INNER-CITY NEWS

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

Financial Justice a Key FocusWilson at 2016 NAACP Convention Students Take On August With New Eyes INNER-CITY NEWS July 27, 2016 - August 02, 2016

New Haven, Bridgeport

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

Students Take On August Wilson With New Eyes

by Lucy Gellman, Editor, The Arts Paper www.newhavenarts.org

it, repeating his monologue like a record on loop.

When the actor identified who he was talking to— Levee’s bandmate Cutler—Pesce knelt down next to him, listening to each word. When he returned to his seat, he asked Lazaro to envision a fireball in his hand, transforming him into a human torch.

Ivan Lazaro and Justin Pesce were world building. In an empty dance studio on Audubon Street, they had already dreamed up a church, sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows. They had walked through the incense-scented pews, making their way to the altar. As they knelt shoulder to shoulder, Lazaro turned to Pesce with fire in his eyes.

“What I care about burning in hell?” he asked, voice rising. “You talk like a fool ... burning in hell. Why didn’t God strike some of them crackers down?”

A junior at the Educational Center for the Arts (ECA), Lazaro is one of close to 100 Connecticut students competing for a spot in the regional chapter of the August Wilson Monologue Competition next month. A collaboration among Long Wharf Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, and New Haven area schools, the regional competition is now in its fourth year in the city. After regional auditions in early February, 15 regional finalists will compete at Long Wharf Theatre on Feb. 24. The top two will Lucy Gellman photos continue to the competition’s national finals in New York City.

Leon and Todd Kreidler at the True Colors Theatre This year, Long Wharf is working with students Company in Atlanta. Students choose monologues from Cooperative Arts and Humanities High from Wilson’s heralded American Century Cycle School, Educational Center of the Arts, Fair(also referred to as the Pittsburgh Cycle), a series field Warde High School, Fairfield Ludlowe High of ten plays chronicling ten decades of workingSchool, Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, and class, African-American life in 20th century Pittsthe Regional Center of the Arts in Trumbull. As of burgh and Chicago. The competition has specific last week, Educations Programs Coordinator Jacque resonance in New Haven, where many of the works Brown said that the theater also plans to work with premiered at the Yale Rep. students from Metropolitan Business Academy and In addition to rehearsing, students are expected to John F. Kennedy High School. do character analyses and learn about the worlds in The competition was founded in 2007 by Kenny 3:45which their1characters live. This year, Long Wharf 1Robeson_InnerCity_5.472x5.qxp_Layout 1 2/3/20 PM Page

“School me on this,” he said. “There’s still so much of this tension. Let your talent take you.”

has placed teaching artists in one-on-one rehearsals with students, instead of group rehearsals.

“A lot of his pieces speak to me,” said Justin Pesce, one of Long Wharf’s teaching artists. “His characters are very specific, and because they’re so specific they’re also universal. When I work with students, I don’t see characters. I see what these student actors bring to the roles with their lives, their experiences. It brings a new spirit to August Wilson’s work.”

On a recent Wednesday, Pesce found himself working with Lazaro, who will be reading as Levee from Wilson’s 1982 play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The work, which is set in Chicago in the 1920s and based on the real-life blues singer Ma Rainey, follows a band as it splinters at the edges, pushed and then destroyed by its trumpeter Levee.

In one reading of the work, Levee is naive and hot-headed, a deadly combination for the America in which he lives. In another, he is a victim of deeprooted racism and economic exploitation, prisons from which he cannot break free because of his blackness. For Lazaro, who also competed last year, the character was immediately relatable.

“Levee spoke to me because he had so much pain,” he said. “When I was younger, I had a lot of anger issues. You bring some of yourself into that role.”

At a recent rehearsal, he took the floor of an empty ballet studio, shaking off the bitter cold before he started the monologue for what may have been the hundredth time. In New Haven, it was 2020. A smudge of blue sky spread over Audubon Street.

Cars crunched over the ice outside. In Wilson’s universe, it was Chicago circa 1927. Levee was bubbling with rage. Lazaro stepped into the past, voice booming. “… why didn’t God strike some of those crackers down?” he cried, his voice rising. “I’ll tell you why!

I’ll tell you the truth! It’s sitting out there as plain as day! ‘Cause he is a white man’s God. That’s why!”

Pesce listened carefully to the end of the monologue. He pushed Lazaro line by line, building a universe that filled the studio with the trappings of a city a century ago. When Lazaro envisioned a recording booth, Pesce asked him to walk around

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Slowly, a more embodied Levee emerged, sentences broken into whole, gut-churning worlds. When Lazaro began, he lifted his hands slowly, almost supplicating. When he revealed that he saw God as a white man’s God—that is, a God hardened to the plight of so many Americans—it was a revelation with anger at its edges. When he asked Cutler, suddenly at a whisper, “why didn’t God strike some of them crackers down?” the sentence rang out with new meaning. It landed with a punch.

Suddenly, the year was 1982, when Wilson was the play writing amidst new equal opportunity provisions to the Civil Rights act. The year was 1927, in a country that didn’t give Ma Rainey proper praise until years after her death. The year was 2020, and it felt like God was still waiting in the wings to intervene.

“It felt good,” Lazaro said when he finished. “It felt like I was talking to a friend. It felt more truthful. I felt, like, an anger, but it was controlled. ” Pesce, whose embodied technique comes from the actor Michael Chekhov, tweaks his approach for every student. As ECA junior Amy Narain took on the character Sterling from Wilson’s Two Trains Running—written in 1990, but set in 1969—he joked that she would need to do a better job of courting Risa, the character to whom Sterling has brought flowers from a funeral home. She cracked a smile, looked directly at Pesce, and started again.

“Them some flowers,” she said, leaning forward with her forearms nearly on her knees. “I got them for you. I got them from across the street. I wasn’t gonna buy them. I think that’s silly to buy flowers.

White folks do that. If I want to buy you something I buy you earrings or something. But I got them. And I got them for you.”

It wasn’t doing it for Pesce. “Where are you?” he asked.

“A diner,” she said. “It’s homey.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Someone I really like,” she answered.

“So you’re trying to woo this person!? Let me see you woo!” he said, moving to the center of the room as if he was waiting for a marriage proposal.

He popped his heel and stuck his hand out, drawing laughs from Narain. “Really woo this person!”

It did the trick. When she started again, every sentence was a complete thought. The flowers materialized, a light and certain weight in her hands. The phrase “White folks do that” became an aside and then an admission, whispered with the comedy that flows through Wilson’s work and is so often overlooked. Sterling’s world became her own.

“I feel a lot better,” she said as she wound down.

“I’m starting to see images when I’m going through the lines.”

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

Brackeen: #IowaSoWhite

by PAUL BASS

New Haven I ndependent

Darryl Brackeen Jr. saw the Iowa caucus up front Monday — and came away persuaded that there must be a better way to start selecting a president.

And not just because the party screwed up the vote count.

Brackeen, a New Haven alder, traveled to Cedar Rapids to serve as a precinct captain in a Democratic nominating caucus for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

He was assigned to corral 40 committed Biden supporters to a Monday evening caucus in the town of Marion, right outside Cedar Rapids.

“I knocked on the doors of everybody” on the Biden list over the weekend, Brackeen reported in an interview Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.

Then on Monday he returned to make sure they made it to Marion City Hall, where the precinct’s caucus was taking place in the combined council/mayoral chambers.

Thirty-seven of the 40 made it to the caucus and held firm for Biden, getting him over the threshold of 15 percent of the 116 eligible caucus participants present to earn the campaign a delegate.

Bernie Sanders drew more support in the room, Brackeen reported. Elizabeth Warren didn’t make the 15 percent threshold in the first round. But in a second

Part 1 of our 4-part series in celebration of Black History Month

round of voting, Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang supporters — and even three Sanders first-round backers — moved over to Warren’s side to win her a delegate.

Biden gained no new supporters in the second round.

So Brackeen knew the Marion results when he left the building. But by the end of the night no one had any official results from any caucuses in Iowa. For a variety of reasons, including a new app that apparently crashed, the vote-counting process was thrown into chaos.

“Should Iowa be the first one out of the gate? Should the caucus” process pick delegates? Brackeen asked rhetorically Tuesday in the WNHH interview.

His answer: no. Not just because of the confusion over the counting. But because of the fact that 91 percent of hte Iowa caucusgoers statewide were white, only 3 percent African-American.

“We need a more diverse lineup,” said Brackeen, who is African-American. “The state is not diverse.” He said he and his wife Chaz Brackeen, who also worked for Biden for the caucus, “were little sprinkles” in the white Iowa sea.

Brackeen is returning home for a couple of weeks. Then he plans to head south to work for Biden’s campaign in the North Carolina and South Carolina primaries.

“Dateline New Haven.” The episode also included an interview with contractor/activist Rodney Williams.

BOSCOV’S CELEBRATES THE LIFE OF

KOBE BRYANT

Public Housing Chief Tapped For State Ed Board

The top-decision-maker on public housing in New Haven, Karen DuBois-Walton, will now help make decisions for the state education system as well.

In a Tuesday afternoon email press release, Gov. Ned Lamont announced that he has appointed DuBois-Walton, who is the executive director of Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH), to serve on the state’s Board of Education.

“Connecticut schools rightly have a reputation for being among the best in the nation, and maintaining that standing is key to attracting new businesses that are going to grow high-quality, high-paying jobs in our state because, quite frankly, they need the workers who are prepared with the skills that match the needs of 21st century jobs,” Lamont is quoted as saying in the release, “My administration is determined to reform the way all of our education and workforce development organizations operate – our high schools, colleges, and businesses all need to be at the table and work collaboratively so that our teachers know what skills to teach,

and our students know what jobs will be awaiting them.

DuBois-Walton is one of four new appointments to the state Board of Education, which consists of 14 members: 10 voting members who serve staggered four-year terms, two nonvoting high school student members, the president of the state college system, and the chair of the state Technical Education and Career System board.

The press release identifies DuBois-Walton as the current executive director of the city’s housing authority, the president of the Glendower Group, which is the associated development arm of the housing authority, and the president of 360 Management Group, which is the associated property management affiliate of the housing authority.

DuBois-Walton previously served as chief operating officer for the city housing authority. Before that, she served as chief of staff and as chief administrative officer under former Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. She is a trained clinical psychologist with a BA from Yale and a MA and Ph.D. from Boston University.

Boscov’s celebrates Black History Month and honors the life of Kobe Bryant, whose many accomplishments and contributions to basketball and beyond have made him a legend.

Father, husband and athlete, this icon will be greatly missed by his many fans, while his life and legacy serve as a true inspiration for all of us.

MARKESHIA RICKS PHOTO Karen DuBois-Walton: Newly appointed to the state Board of Ed.

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

COMCAST, SMITHSONIAN CHANNEL AND THE AMISTAD CENTER FOR ART & CULTURE

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Premiere screening of BLACK IN SPACE: BREAKING THE COLOR BARRIER Comcast, Smithsonian Channel and the Amistad Center for Art & Culture are partnering to present a private screening of BLACK IN SPACE:BREAKING THE COLOR BARRIER. The race to get to space is long over, but buried in time is the revelatory story of the world’s first black astronauts.

For many Americans, the 20th- century Space Race was a Cold War competition over rocketry and technological feats, but the world’s two superpowers were also engaged in another highstakes race – one whose impact is still being felt today. BLACK IN SPACE: BREAKING THE COLOR BARRIER examines the crucial moment when America’s history of racial prejudice became a critical vulnerability in the effort to win hearts and minds around the globe. Confronting a Soviet foe determined to show that communism was the face of the future, the U.S. would need a new generation of astronauts.

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Contributing Writers David Asbery / Tanisha Asbery

Jerry Craft / Cartoons / Barbara Fair

Dr. Tamiko Jackson-McArthur Michelle Turner / Smita Shrestha William Spivey / Kam Williams Rev. Samuel T. Ross-Lee

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Christine Stuart www.CTNewsJunkie.com Paul Bass New Haven Independent www.newhavenindependent.org

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

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February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

West Haven Black Heritage Committee Gets Ready for Black History Month

Cele Celebrating Celebra

BLACK

Members of the West Haven Black Heritage Committee and other activists gather on the steps of City Hall with a new banner to commemorate Black History Month, which begins on February 1st.

The banner includes six images of historical black figures in the United States. They are Madam CJ Walker,

Olympian Jessie Owens, Congresswoman and first female and black presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm, former President Barack Obama, Harriet Tubman and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “The City’s Black Heritage Celebration will be held on Thursday, February 27th at 11:00 in the Harriet North Community

Room, second floor, West Haven City Hall.” Said Committee Chairman Steven R. Mullins. “At that ceremony the West Haven’s African-American Citizen of the Year will be honored, along with two highly accomplished black West Haven High School seniors. The names will be announced in the next two weeks.” he said.

HISTORY MONTH

Pictured are: Front row L to R: Banner Designer Kyle Kearson, Councilwoman Robbin Hamilton, D-5, Councilwoman Trenee McGee, D-7, Kathy Tucker, Denis Wright, Committee Chairman Commissioner Steven R. Mullins. Back Row L to R: Mark Lee, Stanley Chambers, Michelle Mays, Jeffrey Moreno, Mackie McMillan, Commissioner Christopher Suggs.Photograph Credit: Kathy Chambers

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

Activist-Turned-Priest Returns In New Role

by ALLAN APPEL

New Haven I ndependent

Thomas Jackson doesn’t see much difference between a good sermon and good journalism. Both, in his view, strive to make people see connections more deeply and build community.

