Following the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, Adam Greenfield explores his involvement in the Occupy Sandy movement of mutual aid that resulted in an anarchist-style organisation of people and resources to provide a network of solidarity. This is where state and institutional provisions fail in the wake of cataclysmic events.
 
Greenfield writes of the regularity of freak weather events and extreme heat that are the result of climate change, and labels this our Long Emergency. From this point of departure he explores historical attempts at self-reliance, such as Oakland’s Black Panther Party’s programmes in the 60s and 70s, municipal governance in Madrid and Barcelona, the solidarity clinics of post-Euro crisis Greece, and Rojava’s self-determination in northern Syria.
 
This is a clear-sighted examination of care as a matter of collective self-provision – outside the obligations of the family, the impersonal structures of state and market, and vertical structures marked by charity.  Greenfield asks whether these self-organised systems of mutual care formed in response to seismic emergencies can become more enduring? And if so, how?