CHD Files Emergency Injunction to Stop Rule Allowing 5G Antennas on Homes

The following is a transcript of this video. Also see related article.

– Hi, everyone and thank you for joining us for the Children’s Health Defense press conference in regards to the filing of our case against the OTARD rule, the Over-the-Air-Reception Devices amended rule and as well as a motion that we file emergency motion for an injunction against the OTARD rule and asking the court that it would not go into effect. I will explain what’s going to happen during this press conference. It’s going to last for one hour. For the first 30 minutes, our presenter will speak and then we will have 30 minutes for questions. If you are from the media and you wanna ask a question, please mention it when you’re sending your Q and A.

We’ll start an expanse. On February 26, 2021, a month and a half ago, the Children’s Health Defense filed the case, a new case against the Federal Communication Commission challenging the amendment of the over the air receiving device rule. The petition for review, which was filed under the Administrative Procedures Act was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeal of the D.C. Circuit. On March 18th, the Children’s Health Defense also filed an emergency motion for an injunction against the rule going into effect on February 29th, claiming that if the rule would go into effect, it will cause irreparable harm to a lot of people. For that, we ask the court to stay the rule from going into effect. Among our speakers today are the Children’s Health Defense chairman, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. We also would have Scott McCullough who is the Children’s Health Defense lead attorney for this case. Professor David Carpenter, who is a public health expert will explain the public health implications and the public interest implications for this case and we will also have two of our petitioners in the case representing the families that will be severely injured if and when this rule would go into effect.

I will start with explaining what is OTARD. OTARD is a rule, it means Over-the-Air-Reception Devices. It’s a rule that was original enabled video transmissions, had nothing to do is transmitting devices, only with receiving devices. During the year, the FCC amended this rule a few times and the most recent amendment went into effect on January 7th. When the FCC essentially extended this rule to allow fixed wireless devices, not only to be placed on homes but this time, those who wanna install those devices on their home now can extend the service to other properties. What it means in reality is if you have a fixed wireless system on your house, fixed wireless antenna, for example, satellites, dishes or other antennas that will enable you to have access to internet, then you can also install a transmitting antenna and offer the services to neighboring properties.

The one thing that the OTARD rule did this time is allowing, not only to allow the transmissions and providing of broadband internet to other properties, it also extensively preempted any requirement. It preempted any rights of people to object installations of this antennas. So if your neighbor is going to install such an antenna, they don’t have to apply for a permit. You’re not going to be able to get a notice that it’s going to be installed. They preempted any state and local rights, they preempted homeowner association and even did restrictions. The worst thing that OTARD did was to preempt civil rights disability loss. So essentially people who are sick and who are going to be affected by the neighbor transmitting devices would not have any right to object installations of these antennas or to ask to be accommodated in their home.

The rule is literally a draconian rule that take the right to exist for those who have been injured. Those who have been injured, all their rights have been preempted by now. They have no recourse. They cannot sue for the damage that its caused to them. People, adults and children who have been affected cannot go anywhere, cannot be anywhere. Their homes is the last place of refuge and with this rule, there’s no more refuge for anyone. I think that we call this rule the wildest wild West rule because essentially, it’s going to enable very fast proliferation of wireless, including 5G. Because of the preemptions, the deployment is going to be very fast. It’s essentially going to enable the fastest deployment in rural areas. However, it will enable deployment anywhere and everywhere.

The Children’s Health Defense tried to fight this rule. In April, we already filed to the docket of this rule a significant submission explaining all the legal violations that this rule will allow. Our filing was joined by 15,000 people, 15,090 people, including 6,231 people who declared that they and/or their children already became sick from this radiation and asking the FCC not to move ahead and allow this role to go into effect. Nevertheless, on January 7th, FCC did adopt this rule and on February 25th, FCC published the rule in the federal register, which means that we had 60 days to follow the lawsuit. On February 26, a day after we filed the petition for review against the FCC, we had to file it immediately because we already planned to file the emergency motion for an injunction. In a way, the emergency motion for injunction is more important than the case itself because if this rule will go into effect, effects are going to be so devastating and after a year, even if the court will rule in our favor in a year time, by that time, there’ll be so many more antennas deployed, so many people who’ve been injured and will have to leave their homes and have nowhere to go that we had to essentially file a motion for an injunction. The motion for injunction, as I mentioned before was filed on March 18th and we asked the court to not allow the rule to go into effect on March 29th until there’ll be a final decision in our case. I’m going to ask now Scott McCullough, who is our attorney to explain the legal issues our case raised and also the legal issues that were raised in our motion for an injunction, Scott.

