Neighbors Join To ​“Freshin Up” Beaver Hills

Salwa Abdussabur paused while raking up trash to wave at a passing car and call out a greeting to the driver visible through the open window.

It was ​“Freshin Up Friday” — when Abdussabur and her neighbors take to the streets in a new initiative to improve life in Beaver Hills.

Abdussabur, who grew up in Beaver Hills, started the Freshin Up initiative in July as part of a quest to build neighborly connections. Theirs is one of several initiatives that have been keeping neighbors together, face to face, building community during the pandemic.

The 21-year-old Abdussabur recently returned home after a stint in Los Angeles that was shortened by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Salwa held their first Freshin Up Friday’s in July as their own form of protest against the killing of George Floyd by a police officer. The Black Lives Matter protests that Floyd’s death sparked occurred at the height of Covid-19 cases in New Haven. Because Salwa’s sister-in-law had a baby at home, the longtime activist felt unable to join the thousands who took to the streets.

Instead, Salwa turned that pent-up energy into building community across economic disparities within Beaver Hills. They said that they noticed one side of the neighborhood, the northern side of Goffe Street, was getting more attention and street sweeping from the city than the other side.

“We wait until a young person dies to be their family. I believe that [violence] does not thrive when we know each each other,” Salwa said in an interview with their father, retired city cop and business owner Shafiq Abdussabur (who also hosts WNHH’s Urban Talk Radio program).

“This is my service to folks who don’t have the capacity, because there is a war on their mental, physical and psychological health,” Salwa said.

“I’ve met more neighbors in this process than I’ve met my whole life,”

Freshin Up Friday happens every other week from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Salwa started this past Friday’s clean-up at the corner of Goffe and Winthrop Avenue with an assortment of carts, trash bags, gloves, masks and other equipment.

Salwa said that they were able to buy some of the equipment from donations, largely through their Venmo account, salwa_withlove. Other items, like the carts, rakes and brooms, came from the Abdussabur household.

By 5 p.m, two other volunteers had arrived. The trio set off down Winthrop.

Almost immediately, Salwa and family friend Nan Bartow (pictured above) met a Winthrop neighbor. Cheryl Sargeant peeked out of her hedges to talk about past neighborhood clean-up efforts she had been involved in. She described trees she had helped plant and early mornings spent picking up trash, until she was frightened by meeting two men at 6 a.m. in her own backyard.

Salwa nodded and listened. Cheryl asked whether Salwa knew anyone who could help her plow snow or tend to her yard now that she is older. Salwa jotted down Cheryl’s contact information to pass on to her brother.

The two neighbors had lived on the same street for almost 20 years and had never met each other before.

“This is more of a passing of the baton, rather than something fresh and new,” Salwa explained.

While doing research for Freshin Up, Salwa had stumbled upon a video of Nan in a previous neighborhood clean-up effort.

“Nan has been part of a lot of these initiatives. They die out. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Salwa said.

Meanwhile, Dominic Warshaw (pictured above) combed through the edges of a new sunflower bed on the other side of Winthrop for broken glass. Dominic and Salwa have known each other for years from queer youth organizing in the city. Salwa had told Dominic, who lives in Wooster Square, about Freshin Up Friday’s the night before over dinner.

“I like dirty work,” Dominic said from the depths of the flower bed.

Dominic has gotten involved in mutual aid networks to relieve their pandemic-related anxiety. Most often, Dominic drives food and cash to recipients of the aid. Dominic likes the informal set-up of these networks and how they feel less hierarchical and impersonal than nonprofits can be.

“This is more relational, which feels really important right now when we are so isolated,” Dominic said, while peeling gum from the sidewalk.

Salwa crossed over to Dominic to hand over a trash picker.

“I need to preserve your back,” Salwa said.

Dominic tried out the new tool and learned that they could pick up a bobby pin without bending over. Salwa joked that they were going to add that to their resumé.

Shafiq arrived to help his daughter. Because Dominic was leaving, Salwa took over Dominic’s trash can.

Around the trio, one neighbor tended to potted plants and another offered advice to acquaintances through the window of a stopped car. Across the street, a group of teenagers shouted and played basketball in a front yard.

“The key is to be consistent,” Salwa said. ​“Even if it’s only me, or only two people, everybody knows what I’m doing.”

Salwa said that they have cleaned more sidewalks with the help of two very effective people than with ten volunteers.

Both Shafiq and Salwa fall into the ​“very effective” category. Rather than picking through grass, Salwa rakes the trash onto the sidewalk and then sweeps it up with their family’s industrial-style brooms.

Shafiq Abdussabur runs a cleaning and construction company, Eco Urban Pioneers. Shafiq reeled off a list of advice picked up through the business: Know your scope — how much time you are going to spend, what you are going to pick up and what you won’t. Have the right equipment and enough of it for everyone. Keep your team safe with reinforced gloves, hand sanitizers and masks.

