[Noisebridge-discuss] Fabulous hacker hurricane story - from Boston to NYC with ventilator batteries

[Liz Henry]

[tl;dr] Please pass this on to hackerspace folks in NYC.

This is a great writeup from Crystal who I have been working with the
last couple of days to get help to our mutual friends in Lower
Manhattan, Nick and Aleja, who I know from their disability activism
work, writing, and art.

Crystal and Sandi did an incredible amount of work, jumping into this
situation trying to get help from the Red Cross, FEMA, the MDA, and
others, and finally picked up some car batteries and other equipment
themselves. They road tripped down to NYC, Sandi went up and down the 12
flights of stairs many times, and they managed to vastly improve Nick's
situation by increasing the number of hours his breathing equipment
could go between recharges at the nearby fire station.

Meanwhile, as they did all this, Crystal coordinated an increasingly
large team of people over Facebook and Google Docs.

http://littlefreeradical.com/2012/10/31/unconventional-aid-helping-nick-dupree-social-networking-style/

Here is the collective doc to coordinate this effort:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I2qc7n6YFasKCFz_3rr_Ue3Xwu-3KvTZJXT4weFnnTY/edit

Here's Nick's blog:  http://www.nickscrusade.org/about/
and Aleja's profile on GimpGirl & FB:
https://www.facebook.com/superaleja +
http://www.gimpgirl.com/about-us/contributors/


If anyone can pass this on to NYC Resistor and other New York hacker
groups, Nick and Aleja could still use help and equipment. They need
marine batteries, power inverters, and various battery chargers to help
keep their medical devices and Aleja's wheelchair running.  There are
people lugging water and other supplies up 12 floors, driving their PCAs
to work and home since the subway is out, and doing all sorts of other
stuff like laundry and so on.

While FEMA runs around power tripping with its collective thumb up its
ass, telling people to call 911 (not an option here) this is the sort of
thing that people like us can do working together, some battery and
power inverter knowledge, and the net...

There is so much more to this story, and so many fierce ass kicking
hackers, many of them also people with disabilities who are usually only
described in the media as helpless poster children or supercrip athletes
but who have to be hackers on their own equipment (which is proprietary
and closed source in the most evil ways) in order to survive or to get
internet access at all.

Anyway.  Help out if you can!

Cheers,

Liz





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Liz Henry
liz at bookmaniac.org
http://bookmaniac.org

"Without models, it's hard to work; without a context, difficult to
evaluate; without peers, nearly impossible to speak." -- Joanna Russ