INNER-CITY NEWS July 27, 2016 August 02, THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - -February 20,2016 2018
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INNER-CITYNEWS
Volume 27 . No. 2266 Volume 21 No. 2194
Alicia Boler Malloy To Dems: Malloy To Dems: “Black Panther” Davis Ignore “Tough On Crime” Ignore “Tough On Crime” “DMC” Stars and Creators Reflect On Its Arrival
Selected 2018 Black Engineer of the Year
Color Struck?
Cit SnowDeaninConnects July? Steakhouse Debuts With A Cast Iron Twist Af-Am House FOLLOW US ON ALLAN APPEL PHOTO
Fuimara, Marini, and Mayor Harp cut the ribbon, with hostess Ashley-Grant 1
THE INNER-CITY NEWS
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Decade Later, Threatened Library Thrives We’ve always had a space to provide this to these kids. We’ve been here since 2013 every Saturday. The only time we don’t come is when the library is closed.” “If it wasn’t for Ms. Diane opening the doors to us, and DeStefano not shutting Stetson down, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” said Ed Trimble of the S.P.O.R.T.S. Academy. “We wouldn’t be able to bring critical thinking to the Dixwell community, we wouldn’t be able to bring decisionmaking skills to the Dixwell community. We wouldn’t be able to help these kids become leaders in their own right. “We wouldn’t be able to truly be a part
by MARKESHIA RICKS New Haven Independent
During a Black History month 10 years ago, Dixwell’s Stetson branch library was almost ... history. Ten years later, on Saturday, it was, as usual on a weekend, a hub for families to play chess, craft, and read together — as the booming branch plans to move into larger quarters across thes treet. Diane Brown, award-winning branch manager of Stetson, was reflecting on how far the library, which has been the de facto community center of the Dixwell community since the former “Q” House closed, has come. In Feburary 2008, then-Mayor John DeStefano floated the idea of closing the branch as a budget-cutting move. Neighbors banned together to circulate petitions and collect signatures to save the 100-year-old library branch in Dixwell Plaza. In the intervening years, waves of young people came to see Stetson as a second home, hanging oaut after school, getting tutored, discovering books, finding solace when life outside turned rough. It became the neighborhood’s de facto community center. Its success has earned repeated local and national recognition. “Today we are an award-winning, nationally recognized library,” Brown said Saturday as she looked out at the parents and their children, along with the men of S.P.O.R.T.S. (Street Poets Cipher Real Truth) Academy who host the Saturday chess club, playing board games and crafting. It was officially “Family Literacy Day” at Stetson. Cappericnae Midgette, along with her husband Jsuan and their daughter Sharayah, 8, were among the families enjoying the library Saturday. “I think it’s really essential to have something for the youth but also the parents,” Midgette said. “It’s an opportunity to meet other children. It’s also nice that it’s free. There are a lot of events around town but they’re not always free.” Fellow Hamdenite Ato David also was at the library with his children, son Gyasi, 10, and daughter, Oni, 5, Saturday. He said he likes to bring his children to Stetson to hang out with children who look more like them. He said he and his wife grew up in New York City. A trip to Stetson on Saturday to play chess allows the children a little taste of city life. The chess club is put on by the men of the S.P.O.R.T.S. Academy who have been teaching young people about the game and how it applies to life at
MARKESHIA RICKS PHOTO
Jsuan, Sharayah and Cappericnae Midgette enjoy a game of Uno at Stetson Saturday.
of Dixwell, a part of this whole village Ms. Diane helped us build,” he added. And because that shut down didn’t happen, the Stetson Library has a bright future and a new home on the horizon. When the new Q House is built just across the street Stetson Library will get a new state-of-the-art home and serve as an anchor tenant along with Cornell Scott Hill Health Center. The library is looking to raise $2 million to outfit the new library with furniture and new technology and is more than halfway to its goal. Any gift from $50 to $10,000 will be matched by the Seedlings Foundation.
APT Enlists Cops To Quiet Clinic Corner by THOMAS BREEN
New Haven Independent
Sean Reeves of S.P.O.R.T. Academy plays a game of Sorry!
Ed Trimble of S.P.O.R.T. Academy talks chess strategy with Gerald Ledbetter.
Stetson since 2013. Sean Reeves said the goal of the academy is to create a community of independent thinkers and decision makers through the game of chess. The men also provide guidance and mentorship especially to children who don’t have dads. “It’s our job to make sure they are
safe,” he said. Reeves said that when the men first started the program five years ago, they tried to do it in one of the local middle schools. They couldn’t get access to the school on the weekends. “We came to Ms. Diane,” Reeves recalled. “She’s never turned us down.
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A controversial methadone clinic in the Hill is paying the city for extra police presence in an attempt to deter potential illegal activity from happening outside of its doors. According to the neighborhood’s top cop, that strategy is working out well. At Tuesday night’s regular monthly meeting of the Hill North Community Management Team at Career High School on Legion Avenue, Lt. Jason Minardi told neighbors that the APT Foundation has been paying for an offduty New Haven police officer to be stationed outside of its primary methadone dispensary at 435 Congress Ave. from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Monday through Friday. Minardi said that the APT Foundation has been funding this increased police presence since early January. He said that the off-duty police officer parks a police car in the clinic’s driveway, and spends much of his shift walking around the building. “I hope you guys have noticed that the APT Foundation seems a lot cleaner during the daytime now,” Minardi said. “I’ve been working hard on it. They’ve hired a police officer on a regular basis. We’re going to keep the pressure on them, because I know you guys can see the difference when we have a cop there and when we don’t.” For years the APT Foundation has drawn criticism from neighbors for attracting drug dealers, prostitutes and people recovering from addictions to an area right across the street from a K – 8 magnet school. Last October, a man was fatally stabbed outside the clinic’s walls during a dispute with the new boyfriend of an an ex-girlfriend who was receiving treatment at the methadone facility.
Lt. Jason Minardi tells neighbors at Tuesday night’s meeting about increased police presence outside a Congress Avenue methadone clinic.
THOMAS BREEN PHOTO
Minardi said that the improved conditions outside the APT Foundation are not just a result of the new off-duty police presence, as paid for by the clinic. He said that Yale University has been assisting by stationing a Yale Police patrol car on the block. He also said that he has been working with the police department’s narcotics division to visit the area multiple times a week. He said that narcotics officers have made seven arrests in the area in the past week. “There are a lot of different things going on to try to quell things down over there,” Minardi said. Dora Lee Brown, a retired entomologist and long-time Hill North management team participant who lives on Asylum Street, applauded Minardi for putting pressure on the APT Foundation to work more closely with the police. “The street feels so much safer,” she said. Minardi said that he was not sure how long the APT Foundation would continue to pay for an off-duty officer’s presence on weekday mornings. He said that the clinic had committed to funding the extra police presence for a trial period, but that the NHPD would try to encourage the foundation to keep funding the extra police shift for as long as they can.
THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - February 20, 2018
Steakhouse Debuts With A Cast Iron Twist by ALLAN APPEL
New Haven Independent
Attilio Marini has more than 250 cast iron pans of varying sizes He’ll sizzle you a steak, seafood, and maybe even some s’mores right in one of them. He’ll bring the pan to the table, hot and sizzling, and you can eat right out of it. Chat away, drink your wine. The food, in that pan brought out at 550 degrees, stays warm for 20 minutes. That innovative use of cast iron was on the menu Thursday afternoon as Marini, his partner Vinny Fuimara and more than a dozen city economic development officials and well-wishers celebrated the blue-ribbon opening of the Cast Iron Chef Chop House & Oyster Bar at 660 State St. The establishment, which had its soft opening right before the Christmas holiday, takes over the space of Carmen Anthony’s, another steakhouse. It reduces the number of seats, but provides, as the centerpiece, a new technique of cooking with cast iron pans, which Marini said he has been developing over the last decade or more. Business has been booming, said head hostess and longtime family friend Victoria-Ashley-Grant.
Marini is the son of the eponymous Marissa of Marissa’s Ristorante in Trumbull, which recently closed after more than 20 years. He decided to moved the family-begun enterprise to New Haven, switching from traditional Italian food to steaks and seafood uniquely cooked on cast iron. “It was destiny. I’ve always wanted to be in New Haven,” he said at Thursday’s event. “It feels a little surreal that it’s happening. New Haven to me is what I need to build my brand, to become part of the New Haven food scene.” Marini said that 13 years ago he read an article in a cooking magazine about the pleasures and unique taste of cooking a steak on cast iron. The article was about personal cooking. As he continued in the restaurant business, he developed techniques to bring cast iron cooking, he said, in tasty volume, into a restaurant setting. What’s so great about cast iron? Cast iron cooking is as old as the chuck wagon, Marini said. “We’ve become so used to the barbecue grill, people forgot the use of cast iron,” he said. Personally Marini doesn’t like the flame-burning that you get from barbecue-style cooking. Cast iron gives
ALLAN APPEL PHOTO
Fuimara, Marini, and Mayor Harp cut the ribbon, with hostess Ashley-Grant
you “the ultimate sear, and the end result is better than any other method.” The pan is only part of the experience. If you order that steak, Marini will take
one of his pans, already preheated to 550 degrees, and pop it on the gas stove. Into it he puts the steak, along with potato and vegetable in effect, the
whole meal. The entire ensemble cooks in its natural juices. At the end butter, garlic, and fresh thyme are added. Then Con’t on page 9
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Just Don’t Call It A Beat THE INNER-CITY NEWS
Eric Rey was deep into the singsong of his djembe before the drum’s phrases had even finished ringing out across the room. His whole body leaned in, shoulders and back at a sharp angle as his palms spoke a language for which they weren’t yet words. Around him, three pairs of brown, soft but weathered hands joined in, hammering out the heartbeat of a homeland. Thursday night, Rey and members of Healing Drum graced the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology (ConnCAT) as part of “Black Music: The Fabric and Soundtrack Of Our Lives,” a four-part series for Black History Month. After opening with a session on the history of New Haven jazz last week, “Black Music” continued with a two-hour dive into African drumming. Performers Rey, Michael Smith, Brian Jarawa Gray and Amanda Marcano are all members of Healing Drum, a weekly drum circle that meets at Bregamos Community Theater in Fair Haven. The series started as an idea in December, when ConnCAT Chief Operating Officer Genevieve Walker and Executive Director Erik Clemons found themselves talking about Marvin Gaye’s album What’s Going On. The two zeroed in on how topical the words seem almost five decades after they were written, how “that piece itself points to how bad things are.” A series soon materialized. But Walker said she didn’t want to start and end it with What’s Going On. She wanted to give a bigger picture, vibrating with jazz and hip hop, rich history, and tributes to the African diaspora. “I wanted to be encouraging and engaging,” she said at the event. “Before we dive into the bad stuff, let’s do something good. And historical—it’s still doing the work it needs to do.” Performing for an intimate audience, drummers ushered in an evening that was part jam session, part time travel, and part history lesson. As Rey took his seat a place he never seemed to stay still for very long he gestured to the drums laying before him like offerings, their bright paint and taut, rawhide drum skin yellow and shiny in the light. Like Smith and Gray, he is a Djembeföla—a master drummer who is also a teacher. These are the tools of his trade, he said: the mortar-shaped djembe, wider, painted dunun, smaller sangban and dainty but powerful kenkeni, originally linked to the Mali Empire in West Africa. Later he would bring in the shekere, a hollowedout gourd with delicate netting and wood beads. As he introduced the instruments’ names—“there will be a vocabulary quiz at the end of this,” he joked—fellow
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Smith and Marcano. The drum Marcano is holding is the shekere.
