by | Jan 23, 2023 12:48 pm | Comments (7)
Thomas Breen photo
Maceo "Troy" Streater (center) with campaign supporters at King-Robinson.
(Updated) Maceo “Troy” Streater ended up on top of a four-way special election for Ward 21 alder, making him the next local legislative representative for a zig-zagged district that stretches across parts of Newhallville, Dixwell, and Prospect Hill.
by | Jan 18, 2023 5:37 pm | Comments (4)
Laura Glesby photo
Maceo Troy Streater knocks on Ann Garrett Robinson's door Wednesday.
A team of formerly-incarcerated campaigners rally behind Streater.
Door after door, Maceo Troy Streater set out in the neighborhood where he’s lived his whole life to campaign for a newly vacant alder seat — and to convince neighbors that personal and political change is possible.
by | Jan 18, 2023 10:48 am | Comments (0)
Isaac Yu photo
City arts director Adriane Jefferson (right) with colleague Kim Futrell at Tuesday's "cultural vitality" presser.
More artists and artisans at city farmers’ markets. The return of a historic Black cultural parade to Dixwell Avenue. Pop-up events for young photographers, actors and dancers looking to show off their work and grow their audiences.
Continue reading ‘Artists, Orgs Land $187K For "Cultural Vitality"’
by | Jan 17, 2023 8:53 am | Comments (4)
Laura Glesby photo
Stephanie Greenlea reflects Monday on 17 years of organizing with Local 33.
Days after Yale graduate student-workers officially won union recognition in a landslide election, a local labor coalition celebrated that victory while rallying in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s vision of working class justice.
by | Jan 16, 2023 6:30 pm | Comments (12)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Rev. Eldren Morrison: “The church has lost its activist spirit."
A former New Haven-based faith leader returned to Dixwell Avenue Monday to lift up Martin Luther King Jr.‘s legacy of church-led progressive political action.
Continue reading ‘Rev. Morrison Returns To Preach "Good Trouble"’
by | Jan 13, 2023 10:50 am | Comments (1)
Lisa Reisman photo
Fred Christmas at the door with Dixwell resident Sharon Green.
Fred Christmas bounded onto Winter Street in the biting January air, holding a manila envelope of campaign leaflets in his hand.
The Ward 21 alder hopeful had spent the morning talking with Dixwell voters, and was running late for a meetup with some neighborhood senior citizens. But there were still a few more doors to knock — and Christmas was on a mission.
by | Dec 16, 2022 3:03 pm | Comments (33)
Thomas Breen file photos
LCI Board Member Nadine Horton (left): "Rewarding bad behavior." LCI Director Arlevia Samuel (right): "Investing in community.”
Nora Grace Flood photo
The derelict former Monterey Jazz club on Dixwell.
A debate about how to revitalize the Dixwell neighborhood without rewarding a megalandlord for bad behavior has delayed a key vote on the Elicker Administration’s plans to buy four rundown properties for a combined sum of $1.3 million.
by | Dec 15, 2022 2:00 pm | Comments (0)
Ward 21 candidates Hurse, Christmas, Streater.
It’s election season again — at least in Ward 21 — with three candidates now vying for a newly opened seat on the Board of Alders.
by | Dec 13, 2022 4:30 pm | Comments (11)
Plan for the new Dixwell Plaza.
Over $4 million is coming to the city to help builders clean separate polluted properties in order to construct new homes and other public buildings.
Continue reading ‘Millions Flow To City For Building-Site Clean-Ups’
by | Dec 12, 2022 4:18 pm | Comments (5)
Contributed photo; Thomas Breen file Photo
Fred Christmas filing papers Monday at City Clerk's Office; Maceo Troy Streater.
Two lifelong New Haveners are seeking to become the next Ward 21 alder now that the incumbent has stepped down mid-term.
by | Dec 6, 2022 12:22 pm | Comments (0)
The following writeup about a recent performance of The Nutcracker ballet at the Q House was submitted to the Independent by the nonprofit Leadership, Education, Athletics in Partnership (LEAP).
Continue reading ‘100s Turn Out For The Nutcracker At The Q’
by | Dec 2, 2022 3:30 pm | Comments (36)
The former famed Monterey jazz club, one of 4 Ocean-owned buildings on Dixwell Ave. that the city is looking to buy for $1.3 million.
Thomas Breen file photo
LCI's Evan Trachten: Ocean has "had the site for several years and failed to develop it."
The Elicker Administration plans to purchase a handful of rundown Dixwell Avenue properties from affiliates of Ocean Management for $350,000 more than those properties’ combined city-appraised value — and for $800,000 more than what the megalandlord paid to buy those same buildings six years ago — as part of a public effort to develop affordable housing in a revitalizing stretch of the Dixwell neighborhood.
Continue reading ‘Desperate Dixwell Deal Profits Megalandlord’
by | Dec 2, 2022 9:08 am | Comments (20)
Thomas Breen photo
275 Winchester Ave., now under new ownership.
Two New Jersey-based investors have purchased the 158-unit Winchester Lofts luxury apartment complex — capping off a two-year local real estate spending spree that has seen that same landlord duo buy a total of 632 New Haven apartments for a price tag likely well in excess of $100 million.
by | Nov 30, 2022 12:35 pm | Comments (4)
Yash Roy photo
Vietnam vet Conley Monk, Jr. (right) with U.S. Sen. Blumenthal.
Conley Monk, Jr. finally received his federal veteran benefits in 2015 after more than four decades of denied claims and a successful court battle that led to nationwide discharge appeal reform.
