by | Jun 24, 2016 7:20 am | Comments (6)
David Yaffe-Bellany Photos
Activists protest Supreme Court decision voiding executive order.
Tecpa.
Lupita Tecpa, a rising junior at Hillhouse High School, won’t be going on any family trips this summer.
Continue reading ‘Protest Denounces Supreme Court Immigration Ruling’
by | Jun 20, 2016 7:22 am | Comments (0)
Daniela Brighenti Photo
Sandra Bustamante .
Some come to the U.S. to look for better lives; others, to find refuge from the troubles back home. Sandra Bustamante’s journey to the U.S. was a story of love.
by | Jun 15, 2016 7:30 am | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
“Refugee Suitcase,” mixed media by Ahmed.
Ridha Ali Ahmed travels light.
His suitcase contains only an always-sharp pencil for the endless forms to be filled out, a demure but sturdy heart locket full of love, and a long-stemmed rose. The valise is only about two by three inches, is open to the air on both sides, and has a black handle almost too tiny to see or even grasp.
Yet this “Refugee Suitcase,” and creative work like it, have enabled its creator — a member of the persecuted Turkmen minority in Iraq — to travel very far, eventually settle in New Haven, become a U.S. citizen, and, most importantly, stay sane through the healing powers of art.
by | Jun 14, 2016 7:53 am | Comments (0)
Paul Bass Photos
Bandhary-Alexander and Lugo at WNHH.
The latest programs from WNHH radio check in with community members about the massacre in Orlando, revisit immigration reform and the Brock Turner case, meet new authors with new summer reads, and time-travel to a simple time that actually wasn’t so simple.
by | Jun 13, 2016 12:10 pm | Comments (1)
Aliyya Swaby Photo
Yeungs.
Jenah and Jack Yeung both will go from helping run family stores as children to owning their own store of the popular franchise “The Halal Guys” coming this fall.
by | Jun 9, 2016 7:17 am | Comments (1)
Aliyya Swaby Photo
Insurance consultant Janet Ruiz and Durango are two of the staff at the company who speak English and Spanish.
Fabian Durango’s experience as an immigrant from Caracas, Venezuela, helps him understand the needs of the neighborhood’s Latino community and fortifies him to keep them from being taken advantage of by others.
by | Jun 6, 2016 12:28 pm | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Jackson.
Today’s programs on WNHH radio celebrate summer camp and opera music, look forward to July’s nominating conventions, weigh in on local infrastructure, get some quality mom time in the mix, and revisit New Haven’s hyper-industrial past circa World War II.
by | May 27, 2016 7:46 am | Comments (2)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Chanel DuBois, 41, at Gateway graduation Thursday.
When Fereshteh Ganjavi came to New Haven as an Iranian refugee in September 2011, she thought that her college degree would come with her.
No dice, employers said as she began the long and tedious search for jobs. She’d have to start from square one.
Continue reading ‘Class Of Strivers Wins Long-Sought Degrees’
by | May 27, 2016 7:18 am | Comments (0)
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTOS
The exhibit is bound for DC.
Ten images depict local Hispanic families who appear safe and happy for the moment. The portraits exhibited at Junta For Progressive Action on Grand Avenue belie their fragility, as the specter of family disruption looms over their lives and the lives of countless others every day.
by | May 25, 2016 7:15 am | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Silva.
“My story begins,” Jeorge Silva said, “at a very young age.”
by | May 20, 2016 7:08 am | Comments (3)
Daly at Wednesday’s summit.
Can the Muslim community really count on the FBI to protect it in mosques, schools, and neighborhoods as racial profiling and counterterrorism efforts escalate across the country?
Continue reading ‘U.S. Attorney Pledges Civil-Rights Action’
by | May 19, 2016 4:06 pm | Comments (3)
Duc Nguyen had already broken down the lemongrass and shredded it. Now, it was time to add it and some diced onion to the oil that had been heating in the frying pan.
by | Apr 20, 2016 3:23 pm | Comments (6)
Meat Chef Cruz at work at downtown’s new Taste of Brazil.
Tiago Pavuna is very specific about his home country’s national cocktail: It requires one and a half limes, not one or two.
by | Apr 18, 2016 3:39 pm | Comments (0)
Contributed Photos
New Haven activists at D.C. demonstration Monday.
As the U.S. Supreme Court weighed the fates of millions of undocumented workers, New Haven immigratnt-rights advocates rallying outside the door sent a message.
Continue reading ‘New Haven Takes Immigrant-Rights Call To U.S. Supreme Court’
by | Apr 18, 2016 7:16 am | Comments (2)
Contributed Photos
Proclaiming “Education is an opportunity to success!” and “All human beings deserve equality and dignity,” 30 students held a candlelight vigil to support a state bill that would allow undocumented students access to financial aid at state universities and colleges.
by | Apr 15, 2016 12:00 pm | Comments (1)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Severini.