drummers joined him to demonstrate how each had its own language, a sometimes wordless thing that would always rise up to meet other voices. Like a string of phrases meant to celebrate a woman’s first period, woven together to create a celebratory, propulsive call-and-response. As Smith described the ritual, reserved for “women coming into womanhood,” he began to drum, his fellow drummers joining in as attendees sat upright and rocked to the rhythm. In the front row, Walker clapped along, her young daughter joining in after catching the sound as it soaked the room. In those pieces, and between the drummers’ hands, was a deep history. One comprising what Smith called a “pantheon of rhythms” that had been taken forcibly away. Of cultures across a continent that imperial forces tried to strip bare and beat bloody. Of a resilience that defied the limits of human strength. So it was natural, Gray said, that there sprang a new musical language in America, growing its roots in the then-nascent Black church and the many lands across which the diaspora scattered people. “They took our drums away so we did this,” he said, clapping quickly as he beat his chest and stomped his feet in
a hard, resonant staccato against the floor. “I don’t know—that look like church to me. I continue to be excited by what we’re doing here in America.” Something else happened too, he continued. The drums changed form, and morphed as the African diaspora spiraled out, then found thick cultural webbing in the United States. Instruments descended from the Mali Empire took new shapes and phrases as they came out of Cuba, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic. The phrases that had once marked rite and ritual laid the foundation for jazz, contemporary Afro-Cuban drumming. “Africa, where we come from, that’s the cradle of civilization,” he said. “Everything came from this.” Gray said he has lived that fact for his 60-plus years in New Haven. As a kid, he didn’t have drums, but he did hear rhythm beckoning. So he and his friends improvised, drawing on a history of elders who had been doing that for hundreds of years. “As long as I can remember, I was playing drums in the backyard,” he said. “We used cardboard boxes and coffee cans. Those are traditions as important as other traditions. We didn’t
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know the words so we created out own.” As Gray grew older, he met a nowstoried New Haven Djembeföla named Paul Huggins, a local drummer and teacher who died in 2014, at the age of 77. Huggins told Gray that he didn’t have what it took to become a great drummer, and that he should try dance. Then when Gray took up the Conga drum, Huggins suggested he try something else. Gray said he’d lit a fire in him that pushed him to become great enough not only to drum, but to teach. That New Haven had also given rise to players like Bill “Billy” Fitch, a conguero whose skill rivaled Poncho Sánchez and who “kept it in the community.” But they also discussed something that worried them—a lack of interest among New Haven’s youth, who aren’t interested in drumming. Smith said he tries to explain that drums laid a musical foundation for jazz, Latin dance, and hip-hop. That their early uses carry over to contemporary music. But when he’s knee-deep in that history, students ask him to teach them “beats” that they can mix into hip-hop demos. “I don’t teach beats,” he said, drawing laughs from ConnCAT’s Youth, and Community Programs Manager Steve Driffin. “I teach them a drum phrase. You can walk around doing this all day.” He beat his chest and continued. “It was taken from us so abruptly that we’re teaching it back to ourselves right now. These instruments talk to each other like you’re talking to a person.” With that, they entered the final stretch of the evening. Trading their djembe for congas, Rey and Gray kicked off the piece, their hands at a gallop on the taut drum skins. Something tinny, no louder than a cowbell, joined in. Then Marcano, with a response from her djembe. A new drummer takes the wheel. Or, in this case, the phrase. They communicated largely in a language of gestures: a glance here, a head bob there, a long look at each other. Marcano’s daughters ran through the room, pulling a few members of the audience to their feet while others clapped. The drums slowed, then trickled to a slow tap, then stopped in unison. “This is part of the fabric of our life, which is music,” Walker said as drummers began to pack up, teaching a few curious students before putting their equipment away. “I hope we bring who needs to be here.”
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The Inner-City Newspaper is published weekly by Penfield Communications, Inc. from offices located at 50 Fitch Street, 2nd Floor, New Haven, CT 06515. 203-387-0354 phone; 203-3872684 fax. Subscriptions:$260 per year (does not include sales tax for the in State subscriptions). Send name, address, zip code with payment. Postmaster, send address changes to 50 Fitch Street, New Haven, CT 06515. Display ad deadline Friday prior to insertion date at 5:00pm Advertisers are responsible for checking ads for error in publication. Penfield Communications, Inc d.b.a., “The Inner-City Newspaper” , shall not be liable for failure to publish an ad or for typographical errors or errors in publication, except to the extent of the cost of the space in which actual error appeared in the first insertion. The Publisher reserves the right to refuse advertising for any reason and to alter advertising copy or graphics deemed unacceptable for publication. The entire contents of The Inner-City Newspaper are copyright 2012, Penfield Communications, Inc. and no portion may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher.
THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - February 20, 2018
Vendor Seeks Return To Med Mecca by PAUL BASS
New Haven Independent
Wub misses Cedar Street. Cedar Street misses Wub’s grub. Thanks to a paperwork snag in the city’s new mobile-food system, the two remain apart, at least for now. Wub Wubneh Tessema opened an Ethiopian restaurant called Lalibela on Temple Street in 1999. He came to the U.S. from Gondar, Ethiopia, and has forged an immigrant success story. People love the restaurant. He added a food cart in the busy Cedar Street/ Yale medical district in 2000. People loved that, too, the spicy mixes of lentils, split peas, collards, or beef and chicken, over rice and with spongy Ethiopian sourdough injera. Both operations thrived. He then added two carts tothe food vendors outside the “Yale Whale” skating rink on Sachem Street. He and his wife have a son studying at Harvard and two daughters at a private middle and high school. Though they receive scholarships for their kids’ tuitions, they still have bills to pay and that has grown harder since last summer, Tessema said. The city instituted a new system on July 1 for regulating the booming food cart trade, including clear rules for who gets to set up where, and fees
PAUL BASS PHOTO
Tessema with sidelined cart parked in alley.
to support safety and environmental initiatives. The city agreed to grandfather in longtime cart operators like Tessema before opening up remaining slots to a lottery. Tessema and his wife made sure all their licenses and paperwork were in order leading up to the deadline to be grandfathered in. But they made an oversight: They accidentally listed all three of their licensed cart employees as working on Sachem Street, rather than listing one of them on Cedar Street.
By the time of the lottery, their bid for being grandfathered in was rejected because their Cedar Street permit had lapsed, according to Steve Fontana, the deputy director who oversees the program in the city’s economic development office. “Unfortunately they did not complete their paperwork on time,” he said. Fontana said he agreed to put Lalibela on a waiting list for the next open spaces on Cedar Street. But that’s a lucrative spot. Spaces haven’t opened, and the Tessemas aren’t at the top of
the list, Fontana said. The city received nearly 160 applications for the lottery of 91 spaces available in the four special districts created last summer. Twenty-four operators were grandfathered. The one block of Cedar Street, between Yale-New Haven Hospital and Yale School of Medicine, currently has 30 authorized food trucks and carts, according to the city. Wubneh Tessema estimated that the loss of the Cedar Street spot is costing him $30,000 in lost revenue. He argued that he built up a loyal clientele in the area and deserved not to be booted over an honest paperwork error. He also noted that the city hadn’t noticed the error in the months leading up to the summer boot. “Why didn’t they check before?” he asked. He also argued that African food belongs in the mix on Cedar Street, which has numerous varieties of Asian food as well as Middle Eastern and Mexican fare. “Nothing African. Nothing black,” Tessema said. “People should have a choice.” City Building Official Jim Turcio gave Tessema a spot for free for three months in front of City Hall to test it out. Tessema said he didn’t make
any money there. He’d like to return to Cedar Street. For now, the cart is squeezed in an alley behind his restaurant. Turcio said he’s working on creating three new mobile-food spaces on Cedar. “We’ll get something worked out” within a few months, he predicted. “I found some room. We’re going to work with everybody. We have to do some work to make it legal.” Turcio said Tessema is in fact high enough on the waiting list to obtain one of the upcoming spots. Meanwhile his old customers on Cedar Street haven’t forgotten him. “I loved that cart!” exclaimed Yale lab worker Alan Leung said as he waited in line the other day for a Chinese lunch. “That’s actually my favorite one. It’s health food.” “Oh my God! I loved that cart!” echoed Maya Geradi, who was lined up with fellow Wilbur Cross High School student Sophie Edelstein at Taste of Thai, one of two Thai carts operating on the block. Geradi grabs lunch on Cedar Street because she has an internship in a nearby lab. She used to patronize the Lalibela cart at least once a week she said. “Please,” she said. “Bring it back.”
Lawmakers Express Remorse Over Energy Fund Sweeps by Christine Stuart CT. Junkie News
HARTFORD, CT — Legislative leaders regret sweeping $175 million from various energy funds, but when pressed they admitted that restoring those funds will be a difficult task given all the other budgetary demands. At a press conference organized by energy efficiency contractors, Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, said he did something last year he wasn’t proud of. “I felt it was important to vote for the consensus budget that ended up bringing a lot of good things to a conclusion in the session that would not end, but the one thing I felt worst about were the aspects that led to the sweeps of the energy funds,” Steinberg said. The budget signed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Oct. 31 swept $28 million from the Green Bank, $127 million from the Energy Efficiency Fund, and $20 million from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. “It is my firm belief that these sweeps
will increase Connecticut residents’ and businesses’ energy costs,” Malloy wrote in a message to lawmakers. Rep. Lonnie Reed, who co-chairs the Energy and Technology Committee, said they need to stop sweeping essential resources that are paid for by utility ratepayers to balance the budget. “We need to tell a better story about what these energy efficiency funds are doing,” Reed said. She said in order to restore some of the funds they’re going to have to make spending cuts and come up with a game plan for the “legacy debt.” It’s not going to be easy and a lot of what will happen will depend on what revenues look like after April 15. “This is torture,” Reed said. She said she can’t name the programs she would like to see eliminated from the budget off the top of her head, but “the deeper we’re diving the more we see programs that need to be sunsetted.” Steinberg said he wasn’t going to negotiate how much money they might
be able to realistically restore to the funds with the news media at a press conference, but that he would try his hardest to get most, if not all of the $175 million restored. “If we could get some of these funds back that would be a win as well,” Steinberg said. The Energy Efficiency Fund sweep is starting to have an impact on the contractors who provide home energy audits. Mike Murray of New England Smart Energy Group in Fairfield said each home energy audit includes more than $1,000 in improvements that help residents save money on their home heating and electricity bills. The programs paid for by the funds represent 34,000 jobs in the state and layoffs have already begun as a result of last year’s sweeps. “We are only seeing the beginning of the impact of these cuts,” Murray said. He said on Jan. 1, based on the budget cuts, 70 percent of his company’s business vanished “because we could
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CHRISTINE STUART / CTNEWSJUNKIE
Reps. Jonathan Steinberg and Lonnie Reed
only serve a fraction of our propane and oil customers.” He said these residents are still paying into the fund through their utility bills, but are simply not receiving the services. “We have been knocked back years
due to the irresponsible funding raid,” Murray said. Energy efficiency contractors who belong to an advocacy group called Efficiency for All estimated the sweeps could cost as many as 6,800 jobs.