Salwa said that they kept the Freshin Up Friday’s initiative intentionally separate from any nonprofit or other agency that makes money based on inequality and poverty. Their hope is to eventually pass on the initiative to another young person of color.

“Nonprofits should be working to go out of business,” Salwa said.

“Black nonprofits don’t get funded at the same rate as white nonprofits,” or bring in Black executives or board members, Shafiq added.

Nan keeps up a similar pace to Salwa, focusing on cans and large pieces of trash. A retired High School in the Community English teacher, she has the time she used to spend grading papers to herself now.

She has been interested in building communities since serving in the Peace Corps in the 1960s. Neighborhood volunteer efforts fit the bill. She now has a tight-knit group of friends through the Friends Of Beaver Pond Park. She said that she planned to spend Saturday kayaking with the group and pulling trash out of the pond.

Like members of other park-based volunteer groups, Nan and the other park friends focus on invasive plants as well. Nan pointed out a weed that she said has been creeping more into the neighborhoods and can be nearly impossible to clear out without expertise.

While Shafiq and Salwa chatted with a neighbor across the street, Nan grabbed a soggy, greyed-out sock and a flattened aluminum can from the gutter.

“What most people don’t realize is that what’s here will end up in Beaver Pond Park,” Nan said.

She pointed out the oily surface of the water below and recounted a story of finding the ground next to the pond pigmented pink and purple because someone had thrown paint down the drain.

“That’s one reason why people don’t swim there,” she said.

Around 6 p.m, the remaining crew met at the corner of Percival and Carmel streets. As they loaded the equipment into the back of Shafiq’s truck, they chatted about visions for the future.

“I want to save the world,” Salwa said.

“You’re saving it,” Shafiq responded.

While Nan and Shafiq had a parallel conversation about other community initiatives planned for the next few months, Salwa said that they want to expand the cleanup efforts into some form of mutual aid. Salwa and other volunteers have already planted flowers at the Crescent Street roundabout, thanks to suggestions from other volunteers. Salwa has plans to ask neighbors more about what they need and host an event connecting them with those resources.

“What if the city knocked on doors and said, ​‘What do you need?’” Salwa said.

Salwa pointed out lots for sale and reimagined them as community arcades, art galleries and a cafe based on an L.A. concept in which neighbors could buy $1 groceries. The nearby liquor store had once been a movie theater, Salwa reported. What if the movie theater could come back?

An elderly man stopped his car and asked Salwa about the cleanup.

“Awesome!” he said, before driving off.

“This is my favorite time of day, when the sky turns to cotton candy,” Salwa said.

Salwa is not sure when they will go back to L.A. yet. They like the idea of moving out of New Haven, gaining insight into how other places build community and bringing that knowledge back. While the mention of L.A. still adds a dreamy quality to Salwa’s voice, they are enrolled in this year’s Democracy School on how New Haven government works and are wondering whether they should buy a house in the city.

In the meantime, there’s work to do on the block. They’re on it.

Pond Cleaned Up, Too

One day after Freshin Up Friday, another group of neighbors took on the track in Beaver Pond. One of them, Robin Ladouceur, sent in this write-up and these photos.

Eighteen packed-to-the-gills bags of trash, three tires, a board, and a bike: That’s what we found at Beaver Pond Park Saturday, all in the pond itself. The third of three cleanups in three weeks!

It was all part of Save the Sound’s Clean Up Connecticut initiative and sponsorship of The Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup. A fabulous crew of 17 intrepid individuals came out on a spectacular fall day with a distinct chill in the air to tackle our toughest challenge yet.

The pond sees high levels of trash when storm drains overflow and wash street garbage into the ecosystem and from careless passers by and the people who fish there. We did what we could. and there is still much garbage to remove.

Subsequent canoe cleanups are already in the planning phase. Our experience at Beaver Pond Saturday indicates that New Haven really needs an enormous anti-littering campaign and broad-based education on how trash compromises the nature we are so fortunate to have in the midst of our wonderful small city. Please join us in advocating for such a campaign!

A big thank you to all the organizations that organized and individuals who participated in Saturday’s clean up: Menunkatuck Audubon Society, West River Watershed Coalition, Friends of Beaver Pond Park, CPEN, & our fellows from the UrbanScapes Native Plant Nursery in Newhallville!

And the previous Sunday, Sept. 13, Cyn and Dani Astman (pictured above) organized a ​“2020 Music Out Front” event in the neighborhood ​“and invited folks in #BeaverHills to share music, art, poetry,” reported Millie Grenough, who is pictured below performing on her porch during the gathering.