by | Sep 21, 2020 9:04 am | Comments (3)
Brian Slattery Photos
A crowd descended on Bassett Street in Newhallville, ready with brushes, rollers, and cans and cans of paint. They were there to make art that delivered a simple, powerful message — Black lives matter — by spelling it out on the street for all to see.
by | Sep 17, 2020 4:16 pm | Comments (11)
Chris Randall Photo
Ella’s Fund PAC organizers Pia Gero, Keisha Redd-Hannans, Karimah Mickens, Karen DuBois-Walton, and LaMara Russell.
Five Black, female civic leaders — including the city’s public housing chief, an assistant public schools superintendent, and the former president of a local sorority — have launched a political action committee aimed at translating this summer’s grassroots uprisings for racial justice into lasting state and local political power.
by | Sep 17, 2020 1:18 pm | Comments (2)
Yale New Haven Hospital’s incoming president said he wants to ensure that Black and brown communities are considered in the process of improving healthcare.
Continue reading ‘New YNHH Prez Targets Racial Equity In Healthcare’
by | Sep 10, 2020 2:20 pm | Comments (9)
Rachel Peet Photo
Bahati Kanyamanza.
In January of this year, I moved to New Haven to start a job with an amazing refugee resettlement organization, Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services.
I was excited about my new position. In February, I decided to take a walk downtown to familiarize myself with my new city. I entered a restaurant and sat near a group of three white gentlemen. They invited me to join them at their table, but the look of one of them scared me. Putting away my doubts, I joined them. They introduced themselves to me and I did the same.
Then, the scary-looking guy asked where I had come from. Before I answered, he said, “I hope you did not come here illegally and are now living on American taxes.” I replied, “NO, SIR.” But, his question had already watered down the nice gesture of inviting me to their table. And so, even before the Covid-19 lockdown, I started thinking about how to avoid people no matter how nice or innocent they look.
Continue reading ‘Haunted By Ghosts Of The Violence I Escaped’
by | Sep 10, 2020 10:11 am | Comments (1)
Activist Angela Davis told activist Ericka Huggins that she remembered when they met, in Los Angeles in the 1960s. She met Huggins’s husband John when Davis joined the Black Panthers. She remembered when John was murdered. She had made sure that Huggins’s young daughter was in good hands when Huggins was arrested, and she was there when Huggins was released.
The connection between the two women was deep and strong. Both had been Black Panthers. Both had spent time in jail. And both had spent the past decades continuing to work for social justice.
On Wednesday night, in a Zoom talk hosted by Artspace — and filled to capacity — as part of its programming for “Revolution on Trial,” Davis and Huggins connected again, to talk about education.
Continue reading ‘Artspace Talk Brings The Revolution To The Classroom’
by | Sep 1, 2020 2:55 pm | Comments (23)
Contributed
The Olin Powder Farm.
Hamden environmental groups and Newhall neighborhood leaders are renewing a push for the state to force Olin Corporation to clean up, remediate and open a 102.5‑acre forest and wetlands site so that residents can finally enjoy the closed-off land.
by | Sep 1, 2020 2:51 pm | Comments (0)
The first step of addressing racial disparities at a local level is to get some basic terms right.
This is according to Leon Andrews, the director of the National League of Cities’ Race, Equity, and Leadership (REAL) initiative. Andrews has been working with REAL to help local leaders undo structural racism since protests in Ferguson, Mo. in 2015 brought national attention to police brutality.
by | Aug 31, 2020 8:08 am | Comments (2)
Love’N Co set up fast at the end of the block on Orange and Crown Streets and brought joyous songs to Black Art Matters, an art, music, and craft fair held on Saturday from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. that — masks and social distancing and all — brought the arts back to New Haven’s summer streets, with a message.
Continue reading ‘Black Art Matters Brings Arts Back To The Street’
by | Aug 23, 2020 2:16 pm | Comments (6)
Courtney Luciana Photo
Pastor Esau Greene leads the peace rally on Saturday.