THE INNER-CITY NEWS
February 14, 2018
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February 20, 2018
New Haven “Homeboys” Donate to Stetson Library Campaign
Jesse “Cheese” Hameen II representing the “Homeboys”, presents a check of $500 to Stetson Librarian, Diane Brown and Althea Norcott, co-chair of the Stetson Library Campaign. The New Haven Homeboys is a group of “old” New Haveners who come from far and wide to get together to thank God for another year and an opportunity to fellowship and reminisce with each other. Each year they make a donation to a local charity. This year, their 11th Annual Get Together, they choose the Stetson Campaign. In past years they have donated to “Pop Warner” and Police Athletic League “PAL”. Jesse commented, “We love New Haven! We are thankful and blessed to give something back to the community that raised us.” Stetson Branch manager Diane Brown, who has been at Stetson for over a decade, thanked the “Homeboys” for their donation and their support of this important community effort. She has said, “…we don’t just need a place for books – we need a space for people to learn, to be challenged, to come together. A library is not just a home for books, it’s a home for the community.” The new library will increase it square
footage from 7,560 sq. ft. to approximately 15,000 sq. ft. and will be the centerpiece of the new Q House. Building will begin this spring. An anonymous donor has made a community challenge of $250,000; therefore, this donation will be matched and turn into $1000.
Anyone interested is participating in this campaign and investing in the lives of those in the Dixwell/Newhallville communities, please call Diane at 203-946-8117 or send a donation to NHFPL-Stetson Campaign Elm Street New Haven, CT 06510
Fair Haven Warned Of Bus Fare Hike by ALLAN APPEL
New Haven Independent
A state transit official popped in on Fair Haveners to give them advance warning: Get ready to pay more to ride the bus. Connecticut Departrment of Transportation (DOT) Assistant Rail Administrator Richard T. Jankovich delivered that warning at the regular meeting of the Fair Haven Community Management team. Fair Haveners ride the bus more than neighbors anywhere else in town except downtown, according to DOT stats, said Tiffany Garcia, the department’s equal employment opportunity specialist, who also attended the meeting. Jankovich came to make some key and grim points about the ongoing crisis in the state’s transportation system. The governor has called for raising the gas tax and creating a $3 tire tax to put
needed money into the Special Transportation Fund (STF). If that doesn’t happen, capital projects will be cancelled or delayed, including, for example, the new parking garage at Union Station, and increases in fares on the trains and buses implemented, Jankovich reported.. In the absence of new money for the STF, DOT proposes raising the cost of a bus trip for an adult from $1.75 to $2. The senior fare would rise from 85 cents to $1, according to the list of proposed increases posted on the DOT site. Here is the full list of proposed bus fare increases. The changes would take effect on July 1. Jankovich was at pains to point out that the fare increases are proposals only, with seven public hearings across Con’t on page 18
Firing Turns Up-And-Comer Into An “Intrapreneur” by MERCY A. QUAYE New Haven Independent
The overwhelmingly relatable fail, Evans said, can only be understood with this piece of context: “From Jan. 5, 2004 on, I have always had a job.” For Evans, who now serves as the senior managing director of national black community alliances at Teach For America (TFA), what came after the comma following her name has always defined her. “It was the thing I prided myself in doing,” she said during the final edition of #FailMonth episodes on WNHH FM’s “Werk It Out” program with Mercy Quaye. “Both out of circumstance and necessity, but I think hard work was instrumental in who I began to identify myself as.” In 2015, at the age of 26, Evans left “a very comfortable job” at the Connecticut branch of TFA to gain direct service experience with youth at a not-for-profit organization in New York. At the request of a mentor and family friend, she jumped into a position where she was told she’d have to hit the
ground running. And she did just that. “I came in really green and mad excited to take on a bunch of different projects and really prove to myself that I could stand outside of a comfortable space,” she said. “Until nine month later [when] I fell flat on my face.” Evans said just a month into her new role she wrote down a date, Oct. 7. On that date, she promised herself that she would quit her job, which had quickly proven to be a bad environment for her. As Oct. 7 approached, Evans was tasked with firing a number of her staff – something she said was traumatic in its own right. Then, on Oct. 7, she was called into her supervisor’s office and let go in the same abrupt fashion as her staff. “I felt like I had gotten dumped by a boyfriend I knew I had to leave,” she said. On her way home that day, she said suddenly she was faced with a new, uncomfortable narrative for herself: “It was the first time is 12 years that I didn’t have a job to make up my identity.”
This failure, Evans said, reshaped how she would view herself. She spent the next six months unemployed and at odds with the publicly successful personal brand she had created for herself. “[That time] could have been traumatizing, but instead it was so healing,” she said. “I had rid myself of everything that didn’t serve me. By the time I [was] starting working again, not only was I gainfully employed, I was ironically back at Teach for America – a space that I had known I could be an ‘intrepreneur’ in and do work that was connected to my passions.” An intrapreneur is someone within an organization who has the flexibility, autonomy, and expertise to bring innovation to a space both systemically and programmatically, Evans said. Being gainfully employed and an intrapreneur is critical to her theory of leadership. She said she believes in building change from within systems and organizations, which in her opinion is how lasting societal change is built.
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Duanecia Evans, a rising star in Connecticut’s education space, learned how that felt, being lost and unemployed for the first time in her life.
Having the strategic and programmatic autonomy to impact change within an organization, for a cause she care about, is instrumental how I define success, she said. Evan’s story of being fired isn’t wrapped up as nicely as that, she admitted. She said during that time she was forced to do the things she wanted to do. And while collecting unemployment and going to therapy, she found clarity in being forced to slow down.
“There was struggle in the meantime,” she said. “It was hard, it was incredibly difficult, but to date, it was the best thing that’s ever happened to me because I know now that I can navigate it…Diamonds are created under pressure, and I came back clearer than ever.” After the ordeal, Evans has some advice to those who find themselves fired and failing: Don’t wait for the ball to drop to learn a valuable lesson.
THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - February 20, 2018
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yale institute of sacred music joins the
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please visit: albertus.edu/blackhistory
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THE INNER-CITY NEWS
February 14, 2018
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February 20, 2018
Troup Kids Glimpse Their Future
blades for wind turbines, was pleased to see the student interest in engineering. He said interest in green energy is expanding almost as fast as the industry. Wind, according to Hannon, is the fastest growing source of electricity worldwide and in the U.S. Engineering activities and clubs could play a key role in sparking student interest and maintaining their involvement through high school, Hannon said. Kat Rosenfield, a magazine writer and fiction author, said she hoped to encourage students to pursue writing. Even though Rosenfield has been writing fiction since high school, it took her years to realize she could pursue it as a career. “I had to rethink my career path,” Rosenfield said, adding that her time at a public relations firm gave her unexpected access to writers and publishers. Rosenfield said that reading, even reading books you don’t like, is key to developing one’s skill as a writer. She encouraged students to keep up with their literary education. Representatives from the New Haven Police Department encountered a tougher crowd. Officers Jarrell Lowery and John Moore asked a group of students what they thought the purpose of the police department is. “To protect people,” one student said. “To shoot people,” a second added. “To tase people,” a third said. “We don’t like to to do that,” Lowery said, before the officers outlined the tests police recruits undergo and showed off some of the department’s equipment, including a battering ram and shield. Officer Joseph Staffieri, with the K-9 unit, drew the most attention, showing off one of the department’s dogs, 4-year-old Magnum. Magnum was trained to respond to commands in German and to find drugs, people, and weapons. Many of the students were enthralled with the dog, while others shied away. Dyamond Myers, the school social worker and one of the organizers of the event, said career days were vital for students trying to choose a high school. Myers said the community, particularly the presenters helped make the event a success.
by ANEURIN CANHAM-CLYNE New Haven Independent
Stephen Stanley braced himself for a barrage of student questions. And, sure enough, came this one: “What’s the grossest part of being a dentist?” The answer: Working in a close, damp space, where nobody really wants you there. Stanley had another answer, too, about why students might want to work one day in his chosen profession: “No one likes dentists, but we help. People say there’s nothing worse than a toothache.” Stanley made one of a dozen presentations Wednesday to eighth-graders at Augusta Lewis Troup School’s second annual career day. Maria Nuterangelo, one of the event organizers, said the event was intended to help eighth graders at Troup pick a magnet school or a course of study in high school to prepare them for a career later on. Presenters included New Haven police officers, an engineer with a renewable energy firm, a young adult fiction author and a representative from New Haven Legal Assistance Association, among others. Groups of students rotated between the tables every 15 minutes. Edwin Sanchez said he was glad to participate in the event, though he would have liked to see a presenter from the military there. Planned presenters from the military and from the fire department couldn’t end up making it to the event; Board of Education member Edward Joyner, father of Troup Prinicipal Monica Joyner, filled in for the firefighter. Sanchez said the military represents a way out of New Haven for him. “I just want something where I can get away from where I’m at,” Sanchez said. Sanchez said he would be happy to be a Marine. Jayle Jesus, another student, said she relished the opportunity to talk to people in new and interesting careers; she wants to go into business, though she doesn’t yet know which kind of business. “Everyone keeps asking me, but I’m not sure,” she said. Darnell Glover, said the event piqued his interest in engineering and science. He hopes to become a veterinarian and work with animals. Jim Hannon, who works for TPI Composites, which manufactures
ANEURIN CANHAM-CLYNE PHOTO
Dr. Stephen Stanley.
Ed Joyner with Principal Monica Joyner.
Event organizers Maria Nuterangelo, John Wood, and Dyamond Myers.
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Dean Connects Cit
Af-Am House
Dean Risë Nelson (at right) with WNHH host Mercy Quaye.
HARRY DROZ PHOTO
by MERCY A. QUAYE New Haven Independent
Ready or not, Black History Month at Yale’s Afro-American Cultural Center promises to deliver the goods. And despite how New Haveners may have been made to feel in the past, all events will be open to the public. This revived commitment to the New Haven community comes from Dean Risë Nelson, the New Havenraised director of Afro-American Cultural Center (Af-Am House) who is in her third year at the helm. “Every day I consider myself doing it for the culture,” she said during the latest edition of #ForTheCulture month on WNHH FM’s “Werk It Out” program. “It means doing what I do for my ancestors, doing what I do for future generations to come so that they have a pride and dignity and knowledge of where they come from and where we come from.” Nelson said as the director of the oldest and largest black cultural center in the Ivy League, she’s felt an obligation to reconnect with the community and rebuild relationships that may have been damaged in recent years. “I’m trying to bring folks and communities and organizations and coalitions together so that we can be stronger and it’s not just one person or a few people here and there lifting this load,” she said. “It’s so that we’re all doing this together; not just the campus but across the community.” Nelson said after she worked at Con’t on page 10
THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - February 20, 2018
Con’t from page 3
Steakhouse Debuts With A Cast Iron
the whole sizzling enterprise is brought to the table and placed on wooden squares, which show the circular burn marks of previous cast iron pans. You eat right out of the pan. “It’s part of the experience,” he said Marini has advanced his cooking-withcast-iron brand on Facebook and other online platforms. He said he hopes the new New Haven restaurant will help him take it to the next level. Marini’s partner Fiumara, a lifelong friend who grew up working at Marissa’s Ristorante in Trumbull, said a realtor or destiny, according to Marini brought them to the space. They decided it was perfect, if a bit too big. So they eliminated one room, added extensive racks for wine, enlarged the see-through window from the dining room so you can see Marini do his cast iron thing. Marini is his own butcher, cutting larger slabs into different cuts of meat, and then cooking them publicly, if you want to watch. “I love being on the stage. This is my stage. Everyone’s enthusiastic about food, and I like to share,” he said. City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson Thursday praised Marini’s enthusiasm and genuineness. He also reassured him that the site of the restaurant, at State near Audubon, might once have been considered on the outskirts of town, but no longer. With hundreds of apartments coming nearby, in two years, it’ll be in the middle of the action, Nemerson added. The Cast Iron Chef Chop House & Oyster Bar holds about 160 people, in bar, lounge area, and dining room. It has about 70 employees, full and part time.