Jackson knows both roles. An environmental activist and journalist in Fair Haven in the 1980s and 1990s, he made a life change and became a priest. Now he has returned to New Haven after a 16year sojourn, in a new/old role: preaching the good environmental word and much else from the pulpit of historic St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on Whalley Avenue.

After beginning service in July as the St. Luke’s priest in charge, The Rev. Thomas Jackson found New Haven a decidedly different city from the one he left in 2003.

He left after having worn various hats: as a reporter with an environmental beat; a founder of the New Haven Land Trust, along with the first hazardous waste collection sites in the state; an incorporator of what became New Haven Pride Center; Board of Education member during the administration of Mayor John Daniels.

His new duties serving the historic African-American and Caribbean-American congregation have been keeping him very busy.

Rev. Jackson sat down with the Inde-

pendent to talk about the journey his life has taken and what’s new and what’s different in church and town.

Independent: I understand you grew up in Baltimore. You got into a little brouhaha with your university president over your student activism, and you finished college at the University of Connecticut.

There you got started writing and editing for the college daily, and ended up after graduation with an environmental beat at various papers including in Meriden. So what brought you down to New Haven, specifically Fair Haven?

Jackson: We tipped over on a cold morning near Cheshire [during a 15mile boat trip on the Quinnipiac River].

When we finally got to New Haven, went under the I-91 bridge, it was sunset. [I thought:] This is a beautiful New England village. I’d like to live here.

You bought an historic house on Front Street way back in 1980, and for the next two decades you became an activist, raised two kids you sent through the New Haven Schools. Then you left town—and changed your life, coming out in 2003, and moving with your partner to San Francisco. Can you speak a little about that and what brought you back to New Haven in 2019?

“I’m going to law school,” [declared his partner, attorney Alexander Han], “‘and you can go to seminary.” I had not thought of that since 1970.

In 1968. I went to my priest. He said to

ALLAN APPEL PHOTO Thomas Jackson at St. Luke’s, where he now serves as pastor.

me, “There are [already] lots of clergy.

Go do everything else you want, and then come back.”

And so you did!

God doesn’t always show up with a lightning bolt. Sometimes, it’s a nudge.

And out there you went to seminary at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. You were ordained at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, and you worked as the Episcopal chaplain at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto for eight years. You

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also worked at St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco. How has that prepared you for your current job and what’s new at the church and in New Haven?

I was vicar at St. Cyprian’s, an AfricanAmerican congregation, so I was primed to be here. We’re at the cusp of monumental changes in Christian churches, moving from the industrial age to the internet age. All these factors create challenges to the way “we’ve done church.”

St. Luke’s is on the cutting edge of what

it means to be Christian in 21st Century New Haven. What’s worked for our parents and grandparents doesn’t work for us. We now have to go out to the neighborhoods and see where God is working salvation and lend our hand.

And what’s your preliminary finding in that regard?

Actually I have no idea [yet]. However, the way the Episcopal church does worship is a gift. You don’t have to sign a list [of beliefs or doctrines]. Our goal is Con’t on page 16

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

60 Years Ago: Students Launched Sit-In Movement

By Dr. Kelton Edmonds, Special to The New Journal and Guide February 1, 2020 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the historic Sit-in Movement, when four African-American freshmen from North Carolina A&T State College (now University) in Greensboro, NC sparked the non-violent and studentled wave of protests that ultimately resulted in the desegregation of F.W. Woolworth and other racially discriminatory stores.

The brave freshmen from NCA&T, who would later be adorned with the iconic label of the “Greensboro Four”, consisted of David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and Ezell Blair Jr. (Jibreel Khazan). On February 1, 1960, the Greensboro Four bought items at Woolworth’s, then sat at the ‘whites-only’ lunch counter and refused to leave until they were served. Although waitresses refused to serve them, in accordance with the store’s racist policies, the four would continue their protest and in the following days and weeks would be joined by more students from NCA&T, the nearby all-women’s HBCU Bennett College and students from other nearby colleges and high schools.

In a 2003 interview, Khazan (formerly Blair, Jr.) reflected on the daily threats of violence and verbal assaults from white antagonists, as one caller reached him on the dorm hall phone and bellowed, “…executioners are going to kill you niggers if you come back down here tomorrow, you and your crazy friends.”

White student allies who protested alongside black students were not immune from death threats either, as Khazan recalled a white student protester explaining that their college president was threatened by an anonymous caller saying, “…if those nigger loving bitches come downtown again and sit with those niggers, we going to kill them and burn your school down.”

The Greensboro students persisted nevertheless, and soon, the protests that flooded the lunch counters of the segregated store would spread to other cities throughout the South beginning in North Carolina cities such as Elizabeth City, Charlotte and Winston-Salem, in addition to cities in Virginia.

In Virginia Virginia played a primary role in the Sitin Movement, as Hampton, Virginia became the first community outside of North Carolina to experience sit-ins on February 10th.

Initially, three students from Hampton Institute sat-in at the downtown Woolworth’s lunch counter in Hampton and were refused service. As a testament to

the veracity of the movement, within two weeks, over 600 students in Hampton were sitting-in.

On February 12th, sit-in protests spread to Norfolk, as 38 black protesters staged a sit-in at the Woolworth lunch counters on Granby and Freemason streets.

Similar demonstrations were held in Portsmouth, in the mid-city shopping center at lunch counters in Rose’s Department store on February 12th and at BradshawDiehl department store later that week.

Led by students from I.C. Norcom High school, the Portsmouth sit-ins would be one of the few cities that experienced violence, albeit initiated by white anti-protesters armed with chains, hammers, and pipes and resulting in retaliation from the black students after being attacked.

Violent episodes were the exceptions and not the rule of the massively spreading Sit-in Movement. In nearly all sit-in cities, black protesters made immeasurable efforts to avoid violence at all cost since the movement and training centered on non-violent demonstrations in confronting inequality.

Edward Rodman, high school activist in Portsmouth, admitted they were initially unorganized and untrained in passive resistance, which played a role in their reactions to the violent anti-protesters. The Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) connected with the Portsmouth student protesters and over the next few days conducted intense and successful non-violent workshops with the young people. Soon after, the Portsmouth students reignited their movement without incidents of retaliation toward violent antagonists.

North of Hampton Roads, Richmond, Virginia experienced sit-ins as well as Baltimore, MD, and dozens of other cities by the end of February. By mid-April, sit-in protests reached all southern states involving thousands of black student activists and sympathizers.

The coordinated demonstrations of thousands of black student protesters and sympathizers put insurmountable pressure on Woolworth’s, as it became nearly impossible for regular customers to purchase items, eat at the lunch counters and even enter the store in many instances.

On May 25th, the sit-in movement received a major victory as lunch counters at Woolworth’s in Winston Salem, NC desegregated. Soon after, Woolworth’s in Nashville, TN and San Antonio, TX also integrated. Finally, on July 25, ground zero, Woolworth’s in Greensboro integrated its lunch counter. With the possibility of facing bankruptcy, F.W. Woolworth totally acquiesced and desegregated all of its lunch counters throughout the nation by the end of the summer of 1960.

The Legacies And Larger Significance Of The 1960 Sit-in Movement, Sparked In Greensboro Similar to the successful 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the students’ triumphant coordinated protests in 1960 further dem-

onstrated how mass economic boycotts could lead to desegregationist social victories, particularly when targeting businesses that relied heavily on black patronage. The Greensboro Four only set out to challenge and change the discriminatory practices of the local Woolworth’s, yet their movement expanded exponentially to ultimately bring about the desegregation of all Woolworth’s lunch counters in the country.

The students of the Civil Rights era suddenly possessed a new weapon, the mass sit-in, which would continue to be used in Greensboro and around the country in various forms. The sit-ins combined with the freedom rides led to black students establishing their unique value and niche to the larger Civil Rights Movement. Black students understood their unique, collective power and desired to harness their efforts under a national apparatus. Consequently, another major legacy of the student movement that emerged in Greensboro was it also directly led to the birth of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April of 1960 in nearby Raleigh, NC on the campus of Shaw University.

SNCC would soon emerge as one of the most formidable organizations of the decade, elevating students to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement.

After marveling at the magnitude and effectiveness of the student protesters during the sit-ins, major Civil Rights organizations such as the NAACP, SCLC and CORE pressured the students to collapse their meteoric movement into the youth wing of one of their institutions under their supervision.

The students however, decided to remain autonomous and formulate their own student-led organization, while still adhering to non-violent principles. The students’ decision to remain student-led received noteworthy support from several key adult Civil Rights leaders in Greensboro in adCon’t from page 09

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020 Con’t from page 08

dition to Ella Baker from SCLC. SNCC would prove to be an indispensible organization that not only championed directly confronting Jim Crow racism on numerous levels through organized protests and massive voter registration drives, but SNCC also further popularized the concept of participatory democracy and was the first major Civil Rights organization to evolve toward seriously embracing principles of black power ideology under Stokely Carmichael’s (Kwame Ture) leadership in 1966.

Another legacy of the 1960 sit-in movement was that it offered the inspiration and blueprint for the second and more colossal wave of mass student protest in Greensboro in 1963. The 1963 student demonstrations in Greensboro would be even more locally successful than their predecessor as they desegregated all remaining businesses in downtown Greensboro and the student leader of the second wave of sit-ins, Jesse Jackson, would parlay his leadership in the student protests onto the national Civil Rights stage throughout the 20th century. Similar to Greensboro, other cities throughout the South would experience a second and even third wave of similar protests to successfully desegregate other remaining businesses throughout the decade.

Ultimately, all mass student protests of the 1960s and thereafter owe their viability to the student-led Greensboro protests of 1960, including student black power activists and anti-war activists of the late 60s and 70s. Although its origins predate 1960, even one of the largest and most noteworthy national student organizations, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), owe its resurgence and major elements of its effectiveness to the spark ignited by the Greensboro Four on February 1, 1960.

Even recent episodes of student activism exhibited in the Ferguson, Missouri protests of 2014-15, as well as the student protests led by black students at the University of Missouri in 2015, which ultimately led to the resignation of the chancellor, have attributes that correlate to the 1960 student movement. The student movement of 1960, ignited by the Greensboro Four, provided a blueprint for future students to build upon, perfect, and utilize in a variety of ways for a plethora of circumstances.

Most importantly, what happened in 1960 showed young people the power they possessed to address their grievances and ultimately bring about change on both local and national levels if they organized themselves and remained committed.

Unique Weapons for Non-violent Students In addition to the typical traits that come along with youthfulness such as idealism and impatience, student success during the 1960 sit-ins and thereafter was directly affixed to two distinct assets possessed by students juxtaposed to their older adult activist counterparts. The first asset is condense demographics, as student-body

Unidentified sit-in demonstration. Photo: New Journal and Guide Archives Dr. Kelton Edmonds is a Professor of History at California University of Pennsylvania. His primary research is on Black Student Activism in the United States. He is a native of Portsmouth, VA and graduated from I.C. Norcom High school in 1993. populations were primarily located on campuses and/or nearby the colleges.

The fact that hundreds to thousands of students in a college town lived within a square mile of each other led to the expeditious mobilization of large numbers of people and efficient dissemination of information and strategy.

Although black churches proved to be invaluable throughout the Black Freedom Struggle from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement, there was still no equivalent amongst the older black generation to the college campus’ effectiveness as both a meeting place and as a domicile for housing and dispersing the shock troops of the movement.

The second major asset specific to students would be the relation between arrest and reprisal. At some of their demonstrations prior to 1960, older black activists strategically triggered their arrests for charges such as trespassing or loitering as a way to dramatize unjust treatment via media coverage and to pressure white officials to change discriminatory laws.

Once mobilized per the sit-ins however, student activists were able to invite and

withstand incarceration for far longer periods of time and in extremely larger numbers. Students vastly elevated this critical strategy of the overall movement. During 1960 and beyond, the enormous numbers unleashed by black student activists put unyielding pressure on local law enforcement, political officials and jail facilities.

In many cities like Greensboro, there were not enough jail cells for all of the students arrested, particularly since the students refused bail and chose to remain incarcerated.

This action severely drained local municipalities of money and resources, forcing local governmental, business and law officials to dramatically adjust policies and sometimes change discriminatory laws.

Student activists were able to perfect this strategy because they could endure prolonged imprisonment without fear of major job or housing reprisal.

Comparably, many older activists, whose families depended on their incomes, could not sacrifice prolonged periods of incarceration, as it would threaten their livelihood. Furthermore, angry employers or landlords, who disapproved of their pro-

9

test activities, could threaten to fire them or abruptly remove them from property they were renting.

Students were not confronted with the same ramifications of these economic, employment and housing reprisals, as the majority of them lived on campuses and perhaps had part-time, albeit replaceable, minimum wage jobs, often with no dependents.

Drawing the contrast between student activists versus the older activists is not synonymous with drawing divisions, as the older activists understood the assets that students solely possessed to further the movement along. In fact, many of the older activists encouraged the younger activists and actively supported them in numerous ways.

