"New York Hearts Boston" projection by The Illuminator. Image via imgur.com.

The Boston Marathon tragedy has been met with unbelievable acts of kindness. From Buzzfeed, these Bostonians will restore your faith in humanity.

In the wake of Monday's awful tragedy in Boston, you may be wondering what you can do to help, so...How You Can Help:

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Tom Menino have formed The One Fund Boston, Inc. to help the people most affected by the Boston Marathon tragedy. Find out how you can get involved here.

Cell phone service has been shut down in the city. If you're looking for information on someone who was running the Marathon, Google has set up a People Finder -- you can also use it to submit information about a person. Families of victims can also use the Mayor's Hotline for information: 617-635-4500. Or use the Red Cross site, see below.

The American Red Cross of Eastern Massachusetts has opened a disaster operation center and is asking locals to notify loved ones of their whereabouts on the organization’s website.

The Red Cross says the best way to help right now is to get in touch with loved ones through its Safe And Well Listings. The organization is not asking for blood donations at this time thanks to many donations from people seeking to help. But check their website often in case this changes.

The Salvation Army has deployed four mobile feeding kitchens and more than 30 volunteers to dispense food, drinks and emotional support in Boston. One canteen is stationed at the Family Assistance Center at the Park Plaza Castle where survivors and first responders are congregating. Find out how you can get involved here.

Some marathon runners are stranded in Boston and in need of places to stay. Boston.com reports that they'll be setting up a Google doc where runners who need a place to stay can find lodging, and those who have lodging available can post details. Check back on their site for more information soon. Update: The Google doc is now live. Find out how you can offer housing here.

Boston Police are looking for tips, anyone with info about the incident can call 617-635-4500 or 1-800-494-TIPS.

Our thoughts are with everyone in Boston right now, stay safe. Cheers to the first responders who did an amazing job of responding to the call to duty.

Most businesses will be open in the area, although the JFK Library will be closed Tuesday, April 16.

An inmate at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, took to the pages of The New York Times to tell about the degradation and misery the hunger strikers are experiencing at the prison. His name is Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, and he can only "write" by dictating to his lawyers, through a translator, over the phone. Moqbel and his fellow strikers are tied down and force-fed twice a day, often painfully. “I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose,” he writes. “I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.” Moqbel, who has been imprisoned for 11 years and three months, has been fasting since February 10.

Over the weekend, after the Red Cross had left and during a media blackout, prisoners and military guards clashed as the authorities attempted to end the protest by moving prisoners from the communal blocks into individual cells, a step back toward the Bush administration's maximum security-style detention policies. The protests were sparked by what prisoners say was mistreatment of their Qurans during searches, but Moqbel writes that its aims are broad: "I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late."

Documents from 2008 published by the Times indicate that Moqbel was captured in December 2001 and identified as a guard for Bin Laden. Moqbel obviously disputes this claim.

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You can't possibly praise the Occupy movement enough for their response to the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. There are the volunteers who deliver food, water, and clothing to those in need, and even experienced medical professionals going door-to-door in elderly communities to provide whatever assistance is needed far quicker, and it seems they're doing it far more thoroughly than the traditional first-response groups.

Via:

Anna Lederman, a Russian-speaking nurse working with Occupy Sandy, walked up fourteen flights of a pitch-black stairwell in the Surfside Gardens housing complex in Coney Island on Monday and knocked on an apartment door, the only light coming from her small headlamp. An elderly woman wearing a babushka, walking slowly with a cane, told Lederman in Russian that she was all alone. She had her medications, but could not get down the stairs, and needed food. “This,” she said, “is like the second blockade of Leningrad.”