Yale Grad Union Withdraws Recognition Petition by PAUL BASS
New Haven Independent
Never mind.
After years of organizing, a partially won election, dozens of arrests and demonstrations, and a nationally watched hunger fast that drew leading politicians and celebrities like Melissa Etheridge to a protest encampment on Beinecke Plaza, UNITE HERE Local 33 quietly withdrew a petition for recognition as the union representing some of Yale’s graduate student teachers. Local 33 part of the larger union representing Yale’s blue-collar workers and office and research workers formally notified the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) of the decision to withdraw on Monday. It was a signal that the movement to organize graduate student teachers on American campuses, which made progress under the eight years of the Obama Administration, is facing tougher sledding under the Trump Administration. Last February the union, which has for 27 years sought to represent Yale’s graduate student teachers, succeeded in holding elections for representation in nine of 56 Yale departments. It won eight of those elections. It lost the others. Yale argued that meant that it did not have to recognize the union or negotiate with it, because the graduate school as a whole is one entity. Local 33 pressed
LUCY GELLMAN PHOTO
Quite a bit longer: Local 33 supporters blocking downtown streets before arrest last May.
LUCY GELLMAN PHOTO
Robin (Canavan) Dawson at a Local 33 protest at last May’s commencement.
ahead with the NLRB seeking recognition as eight separate mini-unions for the individuals departments that had voted for representation, arguing
that they are distinct workplaces with distinct issues. It was a precedent-setting argument that, had former President Barack
Obama’s appointees still controlled the NLRB, UNITE HERE 33 might have won, based on how other decisions went during the past eight years. But now Donald Trump is president, and he has been appointing businessfriendly, anti-labor people to boards like the NLRB. Local 33, like similar unions reconsidering strategy on other campuses, concluded it made sense to withdraw from the NLRB quest as a result , according to Co-President Robin Dawson, one of the union leaders who went on a hunger strike last year. “President Trump’s NLRB has repeatedly demonstrated its hostility to workers’ rights,” she said in a statement released Monday night. “We continue to call on the Yale administration to address graduate teacher concerns and stand with the labor movement and against the Trump Administration stripping us and thousands of other workers of our rights.” “The University has steadfastly maintained that Local 33’s microunit strategy was inappropriate and that the departmental elections were undemocratic,” Yale spokeswoman Karen Peart stated in a release Monday night. “Yale remains deeply committed to graduate student education, and to providing its teaching fellows with the mentorship and training necessary to complete their degrees and go on to rewarding careers.”
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Ely Center Taken By Storm Af-Am House THE INNER-CITY NEWS
February 14, 2018
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February 20, 2018
Con’t from page 8
Dean Connects Cit
by DAVID SEPULVEDA New Haven Independent
New Haven artist Katro Storm, a master mark-maker, has turned a large gallery space into a temporary studio where visitors can witness his monumental painting challenge in progress — creating 21 (sizable) portraits in 21 days — at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art on Trumbull Street. The painter said he took on the challenge as an art project he is doing for himself, after a string of commissions left him feeling like “more of an illustrator than an artist.” Billed as an “evolving painting installation” by the Ely Center, Storm’s project is part of Ely Center’s winter showcase of solo and thematic exhibits. Gallery director Debbie Hesse said Storm’s project is emblematic of the goals of the gallery in “creating layers of accessibility for artists and the community at large.” Storm’s paintings of mostly famous African Americans occupy floor and wall space in a gallery-turned-studio on the center’s second floor, an area now sheathed in polyethylene to protect it from spills, drips, and spatters part of the mark-making process that imbues Storm’s works with a kind of cosmic essence. The artist said his work is influenced by a field of abstract expressionists including Robert Motherwell and especially Jackson Pollock “1,000 percent,” he said. Francis Bacon and artist Gerhard Richter are other lofty influences that have impacted Storm’s artistic sensibilities. “I am an abstract painter at heart. Figurative portraits is what I know. I try to integrate the two,” said Storm. Photographic images are the starting point for Storm’s dense and moody portraits. A collection of faces musicians, singers, actors, activists, neighborhood heroes, and even some notorious characters such as gangster Pappy Mason, whom Storm refers to an antihero, are always within arm’s reach as the artist works. It is not necessarily the celebrity status of Storm’s subjects that leads him to create the soulful images. Painted in black and white acrylic paint with a broad range of tonalities, the common thread in Storm’s subjects seems to be the subjects’ perseverance. “People that have been on life’s battlefield,” Storm said. “I’m trying to draw energy from their experiences.” Dominating the gallery wall at the
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTOS
Storm’s makeshift studio and several recent works.
Storm applies his trademark spatters.
Storm works on a portrait of singer Nina Simone.
Ely Center is a 15-foot-long painting featuring legendary trumpet player Miles Davis. It’s an older work installed as a placeholder for the emerging new works, which each day gain greater articulation as the artist employs an economy of movement and
utility of techniques in rendering the massive portraits. Storm’s process is not linear. He does not complete one work before moving on to the next. Rather, he works on images simultaneously, depending on the painting technique being utilized.
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Storm said if he is using a dry-brush technique, for example, he will make applications to several individual portraits, taking his inspiration from image to image. “I look at this as one big painting,” he said. Though Storm has created a 21-day, 21-painting framework as the premise for the challenge, the project is not about the number of works he is creating, as much as it is a test of his own artistic mettle. “I feel like I’m in the art world but I don’t fit in. I have to prove to myself that I’m relevant,” he said. “That’s what this is all about.” This is not the first time Storm has worked under the pressure of a tight time frame. While at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he was a student in the 1990s, Storm said he did a lot of “hanging around” and eventually ran short of time to complete an important assignment headed for the program’s review board. With only seven days left, Storm forced himself to rise to the occasion, creating the seven paintings needed — all portraits of influential African Americans. The images were received with great enthusiasm and his work caught the eye of renowned artist Paul Goodnight, who encouraged Storm’s participation in an exhibit for the National Council for the Arts at Howard University. The review board paintings also became the highlight of the Museum School’s Black History Month Exhibition, drawing additional attention and new opportunities for Storm. Ironically, Storm’s early successes at the Museum School persuaded him to leave school early and head off to New York City, where he immersed himself in the art scene, taking on commissions and occasionally displaying his work in the subway system. Storm eventually returned to New Haven to deal with family health issues; he also began teaching at the Educational Center for the Arts. “I like working with kids and art in the community because I think I’m good at it,” he said. “And I do it for free most of the time.” Storm last year worked as an art instructor for ConnCAT’s after school program at Lincoln-Bassett School. “There is always a lack of money but that will never stop me from sharing my skills and art abilities in the community with kids,” he said. “They deserve it, and it’s my calling.”
several different universities in cities from Boston to Indiana, it was time to come back to her hometown of New Haven to contribute to Yale’s developing culture and diversity work and help rebuild Yale’s relationship with the community, which she said was in desperate need of repair. “It’s significant that I’m the only director who has come from New Haven,” she said. “And I grew up here knowing that Yale was not for me. Or at least feeling that, when I would go on campus, the looks that I would get were as if ‘You do not belong here,’ or ‘This is not for you.’” But back then, she said, at least the Af-Am House was always accepting. Citing one of the four points of the Af-Am House’s original mission, Nelson said connecting “Black Yale” and New Haven has always been at the core of the organization’s programming and activities. “So I am trying to actively returning it to that,” she said, and she’s using Black History Month to do it. Nelson said she’s gone into neighborhoods and churches armed with flyers and business cards to make sure people feel welcomed and supported by the House. Her commitment to New Haven even extends to youth, she said, as proven by her bringing a couple hundred New Haven Public School students to Battell Chapel for a keynote given by Bree Newsome, the Black Lives Matter activist who scaled a flag pole at the South Carolina state house to remove a confederate flag. Black History Month kicked off with Newsome’s talk and a lecture by Dr. Cornel West during the first week of February. Nelson said there’s still more to offer the community and the campus. “When you say something is free and open to the public, that can’t just be a tagline or a phrase that you put at a bottom of a flyer,” she said. “Most of the events I have are open to the public … and it’s rare at this point that we have events that are specifically for Yalies only.” Before you head downtown to hang out at the House, here’s what Nelson says you should know: • They’re located at 211 Park St. • And you should just come by.
THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - February 20, 2018
CAA Closes Doors After Bank Drains Account Smith. “This event has emptied our bank account and we now do not have the ability to meet payroll,” Smith wrote Thursday in his letter to board members, elected officials, and supporters. AAA CEO Ted Surh told the Independent his agency had no choice but to take the action. “We’re a nonprofit, just like the CAA,” Surh said. “We’re in a rock and a hard place.” His agency has a responsibility to pay back the state for money it had passed through to CAA for Meals on Wheels and which CAA had misspent in the past, Surh said. It’s up to the state, not his agency, to forgive that debt, he argued. He said he had asked the state if the debt could be forgiven, but did not obtain that permission. Elected officials are scrambling to help CAA reopen. New Haven State Rep. Juan Candelaria said he has appealed to DSS to advance CAA some contractual payments a month early so it can meet payroll. He also asked the state banking commissioner, Jorge Perez of New Haven, to examine whether the bank had the right to withdraw all the money. “Those are federal dollars. Did the bank have the authority to take those dollars? I don’t think that’s the case,” Candelaria said.
by PAUL BASS
New Haven Independent
One of New Haven’s largest antipoverty agencies abruptly shut its doors Friday. It couldn’t make payroll after its bank drained $200,000 from its account, in part to pay another social-service group to which it owed money. State politicians scurried Friday to find a way to reopen the doors at Community Action Agency on Whalley Avenue and address the longer-term problems that led to the closings. Amos Smith, CAA’s executive director, told the Independent that he informed his employees at the close of business Thursday that the agency didn’t have money to pay them. Smith also informed his board in a letter about the situation. “You have reached the Community Action Agency of New Haven,” a recorded message informed callers to the agency Friday. “We are closed today. However we look forward to serving you in the near future. If you need assistance, please call the state of Connecticut’s information line at 211. “We apologize for any inconvenience and wish you a blessed day.” CAA may reopen soon, at least for now: The city is expediting payments to the agency and transferring $44,834.32 Friday to try to keep the agency open, according to mayoral spokesman Laurence Grotheer. CAA, with a $2.1 million annual budget, has 17 full-time and 23 part-time workers, some of them former clients of the agency, according to Smith. Last year it served 10,400 families, or a total of about 25,000 people, with emergency-heat, food, weatherization, and senior and youth programs. Most of its contracted work comes through the state. The city has contracts with the agency to help people who come to warming centers and who are experiencing homelessness or coming out of prison. “What’s happening now is totally avoidable,” Smith said Friday in an interview. He said the state’s budget crunch has squeezed the agency, as the state has many other social-service groups. “This is part of the indirect attack on poor people and indirect attack on those organizations that serve poor people,” Smith said. “The budget at the state and the budget at the federal level have everybody rushing to find protection.” The trigger for the closing was a court action taken by another group,
MARKESHIA RICKS PHOTO
State Rep. Candelaria: Rushing to help.
