Arturo Conde reports: In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, community-based volunteers led by Occupy Wall Street supporters have emerged to fill the void left by FEMA, and The American Red Cross. In less than a week, the Occupy Sandy grassroots movement has raised over $264,000 in relief for New York’s hardest hit neighborhoods, and have established a network of volunteers and materials that is empowering people to rebuild their communities.

Supporters of Occupy Wall Street credit their ability to respond quickly to the needs of people in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Red Hook and Coney Island in Brooklyn, Astoria and Rockaway in Queens, and Staten Island, to the profound sense of solidarity that their community-based network has promoted for over a year, bringing people to work together from different places and social backgrounds. But for a group of activists who helped organize Occupy’s relief effort from a hub in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, this solidarity is also emblematic of their Latino identity and heritage.

When Occupy organizers approached the Mexican community leader Juan Carlos Ruiz, 43, a week ago to ask for permission to use the basement of St. Jacobi Church in Sunset Park as a distribution hub for dispensing water, food, clothing, and other materials to people in areas that were damaged by the storm, he saw it as a natural extension of the volunteer work that he carries out at the Lutheran temple, which was originally founded by German immigrants in 1889.

While churches are often perceived as conservative institutions, many temples have become refuges and meeting places throughout American history, where people could address economic, political, and social injustices. And for Ruiz, who was ordained as a Catholic priest, these parishes are much more than a destination where believers commute to feel closer to God. For Latinos, he explained in an interview with Univision News, they are also places where they can reaffirm their cultural and religious values, and channel the spirit of God to promote a greater sense of solidarity in their immigrant communities.

“If you do not find God out there,” he said referring to the immigrant communities in Sunset Park, “you will not find him in here. The spirit of God is present in your neighbors, when you live day to day in solidarity.” And this communal spirit, Ruiz upholds, is the essence, the soul, of both Latino immigrants and Occupy Wall Street. [Continue reading…]