Text by John Washington, photography by Tracie Williams.1

t is all very scary.” On a warm, summer day in Morristown, N.J., Oscar was sitting on the stoop of the apartment he was sharing with his partner, Daniela.2

Oscar has lupus, fibromyalgia, and what can sometimes be debilitating arthritis, and like many people we talked to in and around this town of less than 20,000, a little more than 30 miles from Manhattan, he hadn’t ventured beyond his front yard in months. “Very, very scary.”3

Nine months into the coronavirus pandemic, after more than 286,000 deaths and countless lives interrupted or shattered by loss, the support most Americans have received from the federal government has been a one-time check for $1,200. The severity of the economic crisis millions of Americans face as we enter a seemingly unstoppable “third wave” of infection has not been matched by robust support at the federal level. That has left states and cities to make their own rules, with schools reopening, then closing again, gyms and bars staying open while curfews are imposed, in patchwork attempts to slow the virus’s spread. Even as the scourge has spread from coastal metropolises to cover the rest of the country, Americans are desperate for a return to the rhythms of life and work and human contact. For the stricken and the bereaved, however, any sense of normalcy remains a dream. For those housebound from underlying health conditions rendering them immune-compromised, everyday life since the onset of the pandemic is incomparable to life before.4

In Morristown County, the lack of decisive action at the federal level has left people to fend for themselves. But they haven’t been doing so alone: For months, residents here have organized to help their most vulnerable neighbors. Through creative fundraising and the special kind of community that forms when neighbors help their neighbors, Mutual Morris, a mutual aid group with a roster of over 100 volunteers, is providing a lifeline for about 500 households during a very dark time. Just after the first wave of the pandemic receded, photographer Tracie Williams and I met with some of these families. Everyone we spoke to had a family member who was immune compromised, and access to transportation posed a barrier for most. As residents cracked open doors, visited with us (at a distance) in their yards, the fear was palpable: Masks on, tears welling, and the mood plaintive.5

The founders of Mutual Morris, local activists Theresa Markila and Renee Shalhoub, started organizing in their community last February, handing out oranges—to boost immune systems—as well as hand soap and safety cards explaining the dangers of the coronavirus. Through that work, they began delivering school lunches and connecting with families who needed help shopping for groceries, working with mostly immigrant and low-income families. The work has expanded to wellness checks, tutoring, and helping to plan for the disruptions the pandemic is causing for young students’ educations. Now, they’re organizing an online children’s book drive and collecting donations for warm clothes for winter. And as the CDC’s moratorium on evictions is set expire at the end of the year, Mutual Morris is educating tenants about their rights.6

Vital to the concept of mutual aid is the mutual support that all participants in the group provide to one another—one-way charity this is not. Mutual Morris trains participants on the skills they need to self-organize. While the exchange isn’t necessarily reciprocal; it is based on the fundamental principle of mutual aid: taking only what you need and giving what you can. Markila and Shalhoub make clear that they are not following the standard nonprofit model. “We want to help communities empower themselves, help them become self-sufficient,” Shalhoub said.7

Mutual aid groups like Mutual Morris have sprung up across the country during the pandemic, and the people involved in these groups volunteer their time and resources to help folks they may have never met, ensuring they have medicine, food, housing, even legal services. As inspiring as these efforts of communal support are, they are also an indictment of the government’s failure to provide for the millions of people who need support during this incredibly difficult time. This isn’t a new story—the gutting of our social safety net has been in the works for decades, and will continue without vocal, grassroots demands to guarantee access to housing, food, and health care. In the meantime, as the Covid-19 caseload continues to climb precipitously, the principles and practice of collective care will be crucial in mitigating the devastation caused by a system that values profit over human life.8

Heather and her children, Eric and Isabel

Poised with her two children on her three-step concrete porch, Heather struck a tone of defiant gratitude in regard to her months-long lockdown. Heather suffers from a host of chronic maladies, including immune thrombocytopenia, a serious risk factor possibly leading to increased mortality with the coronavirus. As such, she hasn’t risked venturing into public since March. “I don’t want to not be there for them,” she said, patting both her two children on their heads. The three wore blue N-95 masks cinched tightly over their faces.9

Heather’s husband, Eric Sr., started stocking up food, especially canned soup, as early as January. Because his father is bedridden and in need of constant care, Eric Sr. spends most of his days at his father’s house, working remotely and tending to his needs—which leaves only an hour in the evenings for him to be with his family at home. “I don’t blame anybody for this, but I just want them to fix it,” Heather said, referencing the political response to the coronavirus. She isn’t looking for handouts, pays for the groceries that Mutual Morris volunteers deliver for their two households, donates for other families in need, and, early on in the lockdown, had set out boxes on her porch for her neighbors to come and retrieve basic food items. When the district abruptly paused school lunches, and the call went out for volunteers to help quickly organize lunch preparation and deliveries, she was one of the first to answer that call.10

Mutual Morris was a lifeline for Heather in the early days of the pandemic when grocery delivery services like Instacart were completely overloaded. Now that she’s able to get her groceries delivered again, Heather has been able to get back to something resembling her usual routine—but that doesn’t mean she has scaled back her involvement with Mutual Morris at all. “I like giving back when I can, it makes me feel good. Especially because I can’t go out.” Mutual aid, she said, “is not progressive at all. It’s ancient.” She compared support networks to the collective action of Amish barn-raising. “The reality is, this is not something new. This is not what I consider progressive at all…. This is an old, old thing, what people used to do in the old days to help each other.”11

As we spoke, she paused briefly, and then noted that she had just had a minor seizure. “I also don’t drive because I have epilepsy, you know I have never been seizure-free.”12

Oscar, Daniela, and their daughters, Ninnah and Hailey

Sitting on the stoop of their apartment in Morristown, Oscar and his partner Daniela were in grieving: A close friend had died two days before in a motorcycle accident, but they wouldn’t be going to his funeral. Oscar grew up poor in Colombia, started working when he was 8 years old, and has been hustling construction jobs in the United States since the mid 1990s. As his lupus—an autoimmune disease triggered by environmental factors such as heat, depression and stress—began advancing, he struggled to work. Daniela, too, who grew up between New Jersey and Colombia, struggled living down an abusive childhood. They and their two daughters were homeless for a couple months beginning in late 2019. They managed to get back on their feet by February, but then the coronavirus hit.13

“It’s so hard, being a man…and not being able to provide for my family,” Oscar said, breaking into tears. Given his medical vulnerability, he doesn’t risk searching for work anymore. “It’s hard for me to reach out for help because I always provided on my own.” And yet, with two young girls, Ninnah and Haley, he had to overcome that pride.14

“With the two kids it’s been…,” says Oscar, emphasizing the inadequacy of the word—and Daniela nodding along—“hard.” When we met them, they had hardly left their apartment since March, insisting on taking extreme precautions: leaving shoes outside, wiping down grocery bags, bleaching the house. “But it’s the same, every day,” Oscar said. “It’s like being locked up, though sorry for using that term.” Some mornings his lupus and arthritis make it difficult to get out of bed, and because of the excruciating pain he is tempted to go to the emergency room so they can “knock him out.” “I’m scared every day, I don’t show her,” Oscar said, referring to Daniela, “but everyday I’m crying because I don’t know if tomorrow I’m gonna be here. I don’t have a home that I can say is my house. And to be honest, I have nothing to leave them if something happens to me. So everyday it gives me flares, because of the stress.”15

Working with Mutual Morris—he not only receives school lunches and personalized groceries, he also volunteers his time by making phone calls for them—has given him some direction and welcome distraction. “They basically trained me how to come out, how to talk to people and stuff like that. So, it’s something positive that came out of this,” he said. “For me to get to know these families and call them was a big relief for me.… They have kids, you know. And we need to reach out because some people don’t know that we are here, some people are too shy to come out, like me.”16

