Documentary Spotlights Newhallville Community Activist

In the trunk of his car, Marcus Harvin has a rock from the parking lot of a vacant building on Bassett Street. So does his friend Babatunde Akinjobi. The two met when they were incarcerated at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield.

“Each of us carries it around, believing that one day soon we will cut a ribbon for that property,” Harvin told a spirited audience of 60 family, friends, and supporters at Peterson Auditorium at the University of New Haven (UNH) on Saturday night. 

The occasion was the premiere of ​“Fresh Start: A Marcus Harvin Story.” The short documentary, which was produced and directed by UNH film students Elisa Broche, Jay Sanders, and Gabe Nelson, chronicles Harvin’s journey from incarceration to Yale Prison Education Initiative (YPEI) graduate to UNH presidential fellow to founder and president of the nonprofit Newhallville Fresh Starts, Inc., an enterprise to feed people’s dreams.

Harvin envisions the property, which formerly housed a social services office and which is the future home of New Haven’s adult education program, as an ​“aspiration incubator” comprising a restaurant, as well as ​“state-of-the-art” emergency and transitional housing. The future Oasis Center will offer classes in financial literacy and training to enhance a person’s particular skills for the job market. For young people, there will be a debate team and a Make Shop designed to ​“exercise their creativity.” 

Harvin said he is undeterred by the recent Board of Zoning Appeals approval for the city to build a new site for New Haven Adult Education on the property.

“There will be an Oasis Center,” he said. ​“It will be at some location, but my highest aspiration is that it will be at that address. While adult education is undeniably important, it’s my belief that kids at Lincoln-Bassett down the street deserve a safe place they can go after school to continue on the path of becoming.” 

Wherever its location, the hoped-for Center is a natural outgrowth of the fREshtaurant, which Harvin launched in early February in the Pitts Chapel Unified Free Will Church basement just across the street, with the only cost being a person’s presence. Serving excess dining hall food from area universities, it’s founded on the belief that the first step toward helping someone realize their aspirations is nutritional sustenance. ​“If someone’s stomach is growling, they can’t hear anything else,” he said. 

Three days after it launched, the city’s health department closed down the fREshtaurant for lack of a food service license. Harvin and his team pivoted, transporting the food to those who needed it. 

Since February, ​“we’ve fed people at warming centers, at homeless shelters, at battered women’s shelters,” Harvin, a licensed minister, said on Saturday night, as he spoke at length without notes, holding the audience in his sway. ​“We’ve fed veterans, single mothers and children, individuals coming out of recovery.” 

While assistance comes from an army of stalwart volunteers and supporters, as well as food donations from area universities and businesses, everything else, including transportation, is self-funded. ​“That’s just not sustainable,” Harvin said. Fresh Starts is seeking funds to renovate the kitchen space and purchase a grease trap. ​“We need to be able to feed people inside, feed anyone in need of food or a plan or hope,” he said. ​“That’s the first step to everything else.”

“When we feed people, we serve them,” he said. ​“We are in service to them. We hold the meal out to them and we meet their eye. These are people who have been made to believe that they mean nothing, so we specialize in giving them back their personhood, their dignity. That is their fresh start.” 

Akinjobi, Harvin’s partner, expanded on that notion. ​“People need to see themselves as God intended, not in the situation they may find themselves, that’s what we talked about all the time when we were in prison, about how we wanted to change that,” he said. 

Among the audience members was Rod Ferguson, professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale and a teacher with the YPEI. ​“Marcus is a shining example of the best that the YPEI and also UNH can produce,” said Ferguson, who led a reading group that included Harvin. ​“He’s investing in his community, he has a vision for how he can help his community, and we couldn’t be prouder.” 

Near the end of the documentary, the filmmakers follow Harvin to Evergreen Cemetery where his grandmother, Sally Mae Harvin, is buried. ​“Everything we’re doing is literally a byproduct of a promise she made me make to her when I was still in prison to go back to school and get my degree,” says Harvin, who earned his associate’s degree in 2023 and is working toward a bachelor’s, as he kneels at her graveside. ​“Every time I accomplish something, I come out here and tell her.” 

As it happened, Sally Mae Harvin worked for 23 years in the social services building that Harvin has in his sights for the Oasis Center. ​“She gave out food stamps, helped with child support, protective services, anything people needed, and she would give redetermination after redetermination, even when her bosses told her she wasn’t supposed to,” he recalled. 

“She taught me to see the people in this community, see that they matter,” he said. ​“Everything I do is because of her.” 

Click here to learn more about Newhallville Fresh Starts.