Can We See Beyond Black & White?

James Berger, a senior lecturer in American Studies at Yale and a member of New Haven Rising who is volunteering for Toni Harp’s mayoral campaign, submitted this opinion piece. Harp is the Democratic candidate in the general election; she is running against independent candidate Justin Elicker.

The city of New Haven is divided – by race, class, education, profession, cultural and political assumptions. OK, I guess this insight doesn’t qualify as a news flash given the results of the Democratic mayoral primary of September 10. Justin Elicker’s vote totals in some predominantly African American wards scraped down close to levels of statistical margin-of-error while the white, educated, professional classes of Westville and East Rock voted overwhelmingly either for Justin or for Henry Fernandez. And the certainty each group of voters felt in the rightness of its candidate was equally powerful. How, thought the white, professional classes, could any rational, informed person support Toni Harp – that supposedly compromised, out-of-touch epitome of traditional politics — when such obviously superior candidates like Justin and Henry were available? Conversely, for most African American voters, supporting Toni was a no-brainer. How could anyone with any real feeling for the city’s social and economic conditions vote for that apparently callow, inexperienced young man who clearly had no idea how life was lived in neighborhoods between East Rock and Westville? 

Whatever reasoned justifications we give our electoral preferences, the politics of New Haven right now are politics of identity. For most of us, it seems, our chosen candidates appear as idealized versions of ourselves. They’re just like us, only a little better, a little smarter, maybe a little younger (or, in Toni’s case maybe a little older and wiser). We support candidates who understand where we’re coming from, see the world and the city the way we do, appreciate our struggles and aspirations, and have struggled in the same ways – whether that means finding a way out of poverty or succeeding in grad school. Kermit Carolina’s endorsement of Elicker does not, I think, change this dynamic

This identity politics is understandable, but not beneficial. It means that Toni Harp’s many years of important work for New Haven are denigrated. Whether one votes for her or not, it has to be acknowledged that just about anything significant regarding health care, education, or jobs in New Haven has been funded (in many cases initiated) thanks to her leadership. You may not like her house or her late husband’s business practices, but her genuine competence, effectiveness, and leadership in the state senate are incontrovertible. Likewise, Justin Elicker’s ideas on how post-industrial cities with poor schools, poverty, and inadequate tax bases can be run more efficiently and fairly should be listened to. They are not, as some detractors say, just wonkish fantasies of saving the city by improving its websites and painting more bike paths.

There is one group, one demographic in New Haven, however, that is not tied up in the politics of identity. That group is the unions and their offshoots and allies in the Connecticut Center for a New Economy (CCNE), New Haven Rising, and other sympathizers. Unions, especially the Yale unions (locals 34 and 35 of UNITE-HERE) have become a touchstone for political debate during this election cycle. Criticisms of Harp have often cited her relations with the unions and their endorsements of her, and we have seen in the past months (as we saw two years ago when union backed candidates won a majority of the Board of Aldermen) a great deal of vigorous union-bashing. But it has to be recognized that this coalition, this nascent ​“movement” whose strongest link right now is the unions, is the only real cross-race, cross-class organization in town. A meeting or a rally of any of these groupings shows what New Haven looks like and, for me at least, it’s truly inspiring. It’s a picture of what a genuine democracy might be if we can figure out how to get there: people from all races, classes, and neighborhoods getting together to establish their political priorities and work to get the power to achieve them. Such a coalition will not get everything right; but they’re working hard to figure out the process of democracy. That really may be the most important thing happening in this election, no matter who gets elected.

And let me briefly address some of these anti-union sentiments. The tendency of liberals in New Haven to disparage unions stirs up a strange melange of ideological reflexes. The disparagement always begins, ​“I’m not against unions,” and then, typically, recites a list of grandparents and other ancestors who were union members. The New Haven liberal union-bashers support unions in China, in Ukraine, in Wisconsin and Ohio – pretty much anywhere but here in the city where they live. What makes people uncomfortable, evidently, is that the unions here actually succeed some of the time and have some actual power, in contrast to the fortunes of the labor movement elsewhere in the country. To support the unions in New Haven means to abandon your nostalgia for the failures of labor and get into the fight to create more success. And the whole suburban union complaint is a red herring. The fury against UNITE-HERE does not, in reality, point toward Hamden or Branford; it points toward Newhallville, the Hill, and Fair Haven. Local 34 and 35’s struggles for the past 20 years to raise wages and benefits have helped produced a modicum of prosperity and political voice for an African American middle class in this city. 

Toni Harp has expressed a commitment to helping this process continue. Based on these expressions of commitment and on what she’s done for New Haven as a legislator, the various groups in the union coalition gave her their endorsements.

