Disabled and left to fend for themselves

Published in Socialist Worker.

FOR PEOPLE with disabilities, Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath poses unique dangers.

The storm has also exposed how--as in so many other ways that affected poor and working class New Yorkers most of all--the government was disgracefully unprepared to protect the disabled from life-threatening danger, nor provide them with the services they needed in the days and weeks following. Once again, tasks that should be the responsibility of the state have fallen on volunteers.

Take Nick Dupree and his partner Alejandra Ospina, disability rights activists living in lower Manhattan, who lost power during the storm. On her blog, Crystal Evans-Pradhan recounted how she and a group of activists and others coordinated an effort via social media to save Nick's life.

Both Nick and Alejandra rely on wheelchairs, and Nick depends on a ventilator to breathe. When the power went out as a result of the hurricane, the two were stuck 12 flights of stairs above ground level--without electricity to charge batteries for the vent that Nick needs to stay alive, and with no landline and bad cell phone reception.

Luckily, Crystal, who lives near Boston, saw Alejandra's plea for help on Facebook and was able to mobilize a network of people to raise hundreds of dollars and secure the help of volunteers to supply Nick with batteries and distilled water. This was no small feat. During the several days that power was out in lower Manhattan, Nick required a new car battery every twelve hours, and each of these heavy, expensive batteries had to be carried up 12 flights of stairs.

Reading Crystal's account, it becomes increasingly clear that Nick may have died had he been forced to rely on the government for relief. Crystal had talked back and forth with FEMA's Office of Disability Integration and Coordination for hours without any luck, and after she travelled from Boston to New York with batteries and supplies, the Fire Department refused to help carry the items up the stairs to Nick and Alejandra's apartment.

Because Crystal also relies on a wheelchair, her friend Sandi Yu had to carry the supplies up by herself. Eventually, Crystal emailed FEMA to let them know that the potential crisis had been averted--no thanks to them.

In a second post, Crystal quotes Nick, who explains why he chose not to evacuate prior to the storm. Any hospital he went to would have had to switch to a hospital ventilator, which nearly killed him four years ago:

I wish there was a hospital I could trust to "first, do no harm," but right now, I just trust them to: a) put me on a ventilator that will maim or kill me; b) not have enough staff to feed or medicate me, because they have genuine emergencies on their hands. I am from Mobile, Alabama and was there until 2008; I tried to go to USA Children's hospital when Hurricanes Georges and Opal hit the Gulf Coast, and no beds or medicine were forthcoming (plus, the hospital lost their electricity, stranding us in our wheelchairs staring at dead elevator doors for hours during Opal), which forced us to un-evacuate, go back home.

And as Crystal points out:"[M]any of the 'evacuation centers' in the area were not wheelchair accessible, if we got him to one of those as the Red Cross had suggested." This included centers with makeshift ramps too steep for many wheelchairs, as well as one with "a sign telling people to ask security for access assistance, except that security is inside at the top of the stairs."

It is inspiring that individuals came together and went to great lengths to make sure Nick's ventilator didn't run out of batteries during the several days he was without power. But it is a case of criminal neglect that the city did not have disaster plans in place for Nick and others like him who depend on electricity to run lifesaving medical devices.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg waited nearly two weeks to announce that he was sending medical personnel door to door to check on people like Nick and Alejandra. Without the ad hoc efforts of volunteers, this would likely have been too little--and far too late.

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THE CASE of Nick Dupree is just one example of New York City's negligence when it comes to meeting the needs of disabled residents. Nor should it come as a surprise.

Just recently, a judge granted class action status to a lawsuit filed by advocates for the disabled that, according to DNAinfo.com, alleges that "the city does not have adequate plans in place to help the disabled population evacuate, find proper shelter or find electricity for medically necessary devices in the event of power failures." The lawsuit was filed last year, in the wake of Hurricane Irene.

For the 900,000 New Yorkers with disabilities, marginalization is not just an issue they face during emergencies like Hurricane Sandy. It's a fact of everyday life.

