Updates

Several police vehicles, an armored tactical vehicle, and law enforcement personnel including swat team pointed their guns at relief workers while surrounding and then entering our base of operations in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico in the [...]

As the days grind up in number, creating time and distance from the thrashing winds and surging inundation of the deluge of water hurricane Maria pulled over Puerto Rico, statistics remain alien from the view [...]

Climate Chaos is happening.  Adaptation and preparation are essential.  Grassroots disaster response will be more and more necessary as we see more catastrophes – infrastructure, economic, and ecological collapses – and as corporations and governments seek [...]

We drove through neighborhoods in the mountains with local residents and our comrades from Guaynabo, delivered food, cases of water, water purification tablets, and provided health care to elderly residents and their families sweltering in [...]

A land abandoned is one in which no one has come to respond. That's not the case in Puerto Rico. Thousands of fema/military/ fbi/police and others have flooded the island and where, at first, we [...]

On this day, we must remember that for some communities, disasters have been unfolding for centuries, depriving people of life and liberty every single day. Indigenous peoples in the Americas have been attacked and oppressed [...]

Here are the latest sights, from Jojutla, Morelos. More words follow. I joined a group of therapists on a scouting mission We learned a lot, primarily that the army is in charge but no one [...]

The following is a report back for a relief trip to the Florida Keys made possible by the work of numerous folks involved with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (MADR). The immense amount of support and [...]

Our weeks, like our hearts, have been so full lately. As the phases of relief and recovery transition rapidly, we are reminded how much work is still in front of us. We ask ourselves, how [...]

Recently we spoke with Dezeray about her organizing with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (MADR) in the weeks since Hurricane Irma and how spaces such as the hub in Tampa are crucial sites for building solidarity [...]

Navigating forth, there are many communities that are still in utter shambles from the hurricane. And while FEMA guards structures of wealth, autonomous mobilizations have been getting supplies into the hands of those [...]

But there are alternatives, and there are real solutions.  Those solutions come from below.  They come from the power of the people, which is incredibly vast, if only we have the vision and the courage to recognize it.  We need radical responses to natural and unnatural disasters.  We need communities that are eager to build power, eager to adapt, and eager to serve those who are neglected by a system which empowers only those who already have the most power.  I saw, in post-Katrina New Orleans, the power that We The People have when we work together.  I saw the efforts of ordinary people, organized, dedicated, and listening compassionately, able to rescue schools and entire neighborhoods from the gentrifying bulldozers. And I saw groups led by poor people of color rise to challenge the legitimacy of city and state government, FEMA, and the Red Cross. In disasters or other chaotic scenarios we can often make great strides in short time by filling vacancies left by “power vaccuums” (when the government and other established authorities temporarily disappear).  In more stable times, we can still steadily gain power by organizing, struggling, fighting, utilizing our strengths (moral, relational, artistic); by acting strategically, creatively, bravely, diversely; and by never giving up. ...