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CNN Heroes: Using Art to Help Kids in Need; Concerns Over Phoenix Mohammed Carton Contest; Eighth Graders Tie to Become Spelling Bee Co-Champs. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired May 29, 2015 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:32:43] MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, here we are with the five things to know for your NEW DAY.

At number one, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert accused of paying $3.5 million in hush money and lying to the FBI about it.

The U.S. is considering a strategy shift in the war on ISIS. The Pentagon wants to train and directly arm Sunni tribes in order to bring them to the battlefields in Iraq.

NSA surveillance programs are set to expire Sunday night at midnight if the Senate cannot reach a deal to reform and extend provisions of the Patriot Act. The White House says failure to act would be playing Russian roulette with national security.

Just one hour until FIFA elections. Sepp Blatter is looking for a fifth term as president. The vote comes days after U.S. charge - officials charged 14 people with corruption, many of them top deputies to the president.

And the observatory at One World Trade Center opens today to the public. Visitors can see panoramic views of New York City. September 11th family members and rescue and recovery workers who responded will receive complementary admission.

For more on the five things to know, be sure to visit newdaycnn.com for the latest.

Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: This week's CNN hero is putting paint brushes and sketch pads into the hands of needy children across New York City. Meet Adarsh Alphons.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ADARSH ALPHONS, CNN HERO: Art has a power to let children discover who they are. When I moved to New York City, I noticed that access to art education was lacking. I decided we needed to be the ones to put paint brushes in the hands of kids.

The opening of art classes in public libraries that are near the schools that need us most. I do look forward to coming here every week. On most occasions I persuade them to let us stay longer.

See where you can take it, all right?

After we bring art into their lives, they become a more confident, the changes are quite remarkable. At the end of every semester, we showcase the student's artwork in galleries in New York's art district.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I tried to (INAUDIBLE) to make it darker (INAUDIBLE) the water (ph).

[08:35:00] When I saw my artwork in a real gallery, I feel proud of myself.

ALPHONS: I hope it sets a spark that it's OK to chase after your dreams, but you should go after it fearlessly, and that anything is possible.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: Tapping into the creativity of kids, so important. Do you know someone deserving of being called a CNN hero? Good, go to cnnheroes.com and tell us about them.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Well, after the thwarted terror attack on a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, law enforcement say they are on guard before a similar event tonight in Arizona. We'll tell you about it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAMELA GELLER, "DRAW MOHAMMED" PROTEST ORGANIZER: The media and the political and academic elites are censoring this cartoon, and we think the American people should see that you are self-enforcing the sharia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:40:04] CUOMO: That is Pamela Geller on NEW DAY defending her attempt to put a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed on Washington, D.C., busses and train stations. Geller lost that battle overnight with the D.C. Metro, suspending all issue oriented ads. But now there's another Mohammed cartoon contest planned tonight in Phoenix outside a mosque, of all places. Is this right, wrong, good, bad, legal, illegal? Let's discuss with Dean Obeidallah, columnist for "The Daily Beast" and host of "The Dean Obeidallah Show" on Sirius XM.

Now, people will google you, Dean, and say, oh, he's funny, but he's also a Muslim.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH, COLUMNIST, "THE DAILY BEAST": Yes.

CUOMO: He's not fair. So let's play this out in terms of what happens.

OBEIDALLAH: Sure. CUOMO: One, does Pamela Geller have the right to put up a cartoon of Mohammed?

OBEIDALLAH: Of course. And I've defended it and every Muslim American organization I know without exception has defended it. So she's saying - someone's saying she can't draw. Draw all you want, Pamela Geller. We don't care. We're not - honestly, let's be brutally honest, we're not offended by someone drawing the Prophet Mohammed. In fact, the winner of that contest she did, I tweeted the picture out. We've been making fun of it like it's the new hairy (ph) X-Men because -

CUOMO: But what about - then why did those two guys show up and try to kill them? Why is there so much hate that comes out of the Muslim community whenever it's done? They say, don't do that, it's an insult to us.

OBEIDALLAH: You have to be very specific about this. The two people came at her and wanted to attack them and who were killed thankfully before they inflicted any injuries whatsoever were radicalized, at least one, Elton Simpson, the leader, radicalized in 2010. He plead guilty to a crime of lying to the FBI about wanting to join a terror group.

This is a man who did not sit in his house and said, oh my God they're drawing the Prophet Mohammed, I'm going to avenge it. No, he was a guy who was looking for a chance to get media attention, to go out in some kind of blaze of glory. So that's what it was about.

