storm stories, part 3

Then there is Occupy. As in Occupy Wall Street. My impression of them was as a disorganized, rag-tag group of activists, anarchists, and who knows what else – but a group that I have admired for their courage and conviction to really take on the MAN for what they believe in. However, instead of kicking Wall Street while it’s down (and it is DOWN), Occupy Wall Street has morphed in a kind of magical caterpillar-to-butterfly way into Occupy Sandy. Occupy Sandy is turning out to be the largest, most effective relief effort in New York City. It is all the same people, but with a new mission sprung from a new catch-phrase: Mutual Aid. Instead of charity or hand outs, OS runs on the belief that we will all be better off, more free, more secure if we mutually support each other as a community of equals instead of patronizing charity handouts or government aid. For Occupy, the whole things is still couched in the principles of anarchy and anti-establishment, but the concept of Mutual Aid is not exactly unique or new. Most people of any kind of faith can tell you that.

Scribbled photo-copied signs inviting volunteers to help OS started popping up all over my neighborhood. I was wary, unsure of their intentions at first. But the address on the sign seemed awfully familiar, really close to my house. Then, after walking by one day, I realized OS was actually headquartering all operations out of this beautiful, huge, and amazingly welcoming episcopal church I had been attending off and on – only a 5 min walk from my house. So I decided to check it out. The first time I went, I registered into OSs online volunteer database and then was required to join the short orientation – about Occupys principles and covering their operations. Not exactly the disorganized crew I was expecting. The church was absolutely OVERRUN with Occupy – they had given them full access. It was both incredible and beautiful. Trucks were coming and going full of supplies. People were dispatching and hauling and sorting. Every pew in the sanctuary was full of boxes of all sizes – sorted by clothes, toiletries, medical supplies, cleaning equipment, and on and on. And the delicious smell of hot meals being cooked and pack was wafting up from the basement parish hall. In the last few weeks, Occupy has been cooking and delivering 3,000-5,000 hot meals a day out of this church. They have registered 60,000 volunteers. There is no plan to stop.

Since I was going to be gone for the holiday weekend, I decided to stop by to lend a hand last night for an hour. It was a quiet night before Thanksgiving, but there were probably still a couple dozen people onsite, putting the finishing touches on Thanksgiving dinner preparations. I spent an hour creating an inventory of 3 pews worth of medical supplies.

Afterwards, I wandered down to the pub on the corner to meet up with some of the church people I thought were gathering there after evening prayer. I waited, but didn’t see anyone I recognized. Instead of giving up and going home, I decided to just have a beer and enjoy the fire pit they had on my own for a while and enjoy the moment.

I was sitting on the picnic bench drinking my beer, half-listening to the conversations of the other couples nearby, when Mac showed up with a BBQ sandwich. He said something apologetic about working with people that smelled like they were homeless (many Occupy people are) and sat down next to me. I recognized him as the medic that had been introduced to me just an hour earlier. We started to chat.

He is an army combat medic-in-training stationed somewhere upstate. He was taking his one week Thanksgiving leave to come to New York City and volunteer with Occupy. Mac is a young kid of 23 from Kansas. He got his degree in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Math and Physics, but didn’t know what to do with it or how to get a job after graduating. He seemed to feel that the military played an important role and saw it as an opportunity to serve. He told me a lot about his training, about levels of care, about life on base. I learned a lot about tourniquets. We talked about Occupy and his view of things versus there’s. He told me about some of his experiences in the city so far, helping set up medical clinics at housing projects in the Rockaways and seeing families working on their destroyed homes in Staten. He defended the military as a good opportunity for growth and advancement for poor kids that don’t have the role models or resources to do something with their lives. He told me that all guys called him Doc, which he felt was undue respect – till his commanding officer told him that it helped them all build a sense of trust and reliability in him, which they need to have in the person that may one day save their life. He talked about how as a medic, he can never show fear or emotion while on the job, but has to hold onto it till he can constructively release it later. We talked about his hopes and dreams for the future.

He is being deployed to Afghanistan in January.

This young guy was spending one of his last few weeks of freedom serving the poor in a city he had never even been to, and then going into combat to serve his country. My prayers go with him, as do my hopes for his safe return.

