the young man cried out, "Mama,"
it's like my son is saying,
"Mama, do something about this because it keeps on happening."
That knee on his neck,
we have all felt in our lives.
We could have been much bigger, better, stronger
in our own personal careers
if you'd have took your knee off our neck.
If there's any sign of hope,
it was the reaction globally and in the US,
and including white folks, to seeing a lynching.
When you have a Black man being strangled to death
in full view,
people watching, terrified, horrified, screaming, yelling,
trying to get the police to stop,
and this man's life just being taken,
that is a lynching.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
In some ways, it's kind of disappointing
that people needed to see that to finally understand.
But the fact is, fine, people needed that.
People who aren't Black, aren't minorities,
haven't had their own experiences
dealing with police officers in an unfair way.
Maybe they should have known already,
but now they do know.
So people were watching the news more than ever,
and there's no distractions.
You can't watch basketball, can't watch baseball,
can't watch-- All that's canceled.
And this is the first time all of the country
had to see over and over and over again,
this knee on the neck.
We didn't have that with other abuses.
You couldn't ignore it with George Floyd.
And I think it brought this country
to the crisis point of dealing with this issue.
♪ (MUSIC SWELLS) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
(CROWD CHANTING)
CROWD: NYPD!
PROTESTOR 1: (CHANTING) How do you spell racist?
-(DRUMS BEATING) -(INDISTINCT CHANTING)
-CROWD: Breonna Taylor! -PROTESTOR 2: Say her name!
CROWD:
-PROTESTOR 2: Say her name! -CROWD:
-(CAR HORNS HONKING) -PROTESTOR 3:
This is the first time,
and I've been out here for decades,
that I saw some rallies
that there were more whites than Blacks.
I went, when I was in Minneapolis, to the scene
of where one of the marches were,
and a little girl, about 11 or 12, she appeared to be,
a white girl,
tugged my jacket sleeve and I just braced myself
and said, "Here it comes. Go home, Reverend Al.
What are you doing here?"
And I looked at this little girl getting ready
to, you know, heckle me.
And she put her little fist up and said,
"No justice, no peace."
That's when I knew this was different. (CHUCKLES)
This was going to be different.
My name is David Ushery. I'm an anchor
at 4:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. at NBC 4 in New York.
We saw a moment, forged maybe because of this COVID crisis
where we were forced to stop, slow down, and really look.
Couldn't avert our gaze from George Floyd
and the knee on the neck.
Couldn't avert our gaze from Ahmaud Arbery
and everything was happening.
And forced to confront it, and forced to have the conversation.
(GUNSHOT)
You had the pollster say 20 to 30 million white Americans
who have before said that anti-Black racism
was not a big deal, within weeks,
said it was at the top of their list of problems in America.
Martin Luther King never had a summer
where 30 million white folks changed their mind.
So that gives you something about the power
of this new youth movement, Black Lives Matter,
technology, social media.
So there is a constituency for change
that includes Blacks and whites and browns and everybody else
that was visible, willing to march
in the middle of a pandemic. That's a sign of real health.
You know, the antibodies against racism as a pandemic
kicking in all around the world.
All over the world!
♪ ("SOMEDAY WE'LL ALL BE FREE" BY DONNY HATHAWAY PLAYING) ♪
♪ (SINGING) ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
♪ (SINGING) ♪
My name is Scott Heins. I'm a photojournalist,
and I live in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
We had a year's worth of protests happening
every single day.
What changed in 2020 last year was that
all of that happened on a spontaneous level.
Any given day, four, five, six different marches,
each one with maybe thousands of people in it,
moving around any of the boroughs of New York City.
CINDY KAMTCHOUM: Hello, my name is Cindy Kamtchoum,
and I'm a member of Warriors in the Garden.
DERRICK INGRAM: Hi, my name is Derrick Ingram,
and I'm executive director of Warriors in the Garden.
JOSEPH COCHRAN: Hi, my name is Joseph Cochran.
I'm the president of Warriors in the Garden.
