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Mariachi Musicians Serenade Grieving Community in Uvalde; Coastal Communities Grapple With Rising Sea Levels; OPEC Agrees to Raise Oil Output by 648k Barrels a Day in July, August. Aired 10:30- 11a ET
Aired June 02, 2022 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: That's an example of music trying to help heal a broken community. Dozens of mariachi musicians packed the town square in Uvalde, Texas, yesterday. The downtown memorial, a gathering spot for community members to grieve, to remember the lives lost in last week's senseless mass shooting At Robb Elementary School.
This group of San Antonio-based performers that you see came together in a matter of hours after a call out on social media, but because Uvalde was almost two hours away, it was going to be hard for many of them to travel there. That is until a local attorney stepped up, stepped in and paid for a charter bus to bring them to Uvalde. And I'm happy to be joined now by the person who helped pull it all together, mariachi musician Anthony Medrano. Thank you so much.
ANTHONY MEDRANO, MARIACHI MUSICIAN ORGANIZED MUSICAL TRIBUTE TO 21 UVALDE VICTIMS: Thank you, Poppy. Thanks for having me.
HARLOW: What was it like to play for them?
MEDRANO: It was emotional. It was very emotional. You know, mariachis, we have a role in our society and our culture to bring happiness and to bring joy with our music to fiestas and to parties and all the landmarks of life, but we also have a calling to be there at the end of life to help console the families and those are the most emotional performances that we do. And this one was right up there with probably one of the most emotional performances that we had to pull together. We did it because we wanted to help that community grieve.
HARLOW: You did it because that is what you do. There's this one song, one of the songs you played, a more eternal love. Can you tell me about it?
MEDRANO: Yes. It's written by a very famous mariachi performer, Mexican performer, named Juan Gabrielle. And it speaks of eternal love. It's a prayer that he had written as a songs for the passing of his mother. And one of the words, one of the lines is, it says that, how I wish that you had lived, that your little eyes had never closed. And that's the type of sentiment that these songs say. They're real, you know? There's no, you know, softness about these songs. They're impactful, you know? They hit our souls and they help us to process what the reality is of what the situation we are in.
HARLOW: A little child came up to you yesterday when you were there and gave you something. What did they give you?
MEDRANO: Well, as we arrived, the bus of 50 musicians from San Antonio, we got off the bus and got our instruments and started walking to the main plaza where everybody was gathered.
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And as soon as I stepped on the lawn, a little boy came to me and he handed me this wooden cross, and he said, thank you. And I was -- already had emotion built up and I thanked him, and I smiled at him because he smiled at me.
And as I took the cross and got ready to perform, I turned and then I saw all the other memorials, all the other crosses of the children with their names on them, and it just hit me. I just -- you know, I knew where I was. I was on sacred, sorrow ground, and I knew what I had -- I knew my part there, like I said. I had to be the consoler, along with 50 of my other colleagues. We just held it together and played our music.
HARLOW: And you wrote a song specifically for Uvalde?
MEDRANO: Well, the artist, Luis Ortiz, is the one who initially contacted me to see if we could get musicians to go and help the community, to sing some songs. That's when I reached out through Facebook and we were able to get, like I said, up to 50 musicians. And part of his gift to Uvalde was he documented the story of what happened in Uvalde in a (INAUDIBLE) form which is basically a storytelling form. He made prints of this and handed it out to people. And from that recollection and that documenting of the story, we're going to put to music and it's going to be the song of the angels of Uvalde.
HARLOW: Wow. If you would please share that with us when you can, and we would love to share it with all of our viewers. Thank you very much --
MEDRANO: Of course.
HARLOW: -- for being here with us this morning and for what you went and did, what all of you went and did.
MEDRANO: Thank you.
HARLOW: Jim?
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Coming up next, coastal communities across the U.S. are now spending millions to try to maintain their shores. It's still not enough to stop the impact of rising sea levels. Look at that house there. You will see the damage already done to one Carolina town.