In America, we don't - we have enough problems in this world where someone drawing something is not really offensive. Does it bother someone? Maybe a little bit, but we don't care.

CUOMO: The notion is that all Muslims are offended by it and they will fight to the death against anybody who puts a cartoon of Mohammed or shows any representation. Is that true?

OBEIDALLAH: Not - clearly not worldwide. I think there's certain pockets of certain places outside of American where in their countries people are ginned up to say, this is such an outrage, it's such an affront to our faith and who we are. We must get revenge.

CUOMO: And is it inculcated in the actual faith? Is it in the Koran?

OBEIDALLAH: No, it's not. And we -

CUOMO: Is it part of sharia law?

OBEIDALLAH: No. Well, sharia law is such an overused, misused term. Sharia law would be - there's not one sharia law, by the way. Just quickly, like we have the U.S. Constitution, there's not a document, hey, there's sharia law. Each - each country that imposes Islamic law picks and chooses what they want. There's nothing in the Koran, absolutely nothing, that says, you can't draw the Prophet Mohammed and nothing there says the penalty is killing someone if you draw it. It's not there. There are just some people who truly I guess (INAUDIBLE) get offended. But, honestly, some are ginned up for a political agenda by certain radical clerics who will say, this is offensive, go get them. That's part of it. We can't disassociate (ph) from that.

CUOMO: All right, so, I'll give you that trumpeting this as a First Amendment issue doesn't sustain very long because nobody has ever been suppressed from the right. Pam Geller, others would say, well, what do you mean, they won't take my bus ads. You don't have a guaranteed venue for your speech -

OBEIDALLAH: Right.

CUOMO: Just because you have the guaranteed right to speak it. But what about the sensitivity that Islam has given that other religions are not (INAUDIBLE). People put it out there.

OBEIDALLAH: Right.

CUOMO: They showed it. other effigies of religions, that's OK. But not when it comes to Islam. You guys get special treatment?

OBEIDALLAH: Well, I think that you have to put it in context with, you know, the Virgin Mary and Caldon (ph) in New York City. Mayor Giuliani was mayor then, wanted to cut the funding and literally evict the museum. Literally evict the museum that put that up there. So he wanted a sensor. So let's not play games.

We had a - at the Metropolitan here, opera this year, Clinhoffer (ph). There were Jewish leaders, five of them, who wanted it completely censored because they viewed it as anti-sematic. We have the right - you have the right to draw something and we have the right to use speech, civilly, peacefully, to say, that's wrong. I object to it.

CUOMO: But we showed the Dung (ph). We showed the piss Christ (ph).

OBEIDALLAH: Sure.

CUOMO: We won't show Mohammed. Double standard?

OBEIDALLAH: We - I tweeted out the pic - the winning picture from Pamela Geller -

CUOMO: But the media is not doing it at large.

OBEIDALLAH: That's your choice. That's - that's your choice.

CUOMO: CNN's not showing it. ABC, NBC not showing it.

OBEIDALLAH: That's - and I've - and I've implored the media to show it. And, you know, I'm not as powerful as I'd like to be in the media, but if I was, they would be showing it. it's not going to - the mainstream - there's not like moderate Muslims. There are mainstream Muslims and then there's crazy, radical people. Mainstream Muslims have enough in their lives, they could care less, especially in America, frankly, and in the west.

So I've tweeted it out. We've made fun of it on Twitter. Muslims in other parts of the world have retweeted the winning picture from her thing. We've mocked it as the hairy younger brother of the X-Men Wolverine. You know, we're having fun with it and I think that's the important thing. And so -

CUOMO: What do you make of this new guy who says we're going to do it in Phoenix, and I encourage people, in protection of their First Amendment right, to use their Second Amendment right and come armed. Do you think this is a step towards progress?

OBEIDALLAH: It - I'm - it's a step towards a mass violence by a biker gang. I mean not to - you know, what could go wrong with a biker gang with weapons.

CUOMO: Because a biker gang may show up there and they may -

[08:44:48] OBEIDALLAH: By getting involved. Like the way it's been described by certain media outlets is that he's involved with - well, biker gangs will come out to support him. I'm not sure if that's true or not. The media (ph) in Arizona and I've talked to the local president of the mosque there, not the imam but the president of the mosque. You know, this man is somewhat known to them a little bit. He is proudly an atheist. He's against all faiths, Judaism and Christianity. He's just really hostile towards Islam. So a special place in his mind. And that's - that worries me because the man who killed the three Muslim students at the University of North Carolina, Craig Hicks, similar mindset. Hate all religions, especially hated Muslims.