CAA’s Amos Smith.
the Area Agency on Aging of South Central Connecticut (AAA). Since 2013, CAA has paid AAA $6,400 a month as part of a court settlement over a debt from the Meals on Wheels program for seniors that Smith said predated his tenure as director, which began 12 years ago. CAA had been meeting those payments, he said. It used profits earned on its weatherization program — the only one of its programs that generates unrestricted revenue that can be used for other purposes, according to Smith. Then the state budget crisis hit last year. Lawmakers failed to produce a new budget until November, four months late. Social service agencies like CAA were not getting paid. They were running out of cash. During that time, AAA agreed to give CAA a moratorium on debt payments. But after the new budget, CAA still couldn’t make payments. That’s because it had lost the contract for its weatherization program, and it wasn’t
allowed to use money from any other programs to meet debts. Smith said the weatherization program, which is partly funded by utilities, was transferred from one state agency, the Department of Social Services (DSS), to another, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). Rules changed, and instead of generating extra revenue, CAA was now losing money on the program, Smith said. CAA asked the Agency on Aging if it could restructure the debt payment plan. The Agency on Aging instead made use of the terms of its court settlement: It declared the debt in default. Last week it obtained a Superior Court warrant and presented it to Liberty Bank, where CAA has its account. Liberty responded by withdrawing $39,000 from CAA’s account to pay the Agency on Aging. Liberty also exercised its rights under the terms of a line of credit it provides CAA. It withdrew $156,000 from CAA’s account. Which left CAA broke, according to
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“I got a complaint, and I’m looking into it,” Perez told the Independent. “We’ll make sure that all the rules and regulations are followed.” Liberty Bank CEO Chandler Howard did not immediately respond Friday morning to a phone call seeking comment. Meanwhile, Smith said that employees from other community action agencies in the state might be coming to the Whalley Avenue office to pitch in on Friday so at least the emergency-heating program can function and people can stay warm. State DSS learned only late Thursday that the agency would close on Friday, according to spokesman David Dearborn. He said DSS officials are speaking Friday morning with members of the statewide association community action agencies to help with contingency plans in wake of the “sudden shutdown.” “We are very concerned of the impact of this action on those in need in the New Haven catchment area, especially those who need delivery authorizations and those with pending applications for” emergency heating fuel, Dearborn stated. If it doesn’t work out to have workers from other cities come to the New Haven office, he said, DSS might shift the emergency heating program temporarily to another city’s office.
Tickets at XLCenter.com
THE INNER-CITY NEWS
February 14, 2018
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February 20, 2018
Alicia Boler Davis Selected 2018 Black Engineer of the Year
Baltimore, MD — US Black Engineer (USBE) magazine’s annual BEYA STEM Conference will recognize GM Executive Vice President, Global Manufacturing Alicia Boler Davis with the Black Engineer of the Year Award on Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018, at the BEYA Gala in Washington Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, DC. Aligned with the mission of USBE, one of the oldest diversity magazines for scientific and technical careers, and USBE‘s BEYA STEM Conference that promotes achievement and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, Ms. Boler Davis is active in providing inspiration and motivation for middle school girls who like math and science, mentoring at General Motors, and speaking to college students on leadership, and driving change. Numerous organizations and publications have recognized Boler Davis for her community service. She serves on the board of directors at General Mills, is a member of the Northwestern University McCormick Advisory Council and a board trustee of the Care House of Oakland County. Boler Davis also serves as Executive Liaison for the GM WOMEN leadership board. Alicia Boler Davis was named executive vice president, General Motors Global Manufacturing in June 2016. Her responsibilities include manufacturing engineering and labor relations. She is a member of the GM Senior Leadership Team and the GM Korea Board of Directors. She reports to
GM CEO and Chairman Mary Barra. Prior to this assignment, Boler Davis was senior vice president, Global Connected Customer Experience since December 2014, where she led the company’s connected customer activities, including infotainment, OnStar and GM’s Urban Active personal mobility initiatives. In February 2012, Boler Davis was appointed U.S. vice president, Customer Experience. Later that year, her role was expanded to vice president, Global Quality, and U.S. Customer Experience. Under her leadership, GM improved vehicle quality and fundamentally redefined customer care and its interaction with customers through social media channels and Customer Engagement Centers. Previously, Boler Davis was simultaneously the Plant manager of the Michigan Orion Assembly and Pontiac Stamping facilities, as well as vehicle line director and vehicle chief engineer, North America Small Cars, positions she held until January 2012. Prior to that, she was plant manager at the Lansing, Mich., Consolidated Operations and Arlington Assembly in Texas, where she was the first African-American woman to be a plant manager at a GM vehicle manufacturing plant. Boler Davis began her GM career in 1994 as a manufacturing engineer at the Midsize/Luxury Car Division in Warren, Mich. During her career, she has held many positions of increasing responsibility in Manufacturing, Engineering and Product Development. Boler Davis has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from North-
— General Motors executive will be the sixth woman in the 32-year history of the scientific and technical awards to be named Black Engineer of the Year —
western University, a master’s degree in engineering science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Indiana University. When Boler Davis accepts the torch as the thirty-second Black Engineer of the Year in the nation’s capital February 2018, she will be the sixth woman to receive this award from the Council of Engineering Deans of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, which graduate more than 33 percent of all black engineers in the United States. The list includes Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Wanda Austin, former president and CEO of The
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Aerospace Corporation, Lydia W. Thomas, former president and CEO of Mitretek Systems (now Noblis), and Stephanie C. Hill, senior vice president of Corporate Strategy and Business Development at Lockheed Martin Corporation, a longtime corporate supporter of the annual BEYA STEM Conference. As the 2018 Black Engineer of the Year nominee, Boler Davis is recognized as a global ambassador of goodwill for underrepresented minorities in science and technology, and for women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). She will keynote the 2018 Council of Engineering Deans of Historically Black
Colleges and Universities meeting at one of the historically black colleges and universities with ABET-accreditation. About US Black Engineer Magazine US Black Engineer & Information Technology (USBE) magazine is published by Career Communications Group, Inc., a leading diversity media company. The publication is devoted to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and to promoting opportunities in these fields for black Americans. About the BEYA STEM Conference USBE magazine’s BEYA STEM Conference has been held annually during Black History Month for more than 30 years to honor the innovation and significant accomplishments of scientists and engineers. At the conference, the Council of Engineering Deans of Historically Black Colleges and Universities advance issues such as STEM education, diversity and inclusion, and opportunity. The BEYA STEM program has impacted thousands of American students since 1995 by providing visible leadership and training so youth can be better prepared to enter today’s workplace. Sponsors of the BEYA Gala at the BEYA STEM Conference include Lockheed Martin Corporation, Aerotek, and the Council of Engineering Deans of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Visit http://intouch.ccgmag.com for more details.
THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - February 20, 2018
Stetson Library: The Next Chapter HELP STETSON LIBRARY MOVE INTO THE NEW Q HOUSE
Celebrating Black History Month and our legacy of providing quality healthcare for all.
“We don’t just need a place for books—we need a space for people to learn, to be challenged, to come together. A library is not just a home for books, it’s a home for the community.” - Diane Brown, Stetson Branch Manager
Thanks to a generous challenge grant from the Seedlings Foundation, you can double the impact of your donation. All gifts between $50 - $10,000 will be matched dollar for dollar! Donate online at nextstetson.org or by check to: NHFPL Foundation - Stetson Library, 133 Elm St, New Haven, CT 06510
Visit our newest location at 122 Wilmot Road in New Haven! The NHFPL Foundation is a 501(c)(3) exempt organization; gifts are fully deductible under federal tax regulations.
203-503-3000 • www.cornellscott.org
RP inner city news jan.qxp_Layout 1 1/10/18 3:13 PM Page 1
THE RIDGEFIELD PLAYHOUSE Valentine’s Day Party with
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February 14 § 6:30pm Gala § 8pm Performance
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Tribute to Diana Ross, Donna Summer, Tina Turner and Whitney Houston
April 7
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THE INNER-CITY NEWS
Happy Birthday Frederick Douglass! February 14, 2018
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February 20, 2018
Happy Birthday Frederick Douglass! Journalist, Civil Rights Activist, Government Official, Author February 14, 1818 - February 20, 1895 from Biography.com Famed 19th-century author and orator Frederick Douglass was an eminent human rights leader in the anti-slavery movement and the first African-American citizen to hold a high U.S. government rank. Who Was Frederick Douglass?
Abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was born into slavery sometime around 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. He became one of the most famous intellectuals of his time, advising presidents and lecturing to thousands on a range of causes, including women’s rights and Irish home rule. Among Douglass’ writings are several autobiographies eloquently describing his experiences in slavery and his life after the Civil War, including the wellknown work Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. He died on February 20, 1895. ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave’ In New Bedford, Massachusetts, Frederick Douglass joined a black church and regularly attended abolitionist meetings. He also subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison’s weekly journal The Liberator. At the urging of Garrison, Douglass wrote and published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, an American Slave, in 1845. The book was a best-seller in the United States and was translated into several European languages. Although the work garnered Douglass many fans, some critics expressed doubt that a former slave with no formal education could have produced such elegant prose. Other Books by Frederick Douglass
glass Born? Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland, around 1818. The exact year and date of Douglass’ birth are unknown, though later in life he chose to celebrate it on February 14. Family
Douglass published three versions of his autobiography during his lifetime, revising and expanding on his work each time. My Bondage and My Freedom appeared in 1855. In 1881, Douglass published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which he revised in 1892.
Douglass initially lived with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. At a young age, Douglass was selected to live in the home of the plantation owners, one of whom may have been his father. His mother, who was an intermittent presence in his life, died when he was around 10.
When and Where Was Frederick Dou-
Learning to Read and Write
Defying a ban on teaching slaves to read and write, Baltimore slaveholder Hugh Auld’s wife Sophia taught Frederick Douglass the alphabet when he was around 12. When Auld forbade his wife to offer more lessons, Douglass continued to learn from white children and others in the neighborhood. It was through reading that Douglass’ ideological opposition to slavery began to take shape. He read newspapers avidly and sought out political writing and literature as much as possible. In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator with clarifying and defining his views on human rights. Douglass shared his newfound knowledge with other enslaved people. Hired out to William Freeland, he taught other slaves on the plantation to read the New Testament at a weekly church service.
Interest was so great that in any week, more than 40 slaves would attend lessons. Although Freeland did not interfere with the lessons, other local slave owners were less understanding. Armed with clubs and stones, they dispersed the congregation permanently. With Douglass moving between the Aulds, he was later made to work for Edward Covey, who had a reputation as a “slave-breaker.” Covey’s constant abuse nearly broke the 16-year-old Douglass psychologically. Eventually, however, Douglass fought back, in a scene rendered powerfully in his first autobiography. After losing a physical confrontation with Douglass, Covey never beat him again. Douglass tried to escape from slavery twice before he succeeded.