After talking a while, Daniela brought out the two girls to join the family on the stoop. They were both shy, and clinging to their father, who put on a tougher face in front of them. “The pandemic has affected me a lot,” said Oscar. “I’m sharing my story because I want people to know what it’s like for people like me. I feel stuck and I’m not sure how to move forward.”17

“I like religion,” he said, unprompted. “I like God. He’s everything for me. I try to do good deeds. I don’t go to church all the time, but I try to be a good person.”18

Frances, Mary, and family

Mary moved back from North Carolina, where she had been living for 40 years, just as the pandemic was taking hold. Her husband had died shortly before, and she felt alone, missing her family back in New Jersey. Frances, her niece, welcomed her into her home with open arms. Mary’s not alone now, as she sits on the sun-scorched porch with a passel of nieces, children, and grandchildren milling in and out of the adjacent apartments, The household had remained in their bubble all summer, except for Frances, who started working with Mutual Morris after she saw Shalhoub drop off deliveries at Oscar and Daniela’s apartment nearby. “I’ll do whatever I can to help the kids,” Frances said.19

Mary suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and fibromyalgia and was hospitalized for three weeks this year because of upper respiratory complications, which at first the doctors suspected were related to the virus “I lose my breath easily. It’s hard to wear a mask.” She was a certified nursing assistant before she retired, and recognized the dangers of Covid-19 quickly.20

As we were talking, Frances returned and sat down in a narrow folding chair in front of her apartment door, hugging the shade. She had just delivered about 20 school lunches to children of parents she cared for over the past 42 years as a daycare provider. And now, she “delivers lunches, news, and humor to the projects,” as she calls them.21

The family still interacts with their neighbors, but as Mary put it, “We be teasing them about the coronavirus,” and they make sure to keep at least six feet of distance. “I don’t like the way it’s been handled” by the government, Mary said.22

Frances was harsher about plans to reopen: “Hell to the no,” she said emphatically. She is particularly concerned about her granddaughter, who is 4 years old and has cerebral palsy. “Because for those kids that have difficulty, like my granddaughter, who was going to school every day to help with her physical therapy, occupational therapy, you know walking, talking, moving all that stuff. Now, they actually,” she says, laughing at the absurdity, “Oh Jesus, they actually are upset with us because we don’t have her on video.” Efforts at online learning aren’t “doing jack for her,” Frances explained, except agitating her. “I’m very, very, very upset about that, because that puts her behind and that’s unfair to her.” The conversation flagged for a moment, as Frances and Mary both mulled the difficulties of the coming school year.23

With a household ranging in school ages from preschool to high school, the added risk of contracting the virus via in-person attendance is high. “I’m terrified,” said Frances, who is the primary caretaker in her home, “because I can’t afford to get anything right now.”24

Orieta and her son, Damian

Originally from Guatemala, Orieta and her husband have been living in the United States for eight years. (Orieta requested that we use pseudonyms for her family.) Despite her initially settling in comfortably, the last five years have been riddled with adversity. It started with a lump in her stomach, which turned out to be a tumor, and required multiple surgeries. Soon after recovering, Orieta gave birth to her first child, Damian, who was soon thereafter diagnosed with leukemia. “I was so depressed that I got sick again. I thought he was about to die,”Orieta said. Damian responded well to treatment, but in May, he contracted the coronavirus. He sank into a coma, and again the family thought they might lose him. “I don’t care if we don’t have anything. I just want health,” Orieta said. Damian, back on his feet, peeked out the window, and then came around to hug his mother’s legs.25

Orieta grew up speaking Mam, and never went to school. She only learned to read and write, and only learned Spanish once she got to the United States. She’s now fluent in Spanish and is working on her English. For her own stress, and other ailments, her family back in Guatemala sends medicine to her. Orieta’s husband still works in landscaping, but struggles to make enough to support the family. “I hope there’s a tomorrow in which we wake up and there’s a medicine for coronavirus,” she said.26

Mutual Morris continues to deliver school lunches and church donation boxes to Orieta’s family, and has now paired them with a Spanish-speaking mother-and-daughter team who come by every Thursday to deliver specific grocery requests like diapers, toothpaste, and beans.27

As Orieta is overwhelmed with taking care of Damian and her 16-month-old son, Alejandro, she doesn’t have the means to help Mutual Morris now, but plans to do so in the future. “I’m just so thankful for all the work” that Mutual Morris does, she said. “I don’t know what we’d do without y’all. I’m grateful to God.”28

Libna and her children, Genesis and Gisella

Libna and her husband, also from Guatemala, have been in the United States for nine years. Her husband works in landscaping; Libna, part-time as a cashier at McDonald’s. They have both continued to work during the pandemic, though they have had their hours cut. Besides the fear of contracting the virus, they are dealing with Genesis’s heart issue—she had surgery in January, but is doing much better now. Gisella, doing cartwheels throughout our conversation, has been especially sad, Libna said, missing school, missing her friends, and worried in general.29

Before the pandemic hit and their hours were cut, Libna and her husband were sending remittances back to their family in Guatemala every few weeks. They’re no longer able to send anything. They’re also worried about simply having enough to eat, and the girls welcomed the grapes, strawberries, and bananas Shalhoub brought as a treat.30

Libna said she has noticed more anti-Latino discrimination since the start of the pandemic. All of the white Americans who worked at her McDonald’s quit, she explained. “People don’t realize that we [Latinos] are working hard for them. We’re dragging this country forward right now, and we’re dying for it. People think we’re getting sick more because we’re not careful, but it’s because we’re still working.” One McDonald’s customer told her recently to “go back home,” and that people like her are spreading the virus. But her home, Libna insists, is in New Jersey.31

“I’m so scared,” said Libna. “I don’t want to go to work anymore,” she said, “but I have to for my family.” School openings have posed an additional risk to exposure for their family. And although Genesis’s health is currently stable, she has been having dizzy spells. The doctor told her she may need a heart monitor.32

Besides working as a cashier and raising her two daughters, Libna makes calls for Mutual Morris, doing wellness checks, reaching out to other families who may have unmet needs. Libna also stepped up to lead in the effort to prepare school lunches when the district put that service on pause. When we asked her if there was anything else she wanted to say about the people who have pitched in to make Mutual Morris happen, she said, “There are no words to thank you.”33

This article is by Sophie Kasakove, with photography by Tracie Williams.

n the meeting room at Red Hook Initiative (RHI)—a Brooklyn community-development nonprofit dedicated to youth empowerment, social justice, and sustainability—a large painting hangs high up on the wall, bordered by the words “rebound and rebuild.” It shows the neighborhood of Red Hook in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, with waves crashing on a row of sandbags, as cans of food, light bulbs, and batteries lie strewn about haphazardly. Last summer, a group of residents of Red Hook’s public-housing developments, just across the street from RHI, gathered here for the orientation meeting of RHI’s 10-week emergency-preparedness training, called “Local Leaders.”

Tevina Willis, a Local Leaders facilitator, says that the first question she asks at an orientation is, “Where were you during Hurricane Sandy?” If people hesitate to answer, she’ll start with her own story—of how she and her neighbors ran up and down the stairs carrying giant cases of water, worked together to collect information about available resources, and played games late at night by candlelight when they were too anxious to sleep. She likes asking this question first, because it gets people who might not know each other to open up. But more than that, it gets people thinking about another set of questions—about what work they’ve already done to help their neighbors during moments of crisis and about the structural deficiencies in public housing that make this work necessary in the first place.

Willis was no stranger to storms when she moved into Red Hook Houses 10 years ago. She grew up in Coney Island, where hurricanes were a regular occurrence and didn’t faze her family, who would just tape paper to the windows and go on with their day. So when she received an evacuation order from the city on October 28, 2012, the day before Superstorm Sandy hit New York, she, like the large majority of people in the city’s evacuation zones, ignored it. But when the storm began sweeping over the city, she realized this wasn’t just another storm. All of the lights in her 14-floor building went out, the elevator froze, the heat shut off. She gathered blankets for warmth, as a refrigerator’s worth of food started to spoil.