For example, when Bennett College students, who were the heroines on the 1963 Greensboro protests, were arrested and refused bail during the 1963 sit-ins in Greensboro, their professors came to the jail facilities and gave them their classroom and homework assignments every week. This scenario personifies the symbiotic relationship between both gen-

erations in the fight against racism, as the professors showed their appreciation for the young people’s unique and valiant position for the benefit of the entire race and future generations, yet not removing the students from their responsibilities and academic requirements.

Altogether, students endured countless hardships that included incarceration, verbal assaults and physical violence. Sometimes, attacks from white antagonists were compounded by disproportionate responses from law enforcement, as Portsmouth activist, Edward Rodman explained, “… the fire department, all of the police force and police dogs were mobilized. The police turned the dogs loose on the Negroesbut not all the whites.”

Students also understood that they could pay the ultimate price for protesting against the status quo of racial inequality, as numerous activists were murdered throughout the Civil Rights era. Nevertheless, over 50,000 black students and sympathizers participated in the sit-ins of 1960. As historian Clayborne Carson highlighted, “Nonviolent tactics, particularly when accompanied by rationale based on Christian principles, offered black students…a sense of moral superiority, an emotional release through militancy, and a possibility of achieving desegregation.”

A movement within a movement was born on February 1, 1960 and that movement evolved into its own distinct force by the middle of the decade. Soon after the sit-ins began, students realized their collective prowess, as student activism consistently helped define the decade of the 60s in forcing monumental political, legal and social changes throughout the nation.

Finally, the black student activists of the 1960 sit-ins did three important things, albeit unintentional: they helped lay the foundation for all collective student activism in the 60s and beyond, they played a legendary role in the larger AfricanAmerican Freedom Movement that began as early as Africans’ arrival to colonial America, and they cemented a valuable place in one of America’s most significant traditions, the protest tradition, which has continuously defined and propelled our country since its inception.

Our society, and all post-1960 social movements, have undeniably benefited from the audacity of those four brave freshmen and their actions on February 1, 1960.

Dr. Kelton Edmonds is a Professor of History at California University of Pennsylvania. His primary research is on Black Student Activism in the United States. He is a native of Portsmouth, VA and graduated from I.C. Norcom High school in 1993. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in Secondary Education-History from North Carolina A&T State University. He earned his Ph.D. in 20th Century US History from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Students from Norfolk’s Booker T. Washington High School stage set in at Granby Street’s Woolworth’s lunch counter. Photo: New Journal and Guide Archives

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

“Game Changer” Honored For Feeding The Hungry

of its 100th year of service, which has begun, and will culminate on Dec. 22, In her work as a pre-school teacher the day on which the organization was in Hamden, Allison Batson discovered founded back in 1920.

UWGNH President and CEO Jennifer many of the families of her kids were Heath said her organization’s “secret food insecure.

That, along with her faith, led her to sauce” is in the very name: “taking on found “Dinner for a Dollar,” a commu- things in a united way that no single ornal supper that now feeds about 60 peo- ganization can solve alone.”

Those large societal issues are early ple, including the homeless, isolated seniors looking for social contact, and just childhood health and education and famplain neighbors, every Friday night 52 ily financial stability. Heath termed those weeks a year at the Grace and St. Peter’s the building blocks of a good life.

Batson’s work on Dinner for a Dollar Church on Dixwell Avenue in northern is only the tip of the iceberg of a life of Hamden.

Batson has never missed a Dinner for a tireless service.

Dollar night in eight years. In her spare “She’s ‘infamous’,” Heath said in circles time (!) she volunteers at warming cen- of people who are attempting to meet unters in Hamden and helps on the home- met needs in Hamden.

Batson said she plans to work in 2020 less front through service on the board of with United Way to spread the Dinner Columbus House.

No wonder Batson was given United for a Dollar concept to locations in the Way of Greater New Haven’s first southern part of Hamden, perhaps at the “Game Changer” award at an upbeat Keefe Center and at a church location, ceremony attended by about 100 people yet to be determined.

Friday at the group’s headquarters at 370 The “dollar” is a donation if particpants are able to pay, and the concept is that James St. In the months to come the recognizing people are guests. Dinners are hot and of another 99 Game Changers will be at home-cooked by the church’s parishioserved4:24 on regular dinnerware. the heart of United Way’s celebration ners 1and Lyman_InnerCity_5.472x5.1.qxp_Layout 1/2/20 PM Page 1

by ALLAN APPEL

New Haven I ndependent

Batson, holding sign, with sponsor Avangrid Foundation Director Nicole Grant to her right and United Way’s Jennifer Heath and Ted Norris on left.

There’s conversation and the feeling of people being guests, Batson explained.

People come for a variety of reasons.

One set of grandparents came into custody of their grandchildren, she explained, and were hard-pressed to make a month-

ly budget and so came every Friday night for the hearty and inexpensive meal.

Now that they’re back on their feet, they come as participants and supporters.

Batson said she hopes that in the not-toodistant future a hot meal will be available

to everyone who needs one in Hamden every night of the week.

Friday night’s menu up at Grace and St. Peter’s: vegetarian chili with rice and cornbread.

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

IN MEMORIAM: The Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones Focused on equal opportunity under law

By Dan Yount, The Cincinnati Herald

Equal opportunity under the law. It was the focus of Federal Judge and Civil Rights leader Nathaniel R. Jones’ life for decades, and he has made more of a difference than most people. Judge Jones died of congestive heart failure January 26 at his home in East Walnut Hills, according to his daughter Stephanie Jones, Esq. He was 93.

Jones was born in Youngstown in 1926, 17 years after the founding of the NAACP and the publication of The Call, a document “imploring Americans to discuss and protest the racial problem and to renew the struggle for civil and political rights.” That document deeply influenced him, as did his mentor, J. Maynard Dickerson, according to his autobiography, Answering the Call.

After growing up in an integrated neighborhood, Jones writes he learned a hard lesson in “deeply entrenched and pervasive” segregation when he joined the Army in 1945. Attending college on the GI Bill, he enrolled in a pre-law course, continued with law school at night, and became involved in Civil Rights issues, increasingly conscious of the ways that racism was built into voting, housing, health benefits, jobs, and education.

A graduate of his hometown school, Youngstown State University, Jones chose a legal career to help eliminate racial injustice — the kind that led to his being refused a shave in the old Sheraton Gibson barbershop during an early visit to Cincinnati. He earned his law degree from Youngstown State University. In 2003, the federal courthouse in Youngstown was named after Judge Jones.

A year after entering private practice, Jones became the first African American in Ohio to be an Assistant U.S. Attorney, when he was appointed to the Northern District of Ohio at Cleveland, a position he held until 1967.

He then was asked by his friend Merle McCurdy to serve as assistant general counsel to President Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission, which made a study of the causes of the urban riots of the 1960s. McCurdy was the commission’s general counsel.

Jones said the commission’s February 1968 report known as the Kerner Report, concluded that the nation was “moving toward two societies, one Black, one White—separate and unequal.” Unless conditions were remedied, the commission warned, the country faced a “system of apartheid” in its major cities.

Jones succeeded Thurgood Marshall as general counsel for the NAACP in the 1970s. His work for the NAACP focused on desegregation, notably in the North, where judges were not convinced that the Brown v. Board of Education decision applied, and on landmark affirma-

Dinner with South African President Nelson Mandela. In a once-in-a-lifetime experience, Cincinnati federal Judge Nathaniel Jones and his late wife Lillian were asked to dine with South African President Nelson Mandela during Jones’ second visit to the country when he assisted in the drafting of a new constitution for South Africa. Photo provided

Judge Nathaniel Jones

is shown in this cover photograph on his autobiography Answering the Call that was taken in his hometown of Youngstown about a month after he had served as deputy general counsel on the Kerner Commission. Provided.

tive action cases.

From 1969 to 1978, Jones’ work for the NAACP took him to the Supreme Court multiple times, where he argued for affirmative action in the public and private sectors, challenged efforts to maintain segregated schools in jurisdictions across the United States, and successfully defended the NAACP against attempts by Mississippi businesses and officials to bankrupt the organization through civil lawsuits brought by the targets of mass boycotts and protests in that state.

Jones also fought to overturn racial discrimination against Black people across Africa in the 1990s, working with South African President Nelson Mandela and

Judge Nathaniel R. Jones. Photos

by Pete Coleman/The Cincinnati Herald

others to write a new constitution for South Africa following the apartheid era.

“Nathaniel Jones is a pioneer who has never failed to stand for the rights of people denied a chance to be a part of the process,” said Roslyn A. Brock, chairman of the NAACP National Board of Directors. “His distinguished career serves as inspiration to our thousands of youth leaders working to end the profound segregation that continues to exist in our society to this day.

Judge Jones was appointed by President Carter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati in 1979.

Judge Jones retired from the Sixth Circuit Court in 2002, and continued to practice law, serving as senior counsel at the firm of Blank Rome LLP until 2018.

“I see enough here to make Cincinnati an exciting place,” said Jones. “People should be proud and press on to make

11

this city an even better place to live.”

During the 101st National NAACP Convention in 2016 in Cincinnati, Judge Jones said in receiving the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, “Democracy requires participation. If you don’t participate, you don’t have anybody to blame but yourself. To be a player, you have to be involved. I recognize both the blessing of 90 years and the finite character of what is left of my life, but as long as I have breath, my advice will be to stay focused and resist efforts on the real threat, which is the nullification of the remedies that give meaning to laws against discrimination.

“I want to issue a plea to all who still believe in the NAACP’s call, some 107 years after our founding in 1909. The original Call concluded: “Hence we call upon all the believers in democracy to join in a national conference for the discussion of present evils, the voicing of protests, and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.

“This is why I am truly honored to be part of the continuing legacy of Spingarn Medalists.’’

Mayor John Cranley, on the passing of Judge Nathaniel Jones, said, in a statement, “Nathaniel Jones was one of the greatest Civil Rights leaders this nation has ever known, having worked with Thurgood Marshall during the Brown v Board case, desegregating countless schools and institutions as head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, to helping South Africa come out of apartheid, to ensuring individual rights as a federal judge. To be in his presence was to be in the presence of greatness. Knowing him has been one of the greatest honors of my life.

“In 2001, he helped me write my first major piece of legislation, the city’s racial profiling ban—that’s the equivalent of getting hitting lessons from Hank Aaron. Among Salmon Chase, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Howard Taft and Fred Shuttlesworth, Nathaniel Jones was one of the five greatest Cincinnatians to have ever lived among us.”

Former Ohio State Senator Eric H. Kearney remembers being in his early 20s and meeting Judge Jones at the home of family friend, Civil Rights activist Virginia Coffey. Kearney said, “To our community, Nathaniel Jones was a judge, lawyer, educator, and determined defender of social justice. To his family, he was a dedicated father and grandfather. To me, Judge Jones was a mentor, law school professor, and inspiration.

Our region, our nation and our world are a better place thanks to his contributions.

Judge Jones will be dearly missed.”

In a statement, a representative of the family of the late State Representative William Mallory, said, “Judge Nathaniel R. Jones was a great legal scholar and a confidant to our beloved William L. Mallory Sr. He called Judge Jones to ask if he had a chance to file a lawsuit to change the way judges are elected in Hamilton County. The historic lawsuit was successful and Judge Jones is a big part of that success. He gave an inspiring commencement speech at the law school graduation of Judge Dwane Mallory. He was a humble man who carried himself with great honor and distinction. He fought for democracy here in Cincinnati and all over the world. He had a unique relationship with the Mallory family, and we will miss him. We send our prayers and condolences to the family of Judge Nathaniel R. Jones.’’

Although thrilled at Barack Obama’s “amazing election,” in the discourse surrounding it, Jones writes in Answering the Call, he was reminded of the need to keep Civil Rights history alive for the media, Congress and the judiciary.

Jones praises Civil Rights lawyers for tirelessly establishing legal standards and fighting federal efforts to thwart them. He mentored and inspired many young people by teaching classes at the University of Cincinnati Law School and Harvard Law School. Judge Jones was actively involved in the Summer Work Experience in Law (SWEL) program in Cincinnati.

He felt that the legal community in Cincinnati was too segregated, so with his friend, the late Judge Robert Black, he established the CBA-BLAC (Cincinnati Bar Association-Black Lawyers Association of Cincinnati) Roundtable to foster better relationships with attorneys of different races and ethnic backgrounds.

Among his numerous honors and awards, Judge Jones was named a Great Living Cincinnatian in 1997. He changed the course of history, and we are grateful.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

Black History Month 2020 Theme: “African Americans and the Vote” www.history.com

Since 1976, every American president has designated February as Black History Month and endorsed a specific theme.

The Black History Month 2020 theme, “African Americans and the Vote,” is in honor of the centennial anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment (1920) granting women’s suffrage and the sesquicentennial of the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) giving black men the right to vote.

In the Radical Reconstruction period that followed the Civil War, newly freed black men made great political gains, winning office in Southern state legislatures and even Congress. The Southern backlash was swift and marked by the passage of “black codes” designed to intimidate black voters, prompting a call for formal, national legislation on the right to vote.

The women’s rights movement grew out of the abolitionist movement, with activists like Frederick Douglas working alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton to secure the right to vote for all. That goal was reached with the passage of the nineteenth amendment in 1920.

19th Amendment The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote, a right known as women’s suffrage, and was ratified on August 18, 1920, ending almost a century of protest.