Stop Waiting for Republicans to Dump Trump. They Won’t. By Bill Fletcher, Jr., NNPA Newswire Columnist After every Trump outrage, we go through a similar routine. Trump says or does something that most sane people believe to be over the top; he is roundly condemned; some Republicans shake their heads; masses of people ask that something be done… and then it all fades into the next news cycle. What was different in connection with Trump’s recent alleged remarks against Africa, Haiti and Latin
America—the notorious “s–thole remarks”—was that some Republicans, who were in the room at the time of the alleged remarks, first played dumb and then claimed that the remarks had not been verbalized. At that point, there was laughter in the audience. Yet, in talk show after talk show there is a question that keeps getting asked: why isn’t something being done about this situation? Why can’t Trump be brought back to the standard of a respectable politician? The answer is not very difficult, but has several parts. Here goes. First, he is not now nor has he ever been a “respectable” politician. Whether as a reality show celebrity or candidate for office or now as President, he has insisted on being provoc-
ative. He believes in stirring things up. It is this modus operandi that inspired his right-wing populist base. They were not looking for what they believed as more of the same. On top of that it remains far from clear that Trump would understand how to be a respectable politician in either case. It seems to run against his nature. Second, who will do anything about Trump? The Republicans control both houses of Congress, the White House and the U.S. Supreme Court. They look at Trump as a blunt force object that serves the interests of their agenda. Many of them may be personally uncomfortable with him, but they know that if they move to take him down, they may provide momentum for the Democrats. They would rather that the United States become and re-
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main a global laughingstock, than lose the political edge. Third, the so-called moderate Republicans who are deeply uncomfortable with the crudeness of Trump worry that they will be challenged in Republican primaries by the extreme Right should they move against Trump. Perhaps they wonder and hope that there will be deeper revelations in the Mueller investigation of alleged Trump/ Russia ties, but for now they will do nothing.
Thus, holding Trump accountable is a matter of political power. It is not a matter of morality and good will. If those who see the Trump regime as a threat to humanity do not engage in mass political action, including, but not limited to, electoral politics, the
situation will go from bad to worse. By worse, I mean growing authoritarianism. And here we must all be clear that Trump’s infatuation with authoritarianism is not a simple rhetorical device to increase the ratings. It seems to reflect the centerpiece of his worldview: Life is about Trump; Trump is the savior of the U.S.; Trump’s ideas are the greatest that humankind has every experienced. Those who get in the way of Trump’s truth, therefore, are enemies who must be removed. The challenge is now ours. Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a talk show host, writer and activist. Follow him on Twitter @BillFletcherJr, Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - February 20, 2018
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THE INNER-CITY NEWS
February 14, 2018
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February 20, 2018
Meet the First Black Woman on the U.S. Olympic Speedskating Team
Born in Ghana, Biney and his father moved to Virginia in hopes of better opportunities. Little did they know that those opportunities would include going to Pyeongchang to compete for the Winter Olympics. Yet, she doesn’t put too much expectation on winning, she also wanted to make the most out of this experience. “I don’t really feel pressure to be the first to get a medal or anything like that,” she told HuffPost back when she was still preparing for the competition. “I just want to go out there, do my best and have fun, and experience the Olympics. That’s what I’m here for. I’m here to win, obviously, but also have fun.” She is now looking forward to the quarterfinals on Tuesday, and possibly semifinals and the ultimate A final when the medals will be settled. Follow her on Instagram at @biney. biney
Nationwide — 18-year old Maame Biney is the first Black woman ever to join the U.S. speedskating team for the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. She has already advanced to the quarterfinal round after finishing second in the opening round on Saturday. Biney stepped onto the ice for her Olympic debut on Saturday to compete in the 500-meter short-track event. Even though a first-timer surrounded by seasoned competitors, Biney’s faith did not rattle and her veteran-like performance secured her a spot in the quarterfinals. Biney finished second in the opening round in her heat (43.665 seconds) behind China’s Fan Kexin (43.350 seconds). Her incredible block and strong maneuver are what held off South Korea’s Kim Alang who finished third, ensuring her advancement. However, fellow American Lana Gehring failed to qualify.
Dr. Jane C. Wright: A Revolutionary In Chemotherapy & Cancer Treatment by Gemma Greene, BDO Staff Writer
A major breakthrough in cancer treatment was the development of chemotherapy in the 1940s. The first chemical noted for its anti-cancer effects were nitrogen mustards. Dr. Jane Cooke Wright played a fundamental role in this story. During her career she would break multiple race and gender barriers and become one of the most distinguished physician-scientists in modern medicine. In fact, her work revolutionized cancer research and how physicians treat cancer. Born in New York City in 1919, Jane Cooke Wright was the first of two daughters born to Corrine (Cooke) and Louis Tompkins Wright. Her father was one of the first African American graduates of Harvard Medical School, and he set a high standard for his daughters. Dr. Louis Wright was the first African American doctor appointed to a staff position at a municipal hospital in New York City and, in 1929, became the city’s first African American police surgeon. He also established the Cancer Research Center at Harlem Hospital. Jane Wright graduated with honors from New York Medical College in 1945. She interned at Bellevue Hospital from 1945 to 1946, serving nine months as an assistant resident in internal medicine. In January 1949, Dr. Wright was hired as a staff physician with the New York City Public Schools, and continued as a visiting physician at Harlem
Hospital. After six months she left the school position to join her father, director of the Cancer Research Foundation at Harlem Hospital. Chemotherapy was still mostly experimental at that time. At Harlem Hospital her father had already redirected the focus of foundation research to investigating anti-cancer chemicals. Dr. Louis Wright worked in the lab and Dr. Jane Wright would perform the patient trials. In 1949, the two began testing a new chemical on human leukemias and cancers of the lymphatic system. Several patients who participated in the trials had remission and they knew they were on to something. In 1952, following her father’s death, Dr. Jane Wright was appointed the director of the Cancer Research Foundation at Harlem Hospital. In 1955 she became an associate professor of surgical research and director of cancer chemotherapy research at New York University Medical Center, and she turned her research program towards personalized medicine. Wright pioneered efforts in utilizing patient tumor biopsies for drug testing, to help select drugs that may work specifically against a particular tumor. In these experiments, a small piece of the tumor was excised surgically and cultured in the laboratory. Once these cells were coaxed to grow, an arduous process in the 1950s, tumor cells were treated with different drugs in culture to help predict which drugs may produce the most robust effect in the actual patient. This is another revolutionary
idea from Dr. Wright, which underlies the contemporary concept of precision medicine. While pursuing private research at the New York Medical College, she implemented a new comprehensive program to study stroke, heart disease, and cancer, and created another program to instruct doctors in chemo-
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therapy. Dr. Wright led groups of oncologists to China, the former Soviet Union, Africa, and Eastern Europe to treat cancer patients. This work spanned her entire career, as her first publication about these journeys was in 1957 following her visit to treat cancer patients in Ghana.
In addition to research and clinical work, Wright was professionally active. In 1964, she was one of seven founders of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and in 1971, she was the first woman elected president… … of the New York Cancer Society. Wright was appointed associated dean and head of the Cancer Chemotherapy Department at New York Medical College in 1967, apparently the highest ranked African American physician at a prominent medical college at the time, and certainly the highest ranked African American woman physician. She was appointed to the National Cancer Advisory Board (also known as the National Cancer Advisory Council) by US President Lyndon Johnson, serving from 1966 to 1970 and the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke (1964–65). Wright was also internationally active, leading delegations of oncologists to China and the Soviet Union, and countries in Africa and Eastern Europe. She worked in Ghana in 1957 and in Kenya in 1961, treating cancer patients. From 1973 to 1984 she served as vice president of the African Research and Medical Foundation Wright was the recipient of many awards, including the honorary Doctor of Medical Sciences degree from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. Wright retired in 1985 and was appointed emerita professor at New York Medical College in 1987.
THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - February 20, 2018
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“Black Panther”
February 14, 2018
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February 20, 2018 Con’t from page 6
Stars and Creators Reflect On Its Arrival
By Ronda Racha Penrice, Urban News Service
Fans, who bought a record-setting number of advance tickets, weren’t the only ones anticipating the Feb. 16 opening of “Black Panther,” Marvel’s historic first black superhero film. “I’ve been waiting a long time. I was just so, so excited because this was a movie [where] we all felt a lot of ownership, that we thoroughly enjoyed making,” said Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o during the film’s January 30 press conference at the Montage Beverly Hills the morning after its glitzy purple carpet premiere. Nyong’o plays Nakia, T’Challa/Black Panther’s love interest. Although T’Challa/Black Panther, whose superpowers include speed, strength, night vision, claws and more aided by his country’s powerful metal, Vibranium, was first introduced in the “Fantastic Four” comic book series in 1966, months before the founding of the iconic freedom-fighting Black Panther Party, “Black Panther” is the character’s first-ever live action film. Reportedly Jack Kirby, who created T’Challa/Black Panther with Stan Lee, took the name from the all-black U.S. Army 761st Tank Battalion of World War II dubbed “the Black Panthers.” Chadwick Boseman, well-known for his roles as such real-life heroes as Jackie Robinson and James Brown, is the first to ever play him on film, appearing in 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War” to great enthusiasm. He returns in “Avengers: Infinity War” May 4. “Black Panther” follows T’Challa/ Black Panther’s journey, in the aftermath of his father’s death, to lead his technologically advanced nation, Wakanda, which the world believes is impoverished. Featuring black actors from the United States, England and various parts of Africa, “Black Panther” is the first Marvel film set in a blackruled nation. As such, the film challenges the negative stereotypes in which the world typically views African nations. It also raises larger questions about what a successful never colonialized African country might look like and what role it would play in today’s global landscape. The film’s larger significance was clearly important to Nyong’o and her fellow cast members – who included Boseman, Michael B. Jordan (Erik Killmonger), Forest Whitaker (Zuri), Angela Bassett (T’Challa/Black Panther’s stepmother Ramonda), “Get Out” Oscar nominee
Daniel Kaluuya (W’Kabi) and more – during the Hollywood press conference where Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige and Ryan Coogler, the film’s co-writer and director, were also present. Jordan, who plays the main villain Erik Killmonger that challenges T’Challa/Black Panther’s ascension as Wakanda’s king, said he only truly grasped the film’s importance after seeing it for the first time at the premiere. “I couldn’t describe that feeling before actually sitting down and watching that film and seeing yourself on screen, not just me personally, but people that look like me in power and having those socially relevant themes but in a movie that you want to sit down and watch and enjoy,” Jordan said. As someone from both the United States and Zimbabwe, Danai Gurira, who plays Okoye, leader of the female warriors known as the Dora Milaje who protect the king, had an
even more positive response to the fictional Wakanda and its very real continent. Gurira shared that she appreciated the departure from the usual depictions of African countries as impoverished. “You see the power and potential of where you’re from, but you see how skewed it’s viewed by the world and how misrepresented it is and how distorted it is or besieged by the world so often,” she said. “[“Black Panther” is] kind of a salve to those wounds to see this world brought to life this way and to see all the potential and power of all the different African culturalisms and aspects of our being that’s actually celebrated,” she said. “Black Panther” is also noteworthy for its elevation of black women in the superhero genre, be they strong like Gurira’s Okoye, humanitarian like Nyong’o’s Nakia, royal like Angela Bassett’s Ramonda or STEM geniuses like Letitia Wright’s Shuri who is T’Challa/Black Panther’s sister. That elevation was also present behind the scenes through the work of production designer Hannah Beachler, Oscar-nominated costume designer Ruth
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E. Carter and hair department head Camille Friend. “How it was written is that the men are always behind the women as well so no one is undermined,” said Wright of the film and her character. “The men are not like ‘you shouldn’t be in technology, you shouldn’t be in math.’ T’Challa is like ‘go ahead sis, this is your department, this is your domain, like kill it.’” Boseman attributes that gender balance to the vision that is Wakanda. “The idea of the next generation being smarter, being better than you, is a concept that they would have evolved to,” said Boseman. “So even though she’s reared in the same generation, she’s my younger sister, she benefits from whatever I have. So you want your sons and daughters to be better than you were. So that concept is a Wakandan concept.” Coogler, previously known for his independent social justice film “Fruitvale Station” and the latest installment of the Rocky franchise, “Creed,” both starring Jordan, said he was cautious not to tamper too much with the “Black Panther” spirit so well established by the comic books in the script he wrote with Joe Robert Cole. “You can go through our film and see something in there probably from every writer that has touched T’Challa’s character and the “Black Panther” comics, from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s initial runs to Don McGregor to Christopher Priest, Reginald Hudlin, Jonathan Hickman and Ta-Nehisi Coates,” he said, naming most of the franchise writers. “The character has got a long history and such rich stuff to mine and each writer left their own mark.” When the film’s radicalism was singled out, Feige reminded those in the room that “Black Panther” was born radical. “Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and the whole Marvel bullpen created Wakanda and created T’Challa and created Black Panther and made him a smarter, more accomplished character than any of the other white characters in the mid-1960s,” he said. That integrity, Feige continued, guided this Marvel team. “If they had the guts to do that in the mid-1960s,” he said, “the least we [could] do is live up to that and allow this story to be told the way it needed to be told and not shy away from things that the Marvel founders didn’t shy away from in the height of the Civil Rights era.”
