ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I summarize the story of Occupy Sandy in Rockaway, as it meandered along a path of empowerment that opened up new vistas in the relief phase only to double-back on itself during the long-term recovery phase. I propose a concept to capture the conundrum of this process: the savior trap. The savior trap connotes how the activists, although deeply aware of their own privileges, nevertheless ended up reproducing some of the same power imbalances they had set out to alter. The savior trap in essence is this: we cannot save, but we cannot not save. I weave together three inter-related subsets of this trap: the intersectional trap, the resistance trap, and the situated marginalization trap. I then lift the gaze to look beyond the specific story of Occupy Sandy in Rockaway and situate the ongoings of this participatory post-disaster space in larger oppositional struggles, as the world face harsher disasters in light of climate change and widening social, political, and economic inequalities. Finally, I reflect on my own positionality in relation to the people I have learned from – the activists and the residents – and discuss a certain kind of trap I found myself in when concluding the work.
