first hand

I spent the day at Occupy Sandy Relief in the Sunset Park neighborhood, Brooklyn NY. I unloaded my carful of donations at St. Jacobi Church, and then went to the volunteer orientation in the sanctuary. At 9 am, there was a good-sized group of people there. The first topic at orientation was horizontalism. I could really feel this in operation in a few ways:

I floated around from job to job. I’m kind of a pain-in-the-ass volunteer, because I have a hard time sticking with an assignment. If I’m bored, or feel something else needs more hands, I will float on over there. Sometimes I touched based with my original assignment to see how it was going, but maybe I just abandoned it. I wasn’t real good at the donation screener job, which involved confronting donaters and making sure they weren’t bringing in clothes. The church basement was drowning in unsorted clothes.

You learn to ask and answer tons of questions. I immediately started fielding questions. For some, I had no idea what the answers were, but tried to make up something that sounded reasonable and made sense. For others – “where’s the bathroom?” – I knew the answer and was happy to provide it.

The clothes sorting area really needed better organization. A few people valiantly tackled the mountain of unsorted clothing but were not making much headway at all. When runners coming in to “shop” for the delivery vehicles, they couldn’t find what they needed even in the sorted pile. I was visualizing a better organization for that area, but I couldn’t step up to the plate enough to implement it. The biggest need was blankets, but there were very few blankets and they were buried under lots of other bags. Two Spanish-speaking women were helping out in the clothes, and I couldn’t remember any Spanish words whatsoever. French words would come to mind – “chapeau” – but no Spanish.

I stuck with clothes sorting for quite awhile, then I moved to being donation screener. This was not a good job. No one wanted to do it. You were stuck at the door and you had to be a policeman. I got better at it. I found out body language is helpful. Stand there with authority, blocking the door. Then – ask people questions – “Are you donating?” They mostly were okay talking to you and itemizing their donations. Luckily for me, in this shift, there were not many donations coming in. People from the neighborhood hearing that there were giveaways going on were supposed to be told that this was hurricane relief, and they could leave their names – the church would get back to them.

After donation screening, I took my leave. Another feature of horizontalism is that you don’t have to sign out or even tell anyone you’re leaving. I told my co-worker Leslie that I was leaving and gave her back the jacket she loaned me. (Also – donation screening is a little chilly, standing outdoors).

I wasn’t ready to go home so I went to the church two blocks down, where they were preparing food. Another large number of volunteers bustling around. It took a few moments before I found a job. I approached a few people asking if they needed help. Third try, a young man named Gus making tuna sandwiches. Yes, he needed help and directed me to latex gloves. Several hours of tuna fish sandwich making, cutting, bagging and toting ensued.

Volunteers are great people. So glad to see Occupy doing this service. It is so homegrown and free-wheeling. “Mutual aid.” I can’t resist it.