– Thank you. Couple of other background things. We also had filed a request that the FCC on its own stay the effect of the and the wireless internet service providers, who were the ones who originally asked the commission to change the rule in this fashion opposed the stay. The commission has not yet ruled and it is still possible that it could do so. We do not know what the commission will do but simply because of the timing, this rule goes into effect, absent some action by somebody on the 29th of this month.

We were forced therefore to seek emergency relief from the D.C. Circuit. Now, Dafna has been calling this an injunction and that is a good word for it but technically, what we are seeking from the D.C. Circuit is called a stay. We are seeking a stay in the effectiveness of this rule until the court can consider the matter on the merit. We have also asked the court accelerate its consideration on the merit and it’s possible that it might agree to do that and if so, then we would have a final decision sooner than the approximate or average year that it usually takes for these things. We do not know a lot about timing but as Dafna said, the 29th of this month is just absolutely an essential and important date because if this will goes into effect, we fully expect these wireless internet service providers to begin to rush these systems into many areas including , that they will be able to do so by contracting with the property owner, adding just a little bit equipment and bringing up very powerful systems, effectively a base station.

The same sort of thing you see on a macro. It could be that. It could be something like you see in a small cell. Even that has very wide range. One of the wireless internet service providers indicated in their comments, in the case to the FCC last year that the system they intend to deploy, it could go up to a mile out. Some of the others had said they could go even further. We’re talking about something showing up in a residential neighborhood overnight that nobody knows about. The only way somebody who’s already sick and has done everything they can to shield their home, protect themselves and find some measure of comfort, the only way they’ll know that this system has gone up is when they start to get sick again.

These systems are so powerful that they can even overwhelm some of the best shields that people put in their homes, either through professionals or by themselves. People who are already sick, they’re just gonna start getting sick and there’s nothing they can do. That is why we think it is so important that the court stay the rule. Now, getting a stay is hard. The court does not grant them freely. There is a four-part test, it is a difficult but the way that the rule works is we have to show that we are likely to success on the merit. We just have to convince the court that we’ve got pretty good arguments on the merit. We have to show that we are likely to suffer irreparable harm and I think we’ve done a fairly good job of that. You’ll hear a lot more from some of the experts who will be talking in the audience in a few moments.

We have to show that the balance of equities favor the injunction. In other words, the harm outweighs the benefit. Here, the benefit would be to those who would have another competitive alternative from one of these systems. Right now, you could get broadband internet access virtually anywhere and everywhere. It’s not like this system is necessary for people who do not have any alternative for broadband internet access but the so-called benefit is that it gives a competitive alternative. It’s a new way to get broadband.

Now, one of the other thing that’s important to understand is that these point to point systems can carry very high capacity services. We’re not talking about just some of the more traditional wireless ISP provided systems like the one I have in my home office, where I’m only getting something like six to 10 megabits a second. Some of these systems can actually go up to a gig or higher and so it is quite likely that these systems would not only be very powerful if they were very far away but they would be and able to serve a large number of customers but nonetheless, the balance here is between those who would have some marginal benefit from an additional broadband choice and those who would be made deathly ill from that same system. Then of course, we have to argue that the stay is in the public interest. Now, since we are proceeding against the government, the courts have understood that the government itself really doesn’t have much of a real interest in quick implementation of a rule. The government itself would not be harmed by the stay. The court’s gonna be looking at the benefits to either the wireless internet service providers in the form of some immediate revenue and the potential users who would get this additional competitive choice.

