“Murdered” Teen Invoked At MLK Service

Murder. Racism.

“We should call it out when we see it,” Tyisha Walker-Myers declared Monday night. And she saw it last week when a white state trooper fired seven bullets into the car of a 19-year-old African-American New Havener and killed him.

She saw it. And she called it out.

Walker-Myers, president of the New Haven Board of Alders, made that impassioned call Monday night during the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. service at Varick Memorial A.M.E. Church on Dixwell Avenue.

Organized by the historic African American congregation in conjunction with the local labor advocacy group New Haven Rising, the two-hour-plus service brought out well over two hundred attendees.

Those attendees included state Treasurer Shawn Wooden, who gave the keynote address, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Mayor Justin Elicker, most of the city’s state delegation, a dozen different alders, and dozens more pastors, parishioners, union organizers, and workers’ rights activists.

“My heart is heavy,” Walker-Myers said in her address. ​“Having this young man killed, and I’m saying murdered, it really did something to me.”

While the central theme of the night was the gross disparities in wealth and privilege between Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital and the predominantly working class African American and Hispanic neighborhoods that surround those two institutions, Walker-Myers focused her 10-minute speech on a topic a bit more immediately visceral than the roughly $146 million the city’s largest employers would have to pay the city in taxes each year if it weren’t for their property tax exemptions.

That is: the death of 19-year-old Fair Havener Mubarak Soulemane, a mentally ill Gateway Community College student who was shot and killed by a state trooper last Wednesday after a high-speed highway chase. Inspectors with the state Division of Criminal Justice are currently investigating the incident.

“It bothers me that in this city we have people standing up if an animal get killed in the street,” she continued, ​“but not if somebody that look like me get killed. I have a problem with that. …

“I’m sick and tired of losing my young African American men in this city and other cities. I’m tired of people being comfortable in their racist ways. I’m tired of it. We shouldn’t have to expect it. We should call it out when we see it.”

“I think we need to recognize that we have structural racism in this city,” she continued. ​“We need to stop walking past the things that we know are not right and acting like we don’t even see them.”

She said the injustice of the university’s and the hospital’s tax exempt statuses are well worth pointing out.

“It’s a sin to have one of the largest institutions and employers in the city and a large majority of the people around that institution is poor,” she said. ​“It’s a sin.”

The balm to that wound must come in the form of greater direct financial contributions to the city to make up for that lost revenue, she said. But New Haveners cannot rest on that call for more money alone.

“What I’m more concerned about is how we treat each other,” she said. ​“We have to make sure that the most vulnerable populations in our city get their fair share.”

“We need Yale to be a real partner,” she continued. ​“And I’m not just talking about money.”

That means being a partner around promoting homeownership in predominantly black and brown communities, she said. That means being a partner in helping revive business along the long-dormant Dixwell Avenue commercial corridor that runs through Dixwell and Newhallville.

“I’m talking about being a real partner to helping people that are the farthest behind to come up closer,” she said.

She turned to Elicker, sitting alongside the clergy and labor leaders who organized the event.

“I’m ready. I’m willing to work with you to get some stuff done,” she said. But that ​“stuff” can’t be small. It can’t mean nibbling around the edges. ​“We need to make a commitment to some real, transformational change.”

Elicker (pictured) thanked Walker-Myers for her commitment to working with him and his new administration, and for publicly challenging him to be ambitious and tackle big, structural inequalities. (Walker-Myers was a vocal and staunch supporter of former Mayor Toni Harp, whom Elicker unseated during last November’s general election.)

“You walk from one neighborhood in this city to another,” he said. In one neighborhood you have people who are living in a very upper class lifestyle, and then you walk to communities where families can’t put food on their table for children, where people don’t feel hope for any kind of good job and ability to afford their rents.

“The fact that a week ago a young man was alive, and today that young man is dead because an officer was overzealous. He must be held accountable. We have work to do.”

”$146 Million Tax Break”

In between gospel performances by Beaver Hill Alders Jill Marks and her daughter Scotticesa Miller, a doo-wop performance by the church’s men choir, and a congregation-wide singalong to ​“Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the majority of Monday night’s speakers focused explicitly on just how much Yale and Yale New Haven Hospital do not pay in city property taxes every year.

They argued that Martin Luther King’s dream of economic justice demands that those institutions reinvest a portion of that money in city coffers and surrounding neighborhoods.