The storm was more intense than residents had expected, but more importantly, they were more on their own than they had expected. “No one knocked to see if any of their tenants were okay,” Willis recalls.

Instead, Willis says she got a knock on her door from the New York City Housing Authority’s Inspector General—the department that enforces NYCHA rules—asking her whether or not she had spoken to reporters who had been visiting the buildings. “I said ‘Where’s my water? What do you care what I’m telling a news reporter?’” If there was any emergency-action plan in effect, it was completely opaque to Willis and her neighbors. “I don’t think there was any protocol except to evacuate. It was, ‘We told you to leave and you chose to stay, so fuck it.’” (Such neglect wasn’t universal: Aixa Torres, the Resident Association president at Alfred E. Smith Houses on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, said that the NYCHA manager for her building was on site throughout the storm and its aftermath, sleeping on the floor and taking care of residents’ requests.)

Sandy was the strongest storm to hit the New York metropolitan area in decades, and the climate-disrupting effects of global warming are making it just a matter of time before the region suffers more powerful and more damaging storms. Sandy caused at least $19 billion worth of damage across the city, and highlighted the fact that in one of the most unequal cities in the country, the ability to adapt to climate change closely tracks income. For some of the city’s poorest residents, those who live in public housing, the infrastructure improvements, safety protocols, and community coordination needed to ride out climate change’s greatest hazards are still not there. As the city struggles to learn from Sandy, and create resilient, sustainable public housing, residents fear that the next storm may come too soon.

YCHA is the largest public-housing authority in the country, with more than 400,000 residents living in over 300 developments across the city. The system was strained long before Sandy—NYCHA has suffered a $3 billion loss in federal funding since 2001, and a study of NYCHA’s needs conducted in 2011, the year before Sandy, estimated that the agency needed $16.6 billion to carry out repairs and renovations to its properties over the next five years. According to NYCHA, more than 280,000 repairs were needed citywide that year, with an average of eight pending work orders per apartment—estimated at an average of $2,900 per unit.

When Sandy hit the next year, it made all of this worse, and residents are still living with the fallout. At Red Hook Houses, six years after the storm, temporary boilers still sit between the buildings in what used to be green space. Mold grows over water-damaged walls. Promises for protection remain unfilled. “It’s never been the same since Sandy,” said Shaquana Cooke, a life-long resident of Red Hook Houses. “I’m still kind of devastated by it, because I feel like we haven’t really recovered.”

From the beginning, Sandy’s impacts were disproportionately felt by public-housing residents: In 2012, New York City Housing Authority buildings were home to approximately 5 percent of the city’s population, but NYCHA buildings sustained more than 15 percent of the damages citywide. In total, approximately 80,000 residents in several hundred NYCHA buildings lost basic services like electricity, hot water, and elevators, many for weeks on end.

These disproportionate effects are far from coincidental. Historically, “the waterfront was the place the city put things it didn’t want to see,” says Roland Lewis, CEO of the Waterfront Alliance, a coalition of organizations focused on making New York’s waterfront accessible and resilient. “It was a place you put the highways, the railroads, the ships, the industry, and the projects.” The legacies of this decision-making have been made increasingly visible as storms surge with unprecedented force through public housing across the country, from North Carolina, to Texas, to Florida. In NYC, NYCHA apartments make up nearly one-fifth of the housing units that lie within the floodplain designated by FEMA.

In Brooklyn in the 1930s, this “out of sight, out of mind” logic dictated the isolation of public-housing residents in the poor, low-lying, water-locked neighborhood of Red Hook. Today, with 6,000 public-housing residents constituting close to 70 percent of its population, the neighborhood is known across the city as the casualty of perhaps one of Robert Moses’s most flagrant urban incisions: Since the completion of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in the 1950s, the neighborhood has been cut off from public transportation, grocery stores, and other services. But Hurricane Sandy revealed a vulnerability on the neighborhood’s other borders. Because the area on which Red Hook is built is largely man-made out of landfills on top of marshy land and tidal ponds, the surge swiftly submerged the neighborhood with up to six feet of water and exposed a number of NYCHA inadequacies lying just beneath the surface.

In the aftermath of Sandy, the city was abuzz with disaster-preparedness plans. There was talk of building massive seawalls, levees, and floodgates, developing wetlands on the tip of Manhattan to absorb storm surge, installing oyster beds or barrier islands in New York Harbor. In Red Hook, a plan to install floodwalls, raise streets, and improve drainage—called the Integrated Flood Protection System (IFPS)—was initially projected to be completed by 2016.

But, years later, little action has been taken to bring these proposals off the paper. The federal government agreed in 2014 to pay $335 million for the first phase of the “Big U”—a proposed 10-mile barrier extending around the southern half of Manhattan—but the project’s scope and other funding sources remain uncertain. Instead of the IFPS project, a temporary barrier of sandbags and tubes has been installed along Red Hook’s lowest-lying street, tall enough to protect from only the mildest of coastal storm surges.

“We were very skeptical when we saw the sandbags,” said Karen Blondel, an organizer with Fifth Avenue Committee, which provides support and services to low-income residents of South Brooklyn, and a resident of Red Hook Houses. Just the other week, she says, she took a walk over to the temporary barriers on Beard Street, and found the street filled with water, after heavy rainfall the previous night.

At the same time as the neighborhood- and citywide plans remain obscure, a cloud of skepticism also hangs over NYCHA’s ability to prepare its properties and residents for storm surges and other climate-related events.

A 2015 audit report of NYCHA by the New York City comptroller found a number of significant flaws in the agency’s emergency-response plan, including that NYCHA’s Emergency Procedures Manual did not “properly define the emergency management leadership” and that the agency was not complying with certain requirements, like maintaining accurate information on disabled tenants. NYCHA’s response to the report did little to build faith in the agency’s ability to learn from its mistakes. The agency stated: “We have enhanced our emergency management programs to plan for, manage and recovery [sic] from major disasters,” and claimed that “the findings and recommendations miss significant improvements NYCHA has made in relation to its emergency preparedness and response,” because of the time frame of the audit. In particular, the agency cited the creation of new plans and procedures for emergencies under the Office of Emergency Preparedness, established in June 2014.

Despite the fact that the auditing period extended eight months after OEP’s creation, NYCHA did not provide the comptroller’s office with these plans and procedures until a year and a half after the office was created. According to the comptroller’s report: “we are concerned that these plans and procedures were only very recently created and therefore they may not have the depth and consideration necessary to be effective.” In a November 2016 progress update sent to the comptroller’s office and obtained by The Nation, NYCHA said that it was in the process of rewriting its Organization for Emergencies section of its Emergency Procedures Manual, which would define the responsibilities of the agency’s leadership and employees during an emergency. The estimated completion for the document was set for the following month, December 2016, but NYCHA hasn’t provided the comptroller’s office nor tenant-advocacy groups like Red Hook Initiative or Fifth Avenue Committee with an updated version. The Nation’s request to NYCHA for this document did not receive a response at time of publication. The agency’s hurricane-emergencies section of this document hasn’t been updated since 2013. Its heat-emergency section hasn’t been updated since 2005, despite the fact that more than half of NYCHA residents live in the city’s most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods, and that less than half of units have air-conditioning.

“Emergencies can be life or death and not preparing to keep NYCHA developments protected isn’t an option,” New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said in a statement sent to The Nation. “The vulnerable seniors, families and disabled residents living at NYCHA are relying on the City to help keep them safe. There’s no defense for the lack of transparency around NYCHA’s emergency planning and it raises very serious questions.”

