New Haveners Of The Year: Under-30s

At a time when the boomers have stayed past their expiration dates atop political and civic institutions nationwide, this emerging crop of needed new budding leaders are the Independent’s collective New Haveners of The Year. They gave us reason to hope for our future in challenging times.

Some of them haven’t reached even their 20th birthdays yet. They’ve already affected decisions in the city and helped us look at politics, government, business, and activism in a new way.

The Grown-Ups In The Room

The Board of Education members who often made the biggest difference in 2017 — or at least emerged as voices of sanity — weren’t the adults. They were high school students. They are filling the board’s new student-representative seats and exceeding even the most optimistic predictions for what they can add to the process.

Hillhouse High School senior Coral Ortiz, for instance, was the most insistent voice urging other board members to act like grown-ups, not kids, during their dysfunctional public fights.

She blew the whistle on a corrupt deal to waste precious education dollars on an ill-conceived charter school proposal to reward a politically influential minister. She noticed that the Board of Ed was already marketing the school to incoming students — even though the board hadn’t even approved it.

Thanks to her and some others, the board didn’t end up approving it, at least for now.

Then, at her Hillhouse graduation, Ortiz delivered a valedictorian speech heard around the world (once the Washington Post picked it up). She captured the zeitgeist, not just in New Haven but nationally, with a plea to elders to listen more to pleas from her generation for respect and humane behavior, and not to assume the worst about New Haven public-school students

Then Ortiz’s term on the board ended. She began studies at Yale University, with plans to remain active in New Haven.

Meanwhile, the two current student representatives to the Board of Education continued injecting the views of their fellow teens into the conversation. The two — Jacob Spell of Creed High and Makayla Dawkins of Hillhouse — found their voices when they saw their colleagues approve the hiring of a new schools superintendent despite the overwhelming opposition of students and teachers in New Haven. The student members can’t vote on the Board of Ed. Spell and Dawkins nevertheless rallied their fellow students, gathered petitions, and spoke clearly and forcefully on their behalf.

Independent Strides

Another New Havener who hadn’t yet turned 20, Hacibey Catalbasoglu, won election to the Board of Alders running as an independent rather than a Democrat. Right now all 30 members of the Board of Alders are Democrats. Conventional wisdom is that only Democrats can win contested public offices in New Haven, especially in liberal bastions like Ward 1 (which covers much of Yale). Catalbasoglu, the son of a Turkish immigrant who runs a popular Howe Street pizzeria, grew up in New Haven and now attends Yale; last winter he and a fellow student delivered 200 winter coats, plus sweaters and boots, to Syrians living in a Turkish refugee camp.

When Catalbasoglu takes office next week, he will be one of two new alders elected as independents rather than Democrats. The other is Steve Winter, who is 29 years old. Winter already has worked on police accountability issues in New Haven. He ran for alder in a largely African-American ward, not only against a Democrat but against someone with deep roots in the community. Winter knocked on every door, some repeatedly. He listened. He won people’s confidence. And he pulled off an upset. He’s looking to join with fellow newcomers on the board to try to move forward a long-stalled plan to create a police civil review board with teeth.

Sarah Ganong has already defied political odds three times — and she’s only 27.

In 2016 Ganong was a local organizer for Bernie Sanders’s history-making presidential primary campaign, which went far further in changing the politics of the national Democratic Party than even many of his most loyal supporters imagined. Later that year she rallied fellow Sanderistas as campaign manager for a progressive first-time candidate, Joshua Elliott, who toppled a veteran Democratic officeholder to win a state representative seat.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as president, she began putting together a New Haven chapter of the Working Families Party as a staff statewide organizer. She did the hard work to get her own name on the general election ballot — without even forging any signatures — for mayor in New Haven, not to actually seek the office, but to gain a permanent spot on the local ballot for party by winning at least 1 percent of the vote. She succeeded in getting her 1 percent — times seven — in some wards winning more votes than a lifetime local politician who actually raised money and did want the office. That means New Haven now has another political party on the ballot for all elections. Look for the outwardly modest Ganong to help build it into a force.

