Joseph
My name is Amelia and I am 13 years old.
The Verizon cell tower made the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, disease our eyes. this is my story.
Last March, we were sent home from school due to the epidemic. The snowboarding show we worked so hard to train for has been canceled. Music auditions have been canceled for my music school. My nature program has been canceled for the weekend. Everything has been canceled.
Everything except the construction happening in my neighborhood.
The trucks were rolling next to our house – big ones, flatbed trucks, and trucks carrying other trucks. When trying to clear the corner between Plump Street and Alma Street, the truck’s weight was so great that it crushed the main waters down the road. We couldn’t get the car out, got out of the repair crew, and went without water all day. Nobody knew why.
Because we were home and not planning to go back to school, we tried to keep ourselves busy. On Christmas, my sister and I got mountain bikes and went down our street like we always did. But this time, up the street, we saw parked trucks and cut trees. Where there was a forest that was once part of Herman Melville’s ranch, the land called “Arrowhead” after Melville found it in the fields, was now a large open space.
Trees were cut down by dozens and were lying on the ground. Some of them were cut into wood and spread from Alma Street to the clearing. None of the neighbors who would wake their dogs up, go out for jogging, or shove their kids in the prams, had no idea why.
My mom called a city councilor and he didn’t know why. He said he would call the Public Works Department and make some calls to the city to find out. When he got back to his mother, he said that no one knew anything about the building. My mom went out for a walk with us and took a picture of the two trucks. I called the construction company and asked what they were doing. That’s when we learned it was a cell tower.
I didn’t know what a cell phone tower was, but I knew that at a time when we couldn’t even see our grandparents, when we couldn’t go to the store or school or participate in any activities – or even take books outside the library – when everything else stopped – The trucks and crews were running all day at full speed.
The city councilor said the tower would have put a “red flag” on his desk – meaning he was in his suite, of course he would have known about it, but he didn’t. The title was misleading. There was no publicity about the tower. It all happened silently, without saying, without our intervention, without our questions and without our objections.
Now our quiet neighborhood is louder and more crowded than it used to be.
The city said they sent notifications to everyone within 300 minutes, but they had no evidence of mailing them. We learned that the tower was permitted in 2017, with only one resident attending. We learned in 2019 that it has received an extension stamp. We learned that the ground the tower was on was 35 feet high and defined and designated for habitation. We knew we called it “open space” and “nobody lives there.” We learned that the Berkshire County Historical Society does not want a tower to set fire to the home of Herman Melville, an American National Historic Landmark. Nobody wants this tower to destroy their neighborhood. And then when my mom and others started talking to workers to ask questions, we were told that we were “collateral damage” and “people with low education, living on low value land.”
We were told that they would go up the tower before we had a chance to organize. Even if that means building it illegally.
The head of the Public Works Department tried to help us. He put a tape on the police and told them that they must clear the road from the street address to the construction site and not use the roads. No one listened. The director of public works put up a sign saying there was no access, and they went around. Even when the Public Works Department erected a concrete barrier, some trucks had to be on our way anyway to keep accessing the site.
My mom was going up and taking pictures. The workers would come to our house, take pictures and harass us. My little sister was scared. We lived in a quiet, safe and private little neighborhood.
Now our neighborhood was quiet, safe and private.
All of that was terrible. People were concerned about their home prices, their opinions, and the housing characteristics of the neighborhood. My mom had been running a nursery in the basement of the church for many years and when it closed, mom wanted to reopen it here in our house. My mom asked parents whether they would feel comfortable sending their children to preschool if the tower went up and the answer was “no.” There her work went. We had selling cards to sell all preschool items to raise money to stop the tower.
The worst part –
It was hard for a city you love to ignore you. Illness when the tower was in operation was worse. My sister felt it first. She was suffering from dizziness, headaches, and a buzzing sensation in her head. That was the day the tower was “on fire”. Neighbors came to complain of insomnia, dizziness, palpitations and headaches. One of them was having such severe tinnitus that he was even contemplating moving. One of them was so dizzy that he couldn’t drive his car. People thought the sign should be now because they felt differently. No one has announced the continuation of the tower. They didn’t have to. By December, we knew that at least 13 people were sick. One of them had cancer.
