Yesterday, residents and volunteering occupants of Rockaway Park in Queens NYC gathered at hurricane relief hubs to share Thanksgiving dinner with one another. Heres video of the afternoon feast, the solar arrays powering the event, and some speeches from organizers and residents:
Despite conditions that still feel aliensand and dust and rubble under the brilliant sunthe community feasted away on turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes at a gathering powered by solar electricity and human determination. Members of Occupy Sandy and other volunteers coordinated an influx of donated hot food and served it to the crowd.
For everyone, it was an unusual Thanksgiving, whether that meant people were making the best of a post-hurricane holiday, breaking their tradition to help others or celebrating a holiday that in the past hasnt been tradition.
The weather was fantastic, repeatedly praised by those in attendance. While the warm sun made everyone comfortable, it also gave us electricity through two major solar arrays capable of sustaining 12 or 16 kilowatts of continuous electrical output. While Greenpeaces Rolling Sunlight kept the lights on inside the church at Beach 100th Street, the SolaRover unit lent to us from Colorado powered a food truck that was refrigerating and preparing food on site.