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SCIUTTO: It is alarming to see the effects of climate change on the world's oceans. We're seeing them, we're living them every day. Some people in the Carolinas, they are seeing this. That's an impact firsthand.
HARLOW: Wow. Our Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir visited one community in North Carolina's outer banks that is especially concerned, and you can see why.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This home we have been notified by the Dare County building inspector is in a state of potential, imminent collapse.
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT (voice over): When these houses were built in the 80s, this beach ran hundreds of feet towards the horizon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't believe it's even high tide yet.
WEIR: Now, the water is at the doorstep in this water of the outer banks and the beach is eroding by a dozen feet a year.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You expect next year it's going to be 12 to 15 feet back and the next year and the next year and the next year.
WEIR: I see.
And while most locals understand the barrier islands move over time, few imagine this would happen this fast, especially the new owner of this $275,000 getaway who never got a chance to sleep here before a mediocre storm took it away, or the $500,000 place that collapsed a few days earlier and spread nail-filled debris along public beaches. At least nine more houses on this stretch are condemned and the sea is taking more than just houses.
DAWN TAYLOR, OUTER BANKS, NORTH CAROLINA RESIDENT: This is our heritage.
WEIR: Look at that.
TAYLOR: We want to save.
WEIR: Wow.
Oh, my goodness. It's right there on the edge.
As a proud daughter of the outer banks, Dawn Taylor spends her days trying to save the graves.
TAYLOR: We're missing the remains of our loved ones due to the tide up and down the coast. We have multiple cemeteries here that have met their demise due to the rising sea level.
WEIR: And so when you think about the lives, the history, the families that we're talking about, you put it in those terms the fundamental question of the age of sea level rise is, what is worth saving and who can afford to save it?
BERNARD MANNHEIM, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA RESIDENT: And we watch the water bubble up through those vents into the house.
WEIR: Down the Carolina Coast in Charleston, the Mannheims decided to raise their 450 ton mansion shun with a system hydraulic jacks.
Can I ask what something like this cost?
MANNHEIM: My answer is many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
WEIR: Right.
MANNHEIM: It's something hopefully that will last another hundred years.
WEIR: Whether it does may depend on whether Charleston can afford plans for a billion dollar seawall which would only protect the most valuable 20 percent of the city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This house was actually moved to this -- this is a new location.
WEIR: Back in the outer banks some are moving their houses as far as they could afford.
They moved it from there to right there?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that was as far as they could go.
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WEIR: Meanwhile, NOAA projects at least a foot of sea level rise here mid-century with ten times as many flooding events like this one which fill driveways with five feet of sand.
READE CORBETT, DIRECTOR, COASTAL STUDIES INSTITUTE: This isn't just happening on the outer banks. It's happening around the world.
WEIR: This is a story about anyone who lives near the ocean from Southern Maine to Padre Island, right?
CORBETT: Right. And these processes are happening never where.
WEIR: Yes. But it is not as evident on the mainland because states, counties and towns dredge, pump and truck millions of dollars worth of sand so tourists and real estate buyers will keep coming.
CORBETT: If you start a nourishment program, when is the next nourishment, five, seven years down the road? Will you get to that point? And you have to think about the economics. It's $25 million, $30 million.
WEIR: So, if you play that out, it really comes down to have or have not communities fortifying themselves, right?
CORBETT: It is challenging when it comes down to the tax base. It's not that we can't work with the environment, we can't work with the change, we can, and we have for years.
WEIR: And you just can't do it the way you used to do it.
CORBETT: We have got to do it different.
