Scenes from a Crisis: Volunteers Bond with Occupiers for Sandy Relief
Wednesday, 14 November 2012 00:00 By John Knefel, Truthout | News Analysis
With Occupy Sandy relief workers at sites in New York, writer observes volunteers from disparate organizations and backgrounds coming together and bonding under Occupy's banner for a common cause.
As the full extent of Superstorm
Sandy's destruction begins to set in, Occupy Sandy continues to expand its effort to provide relief to ravaged areas in
Staten Island,
Coney Island,
Red Hook, and
the Rockaways. The work can roughly be divided into two categories: the primary distribution hubs at St. Jacobi Church on
Fourth Avenue and 520 Clinton Ave., and the field, where organizers often go intersection by intersection, sometimes door to door to assess needs of the community. What I've found, observing these efforts and increasingly participating in them, is that Occupy Sandy has provided the public with a concrete example of the virtue of Occupy's sometimes abstract ideals. Read
read more...
What would a city without libraries look like? There would be one less place for seniors, teens, or kids to safely hang out in the urban landscape. In the case of seniors that means more shut ins, kids would be that much less safe after school and teens would have that much more incentive to seek out trouble with nothing to do. Some of the main providers of ESOL would be put out of commission so fewer people would be able to learn English and improve their lot and that of their families and communities. There would be fewer tools for entrepreneurs so fewer startup business would germinate in the city. The main source of free computer training would be wiped out at a stroke as would free job seeking and job readiness training. Read more.....
