Occupy Sandy in action: Church full of volunteers preparing meals, sorting donations to distribute throughout NYC.

The New Yorker's News Desk:

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.

The Red Cross doesn’t accept individual donations of household goods—these things, it says, need to be cleaned, sorted, and repackaged, and all that takes up more time than they’re worth. It asks for financial donations only. New York Cares requires its volunteers to go through orientation sessions, all of which are full till late November. But Occupy, as you would expect, has a different style.

Be sure to read the entire article at the New Yorker, and not just because it portrays the occupy movement in a positive light, it's because this is what occupy is doing when they aren't protesting in the streets. They're holding educational sessions, planning and organizing sessions...and when there is a need in the community -- as there is most certainly after the devastation left by Sandy (Mayor Bloomberg says as many as 40k NYers may need to relocate!) -- occupiers are able to step up and get the ball rolling with amazing speed.