The worst and the worst part –
When my mom called the health department, they said they would send someone overseas. They never did. Our neighbor Charlie kept calling city council meetings and was silent – he even wrote a letter to the editor about it. People were so upset that their voices were not heard. My mom asked, “If Pittsfield thinks it’s OK to ignore adults, do you think she’d ignore her kids?” I heard my mom calling to city council meetings. I have already given spoken testimony about smart meters, another form or wireless transmitter that has hurt people. I learned we can control our wireless exposure in our home, but when people put towers outside, or smart meters on them, there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves, and we shouldn’t. Our elected officials must protect us. I decided to invite open comments too.
The really bad part, the worst, not bad is good –
We learned that we are not the only ones affected by cellular towers. We were contacted by Noah Davidson’s family in Sacramento, California. Their girls, like us, fell ill when a 5G tower was placed outside their bedroom window. No one listened to them either.
My mom learned about a boy, a Sunni in Canada, who had also been damaged by wireless radiation since he was 5 years old. They made a movie about him and about the others who had been hurt, they called Prisoners without walls. We spoke and learned he liked the same book series. He liked to play video games. He spoke French and liked to shoot videos.
We started to meet families from all over the world with normal children, like us, who were affected by wireless radiation, whether from cell towers or mobile devices. Why, if so many people were hurt by this, there was no one to help them?
So the really bad part, not good is that the science is out there but our lawmakers simply aren’t responding fast enough. Dr. Paul Herux, Dr. Martha Herbert, Dr. Magda Havas, Dr. Cindy Russell, Dr. Sharon Goldberg, Theodora Scarato, Cecilia Doucet, and many others, tried to educate Pittsfield about these issues. They have been silenced at our Health Board meeting, and any letters from them or offers to provide information or help with an investigation have fallen on deaf ears.
My mom would have endorsed me if I had been asked to do nothing and I kept doing it over and over. I’ve heard my grandmother say, “When we know better, we get better.”
Big people, we know better. Please do something. We never thought this could happen to us so please, don’t wait for it to happen to you.
I ask everyone who reads this Defends setbacks of cell towers away from schools and homes. I ask everyone to request an update of the FCC standards that fail to protect us from biological harm. I ask you to return the neighborhood to the safe and residential place it was before the tower, and I ask everyone to take care of the issue of wireless security.
Our people, pollinators, and planet depend on you.
Amelia
Citizens believe 5G affects their health – Noah Davidson and others in Sacramento https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtpGf0tpmsI
Prisons without bars (English) Jayden Jankovi is a teenager from Montreal who has been disabled by electromagnetic fields (EMFs) since the age of five. Our environment is saturated with chemicals and electromagnetic frequencies. The harmful effects of these massive exposures affect a growing number of individuals. Among them are Isabel, Cathia, Jean-François, Sylvain, and Giden. A glimpse into the unknown world of environmental diseases. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/prisonswithoutbars
Read more children’s testimonials here:
https://wearetheevidence.org/children-testimonials/
Generation Zap Investigates potential risks of prolonged exposure to radio frequency (RF) from wireless technology; Its effects on our health and well-being, as well as the health and development of our children. From its links to breast and brain cancer, to its links to increased infertility and genetic mutations related to autism and ADHD, to newly developed diseases, such as electrical over-sensitivity (EHS). Today we face a level of radiation from wireless technologies one hundred thousand times what we encountered in decades. However, the safety standards set by federal regulatory agencies are out of date. New wireless devices such as smartphones, tablets, baby monitors to the latest “Internet of Things” continue to enter the market without any proper pre-market testing or post-market monitoring. Little has been done to ensure public safety and awareness.
https://generationzapped.com/about/
More movies here: https://ehtrust.org/films-on-cell-phone-radiation-cell-towers-and-wireless/
Did you know?
China bans smartphones in all primary and secondary schools
https://ehtrust.org/china-bans-smartphones-in-all-primary-and-secondary-schools/
Russia bans wi-fi networks and smartphones for distance learning
https://ehtrust.org/russia-bans-wi-fi-and-smartphones-for-distance-learning/
Work around the world on wi-fi and electromagnetic radiation at school
https://ehtrust.org/health-effects-wireless-in-schools/
https://ehtrust.org/facts-about-cell-towers-at-schools/
E-mail: [email protected]
Read other articles from the 5G Earth Day Countdown Series Here.