Many New Yorkers affected by the storm have complained about the uneven response from the city, FEMA, and Red Cross. Veterans of the Occupy movement, with experience in New Orleans at the Common Ground Clinic after Katrina, and in Zuccotti Park last year, have stepped in to fill the gap. “That’s one of the reasons we mobilized here first,” said Becca Piser, a street medic trained as a first-responder. “No one’s telling us where to go or not to go.” The Occupy crew in Coney Island also included some of Lederman's fellow nurses from Columbia University, who had been working in shelters and on the Occupy mission to Far Rockaway; a Russian and Spanish translator, who had answered the call on Facebook; Shawn Westfahl, one of the first medics at the Occupy encampment in Zuccotti Park; and Roger Benham and Jeff “Fidget” (his Occupy name), who worked together doing disaster relief in New Orleans and in Haiti after the earthquake.
...
FEMA and the NYPD have been distributing MREs — freeze-dried meals-ready-to-eat—that come in heavy plastic pouches and must be handled correctly to self-heat, have a high sodium content that is problematic for elderly people and those with hypertension, and have instructions printed only in English. A few packets lay scattered in the dark hallways. A number of residents said they did not know what to do with them.
...
It was growing dark. Piser and Westfahl left to answer one last dispatch call for a cancer patient who needed a daily dose of chemo. Fidget duct-taped a sign on the outside of the building saying that every floor had been checked by Occupy Sandy for urgent needs. “It comes down to the fact that they got these knocks,” said Lederman, the nurse. “I think it could be a psychological disaster — at the very least — if nobody at all came for six days.”

No doubt the strategy of Occupy Sandy's emergency response will be examined for some time to come, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the movement's "teach-in" sessions become even more popular and in demand.

If you're able, please visit the Occupy Sandy website and donate if you're able, or better yet -- volunteer to help.

Occupy Sandy in action: Church full of volunteers preparing meals, sorting donations to distribute throughout NYC.

The New Yorker's News Desk:

At the St. Francis de Sales church on B-129th Street, the church hall has been taken over by Occupy Sandy—an offshoot of the still-active networks of Occupy Wall Street. Supplies have been driven here from all over Brooklyn: back there are piles of blankets; on the tables here are diapers, baby food, and cleaning supplies; over there, clothes (grownup, child, baby); more than a hundred pairs of shoes lined up neatly on the bleachers. Residents of the neighborhood wander around the hall, filling bags. In the front entranceway Occupy volunteers are unloading cases of bottled water from a truck, handing the heavy cases one to the next, a bucket brigade to the back of the church. The volunteers move fast but the job lasts more than half an hour—it’s a big truck. In front of the church, long tables have been set up on the sidewalk, where volunteers are serving hot food and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

The Red Cross doesn’t accept individual donations of household goods—these things, it says, need to be cleaned, sorted, and repackaged, and all that takes up more time than they’re worth. It asks for financial donations only. New York Cares requires its volunteers to go through orientation sessions, all of which are full till late November. But Occupy, as you would expect, has a different style.

Be sure to read the entire article at the New Yorker, and not just because it portrays the occupy movement in a positive light, it's because this is what occupy is doing when they aren't protesting in the streets. They're holding educational sessions, planning and organizing sessions...and when there is a need in the community -- as there is most certainly after the devastation left by Sandy (Mayor Bloomberg says as many as 40k NYers may need to relocate!) -- occupiers are able to step up and get the ball rolling with amazing speed.

Wildfires in Colorado continue to rage. As of Wednesday morning, the 6,200-acre blaze had been only 5 percent contained, and 65 mph winds blew the fire through containment lines into northwest Colorado Springs on Tuesday. Officials say it is exhibiting “extreme fire behavior.” Roughly 32,000 residents have been evacuated from the area so far. Colorado Springs reached a record 101 degrees on Tuesday, and conditions are expected to be hot and dry until early next week. Gov. John Hickenlooper said, “It’s as serious as it gets,” while the Colorado Springs fire chief labeled it “a firestorm of epic proportions.”

Support Firefighters on the Frontline and Displaced Families of Colorado Springs

Wednesday, June 26th

Donations Accepted from 8:30-2:00 pm

Location: Walmart Parking Lot in Castle Rock...
Just east of I-25 off Front Street

What is Needed?

Individually Wrapped

Bottled Water
Gatorade or Similar Drinks
Cereal Bars
Power Bars
Trail Mix
Cookies
Candies

Blankets and Hand Sanitizer

Help support our neighbors to the south and those actively engaged
in supressing the blaze by donating much needed items.

All Donations will be delivered directly to Red Cross in Colorado Springs.

Other ways to help Firefighters and Families of the Waldo Canyon Fire: Bring Donations to Wal-mart in Castle Rock, to Volunteer contact 719-955-0742, to make a Cash Donation to the Red Cross contact Adriana Watson at 719-884-1047 or Pat Sisterson at 719-884-1047.

[Editor's note: This post has been edited to correct mention of an organizer who was mistakenly identified as a member of Occupy Denver. Apologies for the error.]