The two main issues, they’re ultimately gonna be the likelihood of success on the merits, whether we’ve made a convincing case that we’ve got a good shot at winning on the merit and then irreparable harm. I think we’ve done both, you never know. Like I said, the courts look at these things very closely. They don’t grant them very often. We’re just gonna have to see what the court says after we get the FCC response, which is due tomorrow. Let me say one more thing. I’m sure everybody is aware the Children’s Health Defense along with the Environmental Health Trust filed another case last year. That case involves the general exposure and emission stand. In 2019, the commission took a look at its emissions rules and decided we think that the general rules for the general population and decided that no change was needed. We think they were wrong and we have argued and briefed that case and a different panel of the D.C. Circuit is considering the arguments. Now, we hope to have a decision in that case in a couple of months. This case is different and it’s important to understand that. We are not in this case, we litigated general emission stand. What we are saying is that regardless of the outcome in that other case, regardless of whether the FCC gets to keep its current emissions rule, there are people who, for whatever reason are made sick under those stands, individuals who are susceptible and there must be an escape . They must have a way to avoid exposure because the only way that they can survive, the only way that they will not be sick is to avoid exposure and that in this case, in particular, the commission has authorized a new source of admission, eliminated all notice, eliminated all local rights even those that you have like a cell tower, personal wireless service cell tower goes up, they have to seek a zoning permit and the local jurisdiction can approve it or make changes to it. Here, you don’t get that. It doesn’t go before the local jurisdiction, it’s all preempted. There’s notice, no opportunity to object, no available remedy whatsoever and so this case is different than the other. It’s far more targeted. In legal terms, it’s an as applied chat rather than a facial chat. That’s one thing to keep in mind. We’re not really litigating general admission stand case here. We’re talking about a specific problem involving specific individuals who are made sick. Dafna.

– A couple more clients is as Scott mentioned, the FCC is supposed to file its response tomorrow, which is March 23rd. We will have 24 hours to respond to the FCC. Our response, our reply is due on March 24th and likely the court will make a decision before March 29th. That will be a decision on the motion for stay, not in a case itself. We still did not file briefs in the case itself. The briefs will be scheduled in a few months time but the decision in the motion for stay in the emergency injunction is going to be due within a week. In this case, in addition to the Children’s Health Defense, we have four more petitioners or plaintiff and we filed together with a motion 11 affidavits. I filed an affidavit on behalf of the Children’s Health Defense, the petitioner filed an affidavit and we had three more affidavits from other families who have been injured. Our petitioners include Dr. Erica Elliott, who is a physician in Santa Fe and not only she has numerous or dozens of patients who have become sick from this radiation, she herself had become injured a few years ago and she lives in a community that has rules that limit deployment of such antennas but because of the OTARD rule, she will not be protected. Jonathan Mirin, who is here with us. His wife became sick 10 years ago and that has led his family to a very long and difficult journey. As a result, they’re now living in rural areas in Massachusetts and he’s been working very hard to try and keep this rural area relatively safe from radiation. He’s been very active in, whenever he was getting a notice or learned about the new installation of antenna, he educated the community, he educated the municipalities and he was actually able to create quite a lot of change in his area and get municipalities to want to install fiber optics rather than wireless broadband but with the OTARD rule, basically there’s nothing else he will be able to do. All his efforts are going to be futile and if an antenna will be deployed and there’s a good chance an antenna will be immediately deployed in nearby area, him and his wife and their son will have to leave. Because of OTARD, there will be nowhere safe for them. Jonathan, do you wanna say a few words? Jonathan, is he here? Just ask– Yeah, the mic.

– Great, can you hear me?

– Yes, just tell us what your family had been through and what OTARD will mean for your family.

– Basically I met my wife, Godeliève Richard in 2000 in Switzerland. She ended up coming to the United States on a fiance visa in 2003. We got married and then in 2004, we started Piti Theater Company. Piti is a word from ancient India that means joy or rapture and basically we started building that company out here in Western Massachusetts. In 2009, we had a son named Ezekiel. In 2010, she became quite ill, inexplicably ill. We spent two years going from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was wrong. She was continually dizzy, she had trouble coordinating her limbs, she had extreme sleep issues, difficulty remembering certain words. Basically, a host of neurological issues and finally, someone suggested that she could be electro sensitive. I’d never heard of that. I resisted that idea but as we began to reduce her exposure, she got better and better. Then during that process, of course, I was researching what was going on with wireless, the history of wireless deployment in the U.S, et cetera and at that point, we just realized we had to start raising awareness about the issues related to safe technology. In our theater performances, we made a show called To Bee or Not to Bee with two Es, which we say is the most fun that I’d ever have learning about pollinator disappearance. She’s been on a long healing journey and we kind of reached a point in 2021 where she is pretty okay in the house but of course, whenever she goes outside the house, she has exposers that we’re not able to mitigate and essentially, she’s been in a kind of lockdown mode for years, way before the actual lockdown. That’s kind of where we’re at. She’s been outside, maybe in the car twice in the last six months to get her blood drawn. It’s difficult to imagine what life would be like were wireless installations to pop up in our neighborhood with no warning and no due process. Essentially, in addition to the theater work we’re doing.