Another 20-something barn-burner is Justin Farmer. He grew up in the part of Newhallville that crosses the New Haven-Hamden border, on the Hamden side. This year he crossed that border to play an active role in campaigns for immigrants rights and police accountability (an issue with which he has had painful personal experience) in New Haven. On the Hamden side, he knocked on door after door after door to win a seat on the Town Council, doing something remarkable along the way.

Farmer explained to people why he was wearing headphones all the time: He suffers from Tourette syndrome, so he needs to filter out noise to avoid seizures. He opened voters’ minds along with winning their hearts and votes and helped a burgeoning progressive cross-border progressive movement to the next level.

Future Bet

Meanwhile, New Haven made a state-funded bet on two 20-somethings to help create the ​“infrastructure” needed to sprout new businesses — and jobs — in town.

The two 20-somethings, Caroline Smith and Margaret Lee, had already established themselves as New Haven movers and shakers and found they wanted to work as a team.

They both attended Yale, same year. Both came from Kentucky, from Korean-American families. Yet they’d never known each other in school. Only after graduation, when they decided to stay in the city they both came to love and make a difference in, did they link up.

Smith took her activism to a new level in 2017 — and did some valuable thinking about how to help New Haven reach its potential in the 21st century. She’d already helped form a brigade of volunteers who shovel the driveways of shut-in people during storms. She helped organize an annual Bike Month to promote riding and advocate for safer streets. This year the effort branched into more city neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, Smith became the new chair of the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team, one of the most active in town, succeeding a baby boomer in the job. She’s looking to add a high school representative, a Yale student representative, and ​“folks who hang out on the Green” to the group.

“The individuals who are most affected by decisions ought to be the decision-makers,” Smith said.

She came to that conclusion not just through her work, but by reading a classic text this year about New Haven: Douglas Rae’s City: Urbanism & Its End. She didn’t just read it. Inspired by each chapter, she wrote a piece about how the 14-year-old text applies to today’s New Haven. She posted the pieces on a site called GovLoop, generating more discussion. Then she put the pieces together in a self-published book. (Buy it here.)

And that’s just what Smith did, unpaid, in her free time.

Her day job was at New Haven’s most successful new-economy start-up, the now internationally used citizen problem-solving platform SeeClickFix. Margaret Lee was working there, too, in the same department. Lee had previously worked at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute helping launch New Haven small businesses. On the side, Lee and Smith started hosting events with townie and gownie entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs from all walks of life, trying to figure out how New Haveners can work across the divide to convert their dreams and skills into successful businesses.

They enjoyed that work. They took the plunge this year, leaving SeeClickFix to launch Collab New Haven, a nonprofit that holds workshops for local entrepreneurs and offers mentorship and seed funding for their new enterprises. Smith said she, like Rae in City, concluded that New Haven needs to harness the growth and research at Yale as a driver of the new economy. She and Lee hope to ​“create spaces where Yale and New Haven residents can work together.”

Enter CT Next, a state initiative to help cities like New Haven create an environment where start-ups can thrive. New Haven won a $2 million innovation grant from the initiative this year to distribute locally. It sent $110,000 to Lee’s and Smith’s new venture for one year. If the duo can show results in 2018, it will be eligible for two more years of funding.

Fair to say, if they can’t show results, nobody can.

Stepping Up

Some of the 20-somethings made a difference out of the public spotlight in 2018. For instance, at LEAP, the city’s premier after-school and summer youth rec and academics program, Eliannie Sola took on the challenge of establishing a new site in the Hill after the clearing out of the Church Street South housing complex. A recent Albertus Magnus grad, she’s only 22. As site supervisor, she had not only to work with a series of schools — now Roberto Clemente — to arrange new locations. She also had to supervise 100 kids, and 14 other counselors. Most of the latter were either her age or older. That took some getting used to, she said — finding the right balance between collegiality and the occasional needed discipline. She pulled it off.

“Eli built our new Hill site into a real powerhouse for kids at Roberto Clemente School,” said LEAP Executive Director Henry Fernandez. ​“Despite her young age, we knew we could rely on her. In our efforts for social change, there are different kinds of leaders.