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WEIR (on camera): For example, some of the owners of the condemned houses here near Rodanthe are learning from insurance companies that they won't cover the cost of a tear down or a relocation, so it's an incentive to just wait for the ocean waves to take it and then comes the cost of the cleanup, which obviously doesn't make any sense, Jim and Poppy, but this is the new reality for beach towns to think about and this, of course, stretch of the outer banks, managed by national park service, they will do some beach nourishment to protect road infrastructure but unincorporated towns like this are on their own. And if you go further down the economic ladder, communities of color along the coast have no resources to deal with this and, of course, they contributed the least to the problem.
HARLOW: Great points. I was just thinking about those kids running behind you, Bill, and what the reality will be like for them when they're adults if we don't make major changes. Thanks, as always, for your reporting, Bill Weir for us in Rodanthe, North Carolina.
A big announcement moments ago from OPEC. They're going to majorly boost their oil production. What does that mean for our gas prices?
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SCIUTTO: This just in to CNN, the White House has just imposed another round of economic sanctions on Russian officials and elites. The measures also target yachts as well as aircraft belonging to Vladimir Putin's associates.
HARLOW: So, this list includes Russian businessman Gad Nisenav (ph) who was secretary of state -- who Secretary of State Antony Blinken calls one of the richest men in Europe and a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Affairs, the commerce department also issued new sanctions restricting Russia's ability to secure military technologies.
SCIUTTO: All right. New this morning, perhaps potentially good news on gas prices, OPEC has agreed to boost its oil output by 648,000 barrels a day in July and August. That's a big chunk and it's more than previously expected. The White House is now applauding that decision. HARLOW: Let's go to our Matt Egan to explain what this means for us. Obviously, gas just went up another 5 cents overnight, $4.72 a gallon. What does this mean in terms of bringing prices down in the U.S. and how quick?
MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Well, Jim and Poppy, for the first time in a long time, it seems like there is some help on the way, but I think the question is whether or not it's enough help. So, OPEC announcing today they are going to will increase production by 648,000 barrels per day in both July and August. That's about 50 percent more than they had originally planned to increase production by.
Essentially, they are returning supply that had been sidelined during the spring of 2020. And this is a big deal, because for months, they refused to do that. The White House within minutes put out a statement praising the move, saying they welcome it. I'll read you the statement in part. They said, we recognize the role of Saudi Arabia as the chair of OPEC+, and its largest producer in achieving this consensus among the group members, the United States will continue to use all tools at our disposal to address energy price pressures.
However, I think the response in financial markets was a lot more muted. U.S. oil prices actually moved off their lows of the day, trading slightly higher at last check at around $116 a barrel, as you can see, about flat, trading $116 a barrel for Brent. That's up from around $70 a year ago.
Now, every little bit of supply helps here, but there are some doubts in the market about whether or not this is enough to move the needle. A former Bush energy official, Bob McNally, he told me this is about 90 percent symbolic and 10 percent fundamentally important.
Now, symbolism matters in energy markets but McNally told me this is a concrete gesture, it's just not a lot of concrete. So, unfortunately, that may mean that consumers are not going to see a lot of relief at the gas pump, as you mentioned, the national average $4.72 a gallon, another record high. Eight states now at $5 or more. And that list, unfortunately, could continue to grow.
SCIUTTO: Matt Egan, thanks so much for following.
The suspect in the buffalo shooting who is accused of killing ten people at that grocery store, he is going to be back in court this afternoon. A grand jury on Wednesday indicted Payton Gendron on 25 counts, including ten charges of first-degree murder, ten charges of second-degree murder as a hate crime, three charges as well of attempted murder as a hate crime, this according to court documents. Authorities allege that Gendron, who is white, targeted the Tops Supermarket because it was in a predominantly black community.
HARLOW: We'll have much more updates on this as they come. Thanks so much for being with us today. We'll see you right back here tomorrow. I'm Poppy Harlow.
SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto. We also expect to hear more from officials in Tulsa, Oklahoma, about the mass shooting there. Four people died there. We're going to hear from those officials in the next hour. Please do stay with us.
At This Hour with Kate Bolduan continues after a short break.
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