In 1848 the movement for women’s rights launched on a national level with the Seneca Falls Convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Following the convention, the demand for the vote became a centerpiece of the women’s rights movement. Stanton and Mott, along with Susan B. Anthony and other activists, raised public awareness and lobbied the government to grant voting rights to women. After a lengthy battle, these groups finally emerged victorious with the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Women’s Suffrage During America’s early history, women were denied some of the basic rights enjoyed by male citizens.

For example, married women couldn’t own property and had no legal claim to any money they might earn, and no female had the right to vote. Women were expected to focus on housework and motherhood, not politics.

The campaign for women’s suffrage was a small but growing movement in the decades before the Civil War. Starting in the 1820s, various reform groups proliferated across the U.S. including temperance leagues, the abolitionist movement and religious groups. Women played a prominent role in a number of them.

Meanwhile, many American women were resisting the notion that the ideal woman was a pious, submissive wife and

photo: Frederick Douglass. National association of Colored Women.

mother concerned exclusively with home and family. Combined, these factors contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen in the United States.

Seneca Falls Convention It was not until 1848 that the movement for women’s rights began to organize at the national level.

In July of that year, reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York (where Stanton lived). More than 300 people—mostly women, but also some men—attended, including former African-American slave and activist Frederick Douglass.

In addition to their belief that women should be afforded better opportunities for education and employment, most of the delegates at the Seneca Falls Convention agreed that American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

Declaration of Sentiments A group of delegates led by Stanton produced a “Declaration of Sentiments” document, modeled after the Declaration of Independence, which stated: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

What this meant, among other things, was that the delegates believed women should have the right to vote.

Following the convention, the idea of voting rights for women was mocked in the press and some delegates withdrew their support for the Declaration of Sentiments. Nonetheless, Stanton and Mott persisted—they went on to spearhead additional women’s rights conferences and they were eventually joined in their advocacy work by Susan B. Anthony and other activists.

National Suffrage Groups Established With the onset of the Civil War, the suffrage movement lost some momentum, as many women turned their attention to assisting in efforts related to the conflict between the states.

After the war, women’s suffrage endured another setback, when the women’s rights movement found itself divided over the issue of voting rights for black men. Stanton and some other suffrage leaders objected to the proposed 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would give black men the right to vote, but failed to extend the same privilege to American women of any skin color.

In 1869, Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) with their eyes on a federal constitutional amendment that would grant women the right to vote.

That same year, abolitionists Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA); the group’s leaders supported the 15th Amendment and feared it would not pass if it included voting rights for women. (The 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870.)

The AWSA believed women’s enfranchisement could best be gained through amendments to individual state constitutions. Despite the divisions between the two organizations, there was a victory for voting rights in 1869 when the Wyoming Territory granted all female residents age 21 and older the right to vote. (When Wyoming was admitted to the Union in 1890, women’s suffrage remained part of the state constitution.)

By 1878, the NWSA and the collective suffrage movement had gathered enough influence to lobby the U.S. Congress for a constitutional amendment. Congress responded by forming committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate to study and debate the issue. However, when the proposal finally reached the Senate floor in 1886, it was defeated.

12

Carrie Chapman Catt In 1890, the NWSA and the AWSA merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

The new organization’s strategy was to lobby for women’s voting rights on a state-by-state basis. Within six years, Colorado, Utah and Idaho adopted amendments to their state constitutions granting women the right to vote. In 1900, with Stanton and Anthony advancing in age, Carrie Chapman Catt stepped up to lead the NASWA. The turn of the 20th century brought renewed momentum to the women’s suffrage cause. Although the deaths of Stanton in 1902 and Anthony in 1906 appeared to be setbacks, the NASWA under the leadership of Catt achieved rolling successes for women’s enfranchisement at state levels.

Between 1910 and 1918, the Alaska Territory, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota and Washington extended voting rights to women.

Also during this time, through the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women (later, the Women’s Political Union), Stanton’s daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch introduced parades, pickets and marches as means of calling attention to the cause.

These tactics succeeded in raising awareness and led to unrest in Washington, D.C. Did you know? Wyoming, the first state to grant voting rights to women, was also the first state to elect a female governor.

Nellie Tayloe Ross (1876-1977) was elected governor of the Equality State— Wyoming’s official nickname—in 1924.

And from 1933 to 1953, she served as the first woman director of the U.S. Mint.

Protest and Progress On the eve of the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, protesters thronged a massive suffrage parade in the

nation’s capital, and hundreds of women were injured. That same year, Alice Paul founded the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which later became the National Woman’s Party.

The organization staged numerous demonstrations and regularly picketed the White House, among other militant tactics. As a result of these actions, some group members were arrested and served jail time.

In 1918, President Wilson switched his stand on women’s voting rights from objection to support through the influence of Catt, who had a less-combative style than Paul. Wilson also tied the proposed suffrage amendment to America’s involvement in World War I and the increased role women had played in the war efforts.

When the amendment came up for vote, Wilson addressed the Senate in favor of suffrage. As reported in The New York Times on October 1, 1918, Wilson said, “I regard the extension of suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged.”

However, despite Wilson’s newfound support, the amendment proposal failed in the Senate by two votes. Another year passed before Congress took up the measure again.

The Final Struggle On May 21, 1919, U.S. Representative James R. Mann, a Republican from Illinois and chairman of the Suffrage Committee, proposed the House resolution to approve the Susan Anthony Amendment granting women the right to vote. The measure passed the House 304 to 89—a full 42 votes above the required twothirds majority.

Two weeks later, on June 4, 1919, the U.S. Senate passed the 19th Amendment by two votes over its two-thirds required majority, 56-25. The amendment was then sent to the states for ratification.

Within six days of the ratification cycle, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin each ratified the amendment. Kansas, New York and Ohio followed on June 16, 1919. By March of the following year, a total of 35 states had approved the amendment, one state shy of the two-thirds required for ratification.

Southern states were adamantly opposed to the amendment, however, and seven of them—Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia—had already rejected it before Tennessee’s vote on August 18, 1920.

It was up to Tennessee to tip the scale for woman suffrage.

The outlook appeared bleak, given the outcomes in other Southern states and Con’t on page 18

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

Lyman_InnerCity_5.472x5.1.qxp_Layout 1 1/10/20 12:11 PM Page 4

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

Dixwell Plaza Plan Unveiled, Embraced

by THOMAS BREEN |

New Haven I ndependent

An ambitious planned $200 million redevelopment of Dixwell Plaza would bring a new performing arts center, banquet hall, grocery store, museum, office complex, daycare center, retail storefronts, and 150-plus apartments and townhouses to the neighborhood’s fraying commercial hub.

The local team behind the project received nothing but praise from longtime community members who heralded developers for striving to keep — and build—inter-generational wealth in the heart of black New Haven.

Over 100 people filled the Stetson Branch Library on Dixwell Avenue Wednesday night to learn about, and ultimately celebrate, those newly unveiled details of the Dixwell Plaza overhaul planned by the Connecticut Community Outreach and Revitalization Program (ConnCORP).

A for-profit subsidiary of the Science Park-based nonprofit Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology (ConnCAT), ConnCORP has been steadily buying up condos over the past year-and-a-half in the 1960s-era shopping complex on the western side of Dixwell Avenue between Webster Street and Charles Street.

They’d been mum over the past 18 months about their plans for the 7.5-acre, suburban-style complex directly across the street from the now-under-construction new Q House.

Wednesday night, they took their intentions public.

ConnCORP President and CEO Paul McCraven, ConnCAT President and CEO Erik Clemons, ConnCAT Chairman of the Board Carlton Highsmith, and ConnCAT Chief Operating Officer Genevieve Walker stood alongside the project’s development consultant, local builder YvesGeorges Joseph II, and dived deep on the team’s estimated $200 million rebuild of Dixwell Plaza.

They urged the dozens of neighbors who showed up for this first public presentation to give feedback on the still preliminary sketches, They invited people to help shape what will ultimately be built as the project moves from the ideas stage to more formal planning and fundraising, followed by rezoning quests, site plan reviews, demolition, and construction.

The team plans to host three more community meetings at Stetson Library on March 11 at 6 p.m., April 22 at 6 p.m., and May 16 at 1 p.m.

ConnCORP still owns only five of the plaza’s 11 condos. It hopes to finish negotiating purchases for the remaining properties by the end of this year and to begin construction in early 2021.

Clemons said Wednesday that the idea for the ConnCORP-led Dixwell Plaza project emerged from him watching ConnCAT grow and succeed over the past decade by providing culinary school, medical bill-

ing, and phlebotomy job training for class after class of local students.

And yet, he still saw those same graduates struggle to stay in New Haven and afford to buy a home or start their own business.

“What we do at ConnCAT and now ConnCORP is aggressively address poverty,” Clemons said. “I believe poverty is the civil rights issue of our time.”

He said that 85 percent of Dixwell residents are renters, 17 percent are unemployed, and 55 percent are low-income.

The mixed-use residential, commercial, retail, office, and recreational suite of buildings that ConnCORP has planned for the prospective Dixwell Avenue superblock are all geared towards addressing that core issue of poverty, Clemons said.

A key focus of the project is also the investment of dollars and resources provided by black New Haveners like himself and McCraven and Highsmith and the rest of the ConnCORP team into the historic center of New Haven’s African American community.

“This is not about us making more money at all,” Clemons said. “This is about us being a part of the social contract. Because of the fact that we have been blessed, we need to share those blessings. That’s what this is about.”

The founder of the Specialized Packaging Group (SPG), a board member of KeyBank, and one of the key funders behind ConnCAT, Highsmith stressed at the top of the meeting that this planned Dixwell Plaza redevelopment has no connection to the university down the block.

He said he is frequently confronted with the question, “Is this a project of Yale University?”

“The answer is: No,” he said to applause.

Instead, Clemons said, the money required to make this all-new construction project a reality will come from a mix of private equity, subordinated debt, new market tax credits, and fundraising.

The Plaza Plan McCraven said ConnCORP initially planned on focusing its Dixwell economic revitalization efforts at the long-vacant former C-Town grocery store building at 156 Dixwell Ave., which the company bought in February 2018.

After the ConnCORP team presented its plans for that building to the city, ThenMayor Toni Harp encouraged the local developers to dream bigger.

So the team started canvassing Dixwell community leaders and residents as to what they would like to see in the neighborhood. They polled Dixwell Community Management Team Chair Nina Silva, Newhallville Community Management Team Chair Kim Harris, and DataHaven to better understand the demographics and history and economic makeup and needs of Dixwell.

McCraven said that they heard the same

Rodney Williams (second from the right): “How could we not support them?”

Clemons with Stetson Branch Librarian Diane Brown and Elm City Communities Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton.

ConnCORP CEO McCraven with local developer Yves-Georges Joseph II.

requests everywhere they turned: Dixwell needs jobs, retail, daycare, banking, housing, open spaces, public safety, cultural and entertainment venues, spaces to launch and grow a small business.

He said people they spoke to frequently referred to a long and proud history of African American residents and businesses in the neighborhood. People recalled a dynamic, diverse, and self-sufficient economy in the mid-20th century.

So the ConnCORP team started brainstorming. They hired local developer

14

Joseph and architect Peter Cook, who helped design the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., and started planning.

McCraven walked Wednesday’s audience through ConnCORP’s plans for the 11 different parcels that make up the soon-to-be-transformed Dixwell Plaza.

“It’s all preliminary sketches,” he cautioned. “None of this is in stone.”

The first building, closest to Webster Street, would consist of a performing arts

center, a banquet hall, and a museum.

“We plan to do jazz concerts there,” he said. “The whole idea would be an entertainment and cultural center for the community.”

Further north in the complex would be a 20,000-to-30,000 square-foot grocery store and food hall.

“Not a big box like Stop & Shop,” he said, “but a big market that would serve the community.” That site would potentially contain commercial kitchens that local culinary entrepreneurs could use to for their own food-related businesses — something akin to the kitchen incubator space the city has been planning for years on building.

An adjacent building to the southwest would be ConnCAT’s new headquarters, he said. “Our dream is to bring ConnCAT over to Dixwell” from Winchester Avenue and to expand upon the current job training offerings to include more computer-based skills as well as advanced manufacturing.

That building would include a roof-top daycare center, he said.

McCraven said that ConnCORP initially planned on building an above-ground parking garage to accommodate the office, commercial, and retail uses on the southern half of the super-block.

But after talking with local alders, who expressed concerns about a parking garage towering over the neighborhood, ConnCORP is now committed to building an underground parking garage accessible off of Webster Street, according to McCraven Building underground parking is significantly more expensive than building above-ground parking, he said. Nevertheless, “we’re committed to making that happen.”

The Dixwell-adjacent middle of the block will house an art gallery and a landscaped plaza under the plan, he said.

And the northern half of the block closest to Charles Street will consist of a mix of rental apartments and townhouses.

ConnCORP anticipates building around 150 to 180 housing units in total, he said, though the exact number of units and bedrooms per unit has yet to be finalized.

The northern half of the block would also contain an office building, ideally housing a mix of start-up businesses and anchor tenants. McCraven said they’re already in serious conversations with a Hamden-based biotech company that is interested in relocating to the Dixwell neighborhood.