CHI OSSÉ: My name is Chi Ossé. I'm one of the founding members
of Warriors in the Garden, and I'm a candidate
for New York City Council, District 36.
All of us came together because we were leaders,
we were in the front lines, and we were all like-minded,
and we call ourselves warriors because we enjoy that.
And we believe that there's a consistent fight
against police brutality
and specifically white supremacy.
And we want to lead that fight.
CINDY: We try to make our marches as welcoming as possible,
so if you have someone who is actively being agitating
towards the police, and we're trying to be like,
"Hey, listen, no justice, no peace,
-but some peace." -Can we talk about that?
-I caught one of them on camera. -That's what I was gonna say.
-Yeah. -One of the first non-violent protests
that I went to, I'm literally taking a video,
and this white man comes over to me
while I'm recording and goes, "Can you flip it over?"
MAN: Can you flip this over? Can you flip it over?
CHI: What?
-Are you kidding me? -PROTESTOR: Are you kidding?
CHI: You're asking us to flip over the truck?
-MAN: Okay. No, no, no. -CHI: Are you fucking kidding me?
PROTESTOR: We do not instigate because it comes back on the Black...
CHI: You just asked us to flip over the fucking truck?
-MAN: No, no, no. -PROTESTOR: We do not instigate!
CHI: This man just asked us to flip over the truck
-with his camera out. -MAN: No, no, no, no, no.
CHI: Calling up a couple of our members
to like shine more attention on this guy.
-Yeah. -Post that video.
Someone on Twitter sends me his live stream.
-He's this alt-right live streamer... -Yeah.
...that instigates, takes videos of, say,
"Let's kill like a bunch of niggers in Harlem."
-SPIKE: Wow. -Like, these people are out there, you know,
and are taking advantage of these situations.
-And they're masking themselves. -And sometimes, they'll be successful.
-If you see... -CROWD: If you see...
-...a person... -CROWD: ...a person...
-...in the crowd... -CROWD: ...in the crowd...
-...inciting violence... -CROWD: ...inciting violence...
-...call them out. -CROWD: ...call them out.
Our protests are therapeutic.
-At least the Warriors-- -Ours are, yeah.
Ours are. We lead with joy, and hope, and optimism--
-SPIKE: And love. -And love that-- love wins
-every time-- -SPIKE: Gotta lead with love.
And we-- that's what we believe.
We believe that love and kindness
and being strategic in that way is going to change the world.
(INDISTINCT POLICE RADIO CHATTER)
PROTESTER 1: Excessive use of force!
What are you doing?
REPORTER 1: NYPD faces growing outrage.
Accused of using overly aggressive tactics,
-like shoving a protester. -(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)
PROTESTER 2: Get his badge number!
OFFICER 1: You're gonna get the fuck back! Get back!
REPORTER 2: Another video shows an officer pull down
the face mask of a protestor and pepper spray him.
PROTESTER 3: All right, all right,
-you got him, you got him! -PROTESTER 4: Hey! Hey!
REPORTER 3: It may have been a peaceful protest,
but the ending was not.
NYPD officers in riot gear arresting protestors
for violating the city's 8:00 p.m. curfew.
-PROTESTER 5: Hands up! Hands up! -Back up!
-Who's that guy? -(ALL CLAMORING)
-Who's that guy? -OFFICER 2: Back up! Back up! Back up! Back up! Back up!
The memory of George Floyd is being dishonored
by rioters, looters, and anarchists.
The violence and vandalism is being led by antifa
and other radical left wing groups
who are terrorizing the innocent, destroying jobs,
hurting businesses, and burning down buildings.
PROTEST LEADER:
(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)
-(OFFICERS SHOUTING) -(PROTESTORS SCREAMING)
-(CLATTERING) -(CROWD CLAMORING)
(POLICE SIREN WAILING)
You can't talk about keeping track of the protest last year
without talking about the JusticeForGeorgeFloydNYC Instagram account.
It was kind of a central hub of announcements.
I think for a lot of people really quickly,
that Instagram page became one of the main ways
that they kept track of the day's protest.
