UFT helps Occupy Wall Street

Cara Metz

Occupy Wall Street protesters (from left) Rory Simpson, Esther Mack, Cameron Healy and Caroline Losneck sort donated clothing in the UFT storefront.

Cara Metz The protesters have so many goods that they have decided to donate 15 percent of their surplus to local homeless shelters and community organizations and another 15 percent to other occupations across the country. Here, New York City public high school student Maxine Dade (in white), former Philadelphia Federation of Teachers member Claire Kaplan, and Bryan Smith, from Los Angeles, shelve donated food.

Venturing from their home base at Zuccotti Park, protesters from Occupy Wall Street have “occupied” — if only for hours at a time — spaces ranging from Washington Square Park, where university students participating in the movement regularly gather, to Gracie Mansion, where occupiers dressed as Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI ate cake outside the mayor’s Oct. 30 dinner with business and political leaders to discuss how to slash $4 trillion in federal spending.

But there has also been a friendlier “occupation”: Occupy Wall Street’s takeover of the first floor storefront that adjoins the lobby of the UFT’s 52 Broadway headquarters and is owned by the union. Once home to a large branch of the Amalgamated Bank, and still under lease to it, the space had been empty — until the union and the bank, impressed by the growing Occupy Wall Street movement’s powerful message, together decided to open it up to the demonstrators camped out two blocks away.

“We asked them what they needed, and they told us space to store their gear and donations,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said about the decision, taken after thousands of UFT members turned out for an Oct. 5 labor rally supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“Our offices are very close to their camp, both the UFT and Amalgamated support their message about the 99 percent and the 1 percent, and we had the space available — so we decided to lend a hand,” Mulgrew said. “It’s that simple.”

Simple or not, it has made a world of difference for the protesters, who typically receive between 250 and 300 packages of donated supplies every day, according to Cory Thompson, 36, of Minneapolis, one of the core organizers on the group’s “shipping, inventory and storage” committee.

Becky Wartell, a massage therapist from a union family in Portland, Maine, said that before the UFT opened up the storefront three weeks ago, packages had sat unopened inside a U-Haul truck at the park, with donations of food often spoiling. The group was planning to rent a storage locker when Wartell said she heard they had secured a space for free.

“I was expecting something small — and then I walked in here and I was blown away,” Wartell said. “It couldn’t be better.”

Now, the group has a comprehensive system for unpacking, cataloging and storing donations of all manner of goods. Packages arrive in the space, are opened and their contents and senders’ information are all taken down in a notebook — in order to later send thank-you letters, one activist explained. That information is then entered into an online spreadsheet, and the goods themselves are sorted and shelved, with dedicated space for food, medical supplies, shoes, tarps, body warmers, books, clothes, bedding and other items. From there, they are distributed to working groups — the comfort, kitchen, library and medical groups are the main recipients — in the park, as needed.

Michael Carder, a Brooklyn-based senior citizen active with Occupy Wall Street, expressed his gratitude to the union for opening up the space.

“We could not do this without the UFT,” he said. “When I heard that the teachers’ union was making this space available to us, it brought tears to my eyes.”