New York Daily News Says Nice Things About Occupy Sandy; Minnesota Blogger Nearly Faints

Yeah, you read that right. The New York Daily News, which spent much of the past year hating on OWS, just did a favorable article, without a trace of snideness or hippie-bashing, on the Occupy Sandy movement:

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Occupy Wall Street has occupied itself with a humanitarian effort: getting supplies to the victims of the storm.

And you don’t have to be in New York to help. Occupy has launched online “wedding registries” on Amazon.com so people wishing to give aid can contribute from anywhere.

Anyone can purchase a gift from the Sandy Registries, which include fleece blankets, coolers, extension cords, flashlights, trash bags, diapers, and even clothing items like socks and underwear.

The items on the New York registry are shipped to the Brooklyn chapter of Occupy’s Sandy relief operation at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Clinton Hill, where they will be taken to those in need. Gifts from the New Jersey registry are sent to Occupy’s outpost at Barrow Mansion in Jersey City.

Looks like the NYDN has joined the ranks of Occupy’s fans. Hey, well, better late than never.

UPDATE: Here’s the main Occupy Sandy link: http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/

Occupy Wall Street Crew May Be Outdoing Red Cross In Helping New Yorkers And Jerseyites Hit By Sandy

That’s not me saying that, that’s Jessica Lustig of New York magazine saying that:

As the lights come back on in lower Manhattan, the power imbalance in parts of the city worst hit by Sandy is more literal than ever. Brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods like Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens were able to celebrate Halloween as usual, but just blocks away, many residents of the Red Hook Houses, the city’s second-largest housing project, are without electricity, heat, or running water, and growing increasingly desperate. Red Hook, like other areas with overheard power lines, could wait another ten days or longer for juice, according to Con Edison. So far, Red Hook has received little help from the city or FEMA, and a team of Occupy protestors have been heading relief efforts.

[...]

In an outcropping of 30 buildings, some of them high-rises of 14 stories, the Red Hook Houses hold some 6,000 tenants, and about half the buildings remain without power. Red Hook Initiative, which usually offers services like tutoring and college counseling, has been joined by about 15 people from the Occupy movement who have set up infrastructure and logistics for running hot-meal operations serving 500 to 1,000 people every day, bringing in medics, gathering information about people who are elderly or disabled and can’t leave their apartments or get down stairs, and broadcasting calls for volunteers and supplies from flashlights to ice for storing insulin.

The editors of NY Natives also have praise for Occupy, which put together their famous pedal-powered electricity generators and are using them to power water pumps to drain flooded basements and to provide power for cellphones and other devices:

In a press release as of November 1, MoRUS shared “The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) is using one of its exhibits to provide the community with free cell phone charging. Working with environmental group Times Up, MoRUS has set up Occupy Wall Street bike generators on Avenue C between 9th and 10th Street. For the past two days, volunteer riders have been pedaling as crowds of people gather to charge up their cell phones. For many people, this has been the first time they’ve been able to contact loved ones after Hurricane Sandy hit earlier this week. Meanwhile, C-Squat, the squat which houses MoRUS, has set up a street-side barbecue. They have been accepting donations and providing the community with free food.”

The residents of C-Squat have set up 2 grills, are receiving food donations and are essentially feeding the neighborhood. After pumping out there own basement and rescuing the Occupy Wall Street bikes, the residents pumped out the water from the bar next door and the deli on the corner. As one C-Squat resident exclaimed: “”It’s like a block party!”

And from the New Yorker, we hear this:

At the St. Francis de Sales church on B-129th Street, the church hall has been taken over by Occupy Sandy—an offshoot of the still-active networks of Occupy Wall Street. Supplies have been driven here from all over Brooklyn: back there are piles of blankets; on the tables here are diapers, baby food, and cleaning supplies; over there, clothes (grownup, child, baby); more than a hundred pairs of shoes lined up neatly on the bleachers. Residents of the neighborhood wander around the hall, filling bags. In the front entranceway Occupy volunteers are unloading cases of bottled water from a truck, handing the heavy cases one to the next, a bucket brigade to the back of the church. The volunteers move fast but the job lasts more than half an hour—it’s a big truck. In front of the church, long tables have been set up on the sidewalk, where volunteers are serving hot food and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

Donate to the Occupy Sandy efforts here: https://www.wepay.com/donations/occupy-sandy-cleanup-volunteers

Keep up with the Occupy Sandy activities and needs (both volunteer and supply) here: http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/live/

Inventor of pepper spray denounces its use by police

One of the people who developed pepper spray in its weaponized uses for the FBI, Kamran Loghman, was so shocked by what he saw at UC Davis and in Seattle that he denounced the manner in which police are using it. He is the recipient of three patents, but has done everything from film making to martial arts to “alternative treatments for addiction and alcohol disorder.”

Here’s the summary from DemocracyNow:

We speak with Kamran Loghman, the expert who developed weapons-grade pepper-spray, who says he was shocked at how police have used the chemical agent on non-violent Occupy Wall Street protesters nationwide — including students at University of California, Davis, female protesters in New York City, and an 84-year old activist in Seattle. “I saw it and the first thing that came to my mind wasn’t police or students, it was my own children sitting down having an opinion and they’re being shot and forced by chemical agents,” says Loghman, who in the 1980s helped the FBI develop weapons-grade pepper -spray, and collaborated with police departments to develop guidelines for its use. “The use was just absolutely out of the ordinary and it was not in accordance with any training or policy of any department that I know of. I personally certified 4,000 police officers in the early ‘80s and ‘90s and I have never seen this before. That’s why I was shocked… I feel is my civic duty to explain to the public that this is not what pepper spray was developed for.”

He makes the point that pepper spray is ideal in the situation where a policeman is trying to subdue someone out of his mind on PCP, where the person who is pepper-sprayed can be decontaminated shortly thereafter. To use it on people who are sitting on the ground is unquestionably an abuse–a form of torture–and completely irresponsible in a situation where the police don’t have any clear means to decontaminate the person within a reasonable period of time. Two people at UC Davis were hospitalized. I suspect that these out-of-spec usages are likely to expose significant long-term damage, including permanent scarring of the airways and esophagus.

The idiots from Fox News called capsicum a “food product.” Well, yeah. So is LSD, opium, and atropine, all of which are dangerous when used in inappropriate dosages. Arsenic is natural, and aflatoxin is organic. What’s your point, Fox?