And with that, I sign off and wish all my family and friends around the world a safe and blessed Thanksgiving. May we all be aware of and thankful for the many blessing we have and those that make them possible.

storm stories, part 2

My office is located in the Financial District, near the corner of Wall Street and Water Street.  That’s right, Water Street.  It was in the evacuation zone.  When I stopped by on the Sunday before the storm to pick up my computer, they had sandbagged the perimeter of the building up to about 2 feet.  Turns out, that wasn’t enough.  The wall of water, aka the Surge, tumbled up and over the banks of the East River, up and over curbs and barriers and sandbags, and down, down, down into the basement of my office and every high-rise office building on the street, destroying all the building systems and electrical equipment in its wake.

I continued to work from home, but the lines of communication were very, very quiet.  Coworkers that are always on and available were silent – in cold homes without power.  There were no updates from company leadership.  Nobody knew anything.  So I waited.  And worked a bit.  A few days after the storm, the emails and phone calls began to trickle in – we couldn’t go back.  Like dozens of other buildings on Wall Street, our fancy high-rise office was rendered uninhabitable by Sandys waters.  It took weeks to be able to enter the building again, and even then the building was running on a generators, half the IT systems were still down, and the heat was off.  To this day, the streets of the Financial District are clogged with generators and air with diesel fumes.  The sidewalks are covered in piles of molding, hazardous debris and equipment, all being extracted by men and women in tyvek bunny suits and respirators.  All we need now is zombies.

Meanwhile, one of my closest friends in New York, a conceptual artist here on a fellowship, had an art studio in the basement of a gallery in Dumbo, an artsy neighborhood in Brooklyn on the waterfront facing lower Manhattan.  Apart from the finished work she managed to move into the gallery upstairs, she lost everything: equipment, tools, materials, books, furniture – all soaked with brackish, sewage-y seawater.  Where to go from here?  How to recover, when you’re already in a field, your life’s passion that leaves you financially vulnerable and constantly struggling?

storm stories, part 1

As I am sure you all know, on October 29^th a hurricane came through and wrecked my new home city, New York.  It was a weird, surreal experience.  This is the city that never sleeps, never stops, never misses a beat.  There were joking rumors of the impending Frankstorm the week before, but I don’t think anyone really took notice – too far away, too uncertain.  Then, the Friday before, at work they told us to take our lap tops home just in case.  I dismissed this and proceeded to leave to enjoy the weekend with friends in the PA.  Then the news reports and emails started rolling in:  A hurricane.  Events canceled.  Mandatory evacuations.  Shutting down the transit system – a full 24 hours ahead of the peak of the storm.  In a place like New York, made up of inlets and islands, you shut down the subway and you shut down the city.  I decided to come home early that Sunday from my weekend away, dutifully picked up my work computer and went home hoping, believing the overly-prepared-for, uneventful storm to blow over and things to be back to normal by Tuesday.

That didn’t happen.  Sandy hit New York, New Jersey, and many other states with a force that no one could have been truly prepared for.  Don’t get me wrong, the authorities did all the right things: by shutting down the city and enforcing mandatory evacuations, they did their best to make sure people were, mostly, out of harms way.  Considering the extent of the damage, remarkably few people lost their lives, which is a blessing.  But no amount of preparation could stop the 10-12 foot wall of water that surged into the harbor, overwhelming every bank, every basement, ever utility trench and every tunnel that makes this city run.

Millions upon millions have been affected.  Some lost everything: their homes, their livelihoods, entire neighborhoods.  Some lost power for days or weeks – and tens of thousands still don’t have it back.  Meanwhile, I cozily sat at home in my neighborhood, Prospect Heights (note the word Heights – no flood problem here), watched the news, tapping away on my computer, while gusts of wind blew rain and leaves around outside.  Not even a blip in power or internet.

The storm blew over and New Yorkers began to emerge.  No one had any idea what to expect.  Prospect Heights got away with a couple of downed trees and smashed cars.  But then there was Red Hook, the Rockaways, Howard Beach, Dumbo, Breezy Point, Staten Island, and the lower third of Manhattan – all royally screwed.