Pastor Esau Greene of New Antioch Church of God and Reverend Wayne McCrae of Upright Ministries Outreach organized a peace rally on the corner of Rosette and Hurlburt streets, the same street where Dayshon Smith was shot and killed and five others were injured a week earlier. Fifteen city officials and officers gathered to speak out for peace and prayer.
by | Aug 21, 2020 11:21 am | Comments (17)
Zoom
Superintendent Iline Tracey with assistant superintendent of curriculum, Ivelise Velazquez.
New Haven elementary schoolers will start off the school year with a home science experiment: What happens when they try to move a tissue with their breath while wearing a mask?
by | Aug 20, 2020 8:01 am | Comments (16)
Thomas Breen / Allan Appel photos
New Haven Chief Reyes and YPD Chief Higgins.
The chiefs of police for both Yale and New Haven defended the university’s police department as a critical “partner” in providing public safety in New Haven, during an aldermanic committee hearing focused on the inner workings and proper role of the local private police force.
by | Aug 20, 2020 7:58 am | Comments (2)
Scenes from These Truths.
There is a “gravitational pull” dragging down Black men in America. “There’s no respect in our community for each other as brothers.” “There are not enough men who are positive role models.” “What can we do as a society to lift Black men up, because y’all did a hell of a job tearing them down?”
These and many other hard truths came to light Wednesday night in the screening of and panel discussion about the short film These Truths: A Documentary on the State of the Black Community, hosted online by The Narrative Project and drawing an audience of about 100.
by | Aug 17, 2020 3:38 pm | Comments (12)
Emily Hays Photo
Rising seventh grader Carlos Cordoba (pictured) got to see and hear peers for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
Wexler-Grant sixth grader Carlos Cordoba hadn’t seen anyone except his family and the kids across the street from him since schools closed in March. Even his video games had only voices and avatars for him to interact with.
So when he started a summer program through New Haven Public Schools and his classes were held on Google Meet, the interaction through video calls made all the difference.
Continue reading ‘Summer Produced Clues For Fall Remote Learning’
by | Aug 14, 2020 10:38 pm | Comments (22)
Thomas Breen photo
Youth leader Jeremy Cajigas urges Mayor Elicker (right) to defund the police.
A “Defund the Police” rally held outside Mayor Justin Elicker’s house turned into a wide-ranging conversation about City Hall’s policy priorities amidst the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement.
Continue reading ‘Police Protest Sparks Dialogue At Mayor’s House’
by | Aug 14, 2020 5:41 pm | Comments (0)
Leaders of black student groups at Yale released the following open letter Friday afternoon to U.S. Attorney William Barr and the Department of Justice over the filing of a lawsuit against Yale for allegedly discriminating against whites and Asian-Americans by practicing affirmative action:
Continue reading ‘Yale’s Black Student Leaders To Barr, DOJ: “We Will Fight For What Is Right”’
by | Aug 14, 2020 8:15 am | Comments (1)
Titus Kaphar
Analogous colors.
On one wall of NXTHVN’s gallery is a possibly already-iconic painting: A Black mother, eyes closed, her hair kept from her face by a headband, cradling only the silhouette of a baby. New Haven-based artist Titus Kaphar painted it in reaction to the killing of George Floyd, and in June it ended up being on the cover of Time magazine.
Facing that image, on the opposite wall, are a series of black pieces of paper that contain faces and words and crossed out lines. One side of the gallery is a short shock; the other is a lake of layers to sink into.
Together, they make up “Pleading Freedom,” a small but deep exhibition of work by Kaphar in collaboration with memoirist, poet, and attorney Reginald Dwayne Betts that has much to say about the condition of being Black in America at a time when people’s ears are prepared to hear that message as much as they have been in a generation.
by | Aug 13, 2020 9:30 am | Comments (2)
Brian Slattery Photo
Clinard.