CUOMO: Well, here is what we have to deal with, though, because I think there's a tendency to get distracted by a lot of the noise surrounding this. The way that the United States culture perceives Islam is a growing concern. Would you agree with that? That while we think that we are trying to teach tolerance and understanding of what you are saying in part about how don't paint all 1.6 billion Muslims with the same brush, you don't do that to Christians, and don't do that to them either. We're dealing with extremists, not them in the main. It's not getting the purchase here that one might think it wouldn't.

OBEIDALIAH: ISIS and al Qaeda, Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab are real. They are terrible Muslims who are committing horrible acts and they're on TV and they are defining us more than I can define us, more than mainstream Muslims can define us. We are one percent of the country.

Most people - there was a poll last summer, only 32 percent of Americans had a Muslim friend. A new poll in the last month, 24 percent of Americans have a Muslim friend. Some people defriended their Muslim friend. That's the situation we're going where people have less and less human counternarrative, and I think that's part of it.

If we were a big population, everybody would have a Muslim friend. If I see some Christian guy do something crazy -- I have so many Christian friends to know that guy is not about Christianity. He is an abortion bomber or crazy person, nothing to do with the faith. We don't have that yet and we need it in the country.

CUOMO: And Dean has grown up with it two ways because you're, you know, on one side you have Muslim (INAUDIBLE) Islam, the other side you have Italian, so you know what it's like to get hit with a stick on both sides.

OBEIDALIAH: Sicilian, yes.

CUOMO: Dean, thank you for being on.

OBEIDALIAH: Thanks very much.

CUOMO: Have a good a good weekend. Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Alright, Chris. They are the best spellers in the country. So good they couldn't even beat each other. The co-winners of the National Spelling Bee are here and we will do our best to stump them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: --you and Vanya co-champions.

(APPLAUSE)

Nunatak.

GOKUL VENKATACHALAM, SCRIPPS NATIONAL SPELLING BEE CO-CHAMPION: Nunatak.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[08:50:46] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you spell this word correctly, the Scripps National Spelling Bee will declare you and Vanya co-champions.

(APPLAUSE)

Nunatak.

VENKATACHALAM: Nunatak. Nunatak. N-u-n-a-t-a-k.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Correct.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: There it was. The moment Gokul Venkatachalam and Vanya Shivashankar became last night's Scripps National Spelling Bee co- champions, the two making history. The first time in Bees history that a tie was declared two years in a row. Vanya also is the first sibling of a past winner to also become a champ.

Welcome, Gokul and Vanya to the show. Congratulations.

VANYA SHIVASHANKAR, SCRIPPS NATIONAL SPELLING BEE CO-CHAMPION: Thank you.

VENKATACHALAM: Thank you.

PEREIRA: How do you feel about sharing this trophy, though?

VENKATACHALAM: It's pretty cool.

SHIVASHANKAR: Yeah, it's really cool.

VENKATACHALAM: Almost never happens.

PEREIRA: I know. That is really remarkable. Neither of you are novices, you've both been to Scripps before. Is it as nerve-racking the second or third time around as it was the first?

SHIVASHANKAR: I mean, like, you just try and have fun each time and enjoy the experience. It's a great experience. You have so much fun meeting everybody and competing.

VENKATACHALAM: Yeah, I agree with that.

CAMEROTA: Now Gokul, your word that you won or tied with was nunatak. Do you know what a nunatak means?

VENKATACHALAM: No.

(LAUGHTER)

PEREIRA: But you can spell it.

CAMEROTA: OK. It's a hill or a mountain completely surrounded by glacial ice. But if you didn't know the definition, how did you know how to spell it?

VENKATACHALAM: Well, it is an Eskimo word, so those words have a certain type of pattern so I just followed that when I learned it.

PEREIRA: Vanya, is that the way you learn words, too, as well, is learning the root of them and what origins they have?

SHIVASHANKAR: Yeah, definitely. Like even if I didn't know the word, I could use the language patterns and roots to put them together.

CAMEROTA: Because your last word was scherenschnitte.

(LAUGHTER)

PEREIRA: Bless you.

CAMEROTA: I don't even know if I'm pronouncing it right.

SHIVASHANKAR: Close enough.

CAMEROTA: So how did you know how to spell that word?