We started a group called Hilltown Health, hilltownhealth.org, specifically for the grassroots organizing that I thought was needed to help raise awareness. Essentially, we started getting calls from lots of people in Western Massachusetts looking for help with cell towers being applied for in their neighborhoods. We got very familiar with local planning boards. We’re currently working with three planning boards in our area on updating the telecom bylaws, specifically around 5G deployment and the last couple of years, we’ve been quite busy with fixed wireless, a company called Wide Valley has been applying to put fixed wireless microwave towers in communities that are not… They’re not actually serving these communities, basically, it’s the least cost solution to put up this fixed wireless tower and bounce the signal back to the communities they’re trying to serve. Both of those towers have met stiff resistance locally. They’re obviously going up in the right of away. They haven’t been approved. One was denied in the town where I was living, where I am living. For that, basically the people whose front yard would have been in had to file a suit in the land court but it also helps that there was a lot of local organizing, all the usual things petitioned in these letters to the editor, et cetera. Now, Wide Valley, the same company is applying for a fixed microwave tower in Heath, which is just a few couple minutes up the road from where we are now and essentially, there’s again, stiff local resistance. They’re trying to get around the telecom bylaw, the town, they actually use fixed wireless bylaws in Heath but they’re trying to get around that by saying that the planning board has no right to rule about something in the right of away and basically haven’t put through as a utility pole as if it didn’t have a wireless component. That’s kind of where things stand now with the fixed wireless in our area and all I can say is I’m just so grateful to live in a democracy where there are planning boards, there are local volunteers, elected officials who serve on these planning boards, who’ve put years of time, years of service, many hours as volunteers learning about zoning, learning about how to be a planning board member, et cetera. There’s due process. There’s open hearings. I’ve spend a lot of time on local Zoom calls since the pandemic speaking at these planning board hearings and basically, we get some warning if there’s an application, if there was abutter, if an abutter wanted, where we live now, wanted to put up a facility on their roof, we would get a letter. Now, I read the agendas and minutes of these local planning boards and I find out what’s happening and people call me, et cetera. If this goes through, as you were saying, Dafna, I think it’s quite likely we would find out just because Godeliève would become much more ill. I guess I would have to just go up and down the neighborhood, looking for where someone had installed this thing. I really don’t wanna have to explain to our son that we, maybe just think about buying an RV and just sort of wander around the country looking for a safe place to live. We’ve put down roots in the hill towns, we work in elementary schools year after year creating performances with children about issues like bald eagles, geologies, local history. This is where we live and–

– You would not be able to live there anymore.

– Well, obviously not. If we’re running a month to month lease now, we don’t have permission to install average shielding in this house. I’m just not really sure where we would go.

– And with OTARD, everything would be saturated so there’s really nowhere that is safe to go.

– They’ll be nowhere to go. It sort of begs the question of, where would we go if there’s nowhere to go? At the point, she’s not really able to fly back to Switzerland because Wi-Fi has been installed on all the commercial airplanes.