Statues stand together, a small family of them, somehow radiating both fear and total resolve. A pair of shadows huddle under rafters. Another group stands together, bearing witness, demanding to be counted. The pieces are all part of a larger exhibit by New Haven-based sculptor Susan Clinard focusing on refugees, migrants, and border crossings, for a new journal seeking to use groundbreaking ways of representing art to perhaps change hearts, minds — and policy.
Continue reading ‘Sculptor’s Work Crosses Borders, Breaks Ground’
by | Aug 7, 2020 1:20 pm | Comments (3)
Maya McFadden Photo
Smitty Bop: Newhallville proud, on the move.
Rising New Haven rapper Smitty Bop, known for music videos celebrating New Haven and local street life, has broadened his message in a new single to target police brutality nationwide and support the Black Lives Matter movement.
Here’s the hook:
I ain’t with that cappin shit /
A cop killin me? I ain’t having it /
won’t get down on my knees like I’m Kaepernick /
cops killing with they knees, that ain’t average /
by | Aug 6, 2020 10:08 am | Comments (1)
Laura Glesby Photo
Barbara Fair accepts flowers.
In a celebration of activist-politician teamwork, two state legislators met a rally of gratitude on Wednesday from grassroots police accountability advocates — and in turn honored the organizers who kept them on task at the state Capitol.
Continue reading ‘Police Accountability Activists Honor Legislators, & Vice Versa’
by | Aug 5, 2020 11:02 am | Comments (0)
Kwadwo Adae
Kerry, Addys, Norm, Sarah, Vanessa, Ericka.
We know the subjects of the paintings are protestors because of the crowds assembled behind them, silhouettes gathered with raised arms and picket signs. One carries a bullhorn. Another has the Puerto Rican flag emblazoned on a tank top. Another throws a fist in the air to reveal a tattoo on the wrist.
As the accompanying notes say, “New Haven painter and activist Kwadwo Adae celebrates his compatriots and heroes” in these series of portraits.
The subjects are Kerry Ellington, Addys Castillo, Norm Clement, Ericka Huggins, Sarah Pimenta, and Vanessa Suárez. Adae has depicted them in their “protest armor.”
In putting them side by side by side, Adae deftly connects past to present. He shows that the protests of 1970 over the Black Panther trials in New Haven have cast a long shadow, and suggests further that they are part of a continuum, an even longer thread stretching back perhaps to the beginnings of the country.
by | Jul 31, 2020 8:15 pm | Comments (0)
Alisa Bowens-Mercado with husband John Mercado (right) and Two Roads’ Phil Markowski (left) ).
This stout tastes like oats, chocolate — and social justice.
by | Jul 31, 2020 8:11 pm | Comments (14)
Ko Lyn Cheang photos
Remsen Welsh leads the protest.
Nearly 100 protesters marched from the Green to police headquarters to issue a renewed call to defund the police.
Continue reading ‘Youth Leaders Renew Call To Defund The Police’
by | Jul 29, 2020 9:08 am | Comments (42)
CT-N
State Sen. Winfield at overnight special session.
The final Senate vote tally, coming in after 4 a.m.
The State Senate early Wednesday voted 21 – 15 in support of a hotly contested police accountability bill after over 10 hours of impassioned debate led by New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield, culminating his decade-long quest to convince a suburban-dominated legislature that Black lives matter when it comes to law enforcement.
Continue reading ‘Moment Seized: Winfield Pushes Cop Accountability Bill Past The Finish Line’
by | Jul 28, 2020 12:52 pm | Comments (14)
File Photos
Nominees, clockwise from top left: Counsel, Avshalom-Smith, Pescatore, Peralta, Ross-Lee.
Devin Avshalom-Smith intends not just to hear cases of police misconduct, but to work toward building trust between the community and police, if he lands a seat on the Civilian Review Board.
by | Jul 27, 2020 10:24 am | Comments (5)
Maya McFadden Photo
Hundreds of Newhallville residents united with a march and rally to call for local voting, equality, and empowerment.