Egidio Severini has never turned down an opportunity for honest work. Born during the second World War in Cheli, Italy, he had his first informal job ferrying wine from an Osteria to his family’s home, where his mother would mix it with water for him and his brother’s dinner. When the family decided to come to the U.S. in 1954, he found that part of being a young immigrant in total “culture shock” was getting a job — first a newspaper route, and then as a cobbler. By high school, he was on his way to becoming a mechanic.
Continue reading ‘From Cheli, He Found, & Grabbed, Opportunity’
by | Apr 8, 2016 7:10 am | Comments (0)
Phoebe Petrovic Photo
Born and raised Jewish in Brazil, Marcia Calisman moved to Israel as a young woman, and again to the U.S. in 2006. When she arrived at her first stop — Old Saybrook, just 20 minutes away from New Haven — she wasn’t thinking about opening a business based around clothing and accoutrements.
Having worked careers in the film and fashion design industries, she’d moved because her husband, Ronen Yur, had found a job designing jewelry for art and craft fairs around the country. As he adjusted to new work, Calisman got U.S. certification as a doula and joined a massage practice, doing painting and jewelry making on the side.
by | Apr 6, 2016 7:57 am | Comments (8)
Markeshia Ricks Photos
Lugo at DeLauro announcement: Arrest the real crooks.
DeLauro introduced a bill to up penalties, enforcement, and recouped wages.
Brothers Axel and Henry Tubac worked for a company installing kitchens. For the first two years they were paid without fail. Then, for six and seven weeks, respectively, their employer stopped paying them.
by | Apr 1, 2016 12:37 pm | Comments (0)
Wkimedia Commons
Andy Warhol with Tennessee Williams.
Today’s broadcasts on WNHH radio uncover new secrets about the artist Andy Warhol, explore mental health in the black community, try to get to the bottom of messy relationships, and more.
by | Mar 29, 2016 12:32 pm | Comments (0)
Aliyya Swaby Photo
Fernando Molina, Atuyuwe.
Arnold Atuyuwe explained a few differences between Truman School in New Haven and his previous school in Malawi: Here, books are not free, computers are everywhere, and teachers don’t hit students.
by | Mar 29, 2016 7:39 am | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Jefferson at WNHH.
What if, Michael Jefferson wondered, slavery and reconstruction hadn’t ended in new iterations of racism? What if history’s wrongs could be righted, power restored to black hands?
by | Mar 23, 2016 2:52 pm | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Mansfield.
For Anna Liffey’s owner Patrick Mansfield, the journey to the U.S. didn’t begin in his family’s pub, where eight siblings and extra guests at the dinner table could sometimes feel crowded. Or when a brother and sister moved to New York in the 1980s, opening pubs in Queens and Brooklyn. Or when he traveled 100 miles across Ireland to see Irish rock sensation Rory Gallagher at 14, and realized that the country — and the world — were a lot bigger than his native County Waterford in southeast Ireland.
by | Mar 23, 2016 7:44 am | Comments (30)
Aliyya Swaby Photo
Tuesday night’s crowd signals support for wage raise.
Erica Lewis sobbed as she spoke about moving into a shelter with her daughter despite earning above minimum wage at two home care jobs.
by | Mar 11, 2016 2:37 pm | Comments (1)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Trinity bartender Paul Jinks pours a stout.
Courtesy Photo.
Beef & Guinness pie.
Shane Carty and Eddie Higgins have a time-tested regimen when it comes to New Haven’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, and it starts with 600 pounds of Silverside-cut corned beef. Beef, specifically, that has traveled from the hindquarters of East Coast cattle through a New York supplier, to The Trinity Bar & Restaurant’s Orange Street kitchen.
Continue reading ‘For St. Pat’s, Dublin With A Side Of Elm City’
by | Mar 9, 2016 1:30 pm | Comments (1)
Paul Bass Photo
Immigrant-rights protesters at City Hall.
(Opinion) “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” Kica Matos intoned from a makeshift stage at the eastern corner of the New Haven Green. It was April 10, 2006, and Matos, then the Director of Junta for Progressive Action, invoked the famous inscription on the Statute of Liberty, calling the “wretched refuse” and “the homeless, tempest-tost” to America’s land of promise.
Supporters of comprehensive immigration reform rallied around the country in cities like New Haven that April day. Although advocates simultaneously pushed local remedies to help the plight of immigrants, national success seemed, at the time, tantalizingly close. Few of us expected that ten years later, the debate about immigration would involve talk of making Mexico pay for a wall along the United States’ southern border and barring Muslims from entering the country.