Surely, seeing really is believing and is bound to generate more empathy and tangible help. And just being there helps the tens of thousands afflicted, literally in our own backyard, know they are not forgotten and it’s not business as usual elsewhere. It’s up to the media, especially, to keep showing the ongoing devastation and telling the heartbreaking stories.

Before my dinner companion made this most telling remark, the column in progress began with the televised Rockefeller Center tree lighting extravaganza and how I thought calls for Hurricane Sandy aid should have been center-staged and not occasional, relatively low-key requests. And before they performed, the featured artists could have showed some sympathy and brought attention to the massive hardship and loss in places only a few miles away.

But mostly it was showbiz as usual, with too much spectacular background décor. The magnificent tree is all we need, and indeed less is more when it comes to its lighting. As always, I wished the performers had asked the adoring crowd there to sing along, but with fewer ho-ho-ho songs and no “can’t live without you” lyrics. Include family, close friends and good neighbors in the lyrics of the wildly popular “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” And “a home” is what tens of thousands in the tri-state area now most desperately need.

On a closing note, the Park Avenue memorial trees are the most meaningful and serenely lovely of all the city’s December traditions. Once again, this parade of illuminated fir trees are in hallowed memory of those who gave their lives in this nation’s wars. This blessed tradition was started in 1945 by several Manhattan mothers whose sons perished in that war, which so tragically was only a taste of more to come. As the holiday season hits full swing, don’t forget that above all, we must pray and work to prevent this most awful of all human-made disasters!
Dewingbetter@aol.com

Josh Fox

Hurricane Sandy hit New York just a month ago and yesterday, Josh Fox (Academy Award- nominated director of 2010′s Gasland) released his short documentary, Occupy Sandy, in the same fast, unconventional way that the Occupy Sandy relief effort popped up after the storm.

People were led via text message to the site of the film’s “guerrilla movie premiere,” which was ultimately revealed less than half an hour before the film began. Fox was still making edits on the latest version.

On the wall of a Mobil gas station, The Illuminator (the mobile projector that has been called Occupy’s “bat signal”) projected the film, as audience members, including people from affected communities, munched on popcorn.

NY Press pulled Fox aside after the movie to talk about the state government’s attitude towards climate change, the role of Occupy Sandy, and plans to re-purpose more gas stations into movie theaters.

NY PRESS: So Sandy hit just about a month ago and you already have this film out. When did you know you were making this film?

JOSH FOX: Oh, like a week ago. I mean, this was something very fast. It’s not polished.  It’s sort of like, we need to get the word out that this incredible disaster relief effort has come out of the Occupy Movement and what amazing work that they’re doing. And I had an afternoon – like a very rare Sunday afternoon off. And I was sitting in my studio in Brooklyn and I was like, “You know what, I’ve heard a lot about this, let me just walk  in there with a camera.’

I walked in the door and was just blown away by what they were doing. I said, ‘I have to go with them on some of these runs.’ I went to Sheepsheadbay, went to the Rockaways, and just met extraordinary people. And also just for myself, to see the damage… it is unforgettable. And to know that this is climate change in real and human terms.

Occupy Sandy is a disaster relief organization of the moment, but it’s also about the root causes of the disaster. You don’t go ahead and say, ‘Oh this is just a thing where we deliver food and water and heaters.’ This is about, ‘No, we have to address climate change.’

That’s why I come to a Mobil Station and show it on the wall. Go directly to the fossil fuel industry and say, ‘If it’s business as usual for you guys, we’re going to see New York flooded again and again and again. And it’s time for you guys to realize that you’re putting us all in peril.’

So what do you think needs to happen to go from Governor Cuomo recognizing that climate change is happening to having something actually be done about it?

Well, I really think this is a moment of change for the government. I mean, obviously, Governor Cuomo stepped out amidst this wall of climate silence right before the presidential election and broke the silence.

And now I think he and everyone else need to understand two very basic things. One, renewable energy can run the world. On existing technology. We have enough wind and sun to power everything that we need in this United States. And two, that it’s an economic engine that people can participate in at every level – at the corporate level, at the personal level, and it needs to be encouraged through leveling the playing field at the government level.

So, this is where we have to be, what we have to do. When we have hurricanes that are supercharged by global warming, we have to plan for a different way of organizing our economy.

Your film Gasland obviously had a considerably larger release and started a national conversation about hydraulic fracturing and agitated a lot of people in the natural gas industry. Do you have any plans to make a longer movie about this?