Fifth Avenue Committee has consistently reached out to NYCHA requesting updated emergency protocols, to no avail. According to Sabine Aronowsky, community-development-program manager at Fifth Avenue Committee, the lack of clear emergency plans has continued to pose serious threats to residents’ safety. Last winter, thousands of public-housing residents across the city suffered through the city’s coldest week on recent record without heat. In Red Hook, the outages were the fault of inadequate temporary boilers that have serviced the developments since Sandy. Aronowsky says that there was no mechanism for residents to report heat outages beyond putting in a standard repair ticket, and residents had no way of knowing whether the ticket would be prioritized in the queue. In an October 2018 letter to NYCHA’s Committee on Public Housing Oversight, Fifth Avenue Committee wrote that the wait time on the central call-center help line during the cold snap was over 20 minutes, and that many residents were automatically disconnected before speaking with a NYCHA representative. “It really brought to light that public-housing residents and NYCHA were no better prepared than during Sandy,” said Aronowsky. “It seemed like not only were we equally unprepared, but systems were breaking down even further.” Earlier this month, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day—the coldest day of the season so far—over 10,000 NYCHA residents lost heat, hot water, or both.

Progress has been slightly more tangible in the realm of infrastructure. The devastating impact of the storm on NYCHA housing prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to dedicate $3.2 billion to the crumbling agency in 2015—the largest grant in FEMA’s history. Out of the 219 buildings to receive funds—which are required to go to post-Sandy recovery, not general maintenance—Red Hook was promised the largest sum: $560 million. With the money, the agency plans to install flood-proof doors to protect building entrances, add a new energy-efficient boiler system, raise generators above flood level, and even to elevate the common space between buildings—a design the agency calls “lily pads.” NYCHA broke ground on the first phase of the project in 2017—a $63 million project to install new roofs on all 28 buildings that will insulate the buildings from extreme cold and heat and protect against leaks.

But because of budgetary restrictions, the expected date of completion for the project has already been pushed back, from the 2021 date announced at the beginning of 2017 to 2022. The same is true in developments across the city: Of the 33 developments receiving FEMA funding post-Sandy, construction has been completed on only one. Willis, of the RHI Local Leaders program, says that the delays are disheartening. “In the beginning there was more of a sense of urgency. But we’ve been hearing this for over five years now.… People are tired of being lied to, of [having] their time being wasted with these promises of things being done and things that will come that are never coming,” she said. But she doesn’t find the delays surprising. “The city can say, ‘Oh, it’s slow ’cause it’s bureaucracy.’ But, no, they’re bullshitting, [it’s] ’cause it’s public housing.” The proof can be found, she says, in new luxury developments that have popped up rapid-fire across the neighborhood since Sandy—built on platforms to withstand flooding. “What I’d like [is] for the real work that can prevent us from flooding to begin,” Willis said. She knows that the clock is ticking: NYC could face Sandy-like floods every five years by 2045.

At the same time, many Red Hook Houses residents feel that the planned projects, even when completed, would leave major issues unaddressed. At an update meeting in October with NYCHA’s Recovery and Resilience Department, residents took the mic one after the other to voice concerns about the issues affecting their lives on sunny days, too: unreliable lights and elevators, leaky pipes, and mold. A 2014 survey of NYCHA residents in primary flood zones conducted by several local environmental justice-organizations found that 40 percent of respondents had a new repair need in their apartment as a result of Sandy. Forty-five percent of respondents said that they had visible mold in their apartment after Sandy, compared with 34 percent who said they had mold in their apartment prior to Sandy. Of those who reported having mold in their apartment, 38 percent said that NYCHA had done nothing to address the problem.

“My walls look like jigsaw puzzles,” said Bernelle Mitchell, who’s lived in Red Hook Houses for 26 years. “Everyone knows you have to start within to bring the beauty out. The inside is falling in. They want these ‘lily pads,’ but [by then], we’ll be hit again.”

Joy Sinderbrand, vice president for NYCHA’s Recovery and Resilience Department, says that she hears these types of complaints often, and that the root of the problem lies with the restrictive nature of the FEMA grant. “There is a lot of cognizance [in NYCHA] that the way the federal government gives out disaster-recovery money is not with the kind of discretion that one would love to have. Nobody said, ‘What are your worst problems and what would you like to solve here?’ It was, ‘Repair the damage from Sandy and protect from the next Sandy.’ And that was very prescriptive.”

For residents, however, the distinction between the FEMA grant’s limitations and the agency’s general neglect of chronic damage (the backlog for repairs is reported to be over 150,000 citywide) is blurry. According to Afua Atta-Mensah, executive director of Community Voices Heard, a community group that works on NYCHA tenant organizing, the overall dysfunction of NYCHA has made residents skeptical of the resiliency plans. “The sustainability plan is not real, because the day-to-day plan is not working,” said Atta-Mensah. “No one has a lot of faith in the housing authority. During a storm the elevator probably won’t work, because tomorrow the elevator probably won’t work.”

uana Narvaez realized quickly that help wasn’t coming, and she didn’t waste a minute. As soon as Sandy hit, Narvaez—who grew up in Puerto Rico and moved to Red Hook 42 years ago, when she was 23—was on her feet, running up and down the stairs of her six-floor building and door to door, asking people if they needed anything. She took care of an elderly woman in a wheelchair who was stranded in her apartment and gathered food from volunteers at a nearby church to distribute to her neighbors.

It was clear that Narvaez and others like her were not just being good neighbors during Sandy—they were filling essential roles severely neglected by the city. In the absence of clear direction, these volunteers had mostly improvised, responding to whatever crises presented themselves with whatever means were available. “In some ways, I believe we were really fortunate in Red Hook,” said Karen Blondel. “Red Hook is an area cut off from most of Brooklyn, and other people don’t usually come here.… But the fact that we were by ourselves actually put us in a better position: We were already relying on each other, so it wasn’t hard for us to organize in those first 72 hours that the government wasn’t there for us.”

After the chaos settled, though, residents began wondering how they could move beyond improvisation. “After sitting there without heat, hot water, electricity or working elevators for 29 days, I wanted to know what we could do to be prepared,” said Willis. So, in 2014, Red Hook Initiative, which had become a hub for volunteers from all over the city during Sandy, launched a training program for residents to learn emergency-preparedness and community-organizing skills. So far, nearly 250 public-housing residents have gone through the 10-week Local Leaders course, and now graduates of the first class have begun serving as trainers themselves.

The work people like Narvaez did during Sandy has been formalized: As a Local Leader, she is responsible for keeping everyone in her building informed about where to evacuate to before an emergency, and where to get resources and services during and after one. Their knowledge of how to ready themselves for an emergency has been formalized, too. “Whenever I hear the news that another storm is happening in Florida or Puerto Rico, I’m nervous,” Narvaez said. “But now I’m prepared—I have a bag of my IDs, medications, and places I might be able to go to. So, I’m nervous, but not like before, because I know I’m prepared.”

The goal of the program is to build resilience through skills and preparation, but also through building stronger relationships among residents. “People feel like resiliency is lights and walls and flood zones and large equipment,” said Jill Eisenhard, director of Red Hook Initiative. But “if you can’t rely on the larger system, how do we make sure we can respond?”

Graduates of the Local Leaders program are under no illusions that they can take responsibility for all of the necessary fixes: removing mold from crumbling walls, coordinating the evacuation of thousands of residents, keeping track of the medical needs of those who remain in their apartments.

But they do know that they can’t just wait around for NYCHA to make improvements.

“It won’t happen in five years, maybe in 20. Probably I won’t see it, but the next generation will,” says Yolanda Diaz, a resident of Red Hook Houses, who moved to New York from Puerto Rico 41 years ago.

“In the meantime, we’ll prepare ourselves with what we got, and so far, what we got is knowledge.”

After traveling untold, difficult miles through Central America and Mexico (and sometimes further afield), the men, women, and children who have joined the many migrant caravans are now at the border in Tijuana, Mexico. The majority of the people who make up this massive exodus are Honduran, but there are also Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Somalis, Cameroonians, Brazilians, and others.

