How Fear Of Occupy Wall Street Undermined the Red Cross’ Sandy Relief Effort

[LiberalElite]

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-fear-of-occupy-wall-street-undermined-the-red-cross-sandy-relief-effort?google_editors_picks=true

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In the days after Superstorm Sandy, relief organizations were overwhelmed by the chaos and enormous need. One group quickly emerged as a bright spot. While victims in New York's hardest hit neighborhoods were stuck in the cold and dark, volunteers from the spontaneously formed Occupy Sandy became a widely praised lifeline.

Occupy Sandy was "one of the leading humanitarian groups providing relief to survivors across New York City and New Jersey," as a government-commissioned study put it.

Yet the Red Cross, which was bungling its own aid efforts after the storm, made a decision that further hampered relief: Senior officials told staffers not to work with Occupy Sandy.
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[RiverLover]

1. That's truly fascinating. The media really did a number on so many good OWS people.

ndeed, some Red Cross responders were so troubled, they tried to work with people from Occupy covertly. They say they maintained a spreadsheet of Occupy contacts separate from the other contact lists to hide from senior Red Cross officials that they were working with the group.

Contemporaneous Occupy Sandy meeting minutes show some examples of fruitful cooperation. An Occupy Sandy volunteer described the Red Cross as being "our lifeline in terms of hot meals."

The minutes also record an incident in which two Red Cross employees showed up at an Occupy site in Brooklyn "asking if we could send them volunteers – and their stipulations for that: they couldn't wear any Occupy stuff." Those conditions were rejected.

The Red Cross responders who say there was a clear ban on working with Occupy differ on how long it was in place. One person says the policy was rescinded in a matter of days, but that it took weeks to communicate to all the corners of the Red Cross relief effort.

A third Red Cross worker says that the policy was still in place in December, more than a month into the relief effort.

Thanks for posting. Got my mind off of our purchased congress for a few minutes, anyways.