Federal government studies Occupy Sandy movement

Mary Frances Schjonberg

[Episcopal News Service] The Occupy Sandy network that sprung up in the days after Hurricane Sandy devastated vast stretches of New York and New Jersey has caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which says it is looking to broaden future disaster relief efforts.

However, not everyone is taking that explanation at face value even though they say the report does a good job at outlining how well Occupy Sandy has worked.

Occupy Sandy tapped into the organization and volunteer power of Occupy Wall Street which had led a multicity protest movement centered on economic inequality just more than a year before Sandy hit. The report, titled The Resilient Social Network, calls Occupy Wall Street a “planned social movement” while it characterizes Occupy Sandy as “neither planned nor expected.”

The Episcopal Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, New York, in the Diocese of Long Island, quickly became the second major Occupy Sandy supply-distribution and volunteer-training hub. The activity at St. Luke and St. Matthew complemented the work begun a few days earlier at St. Jacobi Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn.

http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2014/03/18/federal-government-studies-occupy-sandy-movement/