by | Jun 22, 2020 11:30 pm | Comments (38)
Molly Montgomery Photo
2018 protest unofficially renames Columbus Family Academy, with blood on hands of papier maché Columbus.
The Board of Education voted overwhelmingly in support of removing Christopher Columbus’s name from a Fair Haven K‑8 school — as well as from an October holiday on the district’s calendar — in the city’s latest reckoning with the 15th-century explorer’s violent legacy.
by | Jun 19, 2020 2:44 pm | Comments (3)
Courtney Luciana Photo
Cross grad Atziri Rodriguez, who earned biliteracy seal on top of APs.
Over 140 seniors walked across New Haven graduation stages this year with diplomas certifying that they are proficient in multiple languages.
Continue reading ‘# Of Officially Bilingual Graduates Tripled’
by | Jun 15, 2020 3:51 pm | Comments (20)
Fence outside Nevedo’s house.
Paul Bass Photo
Juan Cervantes shows wound, healing a week later.
Neighbors poured onto Frank Street twice in eight days — first to stop a machete-wielding man from attacking a Mexican immigrant, then to protest what they called deeper problems revealed by the encounter.
by | Jun 11, 2020 10:24 pm | Comments (5)
Sam Gurwitt Photos
Fifty protesters silently marched single file Thursday evening along the Grand Avenue sidewalk to protest police brutality.
Instead of chants of “no justice, no peace,” the most prominent sounds were the honking cars that rushed by, and the “clip, clip” sound of staples sticking posters with police officers’ faces into telephone poles.
by | Jun 8, 2020 10:35 am | Comments (2)
Sumiya Khan and Chef Nour.
We were supposed to have a food processor and did not. But thanks to the right ingredients provided by Sanctuary Kitchen, and expert guidance from Chef Nour, we were able to create flavors from the city of Homs, Syria right in our own kitchen.
by | May 29, 2020 2:08 pm | Comments (5)
Daniel Nieves III.
My name is Daniel Nieves III. I am 29 years old and a college student living in New Haven. My long-term goal is to complete law school and help my homeland, Puerto Rico, become America’s 51st state. To understand why this is important to me, you have to understand where I come from and the journey I have taken to today.
by | May 27, 2020 7:52 pm | Comments (5)
New Havener Jhon Llanos contributed the following first-person piece about an experience had had in the New Haven police lock-up, in which he was told he was going to be held and referred to federal immigration authorities in contravention of New Haven’s sanctuary city policies. Asked for a response, Police Chief Otoniel Reyes said that as soon as he was alerted to the situation, he intervened and Llanos was released from custody “within minutes.” He attributed the episode to a “misunderstanding”: “We dealt with it and clarified it” with the officer involved.
by | May 11, 2020 9:43 am | Comments (6)
Emily Hays Photo
Havenly Treats’ Passoni and Nieda outside Sweet Mary’s, where they plan to start serving free food this week.
When Caterina Passoni and Nieda Abbas heard that downtown bakery Sweet Mary’s was temporarily suspending business during the Covid-19 pandemic, they saw an opportunity to support two bakeries at once.
by | May 1, 2020 12:25 pm | Comments (9)
Seniors Daniela Flores (left) and Ciara Ortiz Diaz.
Pandemic-related travel limitations helped two star New Haven high schoolers pick Yale over other Ivy League as the next stop in their academic careers.
by | Apr 28, 2020 4:37 pm | Comments (3)
City of New Haven
A map of the city’s five testing sites, identified by blue markers.
The city expects the new Day Street testing site to be able to conduct up to 100 coronavirus tests a day once it opens on Wednesday and becomes the city’s fifth testing site in total, and the third to be located in a dense, pedestrian-friendly locale.
Continue reading ‘Covid Updates: 100 Tests A Day On Day Street; Blake Triage Center Opening Soon’
by | Apr 23, 2020 12:07 pm | Comments (0)
Sam Gurwitt photos
Chiekh Idrissou helping out mom at Motherland.
Watching his mother operate a grocery store in a pandemic, budding entreprenuer Chiekh Idrissou has learned that the best businesses fit the term “essential.”
by | Apr 17, 2020 6:12 pm | Comments (24)
Emily Hays Photo
Pho Ketkeo server Maylene Malichanh looks out to where she would normally park her car.
A bat-wielding vandal has the owner of a Southeast Asian restaurant downtown wondering whether to close up shop during the Covid-19 panic.
by | Apr 17, 2020 12:35 pm | Comments (4)
Knight Institute / Yale School of Medicine photos
Yale professors Amy Kapczynski and Gregg Gonsalves: Now is the time to expand the “circle of care.”
The U.S.‘s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the cracks in the country’s “circle of care” — and has presented an opening for social-justice advocates to advance long-term change.
Two veteran activists and academics are making that case in calling for a Public Health New Deal to emerge from the coronavirus crisis.