– Thank you very much, Jonathan. Thanks for all your work on this as well. I think the effect of this rule are going to be, not only devastating for people who have been injured. A lot of communities around the country have been trying to keep antennas away from residential areas. With OTARD, all of this efforts literally are going to be futile. I mean, they may be able to stop those small cell in some neighborhoods but OTARD will enable to put them on their neighbors’ homes and bypass all of those rules and regulation. As Jonathan said, it’s literally removing any power of people to use the democratic process to effect what it is that they want or don’t want in their neighborhood, at least not near their homes. I think some of our petitioners are parents of children who have become very sick from this radiation. In our submission to the FCC in April, where we asked the FCC not to adopt the rule, 6,231 people who filed with us declared that they and/or their children have become very sick from this radiation. When we were preparing for this case, I was reading those comments and they are just heart-wrenching and when the FCC adopted the rule, it essentially dismissed our submission with one short paragraph that misrepresented what we said, hide behind the guidelines, which we know are irrelevant, especially for those who have been injured and ignored all of this sickness and not only ignored this sickness, removed any right for accommodations for this children who suffer life-threatening symptoms in their homes. I wanna read a few of those comments that people filed. I’m just going through it. A woman write, “My boys were getting ill with headaches and constant sleep disruptions. My oldest son had to be monitored with a cardiologist because of severe chest pains when he was exposed to this radiation.” Another comment, “My wife gets migraines and other debilitating symptoms from wireless radiation. My daughter was sick at school whenever wireless devices were used and we discovered that she also suffered from electro sensitivity. Currently, she cannot go to school or go anywhere.” Another person, “My six-year-old gets migraine headaches from wireless radiation. Please don’t force this technology into our neighborhoods against our will, put my son in endless agony.” Another one, “My son’s epilepsy is being exonerated by this technology. Please protect the most vulnerable seizures.” “Our daughter was having seizures while the smart meter was in use but not anymore once it was removed.” “My special needs daughter is sensitive to this radiation and to factor.” “My son has trouble sleeping and plagued by frequent headaches since the installation of 5G antenna across the road. I cannot bear to have any more of this towers closer to our property. My son will become even sicker.” “My daughter is 100% disabled because of radio frequency radiation and it is life threatening to her. My daughter cannot go anywhere. She will not be able to survive with this radiation.” These are just a sample of the comments that were filed to the docket and reading them, it’s heart-wrenching. For me writing this while we were working on this case in the past three weeks, it’s been very emotional. One of the families I’ve been in touch with for a long time is the family of Angela who is one of the petitioners in our case. Angela, both she and her husband are chemical engineers and after the son became sick, they moved from California to Minnesota. Now both her sons are sick from this radiation and their sickness has had a lot of major effect on the way they live their lives. I’ll let Angela tell her a little bit about what impact this rule will have on her sons and on her family, Angela.

– Thank you. Well, my name is Angela and I have two sons. In 2013, August, 2013, our lives were changed forever. My oldest son at the time, he was nine. I’m trying not to get too emotional. He was nine years old at the time and right now he’s 16 years old and at the time when he went back to school, he suddenly became sick for no obvious reason and we couldn’t figure out what was happening. He had headaches, he couldn’t sleep. Imagine a nine-year-old who couldn’t go to sleep. He couldn’t fall asleep until 11:00 PM at night and then at 6:00 AM, he would just jolt awake because his heart was pounding and he couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t even get ready in the morning, doing simple things like brushing his teeth and deciding what clothes to wear was an ordeal. He would have to stop every minute to think about what he had to do next. This is very frightening for a parent to see. How could a normal child of nine years old suddenly have these problems from out of nowhere? Then on top of that, he had nose bleeds, incredible nervousness or he just couldn’t calm himself down. It got so bad we thought he was going to die. We thought, what is going on? He must have some horrible fatal disease. Anyway, it took us a long time to figure out what was going on. About a year and a half later, that’s when we figured out what was happening. Next to his school, there were two cell phone towers and one had been upgraded to 4G LTE in 2013 in the summer right before he went back to school and we didn’t even know about the cell phone towers at the time because they were camouflaged, they were hidden in the ball field light poles. We didn’t discover until 2015, quite by accident when we saw some workers working on the second tower and at the time I thought, well, this is strange to have cell phone towers right next to the school like that. So I started doing some digging at City Hall and that’s when we found out that right before my son got sick, the cell phone tower was upgraded 4G LTE and it was done right before he went back to school. We contacted our doctor in an engraved position and we asked her about this and she said, yes, it is very likely that his symptoms could be from this, the cell phone tower upgrade. At that point, we transferred. Well, before we transferred him to a different school, they completed the second cell phone tower upgrade and then my son got very sick again.