Bus Fare Hike
the state scheduled in the upcoming weeks. The first hearing is in our town. It’s scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 20, from 5 to 8 p.m. at 200 Orange St. At the hearings, as opposed to Jankovich’s informational appearance in Fair Haven this past Thursday, public testimony will be taken regarding the increases and is to be considered when the department drafts its final report on the proposed fare increases and service reductions. During the statewide hearings, public comments can also be placed electronically through March 9 at this email address. Jankovich told Fair Haveners that the State Transportation Fund— the bank account that pays the day-in and dayout operational costs of the system is going broke. In the absence of other solutions, in addition to the bus fare increases, a rail fare increase would take effect. The rail increased would be rolled out in three phases: 10 percent on July 1, 2018; a year of relief in 2019; 5 percent on July 1, 2020; and 5 percent on July 1, 2021. Rail service reductions would also take effect on or about July 1, 2018. However, no bus services reductions have been proposed. The DOT summary also proposes elimination of off-peak and weekend service as well as significant reductions in peak period service on Shore Line East. A draft report of the fare increases is scheduled to be posted, when complete, on the DOT website, including a fare equity analysis being conducted by Prof. Nicholas Lownes at the University of Connecticut Garcia said the point of the analysis is to determine whether the fare increases may have an adverse impact on low-income or minority populations. Jankovich summarized Gov. Malloy’s proposed solution highlights. They include a seven-cent increase in the gas tax; the $3 statewide tire fee; a car sales tax; and tolls on the state’s highways, to be in effect by 2023. Neither the solutions nor the dramatic fare increases elicited a comment or question from the 40 people or so in attendance at the Fair Haven meeting. Garcia said she was a little surprised at the muted reaction. Jankovich was not. “January 30 was the first public notice” of this information, he pointed out. He said the wave of the information had not yet fully landed, but it will. He urged folks to go to the Feb. 20 meeting at 200 Orange, where a full DOT staff will be on hand to address the whole range of issues.
THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - February 20, 2018
Open Houses Will Be Held February 15th & 28th, 3pm - 5pm For more information, contact Karen Martin at 203-234-7611 / kmartin@aces.org 31 Temple Street, North Haven, CT 06473 www.aces.org/village Imagine.
Inform.
Invest.
Inspire.
A school that honors Black History, and contributes to it.
Working together to build a stronger community – now and forever.
“But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved COMMUNITY. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends.”
FACT: Edward A. Bouchet, a graduate from Yale College in 1874 was the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. in the U.S., in physics. He was valedictorian of Hopkins School, class of 1870. Today, Hopkins continues to attract and develop remarkable students. During the summer, we offer courses that are open to any student entering grades 3-12 in the fall of 2018. It’s a chance to experience how Hopkins prepares students to study, learn, lead, and take part in sports. Join us.
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Come be apart of our COMMUNITY. Contact us to learn about the many ways you can strengthen our community and create a personal legacy that benefits the nonprofit(s) that matter most to you. Summer Sessions offered from
www.cfgnh.org | 203-777-7068
June 25 – August 3, 2018
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Information and registration information at hopkins.edu 203.397.1001 • New Haven, CT
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TRANSFER STATION LABORER Off load trailers, reload for trans/disp. Lift 50 lbs., operate industrial powered trucks and forklift. Asbestos Worker Handler Training a +. Resumes to RED Technologies, LLC, 173 Pickering St., Portland, CT 06480; Fax 860-342-1022; or Email to lkelly@redtransfer.com RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE.
Certified Police Officer
The Town of Wallingford is currently accepting applications for current Connecticut P.O.S.T.C Certified Police Officers. Applicants must be active P.O.S.T.C Certified Police Officers in good standing with their current department, or have retired in good standing, still having a current certification status with P.O.S.T.C. This Process will consist of Written, Oral, Polygraph, Psychological, Medical Exam, and Background Investigation. The Town of Wallingford offers a competitive pay rate $62,753.60 - $74,963.20 annually. Application deadline will be March 5, 2018 Apply: Human Resources Department, Town of Wallingford, 45 South Main St., Wallingford, CT. phone: (203) 294-2080; fax: (203) 294-2084. EOE.
Director of Public Works Town of Portland, CT (EOE) Suburban municipality of 9,400 residents; supervises 25 employees; 1.8 million budget; 75 miles of roads. Requires a bachelor’s degree in engineering or business/public administration plus seven years of progressively responsible administration experience, including three years of supervisory capacity. Must possess valid CT driver’s license. Salary range DOQ; non-union with fringe benefits. Subject to pre-employment drug/alcohol testing. Deadline: 3/2/2018. Submit resume with Town application & 3 letters of reference to: Office of the First Selectwoman, P.O. Box 71, Portland, CT 06480-0071
ELECTRICIAN/APPRENTICE – Telecommunications company looking for low voltage cable installer familiar with all aspects of indoor & outdoor cable installation, aerial bucket work, pole work, messenger, lashing, manhole & underground installation. Company is also looking for apprentices to train. Good salary with benefits. Fax resume to 860-282-0424 or mail to Fibre Optic Plus, LLC 585 Nutmeg Road North, South Windsor, CT 06074 Attn: Don Ballsieper Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer
The Town of East Haven is currently conducting examinations to fill the following positions: Secretary III, Grade Level 11-Qualified candidates must possess an Associate’s Degree or higher and 2 years of experience. The starting salary is $38,945.30/year.
Accountant I-Qualified candidates must possess a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting plus 2 years of experience. The starting salary $58,366.44/year. Candidates bilingual in Spanish are encouraged to apply. The town offers an excellent benefit package. The applications for both positions are available at http://www.townofeasthavenct.org/civil-service-commission/pages/job-notices-and-tests or The Civil Service Office, 250 Main Street, East Haven CT and the deadline to apply is February 9, 2018. The Town of East Haven is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Minorities, Females, Veterans and Handicapped are encouraged to apply.
Listing: Logistics Assistant - Immediate Opening
High Volume petroleum oil company is seeking a full time skilled Logistics Assistant with previous petroleum oil, retail or commercial dispatching experience for days, shared on call duties and weekends required also. Must possess, excellent attention to detail, ability to manage multiple projects, excel proficiency and good computer skills required. Send resume to: Human Resource Dept., PO Box 388, Guilford, CT 06437. ********An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer**********
February 14, 2018
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February 20, 2018
Class A Driver
Class A CDL Driver with 3 years min. exp. HAZMAT Endorsed. (Tractor/Triaxle/Roll-off)
Some overnights may be required. FAX resumes to RED Technologies, at 860.342-1042; Email: HR@redtechllc.com Mail or in person: 173 Pickering Street, Portland, CT 06480. RED Technologies, LLC is An EOE.
TRUCK DRIVERS We are looking to hire Class A and Class B truck drivers for the upcoming paving season. Applicants must have a clean driving record and be able to pass pre-employment drug and alcohol screenings. Experience is a plus, but willing to train the right candidates. Apply in person or fax resume to: (860) 376-3909, Attn: Christina Walsh
American Industries Inc.
630 Plainfield Road Jewett City, CT 06351 No phone calls please
The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport Invitation for Bid (IFB) Moving and Storage Services Agency Wide Solicitation Number: 097-AM-18-S The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport d/b/a Park City Communities (PCC) is currently seeking bids from qualified moving companies for Moving and Storage Service. Solicitation package will be available on January 16, 2018. To obtain a copy of the solicitation you must send your request to bids@parkcitycommunities.org, please reference solicitation number and title on the subject line. A pre-bid conference will be held at 301 Bostwick Ave, Bridgeport, CT 06604 on January 30, 2018, @ 10:00 a.m. Although 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 February 14, 2018 @ 3:00 p.m. Answers to all the questions will be posted on PCC’s Website: www.parkcitycommunities.org. Seal bids will be received until February 28, 2018 @ 2:00 PM, at which time the bids will be publicly opened and read aloud.
The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport
Request for Proposal (RFP) for Security Guard Services – Trumbull Gardens Solicitation Number: 098-SEC-18-S The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport d/b/a Park City Communities (PCC) is currently requesting proposals from qualified security firms to provide security guard services at Trumbull Gardens a public housing complex in the city of Bridgeport. Solicitation package will be available on January 16, 2018. To obtain a copy of the solicitation you must send your request to bids@parkcitycommunities.org, please reference solicitation number and title on the subject line. A pre-proposal conference will be held at 505 Trumbull Ave, Bridgeport, CT 06606 on January 31, 2018, @ 10:00 a.m. Although 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 February 14, 2018 @ 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 28, 2018 @ 3:00 PM, to Ms. Caroline Sanchez, Director of Procurement, 150 Highland Ave, Bridgeport, CT 06604. Late proposals will not be accepted.
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Union Company seeks: Tractor Trailer Driver for Heavy & Highway Construction Equipment. Must have a CDL License, clean driving record, capable of operating heavy equipment; be willing to travel throughout the Northeast & NY. We offer excellent hourly rate &for excellent Invitation Bids benefits Contact: Dana Briere Phone: Temporary Staffing Email: Services 860-243-2300 dana.briere@garrityasphalt.com The Housing Authority of the City of New Women & Minority Applicants are Haven to is apply d/b/a Elm Cityencouraged Communities currently seeking Action/ Equal Opportunity Bids Affirmative for Temporary Staffing Services. A complete Employer copy of the requirement may be obtained from
ELM CITY COMMUNITIES
Elm City’s Vendor Collaboration Portal https://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway beginning on Monday, January 29, 2018 at 3:00PM.