Continue reading ‘Can Covid Spawn Public Health “New Deal”?’
by | Apr 15, 2020 10:40 am | Comments (18)
The Connecticut Bail Fund team in Fall 2019: Brett Davidson, Ana María Rivera-Forastieri, Jeannia Fu, Vanesa Suarez, Norm Clement, and Jewu Richardson.
A “honkathon” outside of the guv’s mansion.
Dozens of cars lined up on County Street outside of the Whalley jail, parked bumper to bumper, horns blaring.
A week later, dozens more rolled slowly by the governor’s mansion in Hartford, with shouts and cheers of, “Free them all! Free them all!” rising above the honking fanfare.
by | Apr 14, 2020 1:22 pm | Comments (4)
Paul Bass Photo
Organizer Luis Luna at the Food Garage: Undocumented workers are frontline workers.
Contributed Photo
Common Ground High School barn, where Food Garage team divides up boxes.
What began in mid-March with a few boxes of extra vegetables from Trader Joe’s has turned into a grassroots operation that collects donated food for around 180 mostly immigrant families a week out of a garage in Westville.
Continue reading ‘“Food Garage” Feeds Families During Covid’
by | Apr 13, 2020 1:48 pm | Comments (5)
John Lugo on ULA’s 4-times-a-week pandemic outreach radio show.
Spanish-language digital guides on emergency food pick-ups and renter protections. An undocumented worker relief fund. “Honkathons” outside of federal immigration buildings on behalf of crammed detainees.
A leading city immigrant and workers’ rights group has turned to efforts like these during the Covid-19 pandemic.
by | Apr 8, 2020 12:41 pm | Comments (2)
ULA photo
Local immigrant-rights activists protest by auto outside Hartford ICE facility.
Eighteen detainees have been released so far from a federal immigration detention center in Massachusetts in response to a class action lawsuit alleging that the government has unduly endangered undocumented immigrants by holding them in close, unsanitary quarters during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continue reading ‘18 Detainees Released Amidst Pandemic Threat’
by | Apr 2, 2020 10:16 am | Comments (15)
ULA photo
Local immigrant-rights activists protest by auto Thursday outside Hartford ICE facility.
Contributed photo
Juan Pablo Rojas Ceballos, Alejandra Rojas, and their son.
Juan Pablo Rojas Ceballos looks out at the single, open room he shares with four dozen fellow inmates in a federal immigration detention center and sees a recipe for disaster.
Bunk beds spaced three feet apart. Seven cafeteria tables overcrowded at every meal. Soap that’s so diluted it slips through one’s hands like water. And a pandemic that wreaks the most havoc in close, unsanitary quarters just waiting to break inside.
A newly filed class action lawsuit by a Yale Law School clinic agrees — and is seeking his and other detainees’ release before Covid catches them first.
by | Feb 13, 2020 2:46 pm | Comments (1)
Connecticut has only one shot to capture an accurate count for the 2020 Census.
by | Feb 3, 2020 8:53 am | Comments (4)
Christopher Peak Photo
Bilingual class at John S. Martinez.
On the state’s most comprehensive look at school quality, New Haven’s grade declined last year, primarily because of a harsh new assessment of its instruction for English learners.
Continue reading ‘Schools Docked For Bilingual Shortcomings’
by | Jan 29, 2020 9:17 pm | Comments (17)
Contributed Photo
ICE agents stake out courthouse office seeking immigrant.
Ed Finlayson.
• “ICE is here.”
• Court security screener, who lives in Goatville, hires Pattis to fight dismissal.
• Kica Matos: “Instead of being fired, he should be celebrated.”
• Larger battle looms over feds’ presence in state courthouses.
by | Jan 14, 2020 1:53 pm | Comments (0)
The American immigrant story is taking a new turn — away from focusing on assimilation and back toward examining the past.
by | Jan 1, 2020 11:29 am | Comments (4)
Contributed Photo
Mario Aguilar Castañon, seated at center, with friends Monday night back in New Haven.
A Wilbur Cross junior rang in the new year back home with friends — hours after his release from federal detention in a case that became a cause celebre for his fellow schoolmates and for immigration-rights reformers.
by | Dec 24, 2019 7:51 am | Comments (8)
Thomas Breen photos
Cop accountability protesters shut down College Street in April.
Climate emergency activists outside City Hall in August.
In 12 months of near-constant protests, New Haveners took to the streets — and to City Hall, the Board of Education, public parks, rezoning meetings, out-of-state immigrant detention centers, the Yale Bowl, and many, many more places besides.
These demonstrators sometimes won what they asked for. They always sparked debate. And they seemed to herald a new era of vibrant, disruptive participatory democracy at a time when civic unrest has swept the country and the globe.
Continue reading ‘2019’s Perpetual Protests Produced Results’
by | Dec 23, 2019 8:04 pm | Comments (2)
Thomas Breen photo
Protesters outside 121 Elm St. Monday afternoon. Below: Kica Matos and Miguel Castro.
Dozens of Wilbur Cross High School students and local immigrant rights activists rallied outside a downtown courthouse, and inside City Hall, in support of an 18-year-old classmate who’s been detained outside Boston for over 100 days and is facing deportation.