But what about these statements she’s been coming up with since the primary? She suggests defunding the Living Cities Initiative (LCI). She thinks maybe the Democracy Fund is a waste of money. It turns out her four largest campaign contributions are bundles assembled by companies hoping to get contracts with the city. Toni says there’s no play for the pay; all the contribution will get them is a meeting. And I’m thinking, does Toni really have no recognition of the destructive role that large corporate, business, and PAC (political action committee) contributions have played in transforming American democracy into an oligarchy based on wealth? Does she not grasp the meaning of the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court? These are not – at least as reported — positions that her supporters signed on for. A lot of us worked a lot of hours, knocked on a lot of doors trying to persuade people that Toni will be a good mayor. We had some questions.

So, on a recent evening, a small group of us Westville supporters met with Toni and we asked her about these statements. Here’s what I gathered: Toni’s comment on LCI aimed at suggesting a consolidation of several agencies that inspect buildings. There might indeed be a way of saving the city money by reducing redundancies. At the same time, people must know whom to call when there’s a problem. Perhaps LCI should be that place. Point is, this is not the slumlord’s mom trying to eliminate regulation of substandard housing. Regarding the Democracy Fund, Toni’s criticism was that it was incomplete. A candidate can opt either for funding for the primary or for the general election. Thus, a candidate might use the fund in the primary to establish himself as a viable candidate, and then take all sorts of funding in the general. (Justin is not doing this, by the way, but it would be possible to do). Toni pointed out that as a state senator she helped draft and pass the state’s version of public campaign funding, which is more complete. She is, in fact, quite aware of the impact the Citizens United decision is having on our democracy – that it’s a very bad one that, for one thing, makes campaign finance legislation extremely difficult and subverts what she worked hard to create in Connecticut. Regarding the contributions from businesses to her mayoral campaign, she said that, look, the office of mayor is the culmination of her political career. She’s not like (incumbent Mayor) John DeStefano using the office as springboard for something higher. Mayor of New Haven is it for her; she doesn’t need to cultivate donors for another race and doesn’t need to do favors for anyone. And I would point out further that Toni has been in politics for a long time, and no doubt a lot of people have given to her campaigns – and never has there been any suggestion that she’s arranged contracts or other favors in exchange for these contributions. None. If there were, I’m sure they’d have surfaced by now.

Am I entirely satisfied on these matters? Perhaps not entirely, but close enough. I’m still on her side, and feel I can work for her and with her. I can’t see into the future. As they say in the financial industry, past performance is not a guarantee of future results. But Toni’s past performance gives me confidence.

And let me make a final point about campaign finance that indicates once more the racial and class divides in this election. For us relatively affluent, slightly wonkish, grad-school educated, Nation-reading Westville folks (and yes, I do love stereotypes; don’t expect an apology), campaign finance/corporate oligarchy issues are absolutely central to our political analyses. But for the poor and working class, largely African American voters who are Toni’s base, these issues of transparency and campaign money are not so prominent. The important issues are jobs and the lack of them, youth programs, public safety, and schools. I participated in the canvassing over the past six years or so in which we found out what people in the poorer neighborhoods wanted their political leaders to work on. The kind of good-government, transparency, election reform issues that are Justin’s strength weren’t on the list. 

It seems these race and class divides prevent us from even talking about the same topics. Yet, in reality, the problems of urban poverty, crime, inadequate schools and youth programs, are not separate from the problems of corporate oligarchy and corrupt elections. When wealthy interests increasingly control our media and electoral systems, our cities and their poor and working classes suffer first and most. Both Toni’s and Justin’s supporters need to learn to make this connection more emphatically and imagine ways to fight both battles at once. Even our union-based movement, I’d say, has not yet learned to work with this double vocabulary effectively. Back in the days when people could still speak a Marxist language, there was a way to connect the personal and community consequences of class oppression with the larger political-economic structures that enabled it. Today, we’ve got to figure out a new language. Both Justin and Toni are providing parts of it. New Haven Rising and the unions are trying to create some other pieces.

Whoever is elected mayor will need to draw on the knowledge and experience of the other side. Both Toni and Justin have real strengths; both exceed by far the caricatures their critics have drawn of them. And both have limitations. We’re not electing a savior, fortunately, just a mayor. And we, the people of New Haven – poor, rich, working, unemployed, with different educations and professional experiences, speaking different languages (literally and figuratively) – would do well to keep trying to figure out how to make a cross-race, cross-class, citywide movement for social justice in all its definitions come into being. Toni Harp and Justin Elicker don’t know everything. That much the campaign has made clear. The people, as we learn ourselves, will have to try to teach them.