“We are pushing with the city to hold Yale accountable,” said UNITE HERE Local 34 Organizing Director Barbara Vereen (pictured) while standing alongside Local 34 President Laurie Kennington.

“Working people and working people of color in particular deserve respect,” said DeLauro (pictured). ​“They deserve dignity. And they deserve a fair wage.”

“They deserve genuine equality,” she continued. ​“Economic equality.”

“Unions have aligned with the community to pressure Yale to give opportunities to people in hard-off neighborhoods,” said Varick Rev. Kelcy Steele (pictured).

And Wooden (pictured), in his keynote address, said that he is a firm supporter of higher education, of academic and medical research, of all of the economic and intellectual benefits that Yale and the hospital bring to the city.

But.

“We must ask ourselves: Is it fair for a city as poor as New Haven to give a $146 million tax break to institutions as wealthy as Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital?”

“No!” the crowd roared in response.

“Yale is a strong supporter of and contributor to New Haven,” Yale spokesperson Karen Peart told the Independent in an email statement. ​“The university’s annual voluntary payment to New Haven is over $12 million. No other city receives a larger voluntary payment from a single institution. The university also pays over $5 million in annual property taxes on its non-academic properties and as a result is one of the top four real estate taxpayers in New Haven.” See below for the university’s full response to last night’s service.

Wooden added New Haven’s labor unions and community activists have made this city an epicenter for the fight for better jobs, affordable housing, high quality public education, immigrant rights, climate justice, gender equality, and protection from police brutality.

“New Haven, my friends, is ground zero for America’s fight for justice,” he said.

And yet, he said, corporations and the wealthiest Americans continue to benefit at the national, state, and local levels from tax breaks, slashes to public budgets, voter suppression, gerrymandering, and attacks on workers’ rights to form unions.

“This is all designed to preserve privilege and power, and this is wrong, my friends.”

“Across our country, we see the wealthiest hold on to an increasing amount of our collective wealth in a way that is almost unprecedented in our nation’s history,” he continued. ​“Many of the wealthy control this capital as a means to further consolidate their power. This is unacceptable. This is unjust. This is what Dr. King knew.”

To truly continue the fight of King’s visionary leadership, he said, is to fight to reverse those policies and established relationships that allow for the concentration of wealth, power, and privilege in a few hands and that deprive the majority of the bare necessities of safety, good health, and financial stability.

Yale’s Response

Below is an email statement Yale spokesperson Karen Peart provided in response to Monday night’s service: 

Yale is a strong supporter of and contributor to New Haven. The university’s annual voluntary payment to New Haven is over $12 million. No other city receives a larger voluntary payment from a single institution. The university also pays over $5 million in annual property taxes on its non-academic properties and as a result is one of the top four real estate taxpayers in New Haven.

Beyond dollar figures, Yale’s positive impact on New Haven can be seen in the thousands of students who have benefited over the years from its rich educational programs, which are free for New Haven residents. The university devotes significant resources in support of our local community, including a focus on hiring from local neighborhoods, supporting and sustaining educational outreach and programs, and fostering economic development. Our cultural institutions are free and open to everyone in the greater New Haven community and beyond.

Yale has contributed to the economic growth of the city by creating new pathways to careers at Yale, including training programs, apprenticeships and initiatives with area schools and colleges. This article outlines many of the hiring initiatives and programs we’ve created, such as New Haven Works, which Yale co-founded. We continue to commit significant resources to it and are number one in terms of job placements from this program. Yale’s Homebuyer Program provides $30,000 to full-time employees toward the purchase of a home in New Haven.

The university co-founded and is a primary funder of New Haven Promise, which provides up to $4 million annually in scholarships for New Haven Public School students and covers full tuition at any public university in Connecticut. Nearly 100 New Haven Promise Scholars received paid summer internships at Yale in 2019 and more will benefit in the years to come. These internships are a pipeline for future jobs. We also invest in the Yale Pathways to Science and Pathways to Arts and Humanities programs, which provide free year-round classes and workshops to hundreds of local public school students. These are only a few examples of how Yale gives back to its community. You can learn more at https://onhsa.yale.edu

The university has a long-standing commitment to our home in New Haven and remains dedicated to working closely with its mayor, its Board of Alders and its community partners and neighbors.

Click on the Facebook Live videos below to watch excerpts from Monday night’s service.