Occupy Sandy

But one of the major takeaways that I'll always remember, and I think is really underplayed in the memory, you know, it's often written off as a sort of aimless hip- uh, modern hippie, uh, where ma- you know, resistance movement without a goal or whatever, um, or that its infrastructure wasn't really, you know, well organized.

But when Hurricane Sandy hit New York, uh, Occupy Wall Street reformed, or some of the people of Wall- Occupy Wall Street formed a group called Occupy Sandy, and it was effectively using all these occupations and all these areas where people had been p- providing supplies and creating mutual aid groups already for the Occupiers, who were, you know, sometimes activists, but in many cases also unhoused people participating and hoping to get some economic relief and to whom the message spoke to.

But, you know, operating out of churches, out of, uh, you know, public spaces, these groups collected emergency response materials in a time when the city government was failing, at least initially, to, you know, uh...

There was a supply chain issue.

... and have very specific, um, sort of, um, support for movements.

It was, I would think, I would say also Occupy Sandy.

I don't know if you remember that.

But in tw- 2012-

In the years after the eviction from Zuccotti Park, Marissa continued participating in Occupy movement actions.

I was involved in various offshoots, including strike debt and some of Occupy Sandy.

Occupy Sandy illustrates mutual aid at work in another powerful way.

In 2012, a storm surge from Hurricane Sandy left large parts of New York and New Jersey flooded and without power.

Occupy activists organized a network of about 60,000 volunteers to help residents of the hardest-hit areas.

They provided hot meals, flashlights and other necessities, transportation, and eventually repaired or rebuilt homes.

There were no leaders, no center of command, no bureaucracy, just immediate relief.

In fact, Occupy Sandy volunteers were so fast, efficient, and numerous that the Department of Homeland Security wrote a glowing report about their efforts.

Basically changing this country's helping to change the public's common sense about class and class struggle and the 99% versus the 1%.

This is the thing that that movements in the streets that successful movements in the streets do well is they make they change people's way of thinking about something and then you know good politicians good organizations turn that into something durable and i think so i think you know there there's a there's a clear through line from you know occupy wall street and to to you know occupy sandy to all these organizations that were born to a bunch of leaders that came out of it to bernie to to to the squad to zoran like with dsa to the growth of all these things they each had their own trajectories and you know their own sort of like leaders and players and whatever but there's something Yeah, there is a through line that it's pretty special to be able to look back and say, oh, okay, this did produce something important.

Often what movements produce, it's hard to tell in the moment.

And then in retrospect, you can see some of the imprints.