After being met with a slammed door at the US border (the Trump administration lets only a few dozen asylum seekers present every day, and has tried to block asylum claims via other avenues as well), many migrants and asylum seekers who joined the multiple caravans are biding their time and still recovering from the exhausting journey and cold reception. This incredible multiethnic, multiracial group—people fleeing the gangs alongside those escaping domestic violence, students alongside mothers and fathers—are now figuring out their next steps.

While some are taking their chances and jumping the fences—often to turn themselves in and ask for asylum—the majority of those who haven’t voluntarily returned to their homes and still remain in the city of Tijuana (over 4,000) are making do in the Barretal camp about 45 minutes south of the border. A few hundred are also roughing it in the street outside of the old camp, Benito Juárez, from which they had to flee as rains turned a field into a sewage-infested puddle. Others are scattered across the city in migrant and youth shelters, churches, and donated hotel rooms.

People spend time in and around the camps drying out blankets, pads, clothes, and repairing their tents and lean-tos. During the day, children goof around, soccer games seem to spontaneously materialize, and adults chat, play cards, share food, and strategize. Volunteers dole out clothes, underwear, sandwiches, basic medical services, haircuts, and occasional legal advice. Many of the migrants and refugees have been seeking, and sometimes finding, local employment. Others are starting small businesses inside the camps—selling cigarettes, fried chicken, chicharrónes. Despite some sickness, increasing frustration with the slow “metering” of asylum seekers, and the squalid conditions—insufficient bathrooms or access to clean water—and though the tension and desperation is sometimes palpable, the general atmosphere in the camps is a buoyant resiliency. “I know I have to hope, so I do,” Aura, a 47-year-old Honduran woman, told us.

* * *

“We don’t want to be separated. The ones most psychologically affected [if we get separated] are going to be the kids. They’ve already lived through too much trauma. We don’t want anymore.”

Patricia, 28, from San Salvador, El Salvador, with Emi, 10, and Carlitos, 3. Her husband was out working as a day laborer when we photographed them.

The family is traveling with another Salvadoran family and made friends with a third family from Honduras while they were in Chiapas, Mexico; all 12 members have stuck together since late October. This summer Patricia’s husband got into trouble when a couple of gang members asked him to deliver a pistol to another village. At first he tried to say no, but no wasn’t an option. While he was completing the errand, police nabbed him and threw him in jail for eight days for possession of an unregistered firearm. Though he claimed he hadn’t snitched on the gang members—it would have been too dangerous—they suspected that he had, and started threatening him and his family. “We fled. They were threatening to do I don’t know what. It was too dangerous for the kids. And you can’t just move to another spot in El Salvador because they investigate you.” When I asked if they were planning on asking for asylum, Patricia said, “We decided to stay here in Tijuana. I decided.” Patricia worked in El Salvador as a pharmacist, and hopes to get a Mexican work permit soon.

* * *

“I joined the caravan because it was safer than coming alone. The trains, the checkpoints, it’s all so dangerous. You can’t skirt the checkpoints because there are thieves in the jungle. I want to be with my family, to help them.”

Melchi, 33, from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Melchi has always had a knack for business. When he was a kid he started selling candy on the street, which led, finally, to his own small store where he sold clothes along with fruits and vegetables. It went well enough that he expanded his business and, after working a couple of years without papers in the United States, he returned to Honduras and bought a mobile truck to sell veggies in the suburbs. He grew up with seven brothers and one sister. After five of his brothers were killed, he decided he couldn’t take the country any more, and joined the caravan. In the Barretal camp, he started buying packs of cigarettes and spends hours weaving among the tents selling singles for five pesos and five smokes for 20 pesos. He has strawberry, menthol, and regular: “Got to have what people want.” His wife and son are already in the United States, fighting their asylum claims.

* * *

“I didn’t want to cause my family problems. I want to help them instead of cause them problems. That’s why I came.”

Bryan, 23, from La Ceiba, Honduras (left), and Keneth, 20, from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

“I had some rich friends. Sorta rich,” Bryan says. “That was the problem. They had some problems with some other people. They all got killed.” He worked as a house painter, and sometimes in construction. He was scared that he would be associated with his murdered friends, and decided to leave for a while, work, and send money back to his family. “You earn barely anything there.” He has a wife and two children at home; the youngest was born after he left, only 23 days ago. He hasn’t met her yet, but he spends long hours staring at photos of his new baby girl. Nights in the Barretal shelter he works as a volunteer security guard, “because there are a lot of kids here, you know.” His shift is 11 pm to five in the morning, and then he spends most of the day dozing.

“I’m waiting for my number. I want to do it legally. I want to work, help my family.”

Keneth had his political awakening in his last year of high school, joining a nationwide protest movement against an increase in the cost of gasoline and the basic market basket. He said kids in his school were also protesting a lack of funding for education; some of his classmates were threatened by the police. He was scared he would be next after he appeared in a photograph in a local newspaper. He wants to be an architect, but doesn’t have enough money to pay for college, and couldn’t find a decent job. He’s known for a while that he wanted to head to the United States, and saw the caravan as the safest way to get there. He signed up for the asylum roll call that happens every morning—a notebook of thousands of names managed by a de facto refugee committee trying to organize the few migrants the United States allows to cross to make asylum claims—but thinks he’ll have to wait a few weeks, at least, before it’s his turn.

Keny and Bryan met in Mexico City, and have been traveling and living together for the past six weeks. They share a tent, and spend a lot of their time talking and goofing around.

* * *

“I came because of poverty. I didn’t have enough money to study. I want to be a nurse in the US. I’ve always wanted to be a nurse. I want to work.”

Ingris, 18, from La Ceiba, Honduras.

While in high school, Ingris worked in a daycare center, or sometimes as a nanny. After graduating earlier this year she wanted to continue her education, but didn’t have the money. She grew up with a single father, who couldn’t afford to pay for her school either. She joined the caravan with a group of three friends—some leaving because they wanted to continue their education, others fleeing “the violence.” She has wanted to be a nurse, “ever since I played doctor when I was a kid.”

* * *

“You just have to tell the truth” when you apply for asylum. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

Antonia, 48, from Santa Barbara, Honduras, with her partner, Jorge, 35, and their kids, Jazmín and Jorge, both 13. Their youngest son was on a playdate with another family.

“We were hungry sometimes,” Antonia said. The family is from a coffee-growing region in Honduras. Antonia cleaned houses, washed clothes by hand, did whatever work she could find. Her partner, Jorge, was a bricklayer, construction worker, coffee planter, and whatever could get him a paycheck at the end of two weeks. “We are just people,” Antonia said. “Why does your president say all these bad things about us?” They signed up to apply for asylum, but don’t know how long they’ll have to wait to be able to make their claim. When I asked what their asylum claim was based on, Antonia paused a second, and then said, “They tried to rape my daughter.” Jazmín, 13, was walking down to a river close by her house earlier this year when some gang members sequestered her, stripped off her clothes, and molested her. “We took her to the police afterwards for an examination, but we felt we couldn’t protect her anymore if we stayed there.”

* * *

“I came for safety, to ask for asylum…because of the genocide, it’s really bad.” He added: “I am a fighter for my rights.”

Tasha Edwin, 39 years old, from Cameroon.

“It was bad. It’s getting worse.” Tasha’s family was pushed into the forest along with his neighbors in a conflict in rural Cameroon between the Francophone ruling party and the Anglophone population; the UN is investigating the Francophone side’s actions as genocide. After being displaced internally, he traveled across nine countries—leaving Cameroon for Nigeria, flying to Ecuador, and then traveling overland through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, where he met the caravan, and all of Mexico—to get to within sight of the United States. He worked as a youth pastor in Cameroon, and now spends his mornings checking to see how many asylum seekers will be allowed to cross.

* * *

“If we pass, we pass, God willing,” she said of her asylum claim. “If they send us back, I’m dead. I have no place to go but my mom’s house, in Virginia.”

