Occupy Sandy now has a registry on Amazon.com - You can see for yourself what items are urgently needed and unavailable to people in the affected areas. Some of the items are things that are hard for local volunteers to pick up and drop off.
Several Kossacks encouraged me to repost the Nov 5 PM version of this diary: http://www.dailykos.com/...
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Nov 5 AM version:
Direct donations of supplies are possible, either through Amazon or by shipping directly to Occupy Sandy’s main hub at St. Jacobi Church in Brooklyn.
OccupySandy was covered by Demoncracy Now today: http://www.democracynow.org/...
1. Occupy Sandy now has a registry on Amazon.com.
For those who want to know exactly what your money was spent on (and that none of it was used for executive salaries or bonuses). This option ships to Occupy Sandy NJ in Jersey City, which is directly across the Hudson River from downtown Manhattan.
http://www.amazon.com/...
Reposted from: http://interoccupy.net/...
2. You can ship items directly to Occupy Sandy's main distribution hub in New York City. They are cooking meals there, serving meals there AND using volunteers to personally deliver hot meals and supplies to those in need who can’t come out to pick up things for themselves. And they are coordinating volunteers and full vehicles of food/water/supplies out to other sites, especially focusing on the Rockaways.
St Jacobi Lutheran Church
5406 4th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY, 11220
Occupy Sandy Contact No. at St. Jacobi
(347) 470-4192
If you choose option No. 2 let them (and others) know what you are sending by posting to the social media feed at http://interoccupy.net/...
This is my first diary and I could use some advice re what tags are appropriate.
PS - Occupy Sandy is also handing out information for people to access other available resources and services, of which there are many options. But there is nothing like the boots on the ground that Occupy Sandy is organizing and deploying on a dynamic basis. They have ZERO overhead since they are tapping into and partnering with whatever local sites and organizations are available.
PPS - Many people out in the Rockaways (Queens, NYC) need items similar to what's been listed on the Amazon registry. For up-to-date needs see the interoccupy page, which maintains nodes for many distribution cites in all the NYC boroughs. http://interoccupy.net/...
At the beginning of Occupy a powerful chant was, "The whole world is watching." Let us Kossacks let the folks on the ground know that we hear them and see what they are doing for their communities and our country.
9:51 AM PT: 3. BROOKLYN direct donation and volunteer hub (via UnaSpenser). This is Occupy Sandy's second main hub and it is coordinating volunteers and supplies, focused on Brooklyn needs.
Occupy Sandy Outpost
Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Clinton Hill
520 Clinton Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238
10:42 AM PT: 4. Consider a direct donation to a Chelsea NYC center for Homeless LGBT youth that was destroyed by the surge up the Hudson River.
Sandy Destroys Ali Forney Center for Homeless LGBT Youth
http://www.dailykos.com/... posted by Dave in Northridge
2:47 PM PT:
DIRECT ACTION BREAKING DOWN WALLS - OccupySandy has stepped up to be a "front line" in Hurricane relief/recovery.
Here on the Rockaway Peninsula, we now have both Green Peace and the National Guard supporting an Occupy group that spontaneously stepped into a wide gap left by all the big support systems, the ones that people know about.
a. A local community center in Far Rockaway (The YANA Center) opened a week before the storm managed to bring in a solar generator truck from Green Peace.
b. An Occupy Sandy volunteer asked if they had space available to operate a kitchen and serve as a distribution hub for food/water and other supplies as well as to coordinate people coming out to just work on clean-up.
c. On Saturday, Nov 3, the National Guard dropped by, with two truckloads of food and water asking Occupy Sandy volunteers to distribute to those in need.
See for yourself - walls falling down: http://www.youtube.com/...
See for yourself - the gap that OccupySandy is filling: http://www.youtube.com/...
The established agencies and community organizations have other roles to fill. But they just didn't have boots on the ground, that could respond quickly to the challenges that the storm brought to these neighborhoods, namely near total loss of transit infrastructure, total loss of power and near total loss of delivery capabilities.
GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
Many people out in the flooded and burnt out neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens and in surrounding areas depend on mass transit to get around, and on deliveries to where they live.
Those who had cars that survived the storm could not afford the time to spend hours in line getting a few gallons of gas. Those that did have fuel in the tank, and donated food/water to offer faced massive traffic jams, and lack of knowledge about where to go out there to meet up with those in need. Without power many quickly lost any ability to tap any of their own wider networks receive updates of what services are coming their way.
The Rockaway Peninsula will remain without normal public transit for some time because the bridge that carried the subway out there was damaged. There is transit capability up and down the peninsula which won't be up and running until they deliver some subway cars out there (by truck). And I presume that will include moving a crane out there to unload them.