Second Day of Action helps storm victims recover

Jack Miller

Bronx UFT members participating in the UCAN program help clear debris from a home in Far Rockaway.

Jonathan Fickies

Patti Vitucci, the chapter leader at PS 1 on Staten Island, lays out waterlogged photographs in a Midland Beach home.

Jonathan Fickies

Molly Elverson (right), a teacher at Jonas Bronck Academy in the Bronx, helps with demolition in a Staten Island home.

Marking another UFT Day of Action on Saturday, Nov. 17, nearly 1,000 volunteers traveled to the city neighborhoods devastated by Hurricane Sandy or came to UFT headquarters to help stuff backpacks with supplies for displaced students. On Staten Island, members did demolition and cleanup work on Midland Beach homes alongside teachers from upstate Schoharie who had come to the city for the second time to help the members of the union that helped them after Hurricane Irene last year. On Coney Island, UFT members joined two busloads of members from AFT Connecticut and students from Franklin D. Roosevelt HS for a full day of community relief work. In Far Rockaway, 230 volunteers, including 100 members from the Bronx and 50 Public Employees Federation members, helped clean up homes and distribute relief supplies on the ravaged peninsula. One group of UFT volunteers helped chef Michael Shanker, the son of Eadie Shanker and former UFT and AFT President Al Shanker, prepare and distribute hundreds of hot meals for area residents.