Sandra, 24, from El Salvador, along with her partner, Brandon, 21; son, Caleb, 7; and daughter, Alexandra, 4.

“The father of my children is a gangster,” Sandra said. “He beat me a lot, and after I left him, he tried to kill us all.” Her ex-partner is in prison now, but ordered his fellow gang members to try to force Sandra to visit him. When she refused, they threatened to kill her. She moved to another city, La Libertad, where she met her new partner, Brandon, a baker who worked for Sandra’s grandfather. Brandon had his own problems with the gangs. They had tried to recruit him, and when he refused, he was jumped by seven or eight members of Barrio 18. When they heard about the caravan, they knew they needed to go. Sandra left to escape the trauma after her son was psychologically damaged, as she explained, by watching his father beat her so often; Caleb suffers from tachycardia, asthma, and behavioral problems.

* * *

“I saw the caravan and thought, this is my opportunity. It’s not that we wanted to do this. We had to. I feel sad and hopeless here, but I know I have to hope, so I do.… If they force me home, I’ll turn right back around and try again. I can’t live in Honduras anymore.”

Aura, 47, from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with her son, Kevin, 19.

Five years ago, gang members killed Aura’s eldest son. Three years ago, they killed her husband. Both times, after she buried one of her loved ones, she wanted to flee, but she knew the journey itself was a danger, and she didn’t have the money for a coyote. When she heard about the caravan, she told her son, Kevin, that he was coming with her. She walked through four pairs of shoes as they made their way north through Mexico, and often felt like she was going to faint, or even die.

* * *

“I imagined the worst. Even here, I’m still scared they’ll find us. We had to come, we did it for the kids.”

Mother, 24 years old, from El Progreso, Honduras, with her husband, two daughters, and son. For their safety, we are not using their names.

The mother came with her husband and their three children, including the youngest, seven months old. Her husband was a bus driver who couldn’t meet the gangs’ extortion demands. After receiving multiple death threats, he and the family fled to Tapachula, Mexico, in 2016. This October, she opened their front door and found a note written in large letters on a piece of cardboard. “Te encontré.” Found you. It was signed by the gang. They had been hearing about the caravan, and decided that same morning to join.

They want common-sense gun control, they want the assault-weapons ban to be reinstated, they want an end to the lies coming from the NRA. They want all these things, but most of all, they want their friends, classmates, and family members to stop dying. They want an end to the violence that has plagued schools, churches, movie theaters, and city streets, bringing agony in its wake. That’s why students across the country have been marching, walking out of school, and demanding change with new vigor since the shooting at Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead in February.

The most recent action was April 20’s National School Walkout, on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School Massacre, which saw thousands of students, from Portland to Austin to Richmond, take to the streets to demand action on gun violence. Photographer Tracie Williams joined a walkout in New York City to hear from the students themselves why they are joining this growing movement. “The Polaroids took a few minutes to develop,” Williams said, “which really allowed me the time to engage with the students in a meaningful way.” Williams asked the students to reflect on how they’ve been affected by gun violence, and what they want to see in their future. She found their answers to be tinged with anger and fear, but also full of hope.

Samuel, 16

So last weekend I was in Crown Heights with a couple of friends in a deli when the door flew open and I heard pops in my left ear that shook me into sobriety. A guy in the deli said “man it’s poppin’ tonight!” That really made me think, for real gun violence and violence to end in general we need to do away with the system that facilitates it.

Vicky, 15

Schools shouldn’t be places where kids and teachers are filled with paranoia. It should be a safe space. And that’s why I’m here.

Aushna, 17

I’m here to show that I know what’s happening in the US and I CARE. I want to know what happens with gun control, considering it directly concerns me. Students and children are typically seen as a statistic when making decisions, but I wanna show that we are an educated generation!

Ethan, 15

This all just needs to stop. All the time I hear this on the news, from my mom, my friends. I wish that it could be easier to find a solution, but like many things in life, finding a solution to worldwide problems isn’t easy.

Tazha, 14

I 2 make a difference!

Isidore, 17

For me today was more about recognition of the past and those who were murdered. We must act now!! Young people have historically been agents of change for rights movements. We are not only the future, we are the present.

Derek, 15

I have never been directly affected by guns but I don’t want anyone else to have to go through losing a friend or loved one.

Sakin, 16

I am here because of the fact that I could have been in the same position as any other victim. And that I could potentially acquire a military-style weapon. There needs to be a change.

Blue, 15

I personally didn’t realize how serious gun violence was until a kid threatened to shoot up my school. Then I realized, That could be me, my friends, my family.

Izzy, 14

Cause the NRA sucks.

Ana, 18

Here today because we live in a time where I feel unsafe, I feel scared, anxious, restless and fearful of entering public places. Hearing of children dying day in and day out while our politicians value NRA money over our LIVES angers me. I NEVER want to see this again…. I NEVER want anyone to live in fear of being shot. I’m here to see real change.

Alexander, 15

The fact that these corrupt politicians can easily take money from an organization of killers both pisses me off and makes me fear for my life.

Kennedy, 14

I was at the park with my brother, sister & dog. We were about to leave and then we heard gunshots. Everyone in the park ran out. I didn’t want my younger siblings to ever experience that again.

Isabelle, 14

I personally believe guns are one of the easiest ways to kill someone. So we need gun control to stop this!

Isaac, 14

I want police officers to be demilitarized.

Avery, 18

Growing up in the Bronx, there have been times when I would be so scared to go outside because of the sounds of shots and screams coming from outside my window. That’s why I believe it’s so important, as young people, to use our voices for gun reform so that no child has to go through that.

Take Action Now: Learn how you can join the movement to end gun violence.

As baby boomers have begun retiring, the number of seniors in our country is ballooning—by the year 2050, the number of people 65 and over is projected to double. But the Trump administration didn’t seem to really care about this vulnerable population when it unveiled its absurd budget proposal last year. The cuts that plan laid out would have decimated programs across the country that serve our most disadvantaged, overlooked neighbors: Meals on Wheels.

Trump’s plan would have done away with $3 billion of community-development block grants, which are used in some states to support senior nutrition and home-delivered meal programs. The plan also proposed to make an 18 percent cut across the board to the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which would greatly impact the Older Americans Act Nutrition Program. That program provides 35 percent of the funding for local Meals on Wheels programs from coast to coast, and these programs empower 2.4 million seniors to enjoy healthier and more independent lives in their own homes.

Thankfully, the omnibus spending bill passed by Congress and signed by Trump last week didn’t carry through these threats. In another sign of the gap between this administration’s rhetoric and its ability to actually govern, the bill actually included increases for programs like Meals on Wheels that assist seniors.

Citymeals on Wheels, operating in New York City, is one of more than 5,000 home-delivery meal programs across the country. There are now over 1.4 million people over the age of 60 in New York City, and Citymeals on Wheels, a private/public partnership with the New York City Department for the Aging, delivers over 2 million meals to more than 18,000 elderly residents every year, in all five boroughs.

At Encore in Manhattan’s Theater District, one of 30 senior centers Citymeals partners with to prepare and deliver their meals, the cooking starts early: Chefs begin prepping before dawn to get meals out the door by 9:30 in the morning. Encore, a provider of a range of social services for seniors since 1977, also hosts two lunch sessions on-site: The menu changes each month and meets strict nutritional standards mandated by the state. Once the food is prepared, it’s sealed, labeled, and packaged for delivery—a chaotic, yet well-orchestrated scene. Meal carts are then loaded into delivery vans and each meal deliverer is dropped off to distribute their approximately 30 meals within a four-block radius, no matter the weather. All of this depends on a mixture of employees and volunteers.