One of the biggest issues facing the disabled, particularly those in wheelchairs and others with impaired mobility, is the lack of accessible transportation. In New York, just 2 percent of taxis--less than 250--are wheelchair accessible, in a city with some 60,000 people who use wheelchairs.

By comparison, London requires all of its taxis to be wheelchair accessible, according to Jesse Lemisch of the Nation. Most of the subway system is inaccessible to those in wheelchairs, according to Lemisch:

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the United Spinal Association has brought suit against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for inaccessible subway stations: "It is an absolute disgrace that twenty years after the ADA was passed, more than 80 percent of the subway stations in New York are inaccessible," says attorney Julia Pinover.

Buses are the most widely accessible form of transportation for New Yorkers in wheelchairs--but as a result, cuts to bus lines have disproportionately impacted the disabled.

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THE FULL impact of the storm on the disabled is not yet fully known, but DNAinfo reports that some families have lost thousands of dollars in equipment, including electric wheelchairs and devices that allow people with conditions such as cerebral palsy to communicate. Replacing them will involve navigating the bureaucracy of FEMA and Medicaid.

Compounding this, organizations that serve the disabled are stretched thin, according to DNAinfo:

Amy Bittinger, director of Family Support Services for United Cerebral Palsy, said they have dozens of families in tough situations. One client is a disabled man trapped on the fifth floor of a building, where his family moved to avoid flooding. Unlike Schevon, who weighs just 90 pounds, no one is able to carry him down the stairs until the elevator is repaired.

Some adults without electric wheelchairs have been unable to return to classes. The agency may also have to dig in to its own charitable funds to help clients who don't receive federal assistance. The agency had to move 41 clients to temporary shelters from its locations in lower Manhattan during the storm and is still waiting for full power at its offices on Maiden Lane.

For the mentally disabled, the disruption to their daily routines and the lack of a prompt, coordinated comprehensive response from city, state and federal officials, has caused them significant distress.

Maria Vultaggio wrote in the International Business Times about the storm's impact on Felicia, her 21-year-old sister with Autism: "For those who know people with the learning disability, many of them don't like change. In fact, not only do they not like change, they find it virtually impossible to deal with change."

After days without power, Internet or cable, which Felicia relies on as part of her routine: "[S]he seemed to have reached her wits' end, and nothing we said could make her feel better. Her constant cries were starting to wear the family down."

CBS News interviewed Kirsten Nataro, who works on Long Island at a group home for the mentally disabled that went without power for several days after Sandy hit. She said that the disruption to the daily routine "just rocks their world to a different extent than I think a lot of people understand...regiment and schedule makes it a lot easier for them to function on a daily basis." She also worried about the chance of accidents in the darkened home.

According to the Associated Press, when medical personnel went door to door in the Rockaways on the second weekend after the storm hit, they found several residents in just the first three hours who had to be evacuated to a hospital. As AP reported:

Joseph Williams said that the home care aide who normally helps look after his 27-year-old son, who has cerebral palsy and needs a wheelchair, hasn't been able to visit since the storm. After days of trying to take care of him himself, in a flooded high-rise with no utilities, Williams gave up and carried him down seven flights, so he could be evacuated to Brooklyn.

With thousands still without power--and many of those likely to remain in the dark for several weeks to come--the potential remains for new crises and hardships facing the disabled in the disaster area to emerge.

There is also the potential for the storm itself--and the government neglect felt by some of the poorest, hardest-hit areas--to saddle a new generation with mental disabilities and impairments such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. According to the New York Daily News, children living in areas still without power face trauma that could have a lasting impact.

It is an outrage that the city, state and federal governments did not take steps to prevent the storm and its aftermath from having a disproportionate impact on residents with disabilities. Like poor and working class New Yorkers, in the richest city in the world, those with disabilities have been left largely to fend for themselves.

The storm is still taking a toll

Published at Socialist Worker.

TENS OF thousands of people in New York and New Jersey remain displaced or stuck in their homes without power, heat or water fully two weeks after Hurricane Sandy ripped through the Eastern Seaboard.

