Occupy Sandy Distribution Center

(Occupy Sandy at a Brooklyn church via Jeremy Zilar @flickr.com)

Once the election drivel dies down this week and we have a new President, the real work of those Americans of goodwill and conscience will need to ratchet up our games in the effort to reclaim our democracy.   We’ll need to brew up conditions that will lead to the Great Awakening so many of us believe is on the way; a revolution of spirit and consciousness that will show more and more Americans how irrelevant our needs are to the oligarchs who rule us.  Make no mistake, they intend to strip away more and more of the fruits of our labor, our dignity, health, civil rights and wantonly kill our planet.  And the professional politicians will be right there helping them along.  We need to be ready for what they throw at us either purposely or accidentally, as in the next financial crash.

More posts will likely follow, but the theme I intend to show is that in answer to the question being asked here and there: ‘Can this nation ever heal now?’  There is no answer, partially because each person sees the ‘illness’ as something different.  For those who focused on hating Republican Haters, or hating those of us who declared the reasons we wouldn’t vote for Obomba or Dems of any stripe again, they will see through variations of that lens.  Republicans focused on hate, same gluck, different lenses.

Others of us hate what has happened to our country through the callous disregard of a government that is so in thrall to corporations, and the long refusal of our populace to become informed enough to be able to set tribal loyalties aside to form alliances to reclaim our nation so that we and future generations might live, thrive and create a nation based on cooperation, not competition, and discover ways to husband our planet’s resources for people, not commodify them for profit, and withhold them without obscene recompense to those who lack all conscience.

Those of us who seriously believe that OWS is by no means dead, and speak or document in posts how many in the movement have been operating out of sight on issues and alternatives to The Machine, My.Fdl’s hotflashcarol provided the best imagery recently, saying that she pictures Occupiers like iron filings, spread out everywhere, and ready to rush toward the magnet of necessity that arises next.  Hurricane Sandy has been one such magnet.

Amy Goodman and her reporters have been covering the hurricane devastation in Staten Island and Far Rockaway, southeast of NYC.  The extent of the destruction is far greater than I had pictured, and the human suffering is staggering.  ConEd reports that over a million residents were still without power as Amy went to press, and a major nor’easter is predicted to bring more cold air and misery to the residents of the northeast.  Mayor Bloomberg says 40,000 New Yorkers are without homes.  The nine-minute video is here.

This piece concerns those iron filings rushing to help people in different parts of NYC with the knowledge, skill and experience they learned from Occupying.  So many GAs helped feed the hungry, find shelters for the homeless, medical and mental health help for those in need who’d ‘fallen through the cracks’, a term that has become meaningless now that so many are suffering the neglect and death by neoliberal capitalism.

Caring for each other is one way we’ll begin to heal this nation for now, and is one of the things that the PTB fear the most; it’s on the order of a non-theist social gospel, really.  They have gone to great pains to divide us, isolate us, and more recently, keep us from meeting on The Commons to listen and learn from each other, grow in numbers…in order to resist them.

Hotflashcarol sent me a link to the AtlanticWire that has another wonderful story of the generosity, love and caring energy that Occupiers have brought to the Red Hook housing project and its own RH Initiative volunteers in Brooklyn.  ‘How Occupy Wall Street Turned into a Disaster Relief Group’:

In a matter of hours, we transformed from a small youth development center into a major hub for the disaster relief effort here,” said Eisenhard of The Red Hook Initiative. “The number of people volunteering their time and donating food and supplies has been unbelievable to see.”

Including one contingent that has been making itself known throughout the many poor neighborhoods affected by the storm: Occupy Wall Street. Volunteers organized by the movement under the moniker Occupy Sandy arrived on bicycles, asking if they could set up a kitchen on R.H.I.’s premises.

“They threw it together and started putting up hot meals right away,” said Eisenhard. “We know how to reach a lot of people and businesses in the area. But we don’t have the skills to put a kitchen up that fast.”

As Chloe Cockburn, a civil rights lawyer with ties to Occupy, put it: “What we build (sic) last fall in Zuccotti Park has been put to use and come alive here.” Again, more of the story is here.

With the email, hfc included these words:

“We learned how to feed and take care of each other almost overnight; it turns out there is abundance if you know where to look. I don’t see disaster capitalism ending any time soon, so maybe this is what will bring us all together. “

It’s a story of neighbor helping neighbor, and restaurants and people in adjoining neighborhoods giving food, clothes and supplies to the effort, etc. It’s all just mushrooming and morphing into a glorious testimony to the fact that people aren’t inherently selfish and self-serving.  The way it usually works is that sharing begets sharing, or at least it always has in my life, and these efforts and the community its engendering will become part of each person involved.  How fine is that?

Interoccupy is now calling for a relief organization for New Jersey, which has been hit extremely hard as well.  There are lists of drop off points, supplies needed, and another Amazon Registry as well as a Donate button.

Phoenix Woman has the Amazon Wedding registry up and it’s an utterly hilarious use of Amazon.com, but the hurry-up shipping charges they request might be pretty harsh.  If your pocketbook can’t afford them, the Sandy NYC Donate cash button is here.

Hearty thanks to all you Inconvenient Occupiers who are committing this truly revolutionary act; may it spread abroad as we begin to heal ourselves.  Loving others actively is an important act of spiritual and psychic health, both of which we all need desperately right now.  Stay strong and healthy as you can.  Sweet Honey’s song is timeless: