Canvassers Step Up To ​“Vaccinate Fair Haven”

Over 200 volunteers walked block by block across Fair Haven Saturday, kicking off a grassroots campaign to sign up as many eligible neighborhood residents as possible to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

Wearing t‑shirts bearing the campaign’s bilingual slogan—​“Vaccinate ¡Fair Haven! Vacunate”—neighborhood leaders joined with immigrant rights activists, community healthcare providers, local and state and federal politicians, and volunteers from across the city and the region.

They sought to cover 70 blocks and knock on over 5,000 doors, from James Street to Front Street and everywhere in between, in a bid to reach as many of Fair Haven’s 17,141 residents as they could.

Their mission: To blanket the predominantly working class Hispanic neighborhood with information about the safety and efficacy of the three federally approved Covid-19 vaccines. And to sign up anyone who is interested and eligible under the governor’s vaccine rollout guidelines for an appointment at Fair Haven Community Health Care’s Wilbur Cross High School vaccination clinic at 181 Mitchell Dr.

“Our goal is to knock on every single door in this neighborhood. That’s 5,648 doors,” said Kica Matos, a Fair Haven resident, immigrant rights advocate, and one of the lead organizers of Saturday’s event, which began in the back parking lot of Fair Haven Community Health Care’s headquarters at 374 Grand Ave.

“Fair Haven has been one of the hardest hit communities by Covid-19, not just in the city, but in the entire state,” she continued.

The neighborhood has the largest undocumented population in all of New Haven. Eighty-three percent of its residents are people of color. And the neighborhood hosts a hefty share of essential workers ​“who have helped lead us through the pandemic — as grocery store employees, people who clean our buildings, work in our factories, and tend to our disabled brothers and sisters.”

Thus the emphasis on making sure that Fair Haveners know that the vaccines work, and that shots are available — for free — at sites across New Haven, including at Wilbur Cross.

“We have a common purpose: the health of our community,” said Dave Weinreb (pictured), a Fair Haven resident, neighborhood management team leader, and Elm City Montessori School teacher who serves as the ​“Vaccinate Fair Haven” campaign’s volunteer coordinator.

“If one of our neighbors decides not to vaccinate, we do not want it to be because of a lack of access or information. We will not let it be for a lack of access or information.”

For now, vaccination access remains limited primarily to Connecticut residents aged 55 and older, and to teachers and childcare providers. Residents aged 45 to 54 become eligible to get vaccinated starting on March 22.

Anyone interested in getting vaccinated at the Wilbur Cross site can make an appointment by calling 203 – 871-4179 or by emailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with their name, date of birth, address, and phone number.

Weinreb said that 242 people have signed up to work a volunteer shift with ​“Vaccinate Fair Haven” so far. Anyone interested in signing up for a future door-knocking shift can do so here.

Fair Haven Community Health Care CEO Suzanne Lagarde (pictured) said that her clinic’s goal is to have anyone who registered for an appointment on Saturday get a shot in the arm at Wilbur Cross within the coming week. That school-turned-vaccination site is currently administering roughly 400 to 500 Covid-19 vaccine shots per day.

Lagarde also said that the Fair Haven clinic has partnered with the M7 taxi service to provide transportation for those unable to get to the Wilbur Cross vaccination site on their own.

And she said that the ​“Vaccinate Fair Haven” campaign came together in just two weeks, after she first reached out to Matos with a single plea: Help us get our neighbors vaccinated.

“We are committed to knocking on every single door,” said Karen DuBois-Walton (pictured), a fellow Fair Haven resident and ​“Vaccinate Fair Haven” lead organizer who runs the city’s public housing authority, Elm City Communities.

“We are committed to making sure that there is vaccine for every single household.

“And we are committed to making sure that transportation will not be a barrier for that.”

As of 5:20 p.m. on Saturday, Weinreb said, the ​“Vaccinate Fair Haven” volunteers had scheduled 59 new vaccination appointments for interested and eligible neighborhood residents. They’d spoken with an additional 29 residents who were hesitant or unsure about the vaccine. They’d spoken to 64 individuals who have already been vaccinated, and 51 individuals who are interested but not yet eligible to get the shot because they’re between the ages of 45 and 54. Volunteers had also left literature at hundreds more doors across the neighborhood during their afternoon shifts.

Knocking Doors Close To Home

The volunteers who came out to knock doors in the brisk, sunny weather Saturday included Fair Haven Community Management Team members, Fair Haven Community Health Care doctors and nurses, Unidad Latina en Acción and Clifford Beers Clinic community organizers, and Mayor Justin Elicker, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, State Rep. Juan Candelaria, and White House Covid-19 Health Equity Task Force Chair Marcella Nunez-Smith, among many others.

They also included Fair Haven residents like Nydia Jimenez, who spent the late morning and early afternoon canvassing the very same Saltonstall Avenue blocks that she and her family have called home for the past decade.

She and door-knocking partner Ellieben Acosta-Harris, both of whom work for the city’s public housing authority, started their shift at the apartment complex near Saltonstall Avenue and James Street where Jimenez and her 13-year-old son live.

Jimenez eyed the two dozen doors before her, pointing out the apartments where she knew there were residents over the age of 55 who would be eligible to get vaccinated.

Josefina Hernandez (pictured) opened the second door they knocked on.

Speaking in Spanish, Jimenez explained to Hernandez and her elderly mother the purpose of their visit. She asked if anyone was interested in getting vaccinated, if anyone was over 55, and if they wanted to make an appointment.

Hernandez’s mother said she is already signed up for a slot at Wilbur Cross this Wednesday.

Hernandez, a personal care assistant, said she’s very interested in getting vaccinated. The only problem is: She’s still a few years too young to qualify, since she’s only 52.

Jimenez told her that she’ll soon be eligible, starting March 22.

She and Acosta-Harris gave her a flyer with information about the vaccine and with a phone number to call to schedule an appointment later this month. They also took down her contact information to relay back to the campaign coordinators, so that they could reach back out to her as soon as the vaccine eligibility criteria broadens.

Few other residents of the complex opened their doors when Jimenez and Actosta-Harris knocked. They left flyers wedged in door frames and tucked inside mailboxes.

A rooster crowed from a nearby fenced in yard. Acosta-Harris smiled and said the sound reminded her of her childhood, growing up in Guam.

One resident opened her door when Jimenez rang the bell. She said she’s neither old enough to be vaccinated nor interested in getting the shot even if she was.

“To me, it hasn’t been around long enough,” the neighbor said.

Jimenez handed her a flyer about the vaccine and encouraged her to reach out if she changes her mind.

When the two got to Poplar Street, Jimenez paused. Her aunt lives at this very corner, she told Acosta-Harris. Perhaps she’d be interested in getting vaccinated?

She called her aunt, Luz Cruz, on her cellphone. A minute later, Cruz came out of her house and down the front steps, meeting the two at a metal fence that separated her front lawn from the sidewalk.

Cruz said that she too is very interested in getting vaccinated. Just like Hernandez, however, she isn’t old enough.

She’s 44, and won’t turn 45 until August.

Jimenez handed her information about the vaccine as Acosta-Harris took down her contact info to send back to campaign headquarters.

“I’m very afraid of it,” Cruz said about Covid-19 when asked why she wants to get vaccinated. ​“It’s very important to do it.”

The only family member of hers who has gotten vaccinated already is her nephew, Jimenez’s brother, who works at Yale New Haven Hospital. She said she lives with her children, is worried about her health and their health during the ongoing pandemic, and wants a shot as soon as possible.

A few blocks further east, Jimenez and Acosta-Harris stopped at the Fair Haven Elderly Apartments at 25 Saltonstall.

The front door of the complex bore a sign from the City of New Haven, announcing in both English and Spanish the availability of vaccines and sharing information on how to schedule an appointment.

Jimenez walked up to the first man she saw, an elderly resident smoking a cigarette a dozen feet away from the building’s entrance.

She asked in Spanish if he is interested in getting vaccinated.

He replied with a smile, his cigarette clamped between his teeth. He reached into his pocket and started flipping through his wallet.

You don’t need to have an ID, Jimenez said in Spanish.

A few seconds later, the man, Arby Silva, found what he was looking for. He pulled a small sheet of paper out of his wallet and showed it to her.

It was a vaccination card. He had already gotten his shot a few weeks ago, at a pop-up clinic at his Fair Haven apartment complex.

He leaned towards this reporter, and gestured towards a pin clipped to his hat. The pin read, ​“Covid-19 Vacunado.”

“When I go to shopping,” he said. ​“I point” at the pin and say, ​“Look! Look!”

An ​“Opportunity To Go Back To Normalcy”

Before the roughly 200 volunteers who showed up to Fair Haven Community Health Care’s headquarters at 11 a.m. Saturday dispersed two-by-two to their respective turfs, they spoke up about why they decided to participate in the grassroots campaign in the first place.

Luz Ramos (pictured), a Hill resident and community healthcare organizer for Clifford Beers Clinic, said that her aunt in California died of Covid-19, and a friend closer to home recently came down with the virus.

She said she was initially wary of getting vaccinated because she has an allergy to penicillin. But after reading up on the vaccine, on who should get it and on how safe it is, she said she’s now fully on board — with an appointment scheduled for March 30.

“It’s very important that everyone get vaccinated,” she said. Her primary motivation: making sure that she is safe and healthy ​“for my children.”

Matt Murillo and Eli Sabin (pictured) also signed up for volunteer shifts to help make sure Fair Haven neighbors know how effective and safe the vaccines are, and how they’re available for free in New Haven if eligible residents want a shot.

Murillo, a West Haven native, and Sabin, a New Haven native and Downtown alder, are both Yale undergraduates. Sabin also worked with the ​“Vaccinate Fair Haven” organizing team to divvy up turfs and put together Saturday’s event.

This virus has caused so much economic pain and social isolation, Sabin said, in addition to high rates of hospitalization and loss of life, especially among the city’s Black and Hispanic populations.

Vaccines represent one critical way for community members to protect themselves, their families, and their neighbors against any further ravages caused by Covid.

Beacon Falls residents Karina and Larry Danvers (pictured) said they drove down to New Haven for the day to participate in the event for a simple reason.

“I believe that vaccines will save lives,” Karina said. As a Hispanic woman herself, she said, she has seen how hard people who look like her have been hit by the virus — across the state, and the country.

The vaccines, she said, represent ​“some opportunity to go back to normalcy.”

And ULA leader John Lugo (pictured at left) said during Saturday’s press conference that he and fellow local immigrant rights activists turned out Saturday and will be knocking doors for ​“Vaccinate Fair Haven” in the coming weeks in honor of Nora Garcia.

Garcia was a Fair Haven resident who died last month from Covid, he said.

“She was an essential worker.” She worked for a cleaning company that contracted with Yale New Haven Hospital, Lugo said.

She was not able to get the vaccine, ​“and we feel that’s a crime.”

“Our people are essential workers,” he said. ​“We work in construction. We work cleaning. We work in the farms. And we still are not getting what we deserve.”

He said ULA has mobilized over the past few months to pressure the state to increase rental assistance for out-of-work tenants, and to provide specific support for undocumented residents.

“This time, we’re going to mobilize our community to vaccinate as many people as possible.”

Click on the videos below to watch Saturday’s campaign kickoff event.