Even as Manhattan gears up for the holiday tourism rush that begins in the coming weeks, the government relief effort continues to fall woefully short of what's needed in some of the city's poorest, hardest-hit areas.

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Two weeks later, and still without power
Thousands of residents of New York City public housing are still without power, heat or hot water. Public-housing inhabitants make up half of those in New York City without these basic services, according to the New York Daily News. Residents have been catching colds and falling ill due to the lack of heat, and anger is mounting at the lack of response from the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).

Much of the city's public housing consists of high rises, and some exceed 20 stories. This has left residents on upper floors, including the elderly and/or disabled, stuck without any assistance or even information from city, state or federal relief agencies. While Occupy Sandy and other community organizations have worked to fill the gap by bringing food, water, blankets and even medical care to public-housing residents, these efforts have not been enough to meet the overwhelming need.

After some long overdue media coverage and a petition demanding NYCHA address the power outages, NYCHA announced November 11 that it would provide rent credits to tenants in January 2013, although residents will still be required to pay full rent until then.

Some residents worry that the city will use the storm as a pretext to eliminate public housing, continuing the pattern of gentrification and displacement of the city's poorest residents. In many neighborhoods, public-housing units are islands of low-cost housing surrounded by apartments only the wealthy can afford, and developers would no doubt jump at the chance to replace these projects with luxury complexes.

The city has left water to fester for days in the basements of public housing units, according to the Daily News. "[Red Hook residents] worried that as more days pass, the damage caused by Sandy will become irreparable," reports New York 1. "They're going to knock down those tall projects over there because their foundation is bad," said one area resident.

This fear is well founded. In New Orleans, the Hurricane Katrina disaster was used as an excuse to destroy large amounts of public housing, replacing it with "mixed-income" housing rather than new public units. Years later, many public-housing residents remained displaced.

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More than enough vacant housing
In addition to makeshift camps, FEMA has put thousands of people in hotels, and New York City is currently working with real-estate moguls in an attempt to work out a system to temporarily house displaced residents in vacant apartments.

It is still unclear what will be done with the tens of thousands of displaced residents in New York and New Jersey. While the city has made noises about a "shortage" of vacant apartments to house the displaced, the scarcity has nothing to do with a lack of space.

A recent survey by Picture the Homeless found that New York City currently has more than 3,500 vacant buildings, enough to house nearly 72,000 people as well as enough vacant lots that if developed could house another 128,000.

In some cases, apartments are left vacant in wealthy neighborhoods in order to restrict supply and drive up prices in a city where the priciest condos go for almost $100 million.

Cost is another barrier: FEMA's $1,800 per month allotment for housing assistance to the displaced is not nearly enough to cover rent in Manhattan, where the average rent is $3,418 per month.

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Atrocious conditions in a FEMA shelter
An investigative report by Bill Bowman and Stephen Edelson for the Asbury Park Press revealed horrific conditions inside a FEMA shelter in Oceanport, N.J. According to reports, evacuees spent the night in sparse tents that did not provide protection from freezing temperatures during the November 7 winter storm that followed in Sandy's footsteps.

"At [Pine Belt], the Red Cross made an announcement that they were sending us to permanent structures up here that had just been redone, that had washing machines and hot showers and steady electric, and they sent us to this tent city," said Brian Sotelo, a resident of the shelter ironically called Camp Freedom. "We got [expletive]."

FEMA has barred the media from the camp, and when evacuees attempted to complain about conditions, wireless Internet access was turned off, and residents were prohibited from charging cell phones. Sotelo continued:

My 6-year-old daughter Angie was a premie and has a problem regulating her body temperature. Until 11 p.m. Wednesday, they had no medical personnel at all here, not even a nurse. After everyone started complaining, and they found out we were contacting the press, they brought people in. Every time we plugged in an iPhone or something, the cops would come and unplug them. Yet when they moved us in, they laid out cable on the table, and the electricians told us they were setting up charging stations. But suddenly there wasn't enough power.

