Thanks to friends and family for asking how we fared during and after Superstorm Sandy.
Fortunately, our extended family came through without a scratch. The Upper West Side, where Rachel and I live, was largely spared. We feel very fortunate.
My brother in the East Village and cousins in Queens and Long Island were without electricity and cellphone service all week. Ana, Louis and the boys were safe in Brooklyn, although they were shaken up when a young couple was killed by a falling tree right around the corner at the height of the storm.
Everybody has been having a hard time getting around the city, although public transportation is now gradually being restored. Getting to work and school — and me getting to the East Village to give George a hand — was a nightmare. Paul, in town from Pretoria, has been bicycling around The Big Apple.
My grandson Luis arrived from Mexico for a visit just a few days after Sandy hit. He could have postponed his trip but he’s an adventurous soul. He told me he wanted to witness history, see how New Yorkers cope with disaster.
Overall, the devastation is huge and unprecedented. The worst I’ve seen with my own eyes has been the East Village, which was flooded by the storm surge from the East River. The area is coming back to life now that the electricity is back, but it was a true disaster zone all week. In places, the water came up to car windows, basements were flooded, parts of roofs blown off. Some injuries but no loss of life in the immediate neighborhood.
When I went down on Wednesday people seemed to be in shock, worried more about their cellphones and Internet connections than food and water. That changed quickly, as supplies ran out and the weather got colder. Worst of all, people living in high rises — especially old and disabled folks — were prisoners with little to eat and drink as the days passed.
Federal, State and city assistance began arriving by mid-week. Free hot food was served in churches and schools and from food trucks sponsored by Jet Blue and other companies. With traffic lights out, police directed traffic. Heavy equipment and garbage trucks started to remove fallen trees, debris and destroyed cars. Bus service was restored fairly quickly. Overall, at least in the East Village, I’d give high marks to the official response.
But I was impressed most of all by the reaction of ordinary people. Everywhere you could see neighbors helping one another. A group of anarchists set up an improvised kitchen on the street in front of their squat and rigged a bicycle-built-for-two to charge cellphones. My brother had dinner and hung out with them. Kids from the Occupy movement held a “vertical marathon”, running up the stairs of tall buildings to bring food and water to people trapped in their apartments. I saw similar scenes in Albania during the war in Kosovo and in Honduras in the aftermath of hurricane Mitch. Incredible how emergencies can bring out the best in people.
Luis asked if I thought this solidarity would last as a legacy of Sandy.
I wasn’t sure how to answer him, but what I do think will last is the sense of outrage millions of people feel because the Superstorm was the chronicle of a catastrophe foretold.
It had been predicted almost a decade ago — in great scientific detail — as an inevitable consequence of human-driven global warming and climate change. And of course the warnings went unheeded by government and, to a great extent, the general public. These extreme weather events will become more and more frequent and we will all live with an increased sense of vulnerability, although frankly it’s the poor who are most vulnerable and will always bear the brunt of so-called natural disasters.
Hopefully, this sense of vulnerability and indignation will be translated into protest and pressure for the fundamental, systemic political, economic and lifestyle changes that are needed to change direction and avoid massive environmental collapse and social chaos in the future. As they say, it’s the System, stupid!
We will carry these images and thoughts to the polls when we vote next week. Sandy gave Obama an opportunity and he rose to the occasion, showing leadership and backbone. The contrast between the two candidates couldn’t be greater.
But re-electing Obama won’t mean very much unless he is inspired — or forced — by a mass movement to be far bolder, far more transformative, than he has been in his first term.
The “high rises” are federal and state subsidized ghettos. There was a small presence of National Guard and Army troops bringing tanker trucks of water, etc.
Now, pundits, the press and a few government officials are discussing the need for billions of dollars to construct ocean surge barriers in New York harbor, for protection 15 years from now. The coastal map of NY has changed permanently, and with it, whole communities. What we are seeing is what 2 degrees of climate change can do. Significantly, it’s not only the poor who are affective. Coastal communities like Seaside Heights New Jersey, affordable coops in Far Rockaway, (Obama’s political middle-class constituency) So it depends where you live. All classes are vulnerable and have been devastated.
As Robert said, the East Village, NY where I live and chose to remain during the emergency, felt like the Third World. There was community spirit and also rising tension. A group of teenagers destroyed the glass and steel doors of a new 12-story building which houses 80% market, 10% middle income and 10% low income people. In Robert Moses’ ghetto “projects” some people turned on each other. There were a few muggings and a couple of rapes in the pitch black hallways. Tenants who were afraid or unable to be evacuated, suffered. Outside along Ave D, people were desperately looking for food and water.
I don’t believe in fate but I do recognize luck when I see it. I was lucky and so was Obama. Sandy is giving the president the boost he needs to win the election. He is certainly taking advantage of the situation. He swept New Jersey’s rotund Republican Gov. Christie off his feet, by ordering massive FEMA federal aid to his state and New York. 75% of rebuilding money has been promised, some of which has already been distributed. Obama sent promised federal government transport planes to aid state National Guards units. He allowed tanker ships with foreign flags to deliver gasoline. Plus—while he was touring an area flattened by the storm, he was seen in the media making empathetic gestures to to the population. He hugged one devastated woman for a long time, looked into her eyes and quietly said, “I promise, I promise, I promise.” If he is elected we will see about his new promises.
