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INNER-CITY NEWS July 27, 02, THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09,2016 2022- August - March 15,2016 2022

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Mullins and Archbishop Among Speakers at ‘Free Ukraine’ Protest

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Malloy Malloy To To Dems: Dems:

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Mullins and Blair were among the speakers denouncing last week’s Russian military invasion of Ukraine. Czerepacha is a member of the Ukrainian-American community. In his remarks, Mullins, West Haven Planning and Zoning Commissioner, said, “Today, freedom loving people all over the world, regardless of race, ethnicity and national origin are citizens of Ukraine .”Steven R. Mullins, (left) and Paul Czerepacha (center) both of West Haven joined the Most Reverend Leonard Blair, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Hartford (right) at a “Free Ukraine” protest at the State Capitol in Hartford last weekend.

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Fire Chief’s Reappointment OK’d THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

by THOMAS BREEN

New Haven Independent

With over a dozen city firefighters standing in opposition at the back of the room, and a half-dozen regional fire chiefs sitting up front in support, the Board of Alders unanimously approved John Alston’s reappointment to serve another four years as the head of the New Haven Fire Department.

That was the outcome of Monday night’s latest regular bimonthly meeting of the full Board of Alders. The in-person meeting took place in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.

All of the alders present on Monday voted to confirm the mayor’s reappointment of Alston for another four-year term as fire chief. Alston, who has led the department for the past five and a half years, is now in place for a term that runs through Jan. 31, 2026.

The vote came one week after a contentious Aldermanic Affairs Committee meeting, during which the two dozen firefighters who came out to testify online split evenly between supporting and opposing the chief’s reappointment.

Supporters praised Alston for diversifying the department, improving its technological capabilities, and leading it ably through a number of crises — including the mass K2 poisoning on the Green in 2018, the on-duty death of Firefighter Ricardo Torres in May 2021, and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Critics, including the leadership of the city’s fire union, lambasted him for not

responding quickly enough to fixing over 100 broken fire hydrants, for presiding over an inadequate supply of apparatus vehicles and other department infrastructure, and for failing to do enough to lift morale at a time when many of its members are hurting.

None of those specific issues came up during the alders’ 10-minute discussion over whether or not to approve Alston’s reappointment.

But the chamber was full, with roughly two dozen fire union leaders and members who had been critical of Alston standing at the back of the room with their arms crossed, staring out at the alders.

Sitting in a pew closer to the legislators, Alston was joined by Assistant Chief Justin McCarthy, as well as by a half-dozen fire chiefs from other surrounding departments, including West Haven and Norwich.

The handful of local legislators who did speak up from the floor offered their support for Alston while also making clear to the rank-and-file firefighters that their concerns have been heard.

“I stand in support of Chief Alston’s reappointment,” East Rock Alder Anna Festa said. “I don’t believe there is anyone who is perfect in this world, and that goes for all of us. … Is there work to be done?

Yes, there is always work to be done. The question is: What are we as a board, what is leadership, what is the administration, what is the New Haven Fire Department going to do to address some of these con-

THOMAS BREEN PHOTOS Fire Chief Alston (right) with Asst. Chief Justin McCarthy and other fire chiefs from throughout region at Monday night's vote.

cerns?”

He called on his legislative colleagues to “make sure we follow up on these issues” raised by the rank-and-file firefighters. He said he supports the chief and will continue to listen to and act on firefighters’ concerns “so we can have a successful fire department.”

After the vote, in a brief and solemn statement to the press, Alston said that, while he is grateful for the support of the Elicker Administration, the alders, and those firefighters who have backed his

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reappointment, this is not a night for celebration.

Why not?

“I don’t care if it was one firefighter who had an issue with my reappointment,” he said. “I want to hear from them, and I want to address that.”

To those who spoke up against his reappointment, he directed the following message: “I hear you, and I’m willing to work with you.”

After the vote, Local 825 fire union President Patrick Cannon and Vice-President

Daniel Del Prete said they were encouraged by the alders’ comments about the importance of listening to and acting on the union’s concerns about Alston’s leadership.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Cannon said. That includes fixing broken fire hydrants, hiring mechanics to do that work, filling the permanent EMS director position, and fully staffing the training academy.

“Local 825 will make sure everyone is accountable,” he said.

New Haven Stands With Ukraine THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

by ALLAN APPEL

New Haven Independent

Three hundred Ukrainian-Americans and their allies rallied on the New Haven Green Sunday, linking the values of freedom and liberty that have often been celebrated in that historic space, to the life and death battle now raging in the second week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Organized by Upper Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen and members of the St. Mary’s Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church in the northeastern corner of his ward, the gathering featured dozens of yellow and blue Ukrainian flags fluttering against the New Haven skyline.

The gathering by the flag pole drew anxious, passionate Ukrainians and their civic and religious leaders from New Britain and Hartford to Orange and Bridgeport.

The event included delivery of local proclamations and speeches by headliner U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the local community’s most prominent political ally, and other local leaders..

Many of the speeches were rousing and some electrifying in their simplicity of metaphor. For example, since 1991, declared Liubomyr (Louis) Mykytyn, a young organizer from Hartford, “Ukraine has been a bullet-proof vest for the rest of Europe.”

Among waves of call-and-response cries of “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to its Heroes,” Blumenthal made the first connection between the rallying place of historic American freedoms and Ukraine.

“On this Green American freedoms were established hundreds of years ago,” he declared. Colonial patriots “took a stand for

Mayor Justin Elicker, at center, with Alders Anna Festa and Rosa Santana to his left.

freedom and democracy, as we take one for Ukraine today.”

“Putin is a butcher,” Blumenthal continued, referring to the Russian president who launched the invasion of Ukraine.

“He will slaughter people as he did in Chechnya and Georgia. He is a war criminal. There should be a prosecution …

“No one can tell you how this will end but the people of the United States, all of us, are behind you. We are all Ukrainians at this moment in our history.”

There were graphic, angry anti-Putin

signs (pictured over a toilet, “Flush Him Out”), and spontaneous passionate chants of “No Fly Zone, No Fly Zone” and “No Russian oil” that punctuated people’s urgent individual conversations with each other and the speeches.

Echoing Blumenthal, St. Mary’s Church member Iryna Kokovskyy said, “We are here exercising our democratic rights while our brothers and sisters are hiding from bullets.”

Brackeen said the aim was to send a message statewide not only of solidarity

but also of joy, in the values represented by the gathering.

“There are so many Jews with ancestors from Ukraine,” noted Rabbi Eric Woodward of Beth El-Keser Israel in Westville.

“We’re here to stand for that history and also against Russian imperialism.”

One of the quietly moving stem-winders was offered not by a senator or a mayor or an alder, but a young Ukrainian named Liubomyr (Louis) Mykytyn.

“We need to close the sky above Ukraine.

And don’t be afraid Putin will start bomb