Last year I was invited to shadow Encore employee Natasha Vanderhorst on her meal-delivery route. “My grandma was really up in age, and I said you know, it would be nice to do something for the seniors,” she told me when I asked her why she chose to become a meal deliverer. “So, I thought I would take a chance at it.” Eight years later and Natasha is still delivering more than 30 meals a day, six days a week. For the past five years, Natasha’s children, Tony, Elizabeth, and Robert, have been volunteering with Encore during the summer months and school breaks as well, preparing cold packs, adding nutrition labels to hot meals, and anything that needs to get done—Tony just recently became a full-time employee as a dishwasher.

Natasha’s job is physically demanding and at times heartbreaking. Unlike in other boroughs, Citymeals deliverers in Manhattan distribute meals on foot, navigating their carts through the crowded streets and sidewalks of New York City. Not all apartment buildings have elevators—in fact, Natasha has four walk-ups on her route, but she doesn’t mind, because “it’s for the seniors.” There’s also an emotional toll when someone passes away, because “Once you get to know a client, you fall in love with them.” Natasha lost four clients just this past year.

As we reach the last meal recipient on her list, Natasha knocks on the door belonging to Felix Nogueras with the cry, “Meals!” Mr. Nogueras, now in his 75th year, answers the door with a smile and invites us inside his small, light-filled, 9th-floor Chelsea apartment. For the past four years, Monday through Saturday, Mr. Nogueras has been receiving a fresh hot meal and a cold pack with fruit and milk from Natasha every day around 11 am—on Saturdays he gets two servings of the cold pack plus a frozen meal as well, to cover Sunday. Since his father passed away, Mr. Nogueras has lived alone and is grateful to Natasha not only for her timely delivery of the meals but also for the fact that she is one of the few people who regularly check in on his well-being.

At the age of 4, Mr. Nogueras moved to New York City from Puerto Rico, and he has lived here ever since. During our visit he told us about a city of harsher economic times where, as a teenager, he earned 25 cents a shoe shine to help his mother who, while working full-time in the garment district, was raising three children on her own. He’s had a number of other jobs since then, from healthcare to education, but they’ve all focused on helping others. Mr. Nogueras finally retired a few years ago after a 15-year tenure as a student counselor at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he was instrumental in establishing and managing a ground-breaking program, in partnership with Montefiore Medical Center, that provides clinical services to students such as general check-ups and dental, as well as specialized medical care for pregnant teens, teen mothers, and their children.

Several years ago, just before he retired, Mr. Nogueras was diagnosed with prostate cancer and hospitalized. But while he was receiving treatment, he was told that he would actually require immediate surgery for an unknown ailment, which resulted in the complete amputation of his left foot and all but one of the toes on his right. After surgery, he was confined to a wheelchair, but this didn’t stop Mr. Nogueras. With perseverance and dedication, he slowly learned to walk again, first with the assistance of a cane and then completely on his own with the support of his specialty-made orthotic shoes—these enable him to move around freely, but their lack of grip pose potential dangers when even the slightest fall can cause serious damage to an aging body. This is again where Citymeals comes in—alleviating stress and making it easier to live a full life without injury.

Heava Lawrence-Challenger and her daughter Tiffany Challenger have been volunteering with Citymeals for the past six years—just two of the 21,152 volunteers who provide nearly 67,775 hours of service every year through the program. Every Saturday, despite their busy schedules, they make the hour-and-a-half journey from their Co-Op City apartment in the Bronx to a community center in the Upper East Side where they collect meals for delivery. Heava works full-time as a senior professional skills trainer for New York City’s Department for the Aging, and Tiffany is a junior at Democracy Prep Endurance High School, Girl Scout ambassador, and volunteer with several other charitable organizations—they make good use of the long travel time, catching up on each other’s active lives.

After delivering meals to about 13 home-bound seniors, they then make the trek back to Co-Op city, where they spend their afternoon visiting with Harriet Ross—they were connected with her through another Citymeals on Wheels initiative that pairs volunteers with their isolated elderly neighbors. Heava, Tiffany, and Mrs. Ross can spend hours chatting, watching TV, and sometimes attending community events or concerts. Living within a five-minute walking distance allows them to maintain such a close relationship, providing an extra sense of comfort and security for Mrs. Ross—with whom they have built a loving friendship over the past four years.

Mrs. Ross, born and raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has spent her entire 86 years in New York City—her Russian father came through Ellis Island before the turn of the 20th century. She lived through some of the city’s toughest years, and enjoys regaling Heava and Tiffany with stories from her past.

“I think [these programs] are so great for teens, because they get to meet these seniors who have such history,” Heava told me. “Tiffany has heard about what it was like to work in New York as a woman in the early ’60s, working in the garment factories, living in Brooklyn, the Bronx. Some children will never get that firsthand knowledge.”

Osteoarthritis makes it difficult for Mrs. Ross to get around: She now uses a wheelchair to maneuver her intimate 17th-floor apartment where she has lived for the past 30 years after her husband’s death. Mrs. Ross is charming, and her home warm and welcoming—hugs are offered to all who visit. She loves people, but because of her lack of mobility, her interactions are limited.

Heava and Tiffany’s relationship with Mrs. Ross goes beyond the scheduled volunteer hours—they care deeply for each another. Heava will reach out during the week to touch base, especially if there is an appointment that Mrs. Ross is worried about. “She’s like a grandmother to me” Tiffany told me, “I’m comfortable with her and I feel at home with her…and I would definitely refer to her as family.”

On February 23 of last year, a day when the frozen ground had started to turn to mud, law-enforcement officers rolled into the Oceti Sakowin camp near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota. Donald Trump had been inaugurated a month earlier, and the new president quickly reversed an Obama administration decision to deny Energy Transfer Partners a permit to finish construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a $3.78 billion project running directly under the Missouri River. The water protectors, as protesters called themselves, had been fighting the pipeline since the spring of 2016, concerned that the proposed route cut through ancestral land of spiritual significance, and that a pipeline leak could contaminate the primary water supply to the reservation. The small group who had remained through the bitter winter at Oceti Sakowin had been ordered to leave by February 22 or face eviction and arrest. Most did; a few dozen remained the following the day, when Humvees with snipers on their roofs rolled into camp, a helicopter buzzing above them.

Photojournalist Tracie Williams, on assignment for the National Press Photographers’ Association, captured some of what happened next. Officers wearing military fatigues walked through the camp with assault rifles and knives, which they used to slice open the skins of teepees. Rain and fat flakes of snow fell against a backdrop of smoke rising from structures that had been set alight in a ceremonial gesture. Moments after clicking through the last two frames on her memory card—of two men in prayer, weapons aimed at their heads—she was arrested. Williams, who had been documenting life at Oceti Sakowin for three weeks leading up to the raid, told officers she was a journalist—and says she’d previously identified herself as a member of the press to the governor and the Army Corps and let them know that she’d be there, documenting, and obtained a press credential from the Morton County Sheriff—but they confiscated her equipment as evidence and detained her anyway. Williams was later charged with physical obstruction of government function, a Class A misdemeanor that could result in a year in jail and $3,000 in fines. Her trial is scheduled for June.

More than three dozen other people were arrested that day. In total, some 800 people were charged with crimes during the 11 months between the establishment of the first protest camp, known as Sacred Stone, and the eviction of Oceti Sakowin. While several hundred cases have been thrown out for lack of evidence, more than 200 people are still awaiting trial, according to the Water Protecter Legal Collective. Several face felony charges and years in prison. Williams was not the only journalist arrested: others include Jenni Monet, who was on assignment for Indian Country Today and the Center for Investigative reporting, filmmaker Myron Dewey, and Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman. (Charges against Dewey and Goodman were dropped.) Greenpeace and other environmental groups supportive of the Standing Rock Sioux are themselves facing a lawsuit from Energy Transfer Partners, which alleges that the organization engaged in racketeering.

