2013 Articles

Into the Storm: Occupy Sandy and the New Sociality of Debt

Jaleel, Rana

"In late October 2012, after the completion of this dossier, Superstorm Sandy wrecked much of the East Coast, including the greater New York City area. Now, nearly two months since the storm hit ground, thousands of New Yorkers still suffer from its effects. In the storm’s wake, Occupy Wall Street rapidly mobilized to form Occupy Sandy—the People’s Recovery Effort. Occupy Sandy drew upon the organizing and activist networks that crystallized in Zuccotti Park to offer on-the-ground support for devastated New York area communities. What follows is drawn from observations of Occupy Sandy activities and discussions with two Occupy members in late November, Alexandra (Aleks) Perisic and Amin Husain, who are dedicated to assisting Red Hook, Staten Island, the Rockaways, and other areas hard hit and still struggling in Sandy’s aftermath. While Alexandra and I spoke under fairly sedate circumstances, in a somewhat antiseptic student office at New York University’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, Amin cheerfully answered questions from the back seat of a sixteen-passenger van over a bumpy half-hour ride from Occupy Sandy’s hub at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew, in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, to a distribution center in storm-ravaged Staten Island."