At that point, we knew it had to be the cell phone tower. So then we transferred him to a different school and his symptoms got a lot better. But anyway, after learning what made him sick, we had to avoid wireless radiation and when we had to move in 2016 from my husband’s job, we were very careful about where we were going to live knowing that my oldest son had this issue. We had to pick a house that was a certain distance. We were looking for homes that were at least half a mile from the cell phone tower. We also looked for a home that did not have any streetlight poles or utility poles because we knew 5G was coming and that they could end up with a small cell antennas on them. Then we also looked for schools that were not within a certain distance of a cell phone tower and also did not have street lights or utility poles nearby. Then we heard about OTARD, which is going to change all of our planning. It’s gonna ruin all the planning that we did. Going back to my son’s story, he was very sick. Imagine a healthy nine-year-old suddenly sick with all these strange symptoms and you know what was going on. Let me see if I can find a letter that he wrote. This was a letter that my son wrote in his own words. He said, “I could not concentrate on school work anymore. Things don’t make sense to me anymore. I would read things over and over again and I just could not understand what they were saying. Even doing simple tasks like getting ready in the morning took me very long time to do because I would stop constantly to think about what I had to do next.” When we moved to the new school, they actually would not accommodate him in part because of the FCC limits that only protect against thermal damage and not any sort of non-thermal effects. We shielded our home but that’s not going to be enough to stop OTARD antennas if they come up at our next door neighbor because the radiation from that is going to be very intense. I’m just very glad that we figured out what was making our son sick and that he’s still alive today because things did not look good back in 2013. Anyway, thank you, Children’s Health Defense and Dafna, and Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Scott McCullough for taking on this case. It’s an important case that needs to be done. Sorry for the emotions.

– Thank you, Angela. They’re really here. I’ve been in touch with Angela for many years and she’s such a warrior. Just so grateful for all your help and for, yeah. You’re really a model mother. Thank you, Angela. As Angela said I’m very grateful for the Children’s Health Defense to recognize how important this case is. The other case we have against the FCC is a major undertaking and despite the intense cost of the previous case and the intense cost this case is going to cost us, the Children’s Health Defense did not hesitate and said, “This is a case we must take.” I think that the risk of not taking this case are so intolerable that we just have to take this case. Scott, do you wanna… Sorry, Robert, do you wanna say a few words on behalf of the Children’s Health Defense?

– Yeah, first of all, I wanna thank Dafna for your incredible leadership on this issue. You really changed the public debate on this issue almost single-handedly through your persistence, your brilliance and your commitment to advocacy. I wanna thank Scott McCullough for his determination and for his energy and his brilliant legal representation and my friend David Carpenter who I’ve worked with, I don’t know, for 40 years or something and it’s really good to be back on the barricades with you, David. I’ll just say something very briefly ’cause all these guys have made a specific case here. I just wanna briefly, from kind of 30,000 feet, look at the impact that this is gonna, frame this in a way that people really understand how important this proposal is, not just to public health but to everything about democracy and human rights and civil rights and 2,000 years of developing institutions, ultimately are designed to stand between and protect the vulnerable child from a greedy corporation or powerful entities within a society that want to come in and liquidate the landscapes for cash, liquidate public health, monetize human beings and obliterate democracy. I’ve been involved in hundreds of lawsuits and hundreds of campaigns against large polluters and they almost always have something in common. That part of what they do, gaining the capacity to pollute with impedance. A part of that process is subverting democracy because we have ancient laws in our society that says there is no right to pollute. We have property rights that say, you can use your property in any way that you see fit. You cannot use it in a way that will injure or diminish the use and enjoyment of your neighbor’s property and that law is the foundation or that rule is the foundation of what we call nuisance law that says, if you’re a property owner or if you’re a tenant, you have the right to enjoy the place where you live in and if somebody, if a neighbor does something that interferes with your use and enjoyment, that you have a lawsuit against them. A lot of the laws that we’ve created in this country, the 28 environmental laws that we have in this country, zoning laws and planning laws that localities pass on and the large body of common law nuisance are all designed to protect individual Americans from bad things their neighbors might wanna do that will enrich their neighbor but will hurt you and your use of enjoyment of your property and hurt your public health. That’s really what this is about. It’s about a company, and every industry wants to do this. I’m just saying that the corporate hog industry was able to pass laws in North Carolina that made it illegal to zone out a corporate hog farm, so they’re obliterating local democracy.