“Social justice requires people who combine brains, hard work, and quiet energy that builds the capacity of those around them. Eli has that and more.”

Meanwhile, 26-year-old Leiyanie ​“Lee” Osorio was translating her own life experience as an LGBTQ youth growing up in a low-income culturally conservative family that moved around a lot into making a difference in the organization.

Osorio, who started working for LEAP while studying for a criminal-justice career at Albertus Magnus, has been running the Fair Haven LEAP site at Clinton Avenue School, where she deals with kids in other itinerant bilingual families. She remembers she had no one to talk to about being gay while growing up. 

“I understand how difficult it is to ask the questions: Who am I ? What am I like? Who do I want to be with?” She decided to be a ​“walking billboard for my sexuality” — first during a detour as a homeless teen LGBT outreach worker in Meriden, then when she returned to LEAP to take over the Fair Haven site.

“They come out to me,” she said of some 11- and 12-year-olds in her program. ​“They say the words: ​‘I’m gay.’ It’s important for people like myself to be a beacon.”

In 2017, Osorio decided to extend that light to her colleagues at LEAP. She spent a year developing an ​“LGTBQ 101” training program that she ran for counselors. Now she’s working on a version for 13- to 16-year-old junior counselors. She also organized changes within the building, including the addition of two all-gender bathrooms. She also formed an LGBTQ training and consulting business on the side. ​“She has helped make us better at LEAP, not only in the site she runs in Fair Haven, but through her advocacy within our organization as well,” remarked Henry Fernandez. ​“There is a strong need for her work, especially among young LGBTQ people of color.”

“When We Fight, We Win”

Jesus Morales Sanchez of Unidad Latina en Accion and Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance, a 23-year-old New Havener originally from Mexico, stepped up and made a difference this year, too.

Some seasoned organizers, Kica Matos and John Lugo, continued in 2017 to mount nationally watched efforts in New Haven to advance immigrant rights and protect undocumented workers targeted for deportation, including through a new sanctuary church network. They have mentored Morales, who emerged as a central organizer in the mix as well, testifying in Hartford, getting people to demonstrations, putting together a citywide ​“Day Without Immigrants,” spreading the word through support networks and the media.

On the eve of Thanksgiving, one of the immigrants he helped find sanctuary, Marco Antonio Reyes Alvarez, won a reprieve from deportation. As dusk set in, Morales translated Reyes’ Spanish words of thanks into English for the crowd at a support rally outside First & Summerfield Church across from the Green. Then Morales spoke about his own work on Reyes’ case. He recalled how he shed tears when he wrote a press release about Reyes having to leave the country in August — then rewrote the release to announce that Reyes had found sanctuary at First & Summerfield. (Federal Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have a policy of not entering houses of worships to detain immigrants.)

“We’re on the steps [outside the church], and we’re not worried ICE is going to scoop you up,” Morales noted.

“Tonight Marcos is going home. It warms my heart. But the fight is far from over. Tomorrow we’re going to keep fighting.… When we fight, we win. And boy have we won today!”

Previous New Haveners of the Year:
• 2016: Corey Menafee
• 2015: Jim Turcio.
• 2014: Rev. Eldren Morrison
• 2013: Mnikesa Whitaker
• 2012: Diane Polan, Jennifer Gondola, Jillian Knox, Holly Wasilewski
• 2011: Stacy Spell
• 2010: Martha Green, Paul Kenney, Michael Smart, Rob Smuts, Luis Rosa Sr.
• 2009: Rafael Ramos
• 2006: Shafiq Abdussabur

To listen to an interview with Coral Ortiz on WNHH’s ​“Dateline New Haven,” click on or download the audio above. 

Click on the above and below Facebook Live videos for two different episodes of WNHH radio shows featuring Caroline Smith and Margaret Lee.

Click on or download the above audio file or the Facebook Live video below to listen to the full interview with Steve Winter on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.” The episode included discussion of being white while running for office in a largely black voting district; preserving affordable and cooperative housing; and his life story to date.

Click on the above audio file to hear the full WNHH FM ​“Dateline New Haven” interview with Justin Farmer as well as with homeless organizer Quentin Staggers.