Well, we’re making Gasland 2, which does address issues of climate change. Fracking and natural gas is one of the worst fuels, in terms of its greenhouse emissions profile – both carbon and methane. And for this governor and the mayor of this city to be acknowledging publicly that climate change is a huge problem and, at the same time, still considering a huge drilling campaign throughout all of New York state, is a contradiction in terms.

Hopefully, when they realize, ‘Oh, we’re really at risk here,’ [they'll say], ‘We have to move towards renewable energy and completely abolish the thought of more fossil fuel production in NY state.’

There are two main points that you made in the movie: one, that people need to be held accountable for what happened, and two, that government agencies and established, large non-profits are not the ones that stepped in, but rather Occupy. Do you think that those organizations are really equipped or flexible enough to do what Occupy did?

Well, I don’t think it’s about saying anything bad about FEMA or the City at all. I think what this is saying is, acknowledge the brilliant work that’s being done person to person. The brilliant new model that’s being created here of mutual aid, not charity.

Mutual aid is people giving to people. Charity is rich people giving to poor people. This is coming from within those communities and I think it’s an acknowledgment of how we have to engage a whole new structure.

You know, Occupy Wall Street was dealing with a disaster also – the disaster of the banking collapse and the housing collapse. This is their environmental disaster relief. And I think what we’re finding here is we’re building a new community and a new way of talking about politics.

Would you ever do this kind of guerrilla release again?

Absolutely. Sure, I think once we’ve started to convert the gas stations and the other infrastructure in the fossil fuel industry to movie theaters and other things that people like, it’ll be easier.

OCCUPY SANDY from JFOX on Vimeo.

Photo by Ross Terelle, Megacast News

“Looks like food’s not the problem in Staten Island,” I say. Photographer Ross Terelle and I walk through dark streets lined with great mounds of garbage that used to be people’s lives. It’s a week after Hurricane Sandy hit. Most of the people we’ve met along the way have been trying to give food to us and to each other: “You guys need some hot coffee?” “We got pasta, you guys hungry? You seen anybody who needs some hot food?” “Pizza anybody? It’s still kinda warm.”

We pass a man standing in the doorway of a house that God must have punched, on Hunter Avenue. I ask him what happened and his story spills out in Spanish-inflected English—a messy narrative interrupted from time to time by people begging to give us food. His name is Alfredo Zapata. During Irene last year, the water level only rose a couple of feet, so he decided to stick it out. He put boots on and sloshed through knee-high water with his neighbor, surveying, protecting his house from the thieves who work disaster areas. This year they did the same but the results were different. Zapata and his neighbor barely made it to his house. They shut the door and then watched in terror as the water surged through his neighborhood. Wave after wave—he called them tsunamis—brought the water to within six inches of his ceiling, where it stagnated for a day, leaving a brown ring of grime to mark an astonishing high water mark.

“That’s got to be twelve feet,” says Terelle.

“At least,” I say.

Zapata invites us in. His house is empty; he lost everything. The floor is a layer of brown filth and foam, the walls are grimy, the framing shows through where the drywall has crumbled away, and the walls that remains are soft to the touch. The smell of mold and rot is overpowering. A young couple comes to the door and poke their heads in. “We have hot coffee and hot chocolate. Anybody?”

Zapata graciously declines and sends them on their way. When they are gone, he points to a green sticker on the door. An inspector came and told him his house was habitable. “He looked in and said, ‘Uh, well, you can live here.’” He imitates the inspector’s voice with a generous dose of idiot. “’Well, maybe dry it and you can sleep here. I’m going to put a green sticker on your door saying you can live here.’ Come on! You think a child could live here?” Terelle and I shake our heads. He snaps pictures. I don’t think a prisoner should live in this place.

“This is the same story for all my neighbors,” says Zapata. “They’re complaining. They say the government forgot us. They’re helping Long Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan. This is not Staten Island, this is Forgotten Island.” In the distance a sound like the Muslim call to prayer, but muffled, echos through the neighborhood. It’s a truck with a bullhorn: “We…have…food. We…have…water.” “We…have…food. We…have…water.” It could be something official—NYPD, Red Cross, FEMA—or it could be a local church or a youth group or volunteer firefighters or bunch of friends who feel guilty for being warm. The Occupy movement has been ferrying food and supplies to the hardest hit areas. But nobody has come by handing out lawyers or a warm place for Zapata’s family to live. I imagine he would line up for that truck.