“And implanted in all of this would be retail,” he said. Banks, food shops, fitness centers, bike stores, entertainment venues, clothing stores, pharmacies. “We’re pretty confident we can bring most or all of those things to this site.”

Clemons said that everything included in the project so far, though still preliminary, Con’t on page 23

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

School Choice Expo Draws 2,700 New Role Con’t from page 07

by HELENA CHEN CARLSON New Haven I ndependent

Latoya Howard spent Saturday morning volunteering at the annual New Haven Public Schools Expo with her daughter Corinne, both motivated to share their personal experiences to help other parents through the somewhat confusing process of choosing the best school for their child.

Around 2,700 people showed up at Wilbur Cross High School for the event, where representatives pitched the virtues of their schools to parents weighing wear to send their children.

Parents and kids were greeted at the entrance and given booklets, flyers and detailed agendas for the day. Events were sectioned off into three main rooms; one for high schools, one for pre-K through 8th grade schools and the auditorium which held a number of informational sessions regarding the application process and an overview of all the schools.

The application window opened Monday for parents looking to get their children into schools that have competitive admission processes. Director of School Choice & Enrollment Marquelle Middleton urged parents to take time in thinking through their options given that the application process will remain open until March 2.

Howard, who decided to place her daughter Corinne in the Elm City Montessori School when she was 3, saw how rewarding of a process it had been both for her and for herself as a mother.

Corinne, who is now 6, receives an edu-

cation based on independent, hands-on work in math, science and experimentation.

“I definitely like it because it’s so different from a traditional setting,” said Howard. “They focus a lot on cultivating her as a person.” Elm City Montessori has provided an environment that valued social and emotional growth, she said.

Balancing work and life was at times stressful for her, and she was once taken by surprise when Corinne, sensing this, asked her: “How are you feeling today?”

“She makes me the question myself.

Which as a parent has been challenging,” Howard said. Corinne has more patience than she does at times, and can easily express herself emotionally. Howard attributed this character growth to what she learns in school.

Howard said she helps out in school as much as possible, and saw the relationship parents have with the school as a partnership. As a mother, she is empowered to have a say in the decisions that went on.

“It’s a family environment, so I feel the energy and love when I walk into the building. I think that it helps your child come back to you whole, which is good.”

Like Howard, Casey Pickett signed up to volunteer at the expo to share the positive experiences he and his wife, Anna Pickett, have had placing their children in public school. The Picketts have been volunteering at the annual school choice expo for the past three years. In particular, Casey Pickett wanted to encourage families who were leaning towards plac-

HELENA CHEN CARLSON PHOTO

ing their kids in private school to consider the benefits of public school both for the children themselves as well as for the community.

The Picketts, whose two children both began at East Rock Community and Cultural Studies as kindergarten students, decided that choosing a public school just felt like the right thing to do.

“And then we fell in love with the school and found that our kids were having a fantastic experience,” said Pickett. He said his children are learning not only their ABCs but also the craft of writing.

Joán Cervantes, a senior at Career High Magnet, spent the greater portion of the day connecting with visitors and answering questions from other teens about to enter high school.

16

Cervantes noted that most students are drawn to Career High because of the programs and internships offered. He could tell that DECA, which is a business and entrepreneurship program, was most popular from the excited reactions he got discussing the competitions they would participate in.

Parents were encouraging their kids to speak with Cervantes in particular because they wanted an insider perspective of what student life would be like.

“I was able to give them a full understanding of what to expect throughout the years,” he said, “Although administration and teachers lead the school, they won’t be able to offer the same information from a student’s point of view.”

to have community.

At St. Cyprians they did an extensive inquiry [of congregants’ needs]. But they didn’t ask about spirituality. We need to look at how people are coming together as community. I’m not a religious person.

I’m a deeply spiritual person. Jesus gave us a very simple theology: Love God. Love your neighbor. A lot of the theology [that has evolved since] is how to get away from the heavy lifting. I’s a lot easier for me to sit here and to judge you than to make myself more loving.

Let the “religious” people go and judge.

Spiritual people will get out there and see how to change the world in changing ourselves and the way we live.

And what have you seen that’s different in New Haven in general?

The city is much different. On Front Street, there’s now lower density, and that change is for the good. The parks are better. People are walking and jogging. In 1980 you didn’t run unless someone was chasing you. There’s more retail, however big box stores, fewer mom-and-pops. I think that takes away from local character.

We definitely are at risk of becoming like Anywhere U.S.A. We need to protect our architectural heritage from deterioration, a tear-down.

Given that St. Luke’s is an older congregation, with a largely African-American population. Were any concerns or issues expressed about having a white pastor? Any issues/concerns about having a gay man as pastor?

It’s no more unusual for an Episcopal African American Church to have a white priest then it is for the predominantly white Episcopal Church to have an African American Presiding Bishop as we do in the Rt. Reverend Michael Curry, the Bishop who gave that amazing sermon at the Royal Wedding recently.

St. Luke’s has long been a church where everyone us welcome. And when they say everyone, they really mean it.

Tell me once again how being a journalist is like being a priest ...

I started up with obits. The editor sent me to the house [of parents of a brilliant kid who had died in a car accident] to get a picture. The whole house was a memorial. They took me to the back; they made me coffee. They told me how they were remembering their son.

I took the picture . When I returned the picture,[the obituary] was there, laminated on the coffee table. I’ll remember that till the day I die.

Each sermon is an op-ed. It’s based on scripture, and if done wel I get to have an op-ed in church, each week.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

News alert! News alert! Introducing Our New Program Director! www.newhavenarts.org

We are so excited to welcome Markeshia Ricks (she/her/hers) as our new Youth Arts Journalism Initiative Program Director. Markeshia is a recovering journalist turned voice actor who dabbles in blogging, podcasting (see: Ma’am, WHAT?) and photography. Before joining the Arts Council she wrote for the New Haven Independent, Air Force Times, the Montgomery Advertiser, The Anniston Star, Sarasota Herald-Tribune and The Tuscaloosa News.

Thinking of applying? Here are the basic details: **Students, who must be at a New Haven public high school, are compensated $250 for their participation and work. **In April, we begin with a weeklong intensive during NHPS spring break (April 13-17), teaching everything from contract negotiations to how to handle a portable podcast mic. The intensive includes field trips to the Connecticut Pub-

lic Radio studios at Gateway Community College, New Haven, Hill Museum of Fine Arts, Connecticut Center for Arts & Technology, and City Hall. **This year we are based out of the downtown branch of the New Haven Free Public Library. Lunch and student bus passes are included. **Following the intensive, YAJI students have 10 weeks of pitch meetings and professional mentorship on Tuesday afternoons from 3-5 p.m. These are also held at the New Haven Free Public Library and intended to give students time to pitch and edit their articles. **Student content is published in The Arts Paper and will be printed in the compendium of YAJI work later this year.

Link to the application: www.newhavenarts.org Headshot by the one and only Karen King.

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

Coronavirus: What Is It and How To Protect Yourself

by Derrick Lane, BlackDoctor.org

This new coronavirus is all over the news. Just recently, the virus has been declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization, as the outbreak continues to spread outside China.

“The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The concern is that it could spread to countries with weaker health systems.

So, the US has told everyone not to travel to China.

The state department issued a level four warning – having previously urged Americans to “reconsider” travel to China – and said any citizens in China “should consider departing using commercial means”.

China has said it will send charter plans to bring back Hubei province residents who are overseas “as soon as possible”.

A foreign ministry spokesman said this was because of the “practical difficulties” Chinese citizens have faced abroad.

Hubei is where the virus emerged.

At least 213 people in the China have died from the virus, mostly in Hubei, with almost 10,000 cases nationally.

But a lot of people don’t know what

it really is. As a matter of fact, a recent poll said that many Americans think its a disease tied to the beer, Corona. Wrong answer.

From CNN’s senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, here are few of the most asks questions about the coronavirus: – Is there a cure for the virus? There is currently no cure, and researchers are still trying to learn more about the virus.

But researchers have successfully grown the virus in a lab, an important step towards developing a vaccine.

– What is the coronavirus really? Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute

Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). A novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans.

Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people. Detailed investigations found… that SARS-CoV was transmitted from civet cats to humans and MERS-CoV from dromedary camels to humans. Several known coronaviruses are circulating in animals that have not yet infected humans.

– How does the virus spread? The virus is thought to spread from person to person through respiratory droplets emitted by coughing or sneezing — but it’s not clear exactly when a person becomes contagious. There’s currently no evidence that the virus is airborne — mean-

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ing, for instance, it doesn’t travel across a large room.

Standard recommendations to prevent infection spread include regular hand washing, covering mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing, thoroughly cooking meat and eggs. Avoid close contact with anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing.

– Is it safe to travel? Airlines have suspended flights, and thousands of foreign citizens in China’s Wuhan have been evacuated back to their home countries.

Many countries including the US have advised against travel to China.

– Who is at risk of infection? People of all ages can be infected with the virus, but older people and those with pre-existing medical conditions are especially vulnerable to severe complications.

– How do I distinguish coronavirus from the flu? Coronavirus symptoms look like flu symptoms. Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death. If you show these symptoms and recently went to China, or have been in contact with someone who visited, experts advise going to the doctor.

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given the position of Tennessee’s state legislators in their 48-48 tie. The state’s decision came down to 23-year-old Representative Harry T. Burn, a Republican from McMinn County, to cast the deciding vote.

Although Burn opposed the amendment, his mother convinced him to approve it.

Mrs. Burn reportedly wrote to her son: “Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification.”

With Burn’s vote, the 19th Amendment was fully ratified.

When Did Women Get the Right to Vote?

On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was certified by U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, and women finally achieved the long-sought right to vote throughout the United States.

On November 2 of that same year, more than 8 million women across the U.S. voted in elections for the first time.

It took over 60 years for the remaining 12 states to ratify the 19th Amendment.

Mississippi was the last to do so, on March 22, 1984.

What Is The 19 Amendment?

The 19 Amendment granted women the right to vote, and reads: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

COMMENTARY: Unions Put America First and Goal

By Ray Curry, Secretary-Treasurer, UAW

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for Super Bowl LIV. The big game matches the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers and marks the first time these two have met in a Super Bowl. So how will the big game turn out? I’ve got the answer already. Because of the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) and the collective bargaining they have put into place, the men and women who represent both teams in jobs on the field and off, win. As does America.

Before the guys clash helmets on the field, I want to talk a little bit about how critical union representation is for anyone who gets up and goes to work every day. And, regardless of where you report to work — whether it’s on a football field, behind a desk, in a factory, at a casino, in a classroom, in a bookstore, at the post office, in a museum — having a union means that your rights are protected.

Giving Solidarity the ball Union representation assures that the terms of the collective bargaining agreement are met; that negotiating retirement and insurance benefits are bargained for; that member services and activities are provided; that health and safety standards are put in place and followed; that workers are paid a fair wage and have a voice in their workplace. And by the way, our union brothers and sisters are the backbone of their communities, providing assistance and support to charitable and community organizations across this country.

I believe that every worker, in every job, should have those rights and protections. And a lot of people agree with me. In fact, approval ratings for unions is at a 50-year high. I think we saw clear evidence of that this past fall during the history-making strike against General Motors. All of us, standing up to this massive, powerful, multi-billion-dollar company. But all that money and all that power was no match for my union brothers and sisters who stood in Solidarity and ultimately drove into the end zone with a victory.

That’s the power of Solidarity, of working men and women standing strong together. Support poured in

from across this nation and around the world, and our NFLPA brothers and sisters were right there alongside us.

From my own seat here at the UAW, I can’t thank the pro-union NFL players enough who turned up on our picket lines and stood with the nearly 50,000 of us in front of plants across this country, marching with us in the heat, the cold and the rain for fair wages and a fair contract. And just as we have in the past, the UAW will be there to support the NFLPA in 2021 as they enter into their bargaining.

BROADWAY IS COMING TO FOXWOODS

Marching America down the field That’s what it’s all about. Standing together to protect our right to collectively bargain and have representation in the workplace. And, make no mistake, when we stand together, we win. But the forces working against us and the right to collectively bargain are fierce, formidable and with a game plan all their own. Corporations and the politicians they have working for them will stop at nothing to erode union representation and make it more and more difficult to organize. Our strength is our Solidarity.

For working men and women, the game is always the same. We take the field against management and the companies who put profits ahead of the very people who make them profitable. As in football, ours too is a game of inches, and we fight for every single one of them. So, like I say, I already know who the winners are in the 2020 Super Bowl. (I am not claiming that to know what Kansas City might bring and what the 49ers might have planned to stop them!) I’m just saying, I know the winning job unions have done for all of us on whatever field we play on or whatever game we’re playing.

(It should be a good matchup — and know that you’ve got Union Labor on both benches that all of America will be rooting for.)

Ray Curry, Secretary-Treasurer, UAW elected UAW secretary-treasurer at the 37th Constitutional Convention in June 2018.

Curry was first elected director of UAW Region 8 in June 2014, at the 36th UAW Constitutional Convention in Detroit after having served four years as the region’s assistant director.

FEBRUARY 5–9 FOX THEATER For more information and to purchase tickets, visit foxwoods.com.

800.369.9963 • FOXWOODS.COM 19

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

INNER-CITY NEWS July 27, 2016 - August 02, 2016

Job Announcement FIREFIGHTER / EMT / PARAMEDIC

The Housing Authority of the City of Norwalk, CT

is requesting proposals for Learning Center Services.