GARRITY ASPHALT RECLAIMING , INC Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc seeks: Reclaimer Operators and Milling Operators with current licensing and clean driving record. We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits Contact: Rick Tousignant Phone: 860243-2300 Email: rick.tousignant@garrityasphalt.com Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming Inc Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity seeks: Construction Equipment Mechanic Employer
preferably experienced in Reclaiming and Road Milling Equipment. We offer factory training on equipment we operate. Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming Inc Location: Bloomfield CT seeks: Construction Equipment Mechanic Contact: James Burke Phone: 860preferably experienced in Reclaiming and 243-2300 Road Milling Equipment. We offer factory email: jim.burke@garrityasphalt.com training on equipment we operate. Women & Minority Applicants are Location: Bloomfield CT to apply Contact:encouraged James Burke Phone: 860Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity 243-2300 Employer We offer excellent hourly rate & email: jim.burke@garrityasphalt.com Women excellent & Minoritybenefits Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits
Union Company seeks: Tractor Trailer Driver for Heavy & Highway Construction Equipment. Must have a CDL License, clean driving record, capable of operating Union Company seeks: Tractor Trailer heavy equipment; be willing to travel Driver for Heavy & Highway Construction throughout the Northeast & NY. We offer Equipment. Must have a CDL License, excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits clean driving record, capable of operating Contact: Dana be Briere Phone: heavy equipment; willing to travel 860-243-2300 Email: throughout the Northeast & NY. We offer dana.briere@garrityasphalt.com excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits Women & Minority Applicants are Contact: Dana Briere Phone: encouraged to apply 860-243-2300 Email: Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity dana.briere@garrityasphalt.com Employer Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer
THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - February 20, 2018
Field Engineer
BA/BS in Civil Engineering or Construction Management. 2-5 yrs. experience. OSHA Certified. Proficient in reading contract plans and specifications. Resumes to RED Technologies, LLC, 10 Northwood Dr., Bloomfield, CT 06002; Fax 860.218.2433; Email resumes to info@redtechllc.com. RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE.
Project Manager Environmental Remediation Division 3-5 years exp. and Bachelor’s Degree, 40-Hr. Hazwoper Training Req. Forward resumes to RED Technologies, LLC, 10 Northwood Dr., Bloomfield, CT 06002;
Fax 860.218.2433; or Email to HR@redtechllc.com
RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE.
Class A CDL Driver
with 3 years min. exp. HAZMAT Endorsed. (Tractor/Triaxle/Roll-off) Some overnights may be required. FAX resumes to RED Technologies, at 860.342-1042; Email: HR@redtechllc.com Mail or in person: 173 Pickering Street, Portland, CT 06480. RED Technologies, LLC is An EOE.
Town of Bloomfield
Custodian $22.31 hourly For details go to www.bloomfieldct.org
Waste Treatment Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator (Attendant II): Operates and maintains equipment and processes in a municipal sewage treatment plant. Requires a H.S. diploma or GED. In addition, must possess a State of Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Class II Operator or higher certification; or a Class II Operatorin-training or higher certification. Must possess and maintain a valid driver’s license. $25.38 to $30.24 hourly / $22.59 - $30.24 based on certifications & experience plus an excellent fringe benefit package. Apply: Personnel Department, Town of Wallingford, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492. The closing date will be that date the 50th application form/resume is received, or February 13, 2018, whichever occurs first. EOE
The Housing Authority of the City of Norwalk, CT is requesting proposals for the painting of interior vacant units.
Proposal documents can be viewed and printed at www.
norwalkha.org<http://www.norwalkha.org> under the Business section RFP’s/RFQ’s Norwalk Housing is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Curtis O. Law, Executive Director.
Contract Administrator
1907 Hartford Turnpike North Haven, CT 06473
Galasso Materials is seeking a motivated, organized individual to be its next Contract Administrator. This position provides administration associated with our paving division. Responsibilities include billing, payroll, collection, lien tracking, coordinating with outside legal counsel, and job cost. Experience is preferred but willing to train the right candidate. Salary commensurate with experience and educational achievement. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE. Reply to Hiring Manager, PO Box 1776, East Granby, CT 06026. EOE/M/F/D/V.
Insulation company offering good pay and benefits.
Dispatcher
KMK Insulation Inc. Mechanical Insulator position. Please mail resume to above address.. MAIL ONLY This company is an Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer.
Common Ground seeks an Assistant Fa-
cilities Manager to be responsible for the care, upkeep and maintenance of Common Ground’s facilities. The Assistant Facilities Manager will supervise part time custodial staff. This is a full time, year round 40-hour per week position with benefits. Work hours will generally run from noon until 8 pm with some weekend hours required. For a more detailed job description and how to apply, please visit http://commongroundct. org/2017/10/common-ground-seeks-an-assistant-facilitiesmanager/Common Ground seeks an Assistant Facilities Manager to be responsible for the care, upkeep and maintenance of Common Ground’s facilities. The Assistant Facilities Manager will supervise part time custodial staff. This is a full time, year round 40-hour per week position with benefits. Work hours will generally run from noon until 8 pm with some weekend hours required. For a more detailed job description and how to apply, please visit http://commongroundct.org/2017/10/common-ground-seeks-an-assistant-facilities-manager/
Help Wanted. Immediate opening for opera-
tor for Heavy and Highway construction. Please call PJF Construction Corp. @ 860-888-9998. We are an equal opportunity employer M/F.
Galasso Materials is seeking a motivated, organized, detail-oriented candidate to join its truck dispatch office. Responsibilities include order entry and truck ticketing in a fast paced materials manufacturing and contracting company. You will have daily interaction with employees and customers as numerous truckloads of material cross our scales daily. We are willing to train the right individual that has a great attitude. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE. Reply to Hiring Manager, PO Box 1776, East Granby, CT 06026. EOE/M/F/D/V.
Hot Mix Asphalt Plant Technician & Paving Inspector There are multiple openings in Galasso Materials Quality Control Department. NETTCP certification is preferred, with at least one year of experience. Full time positions available. Your schedule must be flexible as sometimes night shifts are required. Must be able to lift and carry 50lb buckets. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE. Reply to Hiring Manager, PO Box 1776, East Granby, CT 06026. EOE/M/F/D/V.
Equipment Operators and Laborers Galasso Materials is seeking applicants for the 2018 paving season. Experience in paving operations is required. Must possess current OSHA 10 card, have a valid driver’s license, and own transportation. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE. Reply to Hiring Manager, PO Box 1776, East Granby, CT 06026. EOE/M/F/D/V.
Construction Truck and Equipment Head Mechanic
Large CT based Fence and Guard Rail contractor looking for experienced, self-motivated, responsible Head Mechanic. Responsibilities will include maintaining and repairing all company equipment and vehicles, updating asset lists and assuring all rolling stock is in compliance with state and federal regulations. Must have extensive diesel engine, electrical wiring and hydraulic systems experience. Top wages paid, company truck and benefits. AA/EOE Please send resume to Mpicard@atlasoutdoor.com
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PUBLIC NOTICE Project: West Woods Place Hamden, CT
SUBCONTRACTOR PRE-BID MEETING Tuesday, February 13, 2018 4 to 6:00 pm
Location: Haynes Construction Company 32 Progress Avenue, Seymour, CT 06483 (Follow Progress Ave all the way to the end, take a right and entrance will be on right/lower level)
INVITATION TO BID:
New Construction
One Building, 50 Units, Approx 63,682SF This is our Project, Taxable & No Wage Rates apply. This contract is subject to state set-aside and contract compliance requirements. Bid Due Date:
Subcontractor bids due: Tuesday, February 27, 2018 @ 5 pm Project documents available via ftp link below: http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=westwoodsplace Fax or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dlang@haynesct.com HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses Haynes Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 AA/EEO EMPLOYER
Meterman II Position involves the installation and repair of all types of water meters, including outside reading type, used on the water system. Requires graduation from H.S., GED, or vocational school plus four (4) years employment in the water department of which two (2) years shall be in the Meter Department or an equivalent in experience and training. $23.12 to $28.06 hourly plus an excellent fringe benefit package. The closing date for applications is February 20, 2018 or the date we receive the fiftieth (50) application whichever occurs first. Apply: Department of Human Resources, Town of Wallingford, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492, (203) 294-2080. EOE.
DELIVERY PERSON NEEDED Part Time Delivery Needed One/Two Day a Week,
Must Have Own Vehicle If Interested call (203) 435-1387 TRANSFER STATION LABORER Off load trailers, reload for trans/disp. Lift 50 lbs., operate industrial powered trucks and forklift. Asbestos Worker Handler Training a +. Resumes to RED Technologies, LLC, 173 Pickering St., Portland, CT 06480; Fax 860-342-1022; or Email to lkelly@redtransfer.com RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE.
Roman J. Israel, Esq.
THE INNER-CITY NEWS
February 14, 2018
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February 20, 2018
DVD Features Denzel Washington’s Latest Oscar-Nominated Performance DVD Review by Kam Williams
WELL-WOMAN CHECK-UPS. IT’S WHAT WE DO.
Roman J. Israel (Denzel Washington) is a high-functioning savant on the autism spectrum who has been practicing law in L.A. for the past 36 years. The brilliant attorney has spent most of his career under the radar, writing legal briefs in a rear office for indigent criminal defendants, while his partner, William Henry Jackson, served as the face of the firm, whether cultivating clients or arguing their cases in the courtroom. This unorthodox arrangement worked well for Roman who, besides his disorder, is a longtime political activist dedicated to a progressive agenda, namely, to assist downtrodden individuals unfairly ensnared in the net of the prison-industrial complex. And because of that commitment, he’s been willing to work for far less pay than colleagues of his caliber. Consequently, the highly-principled lawyer has had to scrape by on a modest salary, living in the same dive for decades, where he subsisted on a steady diet of peanut butter sandwiches and jazz classics played on an old-fashioned turntable. Everything changes the day William Jackson suffers a heart attack and the two-person firm is forced to dissolve.
With 682,208 preventative check-ups, screenings, exams and counseling services last year to young women like you, we know women’s health care.
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Roman first applies for a position with a public interest non-profit that shares his values. But when the empathetic director (Carmen Ejogo) explains that she doesn’t have the money to hire an attorney, he resigns himself to joining a corporate firm where he’s soon teamed with a young associate (Colin Farrell) interested only in maximizing profits. This leaves Roman sitting on the horns of an ethical dilemma. Should he abandon his morals to keep a roof over his head? That is the question at the center of Roman J. Israel, Esq., a compelling character portrait written
and directed by Oscar-nominee Dan Gilroy (for Nightcrawler). The legendary Denzel Washington is quite convincing as well as moving, here, as a beleaguered soul afflicted with Asperberger’s syndrome. And the Academy does have a history of rewarding thespians playing impaired characters, including Eddie Redmayne (2014) for wheelchair-bound Stephen Hawking (ALS); Colin Firth (2010) for stuttering King George VI; Geoffrey Rush (1996) for mentally-ill David Helfgott; Tom Hanks (1994) for dimwitted Forest Gump; Tom Hanks (1993) for AIDS patient Andrew Beckett; Daniel Day-Lewis (1989) for cerebral palsy victim Christy Brown; and Dustin Hoffman (1988) for mathematics savant Rain Man. Win, lose or draw, Denzel deserves accolades aplenty for his powerful, Oscar-nominated performance. Excellent (4 stars) Rated PG-13 for violence and profanity Running time: 129 minutes Production Studio: Bron Creative / Cross Creek Pictures / Escape Artists / FZ /Macro Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment DVD Extras: 8 deleted scenes; Denzel Washington: Becoming Roman; The Making of Roman J. Israel, Esq.; and Colin Farrell: Discovering George.
THE INNER-CITY NEWS February 14, 2018 - February 20, 2018
N e w P u b l i c
H av e n S c h o o l s
Please join us at our school oPen houses. check
our website for dates.
Application Period Closes: Sun â&#x20AC;¢ March 4, 2018 Office of Choice and Enrollment
Location: 54 Meadow St., 1st Floor, New Haven, CT 06519 Hours: Monday - Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm Phone: 475-220-1430 and 475-220-1431 Website: choice.NHPS.net 23
THE INNER-CITY NEWS
February 14, 2018
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February 20, 2018
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