He tells us some of the Staten Island deaths occurred within a stone’s throw of his house. The neighbor who died trying to save her dog. Two children drowned down the road. A couple in the house on the corner. And there could be more. He worries about the illegals hiding from the authorities; people waiting in the dark, afraid to light candles or turn on generators for fear of being expelled from Forgotten Island. We thank Zapata and wish him luck—both come out hollow—and leave him standing in his doorway thanking-but-no-thanking people, waiting for his insurance company to call him back. Back on the street, we walk gingerly around piles of busted dreams towards the safety of the Midland Beach Distribution Center.

Donna Schofield, the owner of Stationery Toy World at 125 W 72nd St., is comforted by a local customer after losing her home and inventory in Midland Beach, Staten Island, during Hurricane Sandy.

Hurricane Sandy spared most of the Upper West Side, but it did not spare Donna Schofield. On Monday, Oct. 29, the Stationery Toy World owner was away from her West 72nd Street store and at home with her two children and father on Staten Island’s east shore. Floodwater was in her house, climbing toward her second floor.

Police rowboats came to rescue Donna and her family. Some of her neighbors, whose houses did not have as many power lines above them as Donna’s, were rescued by helicopter.

“Not in a million years would we ever think that we would have to leave,” Donna told West Side Spirit. Though well aware that she lived in one of the city’s most dangerous flood zones, she had built her house several feet above previous high-water marks.

Other Midland Beach residents flocked to her home as their own houses began to submerge. Ninety percent of her neighbors remained in the coastal neighborhood, Donna said, despite a mandatory evacuation order from the city.

“We’ve stayed for every flood,” she added. “We were used to it. It wasn’t a big thing to us.”

As her house filled with water, Donna watched in dismay as three nearby warehouses also were inundated. They contained the entirety of her business’s inventory outside of what was in the store itself. Everything was destroyed.

Donna returned to work two days later at 125 W. 72nd St. completely overwhelmed. Her father was with her cousin, her 17-year-old son was with a family friend, and she had taken her 8-year-old daughter to move in at another friend’s home. The family salvaged what they could from their home, but not much was left. As the shock diminished, she realized what she needed most: clothes, toiletries, a bath mat.

Then word of Donna’s plight spread. Suddenly, Stationery Toy World—a store Donna opened with her father 26 years ago to escape wholesale and to pursue her dream of owning her own retail

business—was as busy as it had ever been. Families from across the Upper West Side began stopping by, offering their support to Donna in any way they could and sending their children on mini shopping sprees.

Last Friday, Donna joked with customers between laughs and tears as they asked her what she needed. Some came in to drop off clothes. Many reached across the counter to giver her a hug.

“It’s just unbelievable—the amount of support, and how much people love us up here,” Donna said, then choked up for about the tenth time that morning.

Customers spoke passionately in support of the store. Multiple locals likened it to the type of small business that characterized the Upper West Side years ago.

“The store represents a tradition in the Upper West Side that’s being destroyed by the real estate business. The new buildings going up, the new stores—they’re all the same,” said Hannah, an Upper West Side resident for over 40 years. This one, she says, is “well supplied, it’s up to date. They’re cheerful in spite of everything. It’s a wonderful store.”

“It’s one of the few mom and pop stores we have left,” agreed Morgan Humphries, a close friend of Donna’s who owns a Malaysian restaurant next door. “She’s still giving the feel of a store that cares. She puts her heart and soul into it.”

More than that, though, Humphries said, the store matters because Donna brings the neighborhood love. “She’s so genuine,” he said. “She brings a real positive energy, and a sense of reinforcement. She’s just so selfless.”

Karen Starr, a toy seller who quickly befriended Donna when they began working together, called Donna “one of the kindest, warmest, willing-to-do-anything-for-anybody people.”

“You can’t know Donna without it crossing over into personal,” she added. “Everyone has a unique relationship with her.”

Donna said that she plans to rent an apartment through the holiday season, and to see how her insurance and FEMA aid pans out before relocating in the city. She loved her house on Staten Island, she said, but thought it might be time to seek “higher ground.”

As far as Stationery Toy World is concerned, however, Donna has no plans of going anywhere. “If there’s any place to have a business,” she said in tears and with a big smile, “the Upper West Side is where you want to be.”

Via Wiki Commons

The New York Times is reporting Con Ed may have overcharged numerous electricity consumers this summer because of limited access to meters during the lockout. Many customers were charged more than ever despite, in some cases, being out of town for much of the summer.

(by Alissa Fleck)

At first, reports the Times, Con Ed blamed July’s supposedly unusually warm weather conditions. After the Times called their bluff, explaining July was in fact not as hot as July of 2011, Con Ed changed their tune, blaming “union troubles,” according to Gothamist.