Request for Proposal documents can be viewed and printed at www.norwalkha. org under the Business section RFP’s/RFQ’s Norwalk Housing is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Adam Bovilsky, Executive Director.

VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE

NOTICE

Information Technology Technician

HOME INC, on behalf of Columbus House and the New Haven Housing Authority, is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments at this develTheopment Town oflocated Wallingford is seeking a skilled individual to limitations provide techniat 108Public FrankSchools Street, New Haven.

Maximum income apcal ply. assistance in the operation andavailable distribution of audio and 5PM videobeginning productions.

High school Pre-applications will be from 9AM TO Monday Ju;y diploma or GED one (1) yearsufficient experience in the operation(approximately of audio and video 25, 2016 andwith ending when pre-applications 100)produchave tionbeen equipment, including portableofand studioINC. cameras, audio and control or recordreceived at the offices HOME Applications willvideo be mailied upon reing devices, electronic character generator systems and personal computers. Must possess quest by calling HOME INC at 203-562-4663 during those hours. Completed preand maintain a valid State of Connecticut Motor Vehicle Operator’s License. Please Note: applications must be returned to HOME INC’s offices at 171 Orange Street, Third Hours will vary and frequently include evenings and possibly weekends. Wages: $26.34 Floor, New Haven, CT 06510. hourly plus an excellent fringe benefit package. Apply to: Human Resources Department, Town of Wallingford, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492. Fax #: (203) 2942084. Closing date will be February 13, 2020 or the date the 75th application is received, whichever occurs first. EOE.

The application process is now open and closes on February 12, 2020.

Eligible candidates are directed to contact CTFire@iosolutions.com to register and to answer any questions regarding the exam process.

ABOUT OUR DEPARTMENT The West Haven Fire Department is a progressive Class II Department providing fire suppression, fire rescue, hazardous materials intervention/protection, emergency medical care and mutual aid, responding to more than 6500 calls per year. The WHFD/ Center District has four twelve-person platoons, which rotate four 24/72 hour shifts. The department offers a competitive salary/benefit package including subsidized health and dental benefits, annual health and fitness program and a retirement plan. Under the terms of the Union Contract.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS: Certifications: (All current at time of Employment Offering)

QUALIFICATIONS FOR EMPLOYMENT

NOTICIA

VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES

ELM CITY COMMUNITIES Invitation for Bids

HOME INC, en nombre de la Columbus House y de la New Haven Housing Authority, está aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un dormitorio en este desarrollo ubicadoRubbish, en la calle&109 Frank Street, New Haven.

Se aplican limitaciones de ingresos Carting, Recycling Removal Services LasAuthority pre-solicitudes 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando Martes 25 Themáximos.

Housing of theestarán City disponibles of New Haven d/b/a Elm City Communities julio, 2016 hasta cuando se han 100)A is currently seeking Bids for recibido carting,suficientes rubbish,pre-solicitudes & recycling(aproximadamente removal services. en las oficinas de HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas por correo complete copy of the requirements may be obtained from Elm City’sa petición Vendor llamando a HOME INC alhttps://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gate203-562-4663 durante esas horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse Collaboration Portal a las oficinas de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CT 06510 . way beginning on

Monday, February 3, 2020 at 3:00PM

Listing: Receptionist/Retail Assistant HAVEN Petroleum Company has anNEW immediate full time opening. Excellent customer service skills242-258 a must. Previous petroleum Fairmont Ave experience and/or experience in a very busy office handling multiple telephone lines and 2BR Townhouse, 1.5 BA, 3BR, 1 level , 1BA dealing with customers a plus. Applicant to also perform administrative/ All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 clerical tasks as assigned.

Please send resume to: H.R. Manager, Confihighways, near bus stop & shopping center dential, P O Box 388, Guilford CT 06437.

Pet under 40lb allowed. Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258

********An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer********** CT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s Certificate Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates Seeking qualifi ed condidates to fistart ll numerous vacancies to1:30in response to the Church’s Ministry needs.

The cost is $125. Classes Saturday, August 20, 2016 3:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon JoeAdministator J. Davis, M.S., B.S. include,Public Works Offi ce & Operations Manager, Information Technolo(203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster

CITY OF MILFORD

gy Manager, and more. For information and detailed application instructions, visit WWW. St. New Haven, CT

ci.milford.ct.us Click on SERVICES, JOBS and JOB TITLE.

Construction Foreman M/F-

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY

3+ years Solid CTDOT Exp. 40hr Hzwhpr . Coordinate, Perform, Supervise, Onsite Functions, Support Crew, Maintain Records. Statewide Work. Females Sealed bids are invited by Housing of the Town of Seymour and Minorities encouraged to the apply.

Email Authority resume: michelle@occllc.com Great until 3:00 pm on Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at its office at 28 Smith Street, Pay for Great Work. AA / EOE

Seymour, CT 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement at the Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26 Smith Street Seymour.

ELM CITY COMMUNITIES Invitation for Bids

A pre-bid conference will be held at the Housing Authority Office 28 Smith HVAC Services: Emergency, On Call and Preventative Maintenance Street Seymour, CT at 10:00 am, on Wednesday, July 20, 2016.

The Housing Authority of the City of New Haven d/b/a Elm City Communities is currently Bids for Services on call and preventative Biddingseeking documents areHVAC available from for theemergency, Seymour Housing Authority Ofmaintenance.

A complete copy of theCT requirement may888-4579. be obtained from Elm City’s fice, 28 Smith Street, Seymour, 06483 (203) Vendor Collaboration Portal https://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway beginning on The Housing Authority reserves the right to accept or reject any or all bids, to Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 3:00PM.

reduce the scope of the project to reflect available funding, and to waive any informalities in the bidding, if such actions are in the best interest of the Housing Authority.

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

National Registry Certification for EMT/Paramedic Passing score of on Written Exam Passing score on Oral Exam (Pass/Fail) CPAT or WHFD Physical Agility Exam (Pass/Fail) – (re-test may be required prior to hire date) Medical Examination (Pass/Fail) High School Diploma/GED Extensive Background Check (Pass Fail) Psychological Exam Fire (Pass/Fail) Valid Driver’s License Completion of the Firefighter Recruit Academy (Pass/Fail) One-year Probationary period upon date of Graduation (Pass/Fail) Veterans - DD 214 Must be eighteen years of age by date of exam.

Invitation ** Candidates shall be certifi ed to asBid: a Nationally Certified EMT/Paramedic prior to date of hire. ** nd Notice 2 The West Haven Fire Department reserves the right to amend the order of hire to meet staffing requirements.

The West Haven Fire Department is an equal opportunity employer.

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

Saybrook, CT Construction Seeking(4toOld employ experienced individuals in the labor, foreman, operator and teamster trades for Buildings, 17 Units)

a heavy outside work statewide. Reliable personal transportation and a valid drivers license required. To apply please call Exempt or & Not Prevailing Rate Project (860)Tax 621-1720 send resume Wage to: Personnel Department, P.O. Box 368, Cheshire, CT06410.

Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/V Drug Free Workforce

New Construction, Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, Castin-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Siding, Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

This contract is subject to state set-aside and contract compliance requirements.

NEW HAVEN POLICE NOW HIRING

State of Connecticut Office of Policy and Management

Bid Extended, Due Date: August 5, 2016 The State of Connecticut, Office of Policy and Management is recruiting for Anticipated Start: August 15, 2016 a Policy Development Coordinator Project documents available via ftp link below: position. http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage

Further information regarding the duties, eligibility requirements and application Fax or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com instructions for this position is available HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses at: Haynes Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 https://www.jobapscloud.com/ AA/EEO EMPLOYER CT/sup/bulpreview.asp?R1= 200109&R2=1581MP&R3=002

Apply online at Policeapp.com Or Visit our Social Media Pages For More Information New Haven Police Department Recruitment Team

20

Nhpdrecruitment

NHPDrecruitment

The State of Connecticut is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and strongly encourages the applications of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020 INNER-CITY NEWS July 27, 2016 - August 02, 2016

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc seeks:

DELIVERY PERSON

Construction Equipment Mechanic preferably experienced in Reclaiming and Road Milling Equipment. We offer factory training on equipment we operate. Location: Bloomfield CT We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE Contact: Tom Dunay

NOTICE

NEEDED

Phone: 243-2300 HOME INC, on behalf of860Columbus House and the New Haven Housing Authority, Email: tom.dunay@garrityasphalt.com is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments at this develWomen Minority Applicants are New encouraged to apply income limitations apopment & located at 108 Frank Street, Haven. Maximum rmative Action/ Opportunity Employer ply.Affi Pre-applications willEqual be available from 9AM TO 5PM beginning Monday Ju;y 25, 2016 and ending when sufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have been received at the offices of HOME INC. Applications will be mailied upon request by calling HOME Reclaiming, INC at 203-562-4663 during those hours. Completed preGarrity Asphalt Inc seeks: applications must be returned to HOME INC’s offices at 171 Orange Street, Third Reclaimer Operators and Milling Operators with current licensing Haven, CTbe06510. andFloor, cleanNew driving record, willing to travel throughout the North-

Part Time Delivery Needed

east & NY. We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits

NOTICIA

Contact: Rick Tousignant Phone: 860- 243-2300

One/Two Day a Week,

Must Have your Own Vehicle

Email: rick.tousignant@garrityasphalt.com VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/deEqual Opportunity Employer HOME INC, en nombre la Columbus House y de la New Haven Housing Authority, está

If Interested call

aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un dormitorio en este desarrollo ubicado en la calle 109 Frank Street, New Haven. Se aplican limitaciones de ingresos máximos. Las pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando Martes 25 Tractor Trailer Driver for Heavy & Highway Construction Equipjulio,Must 2016have hastaacuando se han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes ment.

CDL License, clean driving record, capable of(aproximadamente 100) en las oficinas HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas operating heavydeequipment; be willing to travel throughout the por correo a petición llamando&a NY. HOME 203-562-4663 horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse Northeast We INC offeralexcellent hourlydurante rate &esas excellent benefits a las oficinas de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CT 06510 .

Union Company seeks:

Contact Dana at 860-243-2300

Email: dana.briere@garrityasphalt.com Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer

HELP WANTED:

NEW HAVEN

(203) 387-0354

KMK1907 Insulation Inc. Hartford Turnpike North Haven, CT 06473

POLICE OFFICER

Competitive examinations will be held for the position of Police Officer in the Clinton, Guilford, Hamden, Orange, Seymour and West Haven Departments.

Candidates may register for the testing process at www.policeapp.com/southcentral.

Application deadline is Friday, February 14, 2020.

The physical performance, written and oral board exams will be administered by the South Central Criminal Justice Administration.

THE DEPARTMENTS PARTICIPATING IN THIS RECRUITMENT DRIVE ARE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYERS.

State of Connecticut Office of Policy and Management The State of Connecticut, Office of Policy and Management is recruiting for a Labor Relations Specialist, a Leadership Associate and a Secretary 2 position.

Further information regarding the duties, eligibility requirements and application instructions for these positions are available at: https://www.jobapscloud.com/CT/sup/bulpreview.asp ?R1=200124&R2=5256MP&R3=001 https://www.jobapscloud.com/CT/sup/bulpreview.asp ?R1=200122&R2=5989VR&R3=001 https://www.jobapscloud.com/CT/sup/bulpreview.asp ?R1=200127&R2=7539CA&R3=001 The State of Connecticut is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and strongly encourages the applications of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities.

Mechanical Insulator position.

Constuction Laborer SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

Invitation to Bid: Large CT guardrail company Insulation company offering good pay 242-258 Fairmont Ave 2nd Notice looking for Laborer/Driver with valid CT CDL Class Looking for a Laborer with experience in Crane/Pile Driving operations. We and benefits. Please mail resume to above address.

A license2BR and able to get a medical card.

Must be Townhouse, 1.5 BA, 3BR, 1 level , 1BA will consider those with no prior experience. Required skills/qualifications inable to pass a drug test and physical. CompensaMAIL ONLY All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 clude:CTOTC 105 OSHA10 hour Certification, Valid Drivers License, Must be Old Saybrook, tion based on experience. Email resume to dmasThis company is an Affirmative Action/ highways, near bus stop & shopping center to lift over 50 pounds, Minimum age of 18, Must Provide personal transpor(4 Buildings,able 17 Units) tracchio@atlasoutdoor.com AA/EOE M-F Equal Opportunity Employer. tation to and from the jobsite.

Pet under 40lb allowed. Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258 Tax Exempt & Not Prevailing Wage Rate Project Please contact: Eric Bombaci Bombaci Construction CT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s New Construction, Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition,8605754519 Site-work, CastBombaciconst@aol.com Certificate Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates

The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport

Request for Qualifications (RFQ) in-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Siding, Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, Architectural and Engineering Services Exp. F/T Lay Out person for structural Steel and Misc. Shop.

Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

Solicitation Number: 136-PD-20-S Send resume: hherbert@gwfabrication.com

in response to the Church’s Ministry needs. The cost is $125. Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:303:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., B.S. (203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster St. New Haven, CT

This contract is subject to state set-aside and contract compliance requirements.

