The training Starling was running when the Red Cross called was for volunteers going to check in on families and businesses. Starling had been coordinating Occupy Sandy’s door-to-door support in Red Hook since the waters cleared. The Red Cross just called us, again, asking us what people need.” It had been six weeks since Sandy ravaged New York. They wanted to know where Occupy Sandy has gone door-to-door, and where they should go. When she returned minutes later, Starling announced, “That was the Red Cross. “I have to take this, be right back,” she said to the sixty of us gathered outside a storage silo. Once, in the middle of her morning orientation for volunteers, Starling’s phone rang. As a week-long volunteer at Occupy Sandy, I spent a few days shadowing someone we’ll call Starling, Occupy’s coordinator for Red Hook, Starling’s Brooklyn Bay neighborhood, across the water from OWS’ Zuccotti Park. Occupy Sandy was the fourth hurricane relief effort I witnessed first-hand it impressed me more than the courageous, heart-filled community efforts I volunteered for after Katrina. The so many ecological catastrophes filling the air maybe make all the more vital lessons and histories of communities rising from debris. As Hurricane Harvey peters out, Irma wrecks Florida and leaves the Caribbean ravished, as Katia pumbles Mexico, as Jose looms, and as floods continue to ravage the Indian subcontinent, we may need stories that remind us that “disasters, in returning their sufferers to public and collective life,” diminish the privatization and isolation of our lives, as Rebecca Solnit wrote in A Paradise Built in Hell. Our newsfeeds, racing from travesty to travesty, spotlighting catastrophes and one-off heroism, can turn our attention away from hopeful stories of sustained, collective triumphs over ongoing crises. If you want to rejuvenate your faith in frontline organizing, chase a hurricane and spend some weeks helping to rebuild homes and communities. The Climate Crisis Requires Mutual Aid, Not Charity You can sign up here for monthly bulletins plus exclusive climate justice content direct to your inbox. The post was written by Lucas Burdick, a small-time freelance writer and professional volunteer. We hope this piece offers some practicality and hope as communities around the world recover from quakes, fires, and floods. This guest post for The World At 1☌ remembers and explores Occupy Sandy as an exemplary community response to climate disasters.
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