Matos Named A ​“Proprietor”

A prominent immigrant rights organizer, Kica Matos, has just joined New Haven’s most exclusive club — with a mission of making New Haven’s communal core more inclusive.

Matos is the newest member of New Haven’s five-member Committee of the Proprietors of Common and Undivided Lands at New Haven.

The group, not the city government, has owned the 16-acre New Haven Green since the early 17th century. It sets the rules for what can happen there; it contracts with the city parks department to maintain it.

It is a self-perpetuating group, which means its members choose new members. Historically the group, with roots running back to New Haven’s Puritan settlers, represented the city’s WASP elite, but its makeup has diversified in recent years. Matos fills a seat last held by Yale Law School Professor Drew Days, a career civil-rights advocate who served as President Bill Clinton’s solicitor general. U.S. District Court Judge Janet Bond Arterton, who made a career in private practice defending workers’ rights, chairs the Proprietors. The other members are former Albertus Magnus President Julia McNamara, retired banker Robert Dannies, and philanthropist Anne Tyler Calabresi, a descendant of original proprietor Theophilus Eaton, who founded the colony along with John Davenport.

Matos, who is 50 years old and lives in Fair Haven, crafted New Haven’s immigrant-friendly policies as a top city official a decade ago. She has since assumed national leadership roles in the immigrant-rights movement. She also organized protests successfully calling for Yale to rename its Caolhoun residential college; she was arrested last month in a civil-disobedience action at one such protest.

“I’m excited,” Matos said of her selection as a proprietor. ​“I love the Green. It’s a beautiful space that brings the community together.”

In these times of protest, she observed, ​“the Green is a place where we’re going to see democracy fulfilled” in New Haven.

She spoke of how the Green right now is ​“kind of tired” physically and of looking forward to participating in beautification efforts.

Those efforts are underway, along with a campaign by the Proprietors to involve more of New Haven in its efforts. The traditionally secretive group is putting together a website. And it has hired retired city parks official Christy Haas to carry out a new vision for the Green involving more public events throughout the year and planting thousands of new flowers. Click here to read a full story about that.

The state legislature affirmed the proprietors’ legal right to control the Green in 1683, then again in 1723. (Read more about that history here.)

Supporters consider the proprietors responsible civic leaders who protect the public interest. Critics cast the institution, in the words of one lawyer (Norm Pattis) who went to court to try to end its reign, ​“a sort of geriatric Skull and Bones Society, a secret society open to membership only upon invitation of those deemed acceptable to current members … a colonial vestige that is governed by folks elected in secret and holding office for life.”