The Vietnam War vet and former Marine joined a team of legal advocates and a sitting U.S. senator to announce a new lawsuit against the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) alleging racial bias in the process by which benefit claims like his are reviewed and approved.
by | Nov 1, 2022 11:11 am | Comments (2)
Nora Grace-Flood photos
At Monday's trunk-or-treat on Ashmun St.
Baby Savannah practices candy crawling her own way Monday night.
Little mermaids, Minions and monsters gathered outside of the Connecticut Violence Intervention Program’s headquarters Monday — to take turns “trunk or treating” within a web of safety-minded community members and their cars.
Continue reading ‘Safety, Candy Abound At Ashmun Trunk-Or-Treat’
by | Oct 31, 2022 4:40 pm | Comments (4)
Lisa Reisman photo
Juanita Harris with granddaughters at Q House Halloween.
Under the setting sun, a group of young people line danced in loose precision to the beat of V.I.C.’s “Wobble.” A line with witches, ghosts, and dinosaurs stretched from the field to the gymnasium, where trick-and-treat festivities awaited. Face-painted zombies, pirates, and superheroes chased each other in the cool autumn air, squealing with delight.
by | Oct 31, 2022 9:52 am | Comments (0)
Melissa Bailey file photo
The late Winfred Rembert at his Newhall St. home.
Allan Appel photo
Prof. Erin I. Kelly with Rembert book and art on Thursday.
His tale of triumph through art, grit, and love in Georgia’s 1960s cotton fields, including seven years on a chain gang and a near lynching, is already taught at Yale — and well might become required reading in high schools and colleges throughout the country.
And a major motion picture should also be a consideration to get the story out far and wide.
Continue reading ‘Rembert's Rep Rises At NXTHVN Celebration’
by | Oct 27, 2022 11:30 am | Comments (10)
Thomas Breen photo
Attorney Mike Jefferson and author Nicholas Dawidoff in conversation at Stetson event Wednesday evening.
When Flemming “Nick” Norcott Jr. was growing up in the Dwight/Kensington neighborhood in the 1940s and ’50s, Prospect Hill wasn’t the only “other side” of town that was off limits to Black families like his.
“There were a lot of ‘other sides’ then,” the retired former state Supreme Court justice remembered at a Wednesday evening book talk. “As a young boy, a pre-teen, a teen, we couldn’t go to Westville. We couldn’t go to Morris Cove. We couldn’t go to Wooster Square, because there would be consequences that would be really, really bad.”
by | Oct 24, 2022 8:55 am | Comments (4)
Laura Glesby Photo
Erycka recites poetry on the Lit Fest stage ...
... as Lindsey Pina and Royal Bleu look for books on a whim.
Professional poets, emerging authors, scholars of Black literature, and kids learning to sound out words collectively transformed the Q House into a story-fueled time machine at the third annual Elm City Lit Fest.
by | Oct 6, 2022 9:37 am | Comments (1)
A large red empty speech bubble stands on the sidewalk outside NXTHVN in Dixwell. Its object lies in “inviting visitors to rest, contemplate and reflect,” as an accompanying explanation puts it. But as it stands on Henry Street, it also feels like a portal, setting expectations for what’s in store for the rest of the show. Through it, one can see people milling about in the foyer of the gallery space — and beyond that, a commotion of mylar, and anyone who’s in it moving around like they’re in a snowstorm. What’s happening in there?
by | Oct 4, 2022 11:45 am | Comments (10)
Paul Bass file photo
Kadir Catalbasoglu at work at Brick Oven Pizza.
Thomas Breen photo
The city-owned driveway and garage at 55 Dixwell.
For the fourth time in five years, alders signed off on selling a vacant city-owned garage to a local pizza maker-turned-landlord — this time on the condition that he convert the property into five apartments with at least one unit reserved for low-income tenants.
by | Sep 29, 2022 9:12 am | Comments (1)
Noel Sims photo
At Wednesday's food entrepreneur showcase.
Tamales, cupcakes, hot sauce, and corn ribs were just a few of the locally made items on the menu at a Q House-hosted showcase of homegrown foodie talent.
by | Sep 28, 2022 8:23 am | Comments (0)
The video for Ionne’s latest single “The Last Time” — off his new album Fracture — sends the viewer into a spiral from the start. When the camera finally stops spinning, it’s still moving, and there is Ionne himself, singing into the darkness on a beach, a crashed spaceship behind him. “All we ever feared / Was killing time / Several hundred years / Amount to castles that we’ll never own / And songs I write / But cannot sing myself / Our dreams of spaceships and their secret plans to take us somewhere else,” he sings. It’s a melody about loss, but the music isn’t about giving up. It’s about falling down and getting up again, of finding the strength to start something new.
by | Sep 27, 2022 8:47 am | Comments (2)
Laura Glesby Photo
Jana Russo-Priestley, center, with wife Anne and father Arius.
Jana Russo-Priestly arrived at the Omni ballroom remembering the role that Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ (UCC) has played in three generations of her family’s history — as well as in two centuries of New Haven’s.
by | Sep 22, 2022 1:26 pm | Comments (7)
A rebuilt Dixwell Plaza, with a one-level-larger greenhouse-topped parking garage (circled in red).
Dixwell Plaza’s redevelopers won permission to scrap a too-costly underground parking garage in exchange for a larger temporary surface parking lot in their ongoing effort to build up the heart of New Haven’s historic Black neighborhood.
Continue reading ‘Parking Change OK'd For Dixwell Plaza Redo’