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Protests in Georgia Over Jogger Killing; NFL Releases Tentative Schedule for Season; Interview with Dairy Farmer Bottling Own Milk. Aired 10:30-11a ET
Aired May 08, 2020 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[10:30:00]
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: If you've seen the video and you have the stomach for it, you have to watch it. It's just shocking, in broad daylight.
These charges come just days after this 36-second video, which appeared to show Arbery jogging before, really, just a deadly incident.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VIC REYNOLDS, DIRECTOR, GEORGIA BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION: It's certainly a very important piece of evidence. You know, any time you can see what happens at a scene, then it plays an important role in decision-making. Is it the only piece of evidence, is it the only thing in this case? No. But is it important? Absolutely.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: Yes, you might say that. CNN's Martin Savidge joins us now from Brunswick, Georgia. Martin, you're there now at a protest here, where people, reacting to this. Tell us what you're hearing from them.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim, this is the largest protest to date. Part of the reason is that the pandemic had limited crowds until then. But now, people have decided that this situation is far more important than concerns of the pandemic (INAUDIBLE).
Take a look, there are hundreds of people that are gathered outside of the Glynn County courthouse here. This demonstration had been planned for days. It didn't change as a result of the arrest made last evening.
But really, what it reflects is the determination. There are many here who still believe this is just the first step. It's not a celebration, as one of the speakers said. This is just the first step in what has been a long wait for the road to justice to even begin. And in fact, that was the same sort of sentiment that was felt by the sister of Ahmaud, who spoke to CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JASMINE ARBERY, SISTER OF AHMAUD ARBERY: We feel a sense of relief. This has been a long ride, it's been a long time -- it feels like it's been a long time. So this day was a turning point in recovering my brother's case and getting justice for him. So we're relieved and happy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAVIDGE: This crowd has been asking for the two previous district attorneys to be fired or removed from their positions. And you can hear that they're demanding, as is the saying, No Justice, No Peace.
Many people believe that this case has to be followed all the way through the end. Just because you've made an arrest doesn't mean you'll get a conviction, and that's what many here believe is needed in this case -- Poppy and Jim.
SCIUTTO: Yes, you wonder what would have happened without that video. Martin Savidge, thanks very much.
Well, NBA teams can reopen their practice facilities today in places that have eased restrictions. Is that a mistake? What happens to all the various sports leagues, we're going to discuss. We know you want to hear. It's coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:37:11]
SCIUTTO: As the economy starts to reopen, the sports world may not be far behind -- we know you've been waiting for it. Starting today, the NBA, its teams can reopen facilities for individual workouts as long as they follow local guidelines. Despite the uncertainty, the NFL just released its full schedule for the fall, and the Major League Baseball, they could soon be ready to share a comeback plan with its players .
I'm joined now by CNN sports analyst and "USA Today" columnist Christine Brennan. Christine, always good to have you on. Let's go sports by sport, if we can. I mean, the NFL laid out a full 17-week schedule yesterday, no change. I mean, this despite some genuine fears of a second wave happening in the fall. I'm curious, is this a realistic plan in your view?
CHRISTINE BRENNAN, CNN SPORTS ANALYST: Jim, it's a hopeful plan for the NFL. This is the one league of our big four that has basically been able to skate through here without missing any major events. And of course, held the draft -- a virtual draft -- a couple weeks ago that was, by all accounts, beloved and really fun to watch on TV.
So the NFL has got the luxury of time. These other leagues are playing right now -- Major League Baseball, NBA, NHL -- they're missing valuable time right now. The NFL --
SCIUTTO: YEs. BRENNAN: -- is going to start September 10th, that's the plan.
They've also, though, built into that new schedule, they just announced -- much ballyhooed -- they built in, Jim, four weeks where they could, if they had to lose all four weeks or maybe two of those four weeks, they made the schedule such there'd be home and away games, so they could cut those and maybe -- if they have to start in October --
SCIUTTO: Yes.
BRENNAN: -- they could pull that off.
SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean, listen, I watched the NFL draft like it was game seven of the World Series. I think folks are desperate for live sports, but there are genuine concerns here about safety. I mean, after all, you pack a lot of people into stadiums for games like this.
I mean, whether it's football, baseball, basketball, is it likely that they're playing to empty stadiums when -- if and when they do come back?
BRENNAN: Empty stadiums, Jim, spectator-less sports? We can add that term to the lexicon with flattening the curve, social distancing. Spectator-less, or potentially staggered seating. In other words, so a 60- or 70,000-seat arena might have 15 or 20,000 people in it max.
And, for example, if you wanted to go get popcorn or a drink, that would be staggered. You'd be called and you could come up and get it, or it would be delivered to you. Staggered entry, staggered leaving. You would leave the stadium at the time that you're assigned.
This is, by the way, if we have football at all, if we have --
SCIUTTO: Yes.
BRENNAN: -- the NBA at all, any of these sports. I think there's a real question, whether any of it will start on time. But there is hope. And obviously, sports being an escape, I think a lot of people are hopeful and trying to remain positive. These are just plans, nothing is set in stone.
