No Justice, No Growth

We must suspend the ​“privilege” of complacency that nothing can be done; the privilege of empathy that makes us feel good but leads to no action; and the privilege of ignorance, especially of how deeply racism is at the heart of so much poverty.

Without this reflective new thinking, no matter how brilliant our employment, wages, or entrepreneurship program, we will never achieve an economy of true, lasting inclusive growth.

Speakers offered that advice to more than 200 area nonprofit professionals, municipal officials, business leaders, and philanthropists who gathered Tuesday at the Omni Hotel.

The occasion was the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven’s (CFGNH) 92nd ​“community convening.” It featured lectures, panel discussions, and smaller sessions this year under the banner ​“Creating a Future of Opportunity.” The aim was to focus and energize folks to think how economic growth can be achieved not only without the dispersal of the poor, but with their inclusion in and becoming part of a new more equitable economic paradigm.

If the theme sounds similar to last year’s CFGNH convening, that’s because inclusive economic growth in all its aspects is at the heart of the foundation’s five-year-plan, said CFGNH President and CEO Will Ginsberg.

“It’s our vision for what needs to happen in this community, and the key word is opportunity. It could provide a whole different dynamic and a sense of cohesion,” Ginsberg added as he and the participants scurried among the meeting rooms and ballroom of the hotel, like graduate students, bearing charts and booklets, eager not to be late for class.

In the break-out session titled ​“Creating Opportunity in Neighborhoods: Dixwell-Newhallville,” Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology (ConnCAT) CEO Erik Clemons, one of several speakers, spoke movingly from personal experience about just what all the language of economic inclusion means to him.

He described getting out of his car, on the way to a speaking engagement, when a woman panhandler approached him. He rushed on, but he had recognized her, turned, and ended up remembering that he had known the woman, whose name was Destiny, when they were young kids.

They ended up going to a restaurant together and talking.

“Destiny did have opportunity,” Clemons told his audience, ​“but something happened between opportunity and access.”

That something was racism, Clemons said.

“I hope we’ll have courage to talk about the undercurrent, which is race, because unless we do, this is a waste of time. Race is the invisible undercurrent in the conversation, and it’s meaningless unless it becomes visible.

Clemons runs a job-training and cultural organization called ConnCAT. When ConnCAT was establishing its programs, Clemons learned that many black men ​“weren’t allowed to do the job training because they had child support,” he said. ​“There are so many things that have to do with poverty. Those at ConnCAT are still struggling, suffering under poverty. We address jobs, but not poverty itself . It’s the civil rights issue of our time.”

The day’s keynote speaker, Tawanna Black, founder and CEO of Minneapolis’s Center for Economic Inclusion, echoed Clemons’s themes

“Even people of color don’t fully understand the depth of racial and economic inequality, even now 400 years since the first slaves were brought here,” she said.

“How business thrives and at the same time that folks of color, at the lowest rungs of the ladder, find their way up … nobody has figured it all out. All of us are struggling with this.”

“When we have mis-perceptions, it leads us to mistaken prescriptions.”

The full agenda and other materials from the sold-out convening are available on CFGNH’s website