May 29th, it was made clear on social media
that there was going to be a large rally gathering
at the Barclays Center
right on Atlantic Avenue by Flatbush.
-SPIKE: Atlantic and Flatbush? -Exactly, exactly.
SPIKE: Where this other team plays basketball?
(CHUCKLES) Sure, sure. We won't talk about that.
Come on, Spike. You know what's up.
You know--
-You know what's up, Spike. -(SPIKE LAUGHING)
You know we got you for three.
You got a broom around here for Spike?
You sweep up in here 'cause I know they swept up
over the Barclays. (CHUCKLES)
Knicks-- I saw the Knicks walking past my house,
walking over to Williamsburg after the game.
They were hopping the L train to go home.
They took the L. (LAUGHS)
SCOTT HEINS: It's a perfect place to have that kind of rally.
It's a big, open space, easy to get to, easy trains.
But for whatever mixture of those reasons,
the Barclays Center was, I think,
for Brooklyn protests, a clear central point.
It was the hub of the summer.
There was a very large NYPD presence
with barricades in front of the Barclays Center.
And the situation escalated really quickly
into very violent arrests.
People being chased away from the Barclays Center
-deeper into Fort Greene. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
There was a group headed to Fort Greene Park
and that there were police there and things were getting intense.
I went over and grabbed my bike,
and biked right down to Fort Greene Park.
My name is Emily Anadu. I'm a marketer, an activist,
and a resident of Fort Greene, the Fort.
And I think maybe one of my friends called me,
he was like, "You know, they're marching down DeKalb."
-So I came out-- -SPIKE: Point to DeKalb Avenue.
DeKalb, right here behind us.
So cops on the Fort Greene Park side,
protesters mostly on the opposite side of the street.
And you could just feel that nothing good
was about to happen.
At this point, the cops basically were like,
"This is a no-win situation,"
so they all started getting in their cars.
There was probably a caravan of about five or six cop cars--
-SPIKE: There were cars and vans? -EMILY ANADU: Cars and vans.
-SPIKE: Right. -EMILY: And so the last van,
people surrounded it. So it couldn't leave.
And at this point, I remember that I was just yelling,
like, "Let them go."
Because for me, there was just nothing good
was going to happen. And then all of a sudden,
-cobblestones started going through the windows. -(PROTESTORS CHEERING)
(INDISTINCT CLAMORING)
So the NYPD was in retreat, and there was a real moment
of joy, of celebration at that time...
-(CHANTING) Whose streets? -CROWD: Our streets!
SCOTT: ...because the protesters had succeeded in
casting out the NYPD.
It was very obvious as well that they had left behind
an NYPD cruiser van.
And you heard people saying, "Light it up, light it up."
And next thing you know, someone throws
a Molotov cocktail into the van.
(CROWD SCREAMING, CHEERING)
-(POLICE RADIO STATIC) -DISPATCH:
-(EXPLOSION) -(SCREAMING)
I am Lenny Singletary.
I serve as the senior vice president
for external affairs, marketing and strategy
at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
Captain Malcolm, who's the commanding officer
-at 88th Precinct... -SPIKE: 88, right?
LENNY SINGLETARY: ...called me-- 88, right on Classon and DeKalb.
-SPIKE: Mm-hmm. -LENNY: He said, "Lenny, there's nothing you can do,
you probably should stay home,
but I need to get my officers in for treatment."
Absolutely. So we got the officers in,
it's being taken care of.
Thankfully, none of the officers were injured.
(CLAMORING, CHEERING)
LENNY: But the fact that someone threw a Molotov cocktail
in a police van raised a profile for,
"Wow, this is serious,"
because I've not witnessed that in our community
-for the longest time. -SPIKE: Right.
And so that's when it was a trigger for me, "Okay, this is real.
And we're not taking this anymore."
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
OFFICER 1: Where's de Blasio?
Where's de Blasio when you need him?
OFFICER 2: (OVER RADIO) South side of Myrtle Place, 300 Ashland Place.
What can I say about Jeffrey Wright?