[10:40:00]
SCIUTTO: Let's talk baseball here because Major League Baseball, they're reportedly preparing to present a return plan proposal to their players. And the idea being, there'd be kind of a shortened spring training in June, and then the season starting as soon as July.
Notable is that the Major League Baseball stops paying its players after May. I mean, money, imagine that, is a big driver here, is it not? I mean, is the Major League Baseball plan likely?
BRENNAN: Again, you know, we have no idea, right? That's the headline here, I think, for almost everything we're talking about. There's just no way unless we could get in a time machine and go to September, then I'll come back and tell you, right? So, having said that, baseball's plan is an interesting one. They're
going to have -- if they do this -- three different divisions and you'd have the Yankees and the Red Sox playing the Nationals and the Phillies, the Mets. That would be very interesting. And obviously Chicago teams, L.A., et cetera. So that would be fun to watch if it happens.
You're right, money drives a lot of this. And for example, college football, that's a big conversation, those coaches are probably the antsiest coaches of all, Jim, to get back. But the money situation of getting kids back on campus, students back on campus in the fall for these universities and for these billionaires and millionaires in baseball, NBA, same thing.
Money's going to start driving this, except for the fact that even a bigger deal, of course, are the governors and the mayors. They are -- they're the boss of sports right now, governors and mayors. They're in charge, the officials and the health officials, they're driving this. Roger Goodell said that in a statement last night from the NFL.
SCIUTTO: Final question, just quickly, is it likely that fans see live sports before the year is out?
BRENNAN: Well, yes in the sense of -- for example, NASCAR next week is coming back with -- in Darlington on May 17th. So NASCAR would be the first. UFC, the fight championship, is this weekend. That's a little different.
I do think there will be sports. I think most of it will be without spectators. But as you know, Jim --
SCIUTTO: Yes.
BRENNAN: -- it's a TV show for most people, sports are. I love going, you love going to games. But in general, a lot of people just watch it on TV.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
BRENNAN: So that's how you start to recoup the money as well, that's the economic principle as well as giving fans something to watch.
SCIUTTO: Indeed. Well, given safety, a lot of Americans eager to see something. Christine Brennan, thanks very much.
BRENNAN: Jim, thank you.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: The coronavirus pandemic could have put their farm out of business, right? A Pennsylvania family was told they'd have to dump all their milk, the supplier wasn't going to buy any more. But they had a better idea. They'll be with us, next, to talk about what they did.
But first, most of the world's plastic trash never gets recycled, but one man wants to change that. He's getting companies like Procter and Gamble and Nestle to switch from using single packaging to reusable packaging. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RACHEL CRANE, CNN BUSINESS INNOVATION CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tom Szaky is on a mission to eliminate the concept of waste.
TOM SZAKY, CEO, TERRACYCLE: The act of throwing something away itself isn't bad, it's actually incredibly convenient. The problem is where it ends up.
CRANE (voice-over): And it's a big problem. About 91 percent of plastic waste ever created has never been recycled.
SZAKY: We went to all these major companies, saying, here's this new big idea, come take a risk on it and let's ideally change the world in the process.
CRANE (voice-over): He called the big idea, "Loop." His pitch to consumers? Buy the same household products you already love, plus a small deposit. And we'll send them to you in durable reusable packaging. When you're done, return them to be cleaned, refilled and reused by someone else.
SZAKY: I believe that asking the consumer to change anything is an uphill battle. The more we make it feel like a disposable lifestyle, the easier it will be to get mass adoption.
CRANE: How hard of a sell was this to, you know, manufacturers and companies?
SZAKY: Loop is gargantuan-esque (ph) because we're going into Procter and Gamble and saying, reinvent the packaging of these world-famous products completely. Build production lines to fill this reinvented package. Oh, and by the way, I have no proof if anyone's going to buy it at all. But they said yes because they now that there's a garbage crisis, and they really don't want to contribute to it.
[10:44:09]
I think a lot of people are going to think about whether there's a future in reuse by whether we succeed or not. Because all the world's, you know, major manufacturers are saying, we're going to give it a shot. And Loop is their shot.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCIUTTO: Like so many businesses and employees, farmers across the country are struggling just to stay afloat as the coronavirus outbreak puts their industry in real jeopardy, and it could be weeks before they're able to access billions of dollars in aid, set aside by the U.S. agriculture department.
HARLOW: Some farmers are being forced to dump -- you've seen these images -- dump their milk, tons and tons of it, and destroy fresh produce. But one Pennsylvania dairy farm made a quick turnaround to pasteurize, bottle and sell their own milk instead of wasting it.
With us now is Mary Beth Brown, she owns Whoa Nellie Dairy Farm with her family. It's so nice to have you. I know you've got one of your kids, right? It's all named after her. What predicament were you in that made you guys want to do this? Because I know the community's lining up now for more than an hour to get your milk.
MARY BETH BROWN, OWNER, WHOA NELLIE DAIRY FARM: Yes. Well, we -- my husband and I really did not want to waste. We're just really against that. So when we were already bottling about not quite half of our milk, and then the milk company gave us the call to jump their half that they were picking up.
