Paul Bass Photo
Newhallville Alderwomen Delphine Clyburn and Brenda Foskey-Cyrus praised the community benefits agreement leading to the deal to build the new school.
Supporters of Toni Harp’s mayoral candidacy gathered for a last look at some historic African-American portraits — and took aim at a new not-so-flattering one.
The supporters showed up Tuesday afternoon outside the old Martin Luther King School on Dixwell Avenue.
Candice Dorman of Achievement First said students would begin attending the new school in Dec. 2014.
The Achievement First charter-school organization plans to demolish the main wing of MLK — including its iconic mural with portraits of Dr. King, Maya Angelou, Arthur Ashe, Stevie Wonder, Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Benjamin Carson, among others — on Wednesday to make way for a new home for Amistad High School. (MLK is expected to return, along with President Obama, in a new mural at the new school.)
Harp’s supporters noted that this weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, at which King delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech. They paid homage to King’s legacy as well as to the legacy of the Amistad affair after which the new school will be named — the slave-ship revolt that led to an historic civil rights trial in New Haven.
Reginald Augustine Illustration
The Rev. Boise Kimber also brought up a brand new portrait drawn of a leading African-American — a cartoon circulated by the mayoral campaign of Kermit Carolina. This one wasn’t flattering. (It’s shown above.) Carolina, Harp, Henry Fernandez, and Justin Elicker are competing in a Sept. 10 Democratic mayoral primary.
“The people who are trying to degrade her with cartoons — they got a mama too,” Kimber said. “How would they like [someone] to plaster their mama on a poster” maligning her and “her dead husband”?
“We can’t join hands with anyone who disrespects womanhood,” Kimber continued. “Black women have been disrespected enough. In 2013, we must hold our black women up.”
Kimber (pictured) added that “if anybody says anything negative about our candidate, don’t you say nothing negative about them. Just look at them like they crazy.”
His remarks elicited murmurs of assent and nods of agreement from the dozens of Harp supporters crowded on the sidewalk by the fence blocking off the school construction site.
Contacted later, Carolina defended the cartoon, which criticizes Harp’s family’s real-estate business’s record as landlords, as truthful.
“Everything within in the political arena is fair game, and she chose to join. Every leader should be held to a high standard, regardless of their race, sex or age,” he argued.
“Their comments make the point of the cartoon, which is that Toni Harp is an elitist who has been spoiled into believing that she is above the people and above criticism. The cartoon also raises the point that she’s out of touch with New Haven voters and she’s only here to serve the interests of the political establishment at the state Capitol and the suburban union leadership of UNITE HERE. Furthermore, many of the people she has chosen to surround herself with and promised gifts to are the same self-serving individuals who helped to create the problems that currently exist in our city. We need a clean break from these types of individuals.”
Carolina “challenged all news media outlets” to focus on his “plan to improve the city” rather than provide “mainstream exposure” to his campaign only “when I’m in disagreement with Sen. Harp.”