The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport d/b/a Park City Communities (PCC) isBid seeking proExtended, Due Date: August 5, 2016 posals from qualified architects and engineering firms to assist in various architectural andAnticipated engineerStart: August 15, 2016 Sealed bids are invited by the Housing Authority theselect Town of Seymourfirms who shall be placed on an A/E ing projects on an as needed basis. The PCCofwill multiple Project documents available via ftp link below: until 3:00 pm on Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at its office at 28 Smith Street, Invitation for Bids roster.

Solicitation package will be available on January 13, 2020 to obtain a copy of the solicitation http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage Seymour, CT 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement at the you must send your request to bids@parkcitycommunities.org, please reference solicitation number McConaughy Terrace Sanitary and Storm Sewer Improvements Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26 Smith Street Seymour.

Fax or EmailAve, Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang and title on the subject line. A pre-bid conference will be held at 150 Highland Bridgeport, CT@ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses The Housing Authority of the City of New Haven d/b/a Elm City 06604 on January 22, 2020, @ at10:00 a.m. Although is not mandatory, submitting a bid for 32 Progress Haynes Construction Company, Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 A pre-bid conference will be held the Housing Authority attendance Office 28 Smith Communities is currently seeking Bids for McConaughy Terrace the project without conference not20, in 2016. the best interest of the Offeror. Additional quesAA/EEO EMPLOYER Street Seymour, CT atattending 10:00 am, on Wednesday,isJuly Sanitary and Storm Sewer Improvements. A complete copy of tions should be emailed only to bids@parkcitycommunities.org no later than January 30, 2020 @ the requirement may be obtained from Elm City’s Vendor Col3:00 p.m.documents Answersare to all the questions will be posted PCC’sOfWebsite: www.parkcitycommunities.

Bidding available from the Seymour Housingon Authority laboration Portal https://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems. org. shall Seymour, be mailed, hand delivered fice,Proposals 28 Smith Street, CT or 06483 (203) 888-4579.by February 6, 2020 @ 3:00 PM, to Ms. Caroline com/gateway beginning on Sanchez, Director of Procurement, 150 Highland Ave, Bridgeport, CT 06604. Late proposals will

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY

ELM CITY COMMUNITIES

Monday, January 6, 2020 at 3:00PM.

ThebeHousing Authority reserves the right to accept or reject any or all bids, to not accepted.

reduce the scope of the project to reflect available funding, and to waive any informalities in the bidding, if such actions are in the best interest of the Housing Authority.

21

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

INNER-CITY NEWS July 27, 2016 - August 02, 2016

POLICE OFFICER NOTICE

Competitive examinations will be held for the position of Police Officer in the Clinton, Guilford, Hamden, Orange, Seymour and West Haven Departments.

VALENTINA MACRI APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE Candidates may register for RENTAL the testingHOUSING process at PREwww.policeapp.com/southcentral.

HOME INC, on behalf of Columbus House and the New Haven Housing Authority,

Application deadline isforFriday, 14,apartments 2020. at this develis accepting pre-applications studio andFebruary one-bedroom

opment located at 108 Frank Street, New Haven. Maximum income limitations apTheply. physical performance, written and oral from board9AM exams be administered by the South Pre-applications will be available TOwill 5PM beginning Monday Ju;y Central Criminal 25, 2016 andJustice endingAdministration. when sufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have been received at the offices of HOME INC. Applications will be mailied upon reTHE DEPARTMENTS PARTICIPATING IN THIS RECRUITMENT DRIVE ARE quest by calling HOME INC at 203-562-4663 during those hours. Completed preEQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYERS. applications must be returned to HOME INC’s offices at 171 Orange Street, Third Floor, New Haven, CT 06510.

QSR STEEL CORPORATION

NOTICIA

Help Wanted: Immediate opening for Equipment Operator for Heavy and Highway Construction.

10 hour OSHA certificate required. CDL license a plus but not required.

Please call PJF Construction Corp.@ 860-888-9998. We are an equal opportunity employer M/F.

Top pay for top performers.

Help Wanted: Immediate opening for Construction Laborer for Heavy and Highway Construction.

10 hour OSHA certificate required.

Public Notice

or national origin

NEW HAVEN COMMUNITIES

An Affirmative Action/ ELM CITY Equal Opportunity Employer

242-258 Fairmont Ave 2BR Townhouse, 1.5 BA, 1 level , 1BA Invitation for3BR, Bids

Fire System, Fire Pump Vestibule Upgrades at George AllAlarm new apartments, new &appliances, new carpet, closeCrawford to I-91 Manor & I-95

highways, near bus stop & shopping center

The Housing Authority of the City of New Haven d/b/a Elm City Communities is curPet under Interested contact Maria @ 860-985-8258 rently seeking Bids40lb for allowed.

Fire Alarm System,parties Fire Pump & Vestibule Upgrades at George Crawford Manor. A complete copy of the requirement may be obtained from Elm City’s Vendor Collaboration Portal https://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway CT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s beginning Certificateon Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates in response to the Church’sWednesday, Ministry needs.

The cost22, is $125.

Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:30January 2020 at 3:00PM. 3:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., B.S. (203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster St. New Haven, CT

Equipment Operator

Laborer

HOME INC, en nombre de la Columbus House y de la New Authority, está HealthHaven Benefits,Housing 401K, Vacation Pay. We have concrete mixer and aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un Rose@qsrsteel.com dormitorio en este desarrollo Email Resume: Hartford, CT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER triaxle dump driver openings. ubicado en la calle 109 Frank Street, New Haven. Se aplican limitaciones de ingresos Minimum 2 years experience. máximos. Las pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando Martes 25 Must have a valid CDL julio, 2016 hasta cuando se han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente 100) Clean driving record. en las oficinas de HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán Housing enviadas por correo a petición The Manchester Authority will open the 0/1-bedExcellent pay and benefits. list for the Federaldeberán Low Income Public llamando a HOME INC al 203-562-4663 duranteroom waiting esas horas.Pre-solicitudes remitirse Apply M–F from 9-4 at Housing (LIPH) program for elderly or disabled apa las oficinas de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CT 06510 .are plicants on 8:00 AM January 6, 2020. Applications 24 Industrial Drive available in the office and on the MHA website at http:// Waterford, CT manchesterha.org and may be returned to 24 Bluefield Drive Manchester, CT 06040 in person or by mail.

860-444-9600 The Manchester Housing Authority does not discrimiApplications available at nate based upon race, color, disability, familial status, sex

https://www.kobyluckinc.com/careers

looking for Laborer/Driver with valid CT CDL Class A license and able to get a medical card. Must be able to pass a drug test and physical. Compensation based on experience. Email resume to dmastracchio@atlasoutdoor.com AA/EOE M-F

APPLY NOW!

VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES Steel Fabricators, Erectors & Welders

Attention Drivers

HELP WANTED: Large CT guardrail company

Electric Utility System Operator/Dispatcher

Operates electric distribution substation and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system for an electric utility serving 25,000 customers. Coordinates electric system switching and places equipment in and out of service during Sealed bids are invited by the Housing Authority of the Town of Seymour routine and emergency operations. Requires HS diploma/GED with 2 years exuntil 3:00 pmoperation on Tuesday, August 2,SCADA 2016 atequipment its office at 28 Smith Street, perience in the of Distribution and/or switchboards Seymour, CT 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk and Replacement at the used in the distribution of electricity.

ExperienceRepairs and training may be substituted onSmithfield a year for year basis.

Must maintain valid system operation Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26 Smith Streetcertification Seymour. from Connecticut Valley Exchange (CONVEX) or other approved agency or be able to A obtain the conference same withinwill 90 days of hire. posses and maintain a valid State pre-bid be held at theMust Housing Authority Office 28 Smith of CT driver’s license. $ 34.63 - $ 41.15 per hour plus an excellent fringe benStreet Seymour, CT at 10:00 am, on Wednesday, July 20, 2016. efit package. Apply to: Human Resources Department, Town of Wallingford, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492. Fax #: (203) 294-2084. Closing date Bidding documents are EOE. available from the Seymour Housing Authority Ofwill be February 18, 2020.

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY

fice, 28 Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 (203) 888-4579.

Exp. F/T Lay Out person for structural Steel and Misc. Shop.

The Housing reserves the right to accept or reject any or all bids, to SendAuthority resume: hherbert@gwfabrication.com reduce the scope of the project to reflect available funding, and to waive any informalities in the bidding, if such actions are in the best interest of the Housing Authority.

Please call PJF Construction Corp. @ 860-888-9998. We are an equal opportunity employer M/F.

Civil Engineer

Diversified Technology Consultants (DTC) is a multi-disciple engineering and environmental consulting firm. DTC is a leader in servicing governmental clients for four decades. DTC prides itself as having worked on a wide variety of project types. From schools and senior centers to town halls and universities, our diverse portfolio provides extensive experience to our communities.

As DTC enters its forth decade, we are seeking an energetic, organized and proactive professional in our Civil Engineering Department. The successful candidate(s) will work closely with our technical staff in support of DTC’s strategic goals and objectives.

This is an entry level position located in our Hamden, Connecticut office.

Responsibilities:

• Assist in the preparation of plans, specifications, supporting documents, and permit applications for private and municipal projects.

• Assist in preparation of calculations such as storm drainage, water supply & wastewater collection, cost estimates, and earthwork quantities.

• Perform design and drafting using AutoCAD Civil 3D. MicroStation experience is beneficial but not required.

Qualifications:

• Graduate from an accredited college or university with a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering.

• Engineer in training certificate preferred.

CDL Driver Help Wanted: Immediate opening for CDL Driver for Heavy and Highway Construction.

10 hour OSHA certificate and clean CDL license required.

Please call PJF Construction Corp. @ 860-888-9998. We are an equal opportunity employer M/F.

Invitation to Bid: 2nd Notice

Project Manager/Project Supervisor

For Further information or to apply send resumes to ellen. nelson@teamdtc.com DTC is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.

DTC is a Drug Free Work Place.

Individuals with Disabilities, Minorities and Protected Veterans are encouraged to apply.

Town of Bloomfield

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

Clerk Typist II – FT

Tax Exempt & Not Prevailing Wage Rate Project

For more details on how to apply visit www.bloomfieldct.org

Help Wanted: Immediate opening for a Project Manager/ProjOld Saybrook, CT ect Supervisor for Heavy and Highway Construction. Previous (4 Buildings, 17 Units) experience on CTDOT projects required.

Please call PJF Construction Corp. @ 860-888-9998.

We are an equal opportunity employer M/F

$28.45 hourly

Pre-Employment drug testing required. EOE/AA

New Construction, Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, Castin-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Siding, Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

This contract is subject to state set-aside and contract compliance requirements.

The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport Request for Qualifications (RFQ) HUD ChoiceDue Neighborhood (CNI) Planning Coordinator Bid Extended, Date: August 5, Initiative 2016 Solicitation Number: 135-PD-20-S Anticipated Start: August 15, 2016

Project documents available via ftp link below: The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport d/b/a Park City Communities (PCC) is seeking proposals http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage from qualified Planning Coordinator for HUD Choice Neighborhood Initiative (CNI). Solicitation package will Fax be oravailable on &January 13,Lang 2020 to obtaindawnlang@haynesconstruction.com a copy of the solicitation you must send your request to bids@ Email Questions Bids to: Dawn @ 203-881-8372 HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses parkcitycommunities.org, please reference solicitation number and title on the subject line. A pre-bid conferHaynes Company, Ave, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour,CT CT 06483 ence will be held atConstruction 150 Highland Bridgeport, 06604 on January 22, 2020, @ 11:00 a.m. Although AA/EEO EMPLOYER attendance is not mandatory, submitting a bid for the project without attending conference is not in the best interest of the Offeror. Additional questions should be emailed only to bids@parkcitycommunities.org no later than January 30, 2020 @ 3:00 p.m. Answers to all the questions will be posted on PCC’s Website: www. parkcitycommunities.org. Proposals shall be mailed, or hand delivered by February 6, 2020 @ 3:00 PM, to Ms. Caroline Sanchez, Director of Procurement, 150 Highland Ave, Bridgeport, CT 06604. Late proposals will not be accepted.

22

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020 Con’t from page 12

Dixwell Plaza

has been informed by conversations with community leaders and data scientists.

“Now we want to hear even more,” he said. “We want more input” from the broader public.

“How Could We Not Support Them?”

Over the next hour, dozens of people present offered that input.

They pressed ConnCORP to make sure that the redeveloped Dixwell Plaza both includes affordable apartments and contributes to greater homeownership in the surrounding area. They called on the developers to make space for mental healthcare providers and to employ local minority contractors over the course of construction.

Even the most critical of comments was couched in an enthusiastic embrace of the idea that local black developers are spearheading such a large project in the city’s historic black neighborhood.

“This is one of the first projects I’ve seen come to the city where people who look like us are building it for us,” said small business contractor Rodney Williams.

The city more broadly and the Dixwell neighborhood in particular are currently rife with development dollars, he said, referencing the planned new nearly 400unit apartment complex at 201 Munson St. That money, those jobs, and the subsequently built buildings rarely trickle down to the mostly working-class African American population that defines the Dixell and Newhallville neighborhoods.

“How could we not support them?” he asked about ConnCORP. A woman behind him agreed. “This is our time,” she said.