They’re obliterating what is the foundations of our democracy, which is the capacity of localities to exercise sovereignty over their lands, over their land uses and to protect citizens within that locality from things that may be harmful. Why would you wanna obliterate? Why would you want to immunize yourself against local laws that local communities have said, we need this law to maintain our values and maintain our public health. Yet they’re trying to obliterate them across the country, they’re obliterating the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is designed to make sure that if you have a disability, you still have the rights of every other American. Nobody can act in a way that is gonna make it more difficult for you to live with your disability. We have constitutional rights of due process, we have environmental laws that say, I mean think of it this way. Think of it as we’re in a cell tower with invisible radiation coming from it and microwaves that are injurious, that are proven to injure people. Picture if this was a that was spewing toxic emissions and your neighbor tried to put one of those on his property in a residential district. What would be your remedies? Well, first of all, you’d have EPA passing laws that say whatever comes out of that , it cannot harm human beings. Well, that’s been taken away by the wireless companies because they’ve captured FCC and FCC to pass this other rule that we’re now challenging that says, we’re going to abolish wireless injury by by pretending that it doesn’t happen unless you’re skin heats up or unless your organs heat up. It’s just a pretense. It’s cannery, it’s charade. Anybody who looks at the 11,000 pages of documents that we submitted, which is just the tip of the iceberg of studies, peer reviewed studies that show, yeah, it causes injury far before, long before it starts to microwave heat your skin or your organs. That, through the agency captured phenomenon, they have gotten rid of FCC. Now they have to get rid of the locality. They get rid of the planning boards and the nuisance and zoning laws and then you still have that nuisance law that if somebody use their property in a way that diminishes your property or your health, you have a private right to sue that person. They’re removing that too. All of these barriers that our democracy has created to protect families and particularly, little children with these vulnerabilities have been systematically obliterated by this industry and this is an industry that cannot live with democracy. It cannot, because what it’s doing is essentially criminal. It is harming certain people in order to make money for itself and it has to make sure that those people are silenced and that their rights are removed, their constitutional rights, their civil rights, their rights to due process, their rights to sue somebody who is hurting them are all taken away. These are basic fundamental rights that even for the Magna Carta, people in Europe, in France and England had the right to sue somebody who was harming their property or themselves and that right that is 2,000 years old is how that goes back to the code of , a Roman law. That right has to reach back in time and obliterate that fundamental human right, if somebody is hurting you, you can sue them. Imagine what this industry is trying to get away with and imagine, even it’s difficult to concede that they’ve gotten this far but unfortunately, the only thing out there that is gonna stop them is this lawsuit and I wanna thank Dafna and Scott and the person you’re gonna hear from next, my friend, David Carpenter who understands the science probably better than anybody for standing up and saying, we are not gonna let this company destroy, obliterate our democracy, destroy our civil rights and hurt these children.

– Thank you, perfectly said. I’ve been asked, there’s a question here. How can those abused at home or parents of children who have been harmed can sue? As Robert said, this is every right to sue was removed. This case is literally the last hold before all of rights are being removed completely. If we’re not successful in this case, people who have been injured would not be able to sue, even offer accommodation. That is why this is a critical case in protecting our most basic rights. After that, nothing left. As Scott mentioned earlier, in order for us to get a stay, we not only have to show that there is irreparable harm and we also need to show that there’s a public interest in this case. Amongst 11 affidavit we filed, we filed also three affidavits from experts from two university professors in medical schools and from a pediatrician to show the extent of the sickness from this radiation. Within a month of campaign that we had, we had 2,231 people declaring that they’re sick from this. This is one month of campaign. Those doctors and experts explained why it is widespread. Not only people, adults and children suffer from radiation sickness, many with other conditions, especially children with degenerative conditions are extremely sensitive to this radiation. Not only they’re suffering severe and literally torturous pains, their right to exist literally is being denied by this case. The sickness is widespread, the injuries are severe and after this rule, people who are sick will not be able to be safe in their home and will have nowhere to go. The last prong of the test as to whether or not we should be getting an injunction is whether there’s a public interest and this is why I asked professor David Carpenter to join us in this press conference. Professor David Carpenter is a world renowned public health expert and I want him to talk a little bit about the implications of ignoring and denying such sickness.