Evacuee Ashley Sabol told Reuters that when she arrived at the FEMA camp last on the night of the winter storm, she was given only one blanket. "There was no heat that night, and as temperatures dropped to freezing, people could start to see their breath," she said. Reuters reported that "the gusts of wind blew snow and slush onto Sabol's face as her cot was near the open tent flaps. She shivered. Her hands turned purple."

Men outnumbered women--and according to Reuters, "the women said it was impossible not to notice the leering of some men."

While Sotelo likened conditions in the shelter to "being [in] prison," New York state is considering housing some of the 40,000 made homeless by Hurricane Sandy in an actual prison--Staten Island's Arthur Kill Correctional Facility, which was recently closed.

"I lost everything, but I still have my pride," said 44-year-old Wally Martinez. "We don't have to stay in a prison. My brother was once in that very prison, and my mother used to visit him regularly. She used to tell me how miserable he looked and how filthy and disgusting that prison was."

The system of mass incarceration is one of the few public institutions to receive funding increases in recent decades while funding for public housing and social services has been cut, so this outrage should come as little surprise.

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The loss of community resources
Hurricane Sandy destroyed some of the few resources available for two of New York's most vulnerable and marginalized groups: homeless LGBT youth and immigrant day laborers.
The hurricane destroyed the Ali Forney Center's drop-in center, which provides housing assistance, HIV testing, medical and mental health care and other basic services to homeless LGBT youth. They have moved into a temporary space at the LGBT Center. According to Executive Director Carl Siciliano:

Everything was destroyed and the space is uninhabitable...This is a terrible tragedy for the homeless LGBT youth we serve there. This space was dedicated to our most vulnerable kids, the thousands stranded on the streets without shelter, and was a place where they received food, showers, clothing, medical care, HIV testing and treatment, and mental health and substance abuse services. Basically a lifeline for LGBT kids whose lives are in danger.

The hurricane accomplished some of what Mayor Bloomberg had attempted last spring before being stopped by opposition from activists and the City Council. In his budget proposal last year, Bloomberg proposed $7 million in cuts to funding for homeless LGBT youth, including the elimination of 160 of the 250 beds in youth shelters.

Personally, that cut would've been chump change for the billionaire mayor--less than 0.03 percent of his fortune of $25 billion.

Immigrant day laborers also lost a vital resource to Sandy. The storm uprooted the "Bay Parkway Community Job Center, New York City's only center for day laborers, and moved it a couple hundred feet inland from the Bensonhurst shore, cracking one of its walls in the process," according to In These Times. Police have denied day laborers access to the center.

The center provided job protection for day laborers, such as requiring contractors to guarantee an eight-hour day with lunch and minimum pay of $120. According to In These Times:

Since the NYPD's decision to deny entry to the area, workers have been forced to go back to street corners, where they are sometimes given up to 12 hours of work for as little as $90 and forced to buy their own lunches. Wage theft is also a common practice with the workers when they are not being hired under the stewardship of the center, which additionally provides safety and legal trainings.

Despite this loss, workers from the center have organized to participate in relief efforts, putting their skills to use in assisting those impacted by the hurricane.

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Warped priorities revealed
One story from earlier this month highlighted the warped priorities of governments that put profits and the needs of the wealthy before those of the working-class and poor majority. According to Bloomberg Businessweek:

As superstorm Sandy flooded Atlantic City, N.J., one area was shielded from damage by dunes constructed at taxpayer expense: casinos and other beachfront businesses and homes. Nearby, another set of residents didn't get government-paid storm defense. In one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, water from Absecon Inlet filled the streets, knocking down doors, sloshing into bedrooms, destroying furniture and leaving residents wondering if they would drown.

While Atlantic City casinos rake in billions in revenue each year, about one in four city residents live in poverty, two-and-a-half times the statewide rate. City, state and federal spending to build up sand dunes and reconstruct beaches in order to protect the casinos and other "valuable" oceanfront property amounts to some $40 million in recent years.

In 1996, "the [Army Corps of Engineers] called...for building about 1,600 feet of bulkhead in two sections along the inlet," where many of the city's poor, disproportionately Black and Latino residents live. Sixteen years later, the city's poor were left to face Sandy's wrath--unprotected.

Revealing the two New Yorks

Published in Socialist Worker and the Indypendent.

HURRICANE SANDY, the most devastating storm to hit New York City in decades, has left the city divided between areas facing ongoing devastation and those where life is returning to normal.
But the hurricane has also revealed divisions in the city that existed long before Sandy touched ground: between rich and poor, and between the workers who make the city run and the wealthy who reap the benefits.

Some sections of the city, such as Manhattan north of 39th Street, and inland parts of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, are practically back to normal. Residents have power, water and Internet, restaurants and stores are open, and for the most part, the bustle of the city has returned.

In the other New York, however, a humanitarian crisis is looming. As this article was being written on Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of people were still without power--and will be for several days more--after a transformer explosion that affected Manhattan below 39th Street.

Dozens of homes were destroyed in a massive six-alarm fire that hit Breezy Point in Queens on Monday night, leaving hundreds of residents homeless. NYU Langone Medical Center evacuated when its backup generators failed, and Bellevue Hospital, which suffered damage during the storm and was running on generators due to a loss of outside power, evacuated some 500 patients on Wednesday.

Laura Durkay, a resident of the East Village and a SocialistWorker.org contributor, walked over 30 blocks on Wednesday to charge her cell phone in a deli in Midtown. "People are helping each other and sharing information," she said. "A man parked his truck on 12th Street with his radio on, and people gathered around to listen to the news. Electricity is the biggest issue. Starbucks and other places are jammed with lines of people waiting to charge their phones." In addition, cell phone service for many is spotty or down in areas without power.

SW contributor Sherry Wolf, who lives in Park Slope in Brooklyn, described the scene at a makeshift shelter in her neighborhood:

The Park Slope Armory that usually serves as a colossal YMCA--built by the 19th century robber barons as a fortress against the poor--is currently packed with more than 600 climate refugees, mostly seniors and others in desperate need. They appear like any of us would who haven't worn dry socks in days--happy for the donated hot meals and a dry place to sleep, but uncomfortable, frustrated and frightened about what happens next. Even teens off school this week are helping out, though, so many of us have displaced friends staying with us. In fact, I've got two camped out at my small place.

Although the Red Cross said that food relief was on the way, on Wednesday, residents stuck in lower Manhattan were relying on the few restaurants, such as pizza parlors with gas ovens, that were serving food to long lines of those who could afford it. Other restaurants, such as Northern Spy Food Co., "served [free] lunch to everyone who lined up outside their restaurant at Avenue A and 12th Street," according to the Gothamist.

Another obstacle for the poor stuck in the blacked-out area of Manhattan: They can't use the assistance they receive for food purchases from the state's food stamp program because the subsidy is delivered electronically, via Electronic Benefit Cards. Wherever the power is out, the cards are useless.

Durkay described the contrast between her neighborhood and Midtown as "surreal. Midtown is basically functional, while my neighborhood is a disaster zone--no power or cell phone service, maybe one business of out of every 10 or 20 open, no water or heat for many people, a few restaurants and bodegas open, but no grocery stores. Two guys called it the 'dead zone.'"

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RESIDENTS OF public housing were especially hard hit, with nearly 60 complexes without power as of Wednesday. Durkay reported seeing residents on the Lower East Side, many of whom were without water or power, filling up buckets of water from fire hydrants outside their buildings.

Several of the public housing complexes in New York City are in Zone A, which is at greatest risk for flooding. Inside the high-rises of 14 stories high or more, thousands of residents, including the elderly, disabled and those with limited mobility, are stuck without water or power, with humanitarian consequences.

Hector lives in the Jacob Riis housing project, which is located in Zone A on the Lower East Side. "They shut down the elevators and hot water just a few hours after I found out about the mandatory evacuation on Sunday," he said. The pre-emptive shutdown, presumably intended to force people to evacuate, actually made it more difficult for those trying to get out.

According to Hector, most residents of his complex decided to stay. Some thought that Sandy, like last year's Hurricane Irene, which mostly missed New York City, would end up being mostly hype. Others, especially immigrants, had nowhere to go because they were without family in the area--or no way to get there because of a lack access of transportation.

The subway and bus system shut down at 7 p.m. on Sunday, and a cab ride from Manhattan to the outer borough, with extra fees for bridges and tolls, can run $40 or more.

While most of New York City's homeless population rode out the storm in one of the city's 46,631 shelter beds, according to Russia Today: "Lacking enough beds to house all those in need, many shelters made exceptions, allowing their buildings to go over capacity for the night. But although the efforts helped many in need, there still wasn't room for everyone."

As the hurricane approached on Monday, several homeless remained on the streets to face the storm unprotected. But billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg had little sympathy. "There are some people that are just very difficult," he told the New York Observer. "They want to avoid interacting with others, and how you get to those has always been a challenge and as far as I know, we're doing a good job with that."

One homeless man, 43-year-old James, told freelance journalist Julia Reinhart: "I can't go back to the shelter system for another two months...Only once you've been out for a year, can you be classified as long-term homeless, and therefore get access to additional assistance." When Reinhart asked about the emergency shelters, James said, "No, they don't want us there. These shelters are for the good folks, the families that get evacuated. There is no room in there for me."

Also left twisting in the wind during the storm were the thousands of prisoners jailed at Rikers Island. Most are awaiting trial, but can't afford or were denied bail, or are awaiting transfer to serve minor sentences. Amy in Queens reported that the buses to Rikers Island, which had begun running again by Wednesday, were full of people anxious to visit their loved ones to make sure they were okay.

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THE STORM also raises questions about the state of New York City's basic infrastructure--and the priorities of the city's elites.

ProPublica, reporting on the failure of backup generators at NYU Langone Medical Center, explained that part of the system was in the basement, which flooded. New hospitals build generators above the level floodwaters are likely to reach, but according to hospital trustee Gary Cohn, "The infrastructure at NYU is somewhat old."

Tragically, lives were put at risk, including infants in neonatal intensive care, who had to be transported while nurses helped them breathe manually. Years of medical research were also lost when the generator failed.

Cohn, the NYU trustee, is president of banking giant Goldman Sachs, which is helping fund the construction of a nonunion Harlem Children's Zone charter school on public housing green space, in spite of community opposition. There is plenty of money for union-busting and school privatization, but updating hospital infrastructure is apparently lower down on the list.

Nor is there a centralized plan for dealing with hospital evacuations. According to a nurse at a downtown hospital, because of the continuing power outage, every hospital below 34th Street in Manhattan has been ordered to evacuate its patients by the weekend. But there is no plan for where to put the patients--nurses and other staff are working around the clock to find hospital beds for all the people who are soon to be displaced.

Meanwhile, the demand for hospital beds may be increasing as the supply dries up--as a result of injuries from the storm, the potential for the spread of disease resulting from the breakdown of sanitation systems and the possible worsening of New York's rat problem.

Power is out below 39th Street because of an explosion at a Con Edison substation at 13th Street, next to the water on the eastern edge of Manhattan. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, a senior Con Ed executive said the explosion might have been prevented had they moved some of the equipment to a higher level to avoid flooding, but that is "going to take some time." It's unclear why Con Ed, which knew about the risk of flooding after Hurricane Irene hit last year, did not take this precaution sooner.

A Con Edison employee, speaking anonymously, said that while company executives and Mayor Bloomberg declare that most New Yorkers will have power restored in four days, the real timeframe could be weeks--because of the unprecedented scale of the damage and the challenges it poses.

Con Ed workers are putting in 12 to 16 hour shifts in dangerous conditions to restore power as soon as possible.

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WHILE THE contrast between Hurricane Sandy's impact on different sections of New York City is stark, the truth is that New York has been sharply divided for a long, long time.

It is both a playground for some of the wealthiest people in the world--home of the $175 hamburger, $3 million parking spot and the $95 million condominium--and the home of some of the poorest people in the U.S..