Shepard Street blockwatch captain Addie Kimbrough (pictured) also threw her support behind the project. “All they want to do is build and make Dixwell look like it used to,” she said. They deserve the neighborhood’s support.

“This reminds me of what Dixwell looked like when I came here” in 1959, said Claudine Wilkins-Chambers. Whatever help or support ConnCORP needs in order to make this vision a reality, she said, she’d be happy to do her part to provide.

Sean Reeves recognized that most people are wary of change. “But change has to happen in order for our children to be successful,” he said.

And this project could very well lay the groundwork for the economic welfare of generations of Dixwell residents to come.

Katurah Bryant agreed.

“It’s refreshing to see that people who look like us want to engage us,” she said.

She added that she’s tired of seeing outof-town developers and large-scale landlords based in other neighborhoods of the city scooping up all of the rental housing in Dixwell and Newhallville.

“It is going to be a beautiful thing for our community to look like a place where we want to live.”

NEW HAVEN’S GRASSROOTS COMMUNITY RADIO STATION! www.newhavenindependent.org

JOE UGLY IN THE MORNING Weekdays 6-9 a.m.

THE TOM FICKLIN SHOW Mondays 10 a.m.

MAYOR MONDAY!

MERCY QUAYE

Mondays 11 a.m.

Mondays 1 p.m.

“THE SHOW”

“DJ REL”

MICHELLE TURNER Tuesdays 9 a.m.

“WERK IT OUT”

ELVERT EDEN Tuesdays at 2 p.m.

MORNINGS WITH MUBARAKAH

“JAZZ HAVEN”

Wednesdays 9 a.m.

Wednesdays 2 p.m.

STANLEY WELCH

“TALK-SIP”

LOVEBABZ LOVETALK

Thursdays 1 p.m.

Mondays-Fridays 9 a.m.

ALISA BOWENSMERCADO

FRIDAY PUNDITS Fridays 11 a.m.

23

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

COMMENTARY: The Essence and Beauty of Black Women in America

By Roger Caldwell, NNPA Newswire Contributor

RACE AND CHILD TRAFFICKING IN CONNECTICUT February 19, 2020 • 10 am - 12 pm LEGISLATIVE OFFICE BUILDING ROOM 2D Of the 210 children referred to the Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families in 2018 for high-risk or confirmed human trafficking,

73% WERE CHILDREN OF COLOR. Race plays a role in every part of the exploitation of children; and in effort to combat human trafficking, our conversations and solutions must be racially inclusive.

Presenters include

Rep. Jillian Gilchrest • Rep. Robyn Porter • Babz Rawls-Ivy Erin Williamson, Love146 • Yvette Young, The Village Sponsored by

Please contact Megan Auretta at megan.auretta@uconn.edu with any questions related to this event.

Black women are some of the most amazing females on the planet. There are many fraudulent images and concepts about Black women in American culture, where they are considered angry, hard to talk to and unintelligent. The image of Black women as a B, gives everyone in the country, the impression that the majority of our women will curse you out, and are always ready to fight.

These inaccurate descriptions of Black women give young Black girls a negative impressive of themselves, their culture, and race. When they are constantly being bombarded with foolishness on the radio with hip hop, and reality television, it makes Black women appear silly.

But for decades Black women have achieved phenomenal accomplishments and achieving the goal of sharing this information requires Black Media to lead the way, by exposing the truth to America and the world.

Shonda Rhimes, the most powerful show-maker in Hollywood says, “What we are is truth tellers, change agents, and troublemakers – in the best way. We’re agitating. And advocating. Standing on the shoulders of a long line of resourceful, and resilient Black women. And preparing the next generation to take on the mantle, with their own kind of activism.”

Black women have always understood that there was racial discrimination, but they also were discriminated against because of their gender. Black women, and women in general, knew they had to fight and still nurture and take care of their children, and their man. Black women are magicians, and they were always working, and more women are graduating from college than ever before.

The essence of Black women is they are survivors, with purpose as their common denominator.

They take care of business, and they get the job done. “There are also countless women beyond the headlines doing the work every day without any of the fanfare,” says Amber Scott of the Black Enterprise.

There are always Black women like Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama, whose contribu-

tions are too numerous to count, and are using their influence to promote other Black women.

“There is DJ Beverly Bond, who’s gathered up the sprinkles of Black Girl Magic to show the world how much Black girls do indeed rock.” says Amber Scott.

Not only are Black women some of the smartest on the planet, they are also the prettiest. In December 2019, Black women held five of the biggest beauty pageant titles in the United States and the world. “When Miss Jamaica, Toni-Ann Singh, was crowned Miss World in London, she joined an impressive roster of Black women who hold some of the world’s most prestigious pageant titles,” says Tara Law of the NY Times.

The prestigious pageant titles were: 1. Zozibini Tunzi as Miss World, 2. Cheslie Kryst as Miss USA, 3. Raliegh Garris as Miss Teen USA, 4.

Zozibini Tunzi as Miss Universe, and 5. Nia Franklin as Miss America (who is scheduled to

crown her successor on Dec. 19). It is the first time that Black women have held all five of these titles at once.

Black women have a troubled history with race, when it comes to beauty pageants in America.

The wins were very difficult for Blacks to get, because racism played a major part in every judge’s decision. But Black women never gave up, and many of the contestants considered themselves freedom fighters.

In almost every field Black women achieved — and they never stopped fighting. Truth tellers, change agents, and troublemakers, Black women were advocating, agitating to break down the walls. Black women are the most beautiful women on the planet, they are queens, and we must edify them with our love.

The essence of Black women is they are survivors, with purpose as their common denominator.

(Photo: iStockphoto / NNPA)

Celebrating the legacy of Dr. King. ―

Spring Luncheon featured speaker

Brittany Packnett Cunningham A leader whose “voice is going to be making a difference for years to come” - President Barack Obama

Tuesday, April 7, 2020 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

H O N O R I N G AC TO R & AC T I V I ST

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SINCE THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT PASSED IN 1965, WE’VE NEEDED 5 AMENDMENTS TO PROTECT IT Voting was and still is our super power. It keeps people and neighborhoods from being ignored.

We celebrate the people who not only got knocked down, but who kept getting up. Join AARP as we continue the journey to protect and empower all races and ages in all communities.

CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY Learn more at aarp.org/blackcommunity

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

Black America’s Housing Crisis: More Renters Than Homeowners

Homeless Population Jumps 12%

income, family wealth, unemployment and more – the millions of people working multiple jobs, and/or living paycheck to paycheck, are often just one paycheck away from financial disaster.

Add predatory lending on high-cost loans like payday or overdraft fees, or the weight of medical debt or student loans, when financial calamity arrives, it strikes these consumers harder and longer than others who have financial cushions.

And lest we forget, housing discrimination in home sales, rentals, insurance and more continue to disproportionately affect Black America despite the Fair Housing Act, and other federal laws intended to remove discrimination from the marketplace.

By Charlene Crowell, NNPA Newswire Contributor

No matter who you are, or where you live, there’s a central concern that links consumers all over the country: the everrising cost of living. For many consumers, the combined costs of housing, transportation, food, and utilities leave room for little else from take-home pay.

From Boston west to Seattle, and from Chicago to Miami and parts in between, the rising cost of living is particularly challenging in one area: housing. Both homeowners and renters alike today cope as best they can just to have a roof over their families’ heads.

The nation’s median sales price of a new home last September in 2019 was $299,400, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Even for an existing home, the St. Louis Federal Reserve noted its median price in December was $274,500.

For renters, the cost of housing is also a serious challenge. Last June, the national average rent reached $1,405, an all-time high. But if one lives in a high-cost market like Manhattan, Boston, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, a realistic rental price is easily north of $3,000 each month.

Now a new report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) finds that the American Dream of homeownership is strained even among households with incomes most would think adequate to own a home. From 2010 to 2018, 3.2 million households with earnings higher than $75,000 represented more than three-quarters of the growth in renters in its report entitled, America’s Rental Housing 2020. “[F]rom the homeownership peak in 2004 to 2018, the number of married couples with children that owned homes fell by 2.7 million, while the number renting rose by 680,000,” states the report. “These changes have meant that

The real question in 2020 is, ‘What will communities and the nation do about it?’ families with children now make up a larger share of renter households (29%) than owner households (26%).”

To phrase it another way, America’s middle class is at risk. Consumer demographics that traditionally described homeowners, has shifted to that of renters. And in that process, the opportunity to build family wealth through homeownership has become more difficult for many — and financially out of reach for others.

“Rising rents are making it increasingly difficult for households to save for a down payment and become homeowners,” says Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, a JCHS Research Associate and lead author of the new report. “Young, college-educated households with high incomes are really driving current rental demand.”

Included among the report’s key find-

ings: Rents in 2019 continued their sevenyear climb, marking 21 consecutive quarters of increases above 3.0%; Despite the growth in high-income white renters, renter households overall have become more racially and ethnically diverse since 2004, with minority households accounting for 76 percent of renter household growth through 2018; and Income inequality among renter households has been growing. The average real income of the top fifth of renters rose more than 40 percent over the past 20 years, while that of the bottom fifth of renters fell by 6 percent; “Despite the strong economy, the number and share of renters burdened by housing costs rose last year after a couple of years of modest improvement,” says Chris Herbert, Managing Director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies.

“And while the poorest households are most likely to face this challenge, renters earning decent incomes have driven this recent deterioration in affordability.”

This trend of fewer homeowners has also impacted another disturbing development: the nation’s growing homeless population.

Citing that homelessness is again on the rise, the JCHS report noted that after falling for six straight years, the number of people experiencing homelessness nationwide grew from 2016–2018, to 552,830. In just one year, 2018 to 2019, the percentage of America’s Black homeless grew from 40% to more than half – 52%.

That independent finding supports the conclusion of the Department of Hous-

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ing and Urban Development’s report to Congress known as its Annual Homeless Assessment Report.

While some would presume that homelessness is an issue for high-cost states like California, and New York, the 2019 HUD report found significant growth in homeless residents in states like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, and Washington as well.

According to HUD, states with the highest rates of homelessness per 10,000 people were New York (46), Hawaii (45), California (38), Oregon (38), and Washington (29), each significantly higher than the national average of 17 persons per 10,000. The District of Columbia had a homelessness rate of 94 people per 10,000.

And like the JCHS report, HUD also found disturbing data on the disproportionate number of Black people who are now homeless.

For example, although the numbers of homeless veterans and homeless families with children declined over the past year, Blacks were 40% of all people experiencing homelessness in 2019, and 52% of people experiencing homelessness as members of families with children.

These racial disparities are even more alarming when overall, Blacks comprise 13% of the nation’s population.

When four of every 10 homeless people are Black, 225,735 consumers are impacted. Further, and again according to HUD, 56,381 Blacks (27%) are living on the nation’s streets, instead of in homeless shelters.

The bottom line on these research reports is that Black America’s finances are fragile. With nagging disparities in

For Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an assistant professor of African-American studies at Princeton University and author of the new book, “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership”, federal enforcement of its own laws addressing discrimination and acknowledging the inherent tug-of-war wrought from the tension of public service against the real estate industry’s goal of profit, there’s little wonder why so many public-private partnerships fail to serve both interests.

In a recent Chicago Tribune interview, Professor Taylor explained her view.

“You don’t need a total transformation of society to create equitable housing for people,” said Taylor. “We have come to believe that equitable housing is just some weird thing that can’t happen here, and the reality is that we have the resources to create the kinds of housing outcomes that we say we desire.”

“The way to get that has everything to do with connecting the energy on the ground to a different vision for our society — one that has housing justice, equity and housing security at the heart of it,’ Taylor continued. “The resources and the money are there, but there’s a lack of political will from the unfortunate millionaire class that dominates our politics… I think, given the persistence of the housing crisis in this country, we have to begin to think in different ways about producing housing that is equitable and actually affordable in the reallife, lived experiences of the people who need it.”

#MAKE FLORENCE FAMOUS

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

DVOŘÁK & PRICE

Saturday, February 15th

Thursday, March 5 | 7:30pm | Woolsey Hall Florence Price, the first African American female composer to have a symphonic work performed by a major national orchestra, is often compared musically to Dvořák, who also employed sweeping melodies and sampled African American and Native American music. This aesthetically beautiful concert will reexamine our classical music roots.

PRICE Symphony No. 1 ROSSINI William Tell Overture DVOŘÁK Cello Concerto

Tickets on sale Friday at 10:00am only at

Featuring: Alasdair Neale music director | Oliver Herbert cello

Tickets on Sale Now! (203)787-4282 | NewHavenSymphony.org TICKETMASTER.COM | MOHEGANSUN.COM 27

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

February 05, 2020 - February 11, 2020

We all have

DREAMS. Let Job Corps help you achieve yours.

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High school diploma programs College credit opportunities

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For more information, visit jobcorps.gov or call (800) 733-JOBS [5627] New Haven - Kerri Keegan – Keegan.Kerri@JobCorps.org • Bridgeport and Fairfield County - Kelly Conner – Conner.Kelly@JobCorps.org Waterbury Area – Abdul Shabazz – Shabazz.Abdul@JobCorps.org

Job Corps is a U.S. Department of Labor Equal Opportunity Employer Program. Auxiliary aids and services are available upon request to individuals with disabilities. TDD/TTY telephone number is (877) 889-5627.

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