Con Ed decided charges based on meters in Staten Island, Westchester County and the Bronx which the company could read remotely during the lockout. A spokesman for Con Ed said meter readings in those locations were “10 to 15 percent higher than what [they] anticipated [them] to be during July.” Because of this, the company decided to add approximately 10 percent to electricity consumption estimates for customers whose meters were not read in July, reports the Times.

Reportedly, Con Ed will adjust consumers’ bills to the appropriate amount if they can prove they were overcharged. The bigger issue seems to be Con Ed taking its customers for a bunch of rubes.

Photo Courtesy of Alissa Fleck

The Potomac Theatre Project (PTP) presented an evening tribute to Middlebury College’s New England Review Monday night, featuring five writers who have graduated from Middlebury and/or been published in the Review. The reading was the Review’s first in the City. PTP is dedicated to extending arts beyond the Middlebury campus and into major cities.

(by Alissa Fleck)

The established writers, many of whom had some of their work first published in the Review, read from recent or in-progress poetry, prose and novels in the Atlantic Stage 2’s 99-seat blackbox basement theater. Works ranged in subject matter from disfigurement to the unexpected anxiety induced by meditation tapes to life on Staten Island to NYC’s elite literary society. The reading may have felt incomplete without the token love poem to cigarettes.

Tone vacillated between serious and humorous, as writers read their work but also conversed with the crowd. Producer Richard Romagnoli described the event as unrehearsed but comfortable and revealing, an apt depiction of the evening, which was followed up with a wine and cheese reception.

Poet Patrick Phillips, said the Review “has a stolid and elegant continuity to it,” pointing to the literary magazine’s long-standing prestige. Poet Cate Marvin said: “You don’t find [bad poetry]” in the journal. “It’s very physically beautiful,” she added. She contrasted it with another prominent literary journal, which she finds to be aesthetically “butt-ugly.”

All the readers agreed the Review had provided them with a strong sense of community necessary to an, often solitary, writer. “You’re by yourself in a room having crazy ideas so having that connection…it’s incredibly valuable,” said short story writer Emily Mitchell. Marvin added: “Unless you’re social, you meet writers in a very pure way when you just read their work.”

The writers may have described themselves as “anti-social,” but the experience felt anything but.

Adriano Espaillat, phtoo courtesy of wiki commons.

Manhattan

As Rep. Charlie Rangel’s margin of victory narrows, he and Adriano Espaillat are going to court today.

A Dominic-American group is demanding the Department of Justice monitor the vote-counting process.

Marty Connor is leading Espaillat’s legal efforts.

Brooklyn

The degree to which the two Satmar sects played a role in Nydia Velaquez’s victory is in dispute.

The faction that opposes Vito Lopez claimed credit for Velazquez’s win.

Hakeem Jeffries was tapped for an important Democratic Party fundraising position.

Staten Island

Mark Murphy is touting an internal poll showing him down 15 points to Michael Grimm.

State Senate

David Carlucci’s Republican opponent won’t get the Conservative line because she supports gay marriage. (And she happens to herself be a married lesbian.)

Elsewhere

Harry Giannoulis of the Parkside Group and Hank Sheinkopf got into a bitter email exchange.

To read more from City & State click here.

Fresh Kills in Queens.

Bowing to public pressure, the Bloomberg administration today took the former Fresh Kills landfill off the table as a potential location for a pilot project to convert waste into energy.

In early March, the city asked companies to submit plans for a waste-to-energy facility inside the five boroughs or within 80 miles of its borders, but the only site specifically named as a possible location was a portion of the former landfill.

That set off a firestorm of criticism on Staten Island, where garbage has long been a controversial issue due to Fresh Kills, a massive landfill closed in 2001 after years of debate that is now being turned into a sprawling park.

New York City Councilman Jimmy Oddo, who joined other Staten Island elected officials in raising their concerns with Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday, praised the decision to reverse course.

“The thing that we bristled at was that the RFP said to the world, ‘You can show us how you can use any of these technologies within 80 miles of the city of New York, and oh, by the way there’s one publicly owned site that we would ask you to consider,’” said Oddo, the Council minority leader.

“You can’t lead on garbage with Staten Island, given our history,” he added. “We saw this entire issue through the spectrum of Fresh Kills.”

Oddo and other Staten Island elected officials had planned a protest near the former Fresh Kills landfill on Monday, but a fire forced them to cancel the press conference. A town hall meeting was also planned for later this month.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio also seized on the issue, and Council Speaker Christine Quinn issued a statement today applauding the mayor for excluding Fresh Kills.

To read the full article at City & State click here.