SHIVASHANKAR: Well, I had studied it before, but it's a German word so I could put it together even if I had not seen it. PEREIRA: Yeah, because you got it like that. OK, so this is what is

amazing, is the amount of studying you each have to do. Is it a bit like training, I imagine, for a marathon, Gokul, that you have to sort of do drills? Is it like exercising your brain?

VENKATACHALAM: Yes, it is.

SHIVASHANKAR: Uh-huh.

CAMEROTA: Well, Michaela was just saying how easy it must be to spell these words.

PEREIRA: Yeah. Super easy.

CAMEROTA: She was saying it's a piece of cake.

PEREIRA: Yeah. Totally.

CAMEROTA: So she wanted you guys to give us a couple of challenges with some of the words because we're sure we can do it.

PEREIRA: Alright. What's the word you have for us to spell?

VENKATACHALAM: Well, for Alisyn, I have milquetoast.

CAMEROTA: Milquetoast? Oh, that's a piece of cake.

PEREIRA: Milquetoast?

CAMEROTA: Milquetoast.

PEREIRA: Oh. OK.

CUOMO: Someone told her.

CAMEROTA: I don't really know if I'm doing toast right, though.

CUOMO: Someone told her.

CAMEROTA: OK. Is that right?

PEREIRA: She's actually used to the board.

CAMEROTA: I used the board -

PEREIRA: Did she spell it right?

(DINGING NOISE)

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: She spelled it correct. A timid, meek, or unassertive person.

CAMEROTA: You know, if there is food involved in the root of the word, I got it. You go.

PEREIRA: OK. I feel like this is going to be harder.

CUOMO: Someone told her.

PEREIRA: Alright. What is my word? Vanya, do you have a word for me?

SHIVASHANKAR: Yes, I do. It's the word it's the word Tchotchke.

PEREIRA: Tchotchke!

CAMEROTA: That's not easy.

PEREIRA: OK, this one's tough.

CAMEROTA: That's not easy.

CUOMO: Someone told them.

PEREIRA: Nope, nope, nope - It's tchot (ph) -

CUOMO: You know you wanted to start with a c-h.

CAMEROTA: Oh, I like where you're going with this. Yep.

PEREIRA: Tchotchke.

CAMEROTA: Oh, no -

PEREIRA: I'm wrong. I'm wrong.

CAMEROTA: There's something that went bad here.

(HORN BLOWING)

CAMEROTA: It's t-c-h-o-t-c something. What was it?

PEREIRA: Did I get it right? No! I was so close.

CAMEROTA: Yeah, there was just one missing -

PEREIRA: Knickknack. Alright Vanya and Gokul, we congratulate both of you because, clearly, we don't have what it takes, you do. Well done to the two of you. I am sure Monday at school you're going to get lots of congratulations from all your pals and friends.

SHIVASHANKAR: Thank you.

VENKATACHALAM: Thanks.

CAMEROTA: Thanks so much for being on. You guys are great.

PEREIRA: Well done, guys.

[08:55:01] CAMEROTA: God, they are impressive.

PEREIRA: Really impressive. We don't have what it takes, but we knew that. Or maybe you do. CAMEROTA: Chris, chrysanthemum. Go.

CUOMO: Oh, please. First of all, I think people told both of you how to spell those words and Mick chose to fake it to be nice and you, of course, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Why does he always say (INAUDIBLE) ? What's that about?

CUOMO: There is no way with the q-u-e - I've seen you spell. I sit next to them all the time. I'm telling you. I'm not buying it. And I'm also not buying that these two kids don't embrace how genius they are. Anyway. "The Good Stuff" is coming up. It's got a German root, that's how I know how --

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: These two young buddies, they love football. One gets into a football camp, but he does not have the $50 admission. The other friend says, you know what, let's go door to door doing odd jobs to earn the cash.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pick up dog poop. We would have picked toys up even if they were not even ours.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: I don't know what he just said. But the kids go door to door and one woman who they tried to help was so touched by what these kids were doing, she puts their story up on Facebook. You know what happens next. Within minutes, they had 50 bucks many times over. The Facebook post even got back to the director of the camp, so guess what?

CAMEROTA: What?

CUOMO: They're both going for free.

CAMEROTA: Amazing.

PEREIRA: Awesome.

CUOMO: And the kids are giving the extra money to other disadvantaged kids so they can go,.

CAMEROTA: That's fantastic.

PEREIRA: Genius.

CAMEROTA: Alright, happy Friday.

PEREIRA: You, too.

CAMEROTA: Let's get now to "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello.