New York Post-Sandy Is a Lesson in How Social Injustice Will Amplify the Ravages of Global Warming [View all]

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AlterNet / By Steven Wishnia

New York Post-Sandy Is a Lesson in How Social Injustice Will Amplify the Ravages of Global Warming
There's a reason some of New York's public housing communities were forced to wait so long for basic services to be restored after the storm.

November 18, 2012 |

This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org.


Sixteen and a half days after Hurricane Sandy sent an 11-foot wave surging over the boardwalk, Coney Island is slowly resurrecting itself. Workers carry sheetrock into gutted bodegas on Surf Avenue, the street closest to the ocean. A block inland, a hammer resounds inside the United Community Baptist Church on Mermaid Avenue, rebuilding the wrecked pulpit. The church took on five feet of water, and “nothing in here was salvageable,” says Pastor Connis Mobley, but he hopes to have power and water restored by the spring.

The Surf Neighborhood Gourmet Food bodega is restocking, the sandy sidewalk out front piled with plastic-wrapped pallets of paper plates, cups, Clorox Wipes, and beer. It’s the first grocery in the neighborhood to reopen, says manager George Fox, and everything has to be replaced. “What was good we donated to the community. We threw out everything else.”

The neighborhood’s supermarkets are still closed. The nearest open one is on the Brooklyn mainland, more than a mile away, says Tiesha, a 42-year-old mother who just picked up donated food in the parking lot next to the minor-league Brooklyn Cyclones’ ballpark. About 50 people are lined up there. Women pushing strollers with toddlers in pink parkas fill shopping carts with cases of bottled water and tiny school-lunch cartons of milk and orange juice, boxes of crackers and pasta, cans of beef stew and jars of spaghetti sauce. An orange-vested volunteer calls out “Next!” and “Keep it moving.” .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/new-york-post-sandy-lesson-how-social-injustice-will-amplify-ravages-global-warming