– Well, it appears that there’s something up to 10% of the world’s population that have this syndrome which we call electrical hypersensitivity or microwave sickness. Now, many of these people like Jonathan’s wife initially, like Angela’s son initially, they’re sick but they have no idea what’s causing it and of the 10% of people that have these syndromes, I’m sure that probably half of them or maybe more than half of them don’t understand even now what makes them ill but it is this radio frequency radiation coming from a variety of sources. Now, I’d like to relate to a disease which is poison ivy allergy. I’m not saying that this is an allergy but there’s some similarities. If you once become sensitive to poison ivy, you’re sensitive for the rest of your life and every time you’re exposed to it, you’re gonna develop symptoms. For someone that develops electro hypersensitivity, they’re always going to get ill if they’re exposed to radio frequency radiation. Most people are not sensitive so they may be around it but their immune system doesn’t react. The point is that for individuals that are sensitive to radio frequency radiation, this bill would prose irreparable harm to them because no matter where they are, if they’re exposed to radio frequency radiation, they’re going to be ill and if it’s from their neighbors installing one of these devices against their will without any permission, they’re going to become ill. That’s why this rule, if it were approved is so totally irresponsible, contrary to the general public health principle that nobody is allowed to harm their neighbors. What they want to do with themselves, that’s one thing but they can’t install something on their home that adversely impacts their neighbor’s home. They can’t use chemicals on their home that migrate to their neighbor’s house and that’s why this harm is just irreversible and totally contrary to everything we know about protecting public health. As Angela said, if her son can’t think, can’t remember, can’t pay attention. Children in schools are not going to be able to learn, adults, if they can’t leave their home and if this kind of technology is going to be distributed everywhere, even in rural areas, individuals with electro hypersensitivity are going to have nowhere to go. This is totally contrary to everything that’s American that’s justified and it must be stopped. That’s why this is such an important legal action that’s being taken. Thank you.

– Thank you. David, in all your years of work in public health, have you ever encountered such a cruel denial of people rights to exist?

– I have never encountered something like this. One of the problems is this is not a chemical, you can’t measure it. It’s an invisible thing that we have known for literally for decades of the harm this causes and yet we have an industry that’s trying to make a lot of money and they deny the harm, they deny the adverse health effects which are so well-documented.

– Thank you. It’s documented by our own government and admitted by our own government although when it comes to the public, it denies it. Most recently, the department of state asked the National Academy of Sciences to find an explanation to the mystery sickness of our diplomats in Cuba and in China and Professor Beatrice Golomb, who was one of the experts who filed an affidavit in our case was the first to show that that the sickness that they’re suffering from is exactly the same sickness that Angela’s children are suffering from, that I’m suffering from, that Jonathan’s wife’s suffering from which is basically radiation sickness, being sick from pulse modulated radio frequencies. The studies on which they rely are largely the same studies we rely on and Professor Beatrice Golomb quoted one of those diplomats who were injured, who is a CIA operative and he wrote and he said that he has been shot many times during his career and what he’s experienced with this sickness, between the symptoms and the denial. He said, “I rather been shot.” Many people in this country now are suffering severely. Children get seizures, epileptic seizures, get life-threatening symptoms, including heart palpitation that can lead to heart attacks and induce heart attacks in children. People have nowhere to go. They cannot now even be safe in their home and there’s nothing they can do. When Scott and I finish writing the motions and the affidavit, Scott wrote me that, if this would not move the court, I don’t know what will. I think we put the best case forward that we could. I once before already quoted William Wilberforce who fought slavery. He said, “You may look the other way but you will never be able to say you didn’t know.” I hope the court would not look the other way and we hope that the court will listen and do what must be done in this case. So much here is on the line, lives of people, lives of the population and also our constitutional and civil rights. This is to me, the most important case that I’ve seen in the past 40 years and I hope we win. I hope the court will grant us the motion to stay because if this rule would go into effect, even if we win in a year, there’ll be a devastation that cannot be repaired after that. Thank you, everyone.