Jeffrey was coming back from Brooklyn Moon
on his skateboard
and saw what was going on and jumped off his skateboard
and was in the middle by himself telling people,
"Wait, whoa, hold on. You can't destroy the park.
We can't destroy our communities
if we wanna fight for another day."
You got photographs. (LAUGHS) There's always evidence.
So you could see that there were some instigators...
-SPIKE: Mm-hmm. -...who wanted to come just--
you know, just fuck with shit.
And, you know-- And not from here.
You come to a protest for George Floyd,
you've got flares in your pockets, you know?
If it's not led right, particularly from the cop side,
then, um, it's gonna end up like it ended up that night.
My position, both as a journalist
with this press pass hanging around my neck
and as a white man being there,
I have a huge amount of privilege and protection
and safety from the entire situation.
And especially from the NYPD that other people there,
Black people, people of color who were demanding their rights,
do not enjoy.
I know African American journalists who have--
were arrested last summer,
who were visited after protests at their home
and harassed by the NYPD.
I see it just as, if this is a privilege that I have,
then it's also my responsibility to use it as best I can
to document what's going on.
I remember waking up the next morning,
and I was out here with a friend,
probably like 5:30 in the morning to clean up,
walking out here and just being like, "Wow,
it is like nothing happened."
The only thing that was left, even at 5:30 in the morning,
is someone had swept up the ashes of the van
because the police van was gone, um, all the big remnants,
but there were ashes, and the ashes had been swept
into the letters "Black Lives Matter."
SPIKE: And these were the ashes that were from
-the burnt NYPD van, right? -EMILY: From the burnt NYPD van.
-I'm glad she converted it into that. -SPIKE: Hmm.
(CLEARS THROAT) I'm not sure if the dudes who lit it
were really-- that's what it was on their heads.
I don't see them around here, I don't see them over here,
uh, you know, on the other side of the park.
I don't see them over there.
You know, I don't see them at Mike's.
And now to some new information on a Molotov cocktail attack
on a police van in Brooklyn.
A 21-year-old suspect has been arrested and charged.
Police say Matthew Piscitello and two other people
threw that explosive device at a van
on South Portland Avenue and DeKalb Avenue
in Fort Greene.
Piscitello was now facing multiple arson
and criminal mischief charges.
Hi, I'm Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington, DC,
our nation's capital and soon-to-be 51st state.
SPIKE: So what happened on that day...
that led to...
Black Lives Matter Plaza?
MURIEL BOWSER: Well, I think the world saw what happened.
-Uh, Donald Trump happened. -SPIKE: Mm.
MURIEL: He wanted to take a photo op in front of a church
on this street.
And what we saw here was the president call police,
the United States Army, the United States National Guard
to move a peaceful crowd from in front of the White House
so he could take a picture.
(POLICE SIRENS BLARING)
-But because we're the capital city... -SPIKE: Mm-hmm.
MURIEL: ...I think that there was an intentional display
of enormous force
to tell everybody else in the country,
"Look what I will do to you."
-(INDISTINCT CLAMORING) -PROTESTER 1: And here come the Nazi Police.
-(PROTESTER 2 SCREAMING) -(CROWD CLAMORING)
(GUNSHOTS)
(EXPLOSION BOOMS)
PROTESTOR 1: Those are rubber bullets, Wolf.
MURIEL: What we saw in the days that followed that
were more and more
of these unidentifiable law enforcement
on the streets of Washington, DC.
-SPIKE: Whose streets? -MURIEL: Our streets.
-(SPIKE LAUGHING) -MURIEL: And we needed a place
where people could peacefully protest...
-SPIKE: Mm-hmm. -...and know that they could be safe.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
You talk about the revolution not be televised, you know.
And that, well, you know, everybody's, "Well, it will be televised.
Everybody has a camera now."
-That's not what Gil Scott-Heron was talking about. -SPIKE: Hmm.
He was talking about the revolution in your mind.
SPIKE: Uh-oh, say it again.
He was talking about...
-And, as of yet, you know... -(SPIKE LAUGHING)
...they don't have cameras in there yet.
(DRUMS BEATING)
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