The scale of inequality is staggering. New York City trails only Moscow for the most billionaires with 57, yet it is also home to the poorest congressional district in the nation. The city's inequality surpasses that of Brazil, as Doug Henwood pointed out in a blog post last year: "The bottom half of the city's income distribution has 9 percent of total income; the bottom 80 percent, 29 percent...[the top 1 percent] has 34 percent of total income, compared with 19 percent for the U.S. as a whole."
David Rohde, a Reuters columnist, pointed out that Hurricane Sandy exposed how unequal New York City has become:

Divides between the rich and the poor are nothing new in New York, but the storm brought them vividly to the surface. There were residents like me who could invest all of their time and energy into protecting their families. And there were New Yorkers who could not.

Those with a car could flee. Those with wealth could move into a hotel. Those with steady jobs could decline to come into work. But the city's cooks, doormen, maintenance men, taxi drivers and maids left their loved ones at home.

Rohde praised "the tens of thousands of policemen, firefighters, utility workers and paramedics who labored all night for $40,000 to $90,000 a year," as well as "local politicians who focused on performance, not partisanship, such as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie [and] New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg."

But it is politicians like Christie, Bloomberg and others--along with the corporate elites they serve--who are responsible for rising inequality in the first place.

In the years before Hurricane Sandy devastated his state, Christie took the axe to the benefits of the very workers who are taking the lead in helping residents during this crisis. Christie, with the help of several Democrats in the state legislature, attacked public workers with legislation to "remove health insurance from collective bargaining, more than triple employee health care contributions and raise workers' pension contributions." And Christie has led attacks on teachers' unions in his state, using his platform at the Republican National Convention to demonize teachers' unions further.
Bloomberg, with a net worth of more than $20 billion, is the tenth richest person in the U.S.

Unsurprisingly, he opposed the extension of the so-called "millionaires' tax" that would have raised billions by taxing the very wealthy--money that could go towards repairing the city's outdated infrastructure.

During his term as mayor, Bloomberg's net worth has more than quintupled, while he slashed budgets impacting the neediest; cut funding to education, health care, child care, homeless shelters including for LGBT youth and libraries; and attacked the very public-sector workers whose response to Hurricane Sandy Bloomberg has hypocritically praised in front of television cameras.

According to an article from U.S. News and World Report, the city could have protected New York City from the flooding with sea barriers of the kind used in major European cities--at a cost of just over $6 billion. That's less than one-quarter of Bloomberg's current fortune--and less than one-third the amount that Bloomberg's net worth has increased since he became mayor.

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THE EFFORTS of those workers have done an enormous amount to reduce suffering during this crisis. Limited bus service was active by Tuesday, and full bus service as well as limited subway and train service was restored by Wednesday. The MTA workers who made this possible--and who run the largest public transportation system in the country, the backbone of New York City--are more than two-thirds Black and Latino workers, who have been working without a contract since January due to the MTA's unwillingness to give them a fair deal.

Meanwhile, the MTA has announced further fare increases that will push the cost of public transportation even more onto working class New Yorkers.

Con Edison, despite making over $1 billion in profits each year, locked out employees just a few months ago in order to impose a two-tiered pension system and increased health care costs that cancel out pay increases. These same employees are working around the clock in dangerous conditions in order to restore power.

Then there are Verizon workers, who went on strike in August 2011 after the telecommunication giant, also incredibly profitable, demanded cuts in their pension, health care and retirement benefits. They are currently working 12-hour days repairing the damage done to phone and Internet lines in New York City.

Just as Hurricane Sandy revealed the importance of dealing with climate change, it has also revealed the vital importance of public-sector and utility workers. Sandy has showed that these workers, so often demonized and attacked, are so central to making this city, and our society, run.
Not only that, but the closure of grocery stores and restaurants across much of the city highlighted the vital work performed by a largely immigrant workforce for low wages in New York City's service industry.

While a general strike actively demonstrates the collective power of the working class to shut down production, Hurricane Sandy illustrates--by disrupting the everyday labor of millions of workers--the essential role performed by New York City's under-compensated and under-appreciated working class.