It will probably take a week or more for election results to be tallied. Both Democrats and Republicans have hired thousands of lawyers to election poll watch. Everybody will sue everybody. It’s gonna get down and dirty. The Tea Party Republicans will try to steal the election from Barak Obama, as they did from Al Gore. But this time they will fail. We don’t have a choice. If big finance and crony capitalism wins with Romney as its puppet, The U.S. of A will begin to hurtle toward it’s doom. If Obama wins, the middle and working classes stand a chance.
If anybody wants to view my doc photos of Sandy aftermath, contact Robert.
Robert,
I’m glad you are OK. I’ve been looking at some of the reports from New York and New Jersey. It appears the weather media were not exaggerating. And this was a “category 1” hurricane when it made landfall. Can you imagine what a Katrina-sized storm would have done? And they are coming! Everyone who isn’t guzzling kool-aid is asking “will this event be the catalyst for action on the long emergency?”, but I’m not optimistic (what else is new?). First of all, there’s the problem of the attention span of the TV-addled masses, and the fact that this disaster is easily accommodated as part of the entertainment cycle, with the heroism of the emergency workers closing the circle of newsworthy heartache and redemption. I won’t even bother to include the peculiarly American conflation of material causality with the chastisements of a morally outraged God, or the many other mythic fabrications into which such events can be poured in a way that either relieves us of responsibility or offers miraculous salvation by one or another “invisible hand”. The deep problem is structural, and climate change is just the most recent manifestation, breaking through our white picket dreams only because it threatens our private property. (And, of course, our fuel supply!). What about our “public property”? What about the stuff that isn’t our property at all? Like all the living systems on the planet that “we didn’t build”? That stuff has been under siege for a long time (“the burgeoning that dies / of our dominion”, as one of our northern recluses has it) and that problem is not going to be fixed by tinkering with the energy supply chain.
OK, I know, small steps. But you can see what I mean. Cliche though it may be, the perfect storm is us. And it’s bigger than we imagine. Perhaps it’s a mistake to think about a “system” like the human species just in terms of its inertia, or its appetites, or its addiction to power at all scales. But everywhere I look I see that stuff writ large, and all the counterbalances of art and philosophy just so much wind-drift and sea-foam. Of course, if my own “mythic fabrication” is correct, that there is a systemic “virus” at work at a nearly molecular scale in human agency, then it makes sense to look inward, rather than outward. To engage our own immune system, as it were. Perhaps it’s not just “arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”, but maybe more like trying to hear the crickets and tree frogs on a June night at an outdoor rock concert. In order to do this, you have to turn off the music! How many storms will it take for that to happen?
I apologize, as usual, for my eternal grumpitude. I can’t even blame the US election circus, which I have been mostly avoiding. But in my recent epistolary skirmishes with our own puppets of corporatocracy here in “socialist” Canada, I am feeling a bit storm-tossed myself; no sooner do we mobilize against the tar sands, or the pipeline, than there is a new deal on the table (in the back room of course) to sign a multi-year contract with a Chinese energy behemoth for the rights to exploit Canadian natural resources, including a right to sue (secretly) in Canadian courts if future environmental legislation should interfere with contractually specified profits. And it just goes on and on like that, like the great “bait and switch” operations of the Bush years. Meanwhile all creatures left and right hum the mantra of “economic growth” as the solution to, wait for it, economic growth. That’s right folks, it’s all done with mirrors.
Anyway Robert, I’m glad you are safe, and believe me when I say that if there is anyone on the planet who understands why the hidden dimensions of the human heart may still save us from ourselves, it’s you mate. So on your account, at least, I will withhold judgement on the apocalypse until, well, at least Wednesday.
This is terrific, fabulous, and wonderful, Bobby, and I’m using these words in all of their multiple senses. Thanks for an enlightening and revealing picture of Sandy, the likes of which I’ve seen nowhere else.
love,
Rob
Many thanks to my bro George and my old pals Peter and Rob for excellent comments and kind words. More to come — we’ll figure out a way to get George’s photos up as an album.
Luis asked a central question, because “where have all the flowers (non-hierarchical mass activists) gone?” and what we will ever learn are central. Can begin to comprehend/answer without thinking about everything from oligarchical power to water to liberals/lefties/anarchists.
My mistake 4 years ago was “change you can believe in,” as change is what we do together, not what we admire or worship. Obama has demonstrated what he can(not) be inspired to do. Something like an enduring version of last year’s Occupy might show what he will do if forced, but also what his , er, establishment backers will turn to as physical, economic and financial frankenconjunctures threaten them.
Still, we know that spirit that lives, among other places, in the marginal lower Manhattan, nice to hear of it in vertical marathon etc. action. Crisis, whether climate or other, always opens doors — to the best and the worst in us.
Thanks for this David. Your comments are, as always, on target. Much love…