Standing Rock protesters were also subjected to a wide-ranging surveillance effort underwritten by Energy Transfer Partners. For months, according to reporting by The Intercept, local and federal law enforcement worked alongside a private security firm called TigerSwan, which Energy Transfer Partners hired to collect information about Standing Rock participants and supportive groups. TigerSwan is mostly known as a mercenary and security firm conducting counterterror operations overseas; the company applied its militarized tactics in North Dakota, using aerial surveillance, infiltrating the camps, and referring to the indigenous-led movement as “an ideologically driven insurgency” that “generally followed the jihadist insurgency model.”

n hour after police evicted the last demonstrators from Oceti Sakowin, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum signed four measures increasing punishments for demonstrators. Among other things, the new laws expanded the definition of criminal trespass, and raised the penalty for a riot conviction. Though the measures were clearly in response to Standing Rock, they also reflected a much broader conservative backlash to direct action—a backlash that resulted in a wave of legislation introduced in states across the United States. Overall, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, lawmakers in 30 states have introduced 56 bills to restrict public protest since Trump’s election.

“What we saw in the last legislative session was a surprising and unusual surge in anti-protest legislation, which went after those fundamental rights to go outside, speak out, dissent,” said Vera Eidelman, a fellow with the American Civil Liberty Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Though only a few of the bills introduced last year became law, several others are pending. The sheer number of anti-protest bills that have been introduced, along with the heavy-handed policing of demonstrators on the ground, points to a trend towards the criminalization of dissent—spanning from Standing Rock to the 194 people, including journalists, who faced felony charges and up to 70 years in prison for protesting Trump’s election. (In January the Department of Justice dropped charges against more than 100 of the #J20 defendants, but 59 still face trial at the time of publication.)

According to Eidelman, most of the legislation appeared to be written in response to the most successful mass protests in recent years, particularly those implicating oil and gas infrastructure and racial-justice demonstrations that often blocked traffic as a tactic. A bill introduced in Colorado would have tightened penalties for “tampering” with oil and gas equipment. A similar measure signed into law in Oklahoma dramatically increased the penalties for trespassing in areas containing a “critical infrastructure facility”; tampering with such facilities now carries up to a $100,000 fine, or 10 years in prison. The South Dakota legislature passed a measure in March that allows the governor or local sheriffs to ban groups of 20 or more people from public land and schools. Lawmakers in Mississippi proposed a bill to make obstructing traffic a felony punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. A Republican senator in Oregon introduced a bill requiring public universities and colleges to expel students convicted of rioting. Lawmakers in half a dozen states—North Dakota, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Rhode Island—introduced legislation to protect some drivers who “unintentionally” hit protesters with their cars. In Washington State, a Republican state senator who served as Trump’s deputy campaign director recently reintroduced a bill adding a mandatory minimum sentence of 60 days to any crime that “cause[s] economic disruption,” such as blocking traffic or railways.

The practice of tarring activists with the language of the War on Terror has also spread beyond Standing Rock—and it could have legal implications. In late October, 80 Republicans and four Democrats sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking whether demonstrators who target energy infrastructure might be prosecuted as domestic terrorism. The authors argue that interfering with energy infrastructure poses “a threat to human life, and appear[s] to be intended to intimidate and coerce policy changes,” and therefore might be considered terrorism. The letter specifically mentions a series of coordinated actions that occurred October 11, 2016, in which activists in four states were arrested for shutting off valves on pipelines carrying crude oil between Canada and the United States. (Three of those activists have already been convicted on felony charges.)

A report released in May by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis on “suspected environmental rights extremists” emphasized the “criminal and violent acts” carried out by pipeline protesters. In a similar vein, the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently issued an internal report warning that “black identity extremists”—a novel term—motivated by racial injustice pose a violent threat to law-enforcement officers. Civil liberties experts worry these labels will be used to justify further surveillance of activists.

“This is a battle for a narrative,” said Standing Rock Sioux member and attorney Chase Iron Eyes, when I asked how he felt about activists’ being referred to as terrorists or “jihadists.” Iron Eyes was arrested during a police raid on another protest camp a few weeks before the eviction of Oceti Sakowin, and charged with a felony for “inciting a riot” as well as criminal trespass. He’s facing five years in prison. Daniel Sheehan, who serves as chief counsel for the Lakota People’s Law Project and is defending Iron Eyes, believes that Iron Eyes was surveilled and selectively prosecuted with felony charges because he was particularly outspoken in his opposition to the pipeline. His name appeared on several intelligence documents prepared by TigerSwan, including one labeling him as one of the “most radical” members of the protest movement.

s the cases against Standing Rock activists proceed through the courts, other conflicts over land and energy development are brewing. Resistance to another ETP-backed pipeline known as Bayou Bridge, which the Army Corps of Engineers approved in December, is growing in Louisiana. Tribes and environmental groups in Minnesota have mobilized against the Line 3 expansion, an Enbridge project slated to become one of the country’s largest crude-oil pipelines. In Washington State, members of the Puyallup Tribe and others are fighting the construction of a liquefied-natural-gas plant close to the waters of Puget Sound. Several tribes have challenged the Trump administration’s decision to shrink Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, which encompasses land of immense historical and spiritual significance to indigenous peoples in the Southwest. Members of Alaska’s Gwich’in Nation, who depend on caribou herds born on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, are advocating against oil and gas drilling in that protected area, which was authorized for the first time by the Republican tax bill that passed in December.

The campaign to stop construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has been revived, too. In November, days after an existing section of the Keystone pipeline spilled over 200,000 gallons of oil onto farmland in South Dakota, Nebraska’s Public Service Commission approved TransCanada’s plan to route KXL through the state, to the east of the company’s preferred pathway. TransCanada has yet to obtain new easements from all of the landowners along the alternate route. Still, a coalition of tribes, green groups, and others have already issued a call to action, asking supporters to “commit to creative peaceful resistance along the pipeline route when called upon by frontline leaders, likely next spring.” Local police departments in Nebraska have been studying the Standing Rock demonstrations in preparation.

All of these conflicts will unfold across a political landscape that is growing more hostile to protest and increasingly deferential to energy interests. The Trump administration’s aggressive promotion of expanded fossil-fuel production means that clashes over infrastructure are likely to spread, and become more fraught with questions about the rights of protesters. In January, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing policy shop, finalized model legislation inspired by Oklahoma’s new laws cracking down on demonstrations affecting “critical infrastructure” like pipelines. ALEC’s model bill “codifies criminal penalties for a person convicted of willfully trespassing or entering property containing a critical infrastructure facility without permission,” and it “prescribes criminal penalties for organizations conspiring with persons who willfully trespass and/or damage critical infrastructure sites.” Less than a week later Republicans in Iowa and Ohio introduced similar legislation.

Considering the encroachment on dissent and on press freedom, “our roles as journalists—to seek truth and hold those in power accountable—becomes that much more important,” Williams wrote to me recently. “What happened at Standing Rock is indicative of the US government’s historical failures to acknowledge treaties made with Indigenous Nations and the current administration’s complete disregard for public health, the environment, indigenous rights, and civil liberties—in favor of the extractive industries.” Meanwhile, the Dakota Access Pipeline itself has confirmed some of the Standing Rock Sioux’s fears: After becoming fully operation on June 1, the pipeline has already leaked at least five times.

The organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, DC, expected 200,000 people to show up on Saturday. Instead, at least 500,000 energized people flooded the streets of the capital yesterday, traveling untold miles to protest everything President Donald Trump stands for. Similar crowds outpaced organizers predictions all across the country, from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York City.

Photographer Tracie Williams was on the ground in DC, and her photographs capture some of the feeling of the day. On packed subway cars to the march, Williams says, “the energy was electric. We all knew something remarkable was going to happen.”

As Williams finally got to the march in the morning, “We could hear the roar of the crowd in the distance, a surreal yet beautiful sound beckoning us closer.” Her photos show the rest.

Read Joan Walsh’s dispatch from the DC protest, “Pussy Power Fights Back.”