Natural disasters, like Hurricane Sandy, although cause the destruction of homes, material possessions and lives of countless people, often expose underlying problems in a community and help bring together the community on a common goal. In the case of Hurricane Sandy, that goal was to help those who lost everything rebuild their homes and their lives. In “Occupy Sandy: A movement moves to Relief”, Occupy Sandy has been able to do what many government agencies and larger charities haven’t, provide aid to those in need. As Ms. Gallista, field coordinator, put it, “For a long time, we were the only people out here doing relief work.” By providing flashlights, hot meals, warm blankets…etc, this organization has been able to bring together the community. Despite place a large shadow on the lives of many, Hurricane Sandy has illuminated a movement, the Occupy movement. It has encouraged many residents to join the movement and help aid others

Question: What other movements have been fueled by the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in NYC?

The Gowanus and Red Hook has been noted for its low-income public housing complex for around three thousand residents; when hurricane Sandy struck a lot of buildings were damaged from the inside and out. It took a while before the water was drained, damaged was assessed, and power was restored. This delay had a severe consequence on the residents in the Gowanus. Some of the residents were unable to use their medical equipments without the electricity. The elder residents were trapped on the tops floors surviving off of what remained in their homes. There were some volunteers who helped pass medical supplies, food, and flashlights. However, some buildings still remained powerless even weeks after Sandy hit. Most of the residents did not know when power would come on. Inquires on when the power would return proved fruitless. Most officials of NYCHA didn’t know anything.

Question: Has the city made any improvement in contingency plans for power outages in public housing areas?

Not to sound bitter or pessimistic or anything, but institutionalized racism has been a part of the American government since its founding. It’s terrible and inhumane, but it is no longer surprising. The egregious mistreatment of low income and black residents after Hurricane Katrina is therefore also not surprising, especially after watching Land of Opportunity, which touched upon the topic of public housing destruction justified by a natural disaster. Natural disasters are often thought of as levelers and unifiers. They do not discriminate what they destroy, and they bring communities together in the aftermath. Unfortunately, the wealth that is destroyed by a natural disaster can quickly be rebuilt,the housing and necessities of the poor cannot. Communities band together to rebuild those communities that are beloved, and low income housing is often not, save for those who live there.

Government always favors those who can pay. So given the chance to rebuild low-income, predominately black areas as middle-high income, whiter neighborhoods, they absolutely will.

I expect government to act in accordance to money, but I question why the public was never made away of these conditions in the post-Katrina headlines. Clearly people are upset by these actions, perhaps if more of these occurrences were widely known, racial and class discrimination would be less widely spread.

“It’s evidence that when official channels fail, other parts of society respond.” (Feurer). The previous statement really sums up the disaster that followed after Hurricane Sandy. Everyone was basically looking out for one another after this horrific natural disaster. I remember that I had to travel to the Stop and shop down the street in order to do my nebulizer because I had a horrible asthma attack the day after. My experience isn’t as dreadful as those that the people of the NYCHA’s Gowanus Houses had to go through. I cannot even imagine staying in my home for a week because I was trapped at a higher level of a building and not having electricity/heat/power for 11 full days. Both the Huffington post and the New York Times Articles clearly send out the message that during these hard times, government officials were the slow ones to react and that has to be fixed. Volunteers made this difficult time smoother for all those that were suffering. Its truly sad how we were not prepared for such a thing and I hope the governmental officials took note of how devastating this storm was and have made plans to address the issues it brought up.

Question: What types of rules and laws would the government have to put into action to prevent something like this from happening again? Or is this type of consequence from a natural disaster inevitable?

In the “Law Enforcement Violence & Disaster” article from Incite-National, there was extensive description of the grievances committed against mainly black women, especially LGBT women of color. At the time of the floods, I was too young to fully understand the impact of racial politics in the handling of natural disasters, but I am very glad that we are learning about this in our curriculum now. This is the first time I have encountered the struggle of colored trans women in academic media in my educational experience. Up until now, I had only ever been informed of this group’s struggles in my personal time on alternative media sources.

Although I realize that a website like Incite National may write in a certain tone to gain the sympathy of its readers, I realize that this empathetic writing style may be necessary in elucidating a problem that may be invisible to much of mainstream America.

Question: How can we shape future policy to better amend issues that our readings bring up? How can we better educate our youth to bring to light the issues that marginalized groups like black trans women face?

The issues we face as a society in todays world are subject to an intimidating number of factors, factors whose subtlety at times require a nuanced approach in which intellectual creativity must be applied in order to truly asses all the catalysts and results of said issues. Racism is one such issue, and the recognition of environmental racism as a hurtful paradigm made apparent by the natural disasters of recent history proves to be a step in the right direction in the process of addressing the not so obvious connection between race and income, and the government protection received in the face of tragedy.The failure of protecting agencies to justly care for the victims, instead falling back on the institutional racism and classism, especially given the gravity of the situation these communities faced, is a blaring example of the country’s backward approach to race and the environment. The fact that organizations are using these tragedies as a crutch for their abusive city planning is inexcusable, as we should not as a society accept that profit in the face of disaster is an acceptable facet of capitalist opportunism. The Toxic Soup article was a clear summary of how this racism directly affected those who went through Hurricane Katrina, where as the New York Times article demonstrated how it is communities come together in the face of this injustice in order to make up for the lack of federal assistance.

This article highlights the obvious inequality that exists within our society. Interestingly enough, however, I have heard of a few individuals who deny such phenomena.

I am sure that a storm like Sandy caused many headaches for all New Yorkers. Unfortunately, not everyone was able to get back on their feet at the same time. This articles proves that not every neighborhood of New York gets the same amount of attention and support from the agencies that are supposed to keep an eye on their well-being and provide them with standard services. Once money is involved, companies as well as the governments tend to forget that a family’s inability to live in a high-class neighborhood doesn’t determine whether they get the help they need promptly or after weeks. At the end of the day, it’s human beings that all of those companies are dealing with, so how about they come up with recovery plans that would benefit both, low and high income families, simultaneously. In other words, not focus all of the resources on the people that are able to quickly pay for them, such as the upper class, but also spread some of the help to the middle and lower classes.  Like Levin, from the article, states “cost should be the last consideration.”

Question: Do you guys think that if the government/agency officials were part of the middle and lower classes, that then and only then advocate better for the people with less resources?

The concept of “environmental justice” is an interesting one; before reading “Toxic Soup Redux,” I didn’t have a clear understanding of what the term meant or where and how it applied. Afterwards, though, I definitely recognize that such environmental racism exists and that it is appalling. This aspect of discrimination is something that needs to be brought to the forefront of the environmental conversation. Environmental justice doesn’t just apply to the US: it is globally applicable. In my Politics of the Developing World class, we watched a documentary about gas flaring in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The people of the Niger Delta were forced to live with toxic gases being burned by foreign oil companies, and no matter how much they protested, demonstrated, and organized, they were continually ignored, and all because they lack wealth and influence. I would even argue that environmental racism is indeed worse in the developing world, where many of the environmental regulations we have here are either nonexistent or disregarded entirely. The environmental justice movement therefore must be worldwide: it’s the only way we’ll be able to combat not only environmental racism, but the behemoth of environmental degradation itself.