[10:50:11]
So we can only pasteurize about 30 gallons at a time, and it takes about three hours. So we just did a callout on Facebook, and vowed to marathon-bottle, to not dump any of that milk. And we are still marathon-bottling, around the clock, 24/7 so that none of that milk is wasted.
SCIUTTO: We're so glad you're doing it. You know, it's interesting, I go to the grocery and a lot of groceries have limits on how much milk you can buy because, you know, people are flooding and supplies are uncertain.
I wonder, is this a model that you think other dairy farmers can copy perhaps so that they don't have to waste milk too?
BROWN: It would be a fantastic thing. It would be just circling around, back to the time of the 1950s and '60s, when they had home delivery and where a small dairy farm produced themselves, was their own establishment.
And I would be a very helpful thing for dairy farmers to do it, but it is not an easy thing to set up and get going. It took us a while, and that was three years ago, when we set up. But it is definitely beneficial for a dairy farmer to look into doing this.
HARLOW: Sure. And if you can have lines like that, I mean, I don't know if people understand, guys. If we can pull up this picture, those cars in line are all people waiting to pick up milk from you guys, which I think is pretty extraordinary. And if you can get lines like that, the margins are higher if you don't have to sell through someone else.
They say, right, necessity is the mother of invention. Is that what it was for you guys?
BROWN: Yes, absolutely. So we definitely did not want to dump that milk and we didn't know how it would go. We didn't know if we'd be able to bottle it all and have the community show up to get it. But boy, did they respond in a big, huge way.
And when I would go through the line and talk and interact with people, the main reason they were here is because we had the principle of not dumping that, not wasting that.
And we even had some -- we're working with a ministry that's giving out our milk to -- with their food boxes once a week, and that's what I really wanted to come out of it, to show that we're not -- not only are we not wasting, but we are doing something to help the community and help the people in need. There are so many people struggling, and that was our thought, not to waste that milk when there's so many people struggling right now.
HARLOW: Yes.
SCIUTTO: I have a sister named Nellie, you have to tell me if I could buy a T-shirt. That's important.
(LAUGHTER)
But before I let you go, these times are really challenging. I mean, for a whole host of businesses, farmers included. You know, this farm's been passed down in your family for generations. Can you make it through?
BROWN: We feel we can make it through now. The support has been unbelievable. We have a lot of local farmers, coming to see what we're doing, to try to pursue the same thing. And we are encouraging them. Yes, please, there's a market for what we're doing.
People are going back to wanting to know where their food is coming from and there is definitely a market, so we're encouraging all the farmers that are coming here to look at what we do, to try to make it happen.
HARLOW: I'd buy -- I'd buy your milk for my kids if I could, Mary Beth Brown. Thanks very much, good luck to you guys.
BROWN: Thank you.
HARLOW: Make sure you get Jim that --
BROWN: Thank you very much.
HARLOW: Make sure you get Jim that T-shirt, his sister will appreciate it.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
HARLOW: Thanks, Mary Beth, take good care.
BROWN: Thank you.
HARLOW: While this pandemic has been hard on so, so many people out there, one bright spot has been friends and family and neighbors, stepping up to help through the crisis.
SCIUTTO: Yes, see it there with like a dairy farm too. And now the CNN heroes team has partnered with the music superstar Alicia Keys on her Good Job Challenge to celebrate the unsung heroes she sings about in her new song, "Good Job." And to give viewers the opportunity to say thank you.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ALICIA KEYS, MUSICIAN: -- doing a good job, a good job --
I know you have amazing people in your community who are your hometown heroes, that you're just thinking about right now and really wanting to tell them, You're doing a good job, a good job --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My Auntie Katie (ph) is my hero because she's a nurse and she keeps all the sick people healthy.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you and good job to the doctors and nurses on the frontlines who have been working tirelessly through all of this.
UNIDENTIFED FEMALE: Thank you to all the million unknown faces out there who are risking their lives.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you to our health care professionals, the first responders, the grocery store workers --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My mom Julia is a health care worker and I would just like to thank her for all the great work that she's doing.
UNIDENIFIED MALE: For the frontlines workers who gave (ph) (INAUDIBLE) for their sacrifice.
VAN JONES, CNN ANCHOR: Good job to my twin sister Angela. She lives in Tennessee, working with young people in the middle of this whole pandemic.
[10:55:02]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thanks to all those helping us living through the coronavirus.
KEYS: You're doing a good job, don't get too down. The world needs you now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SCIUTTO: All right, so here's your chance. We want to know who inspires you. Record a short video, thanking someone who is helping others during this crisis. Post on Instagram with the hashtag #GoodJobChallenge, and we may share it with CNN's audience, on-air and online.
HARLOW: All right, nice way to end the show. Thanks so much for being with us all week. Have a good weekend, we'll see you back here on Monday. I'm Poppy Harlow.
SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto. NEWSROOM with Kate Bolduan starts right after a short break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [11:00:00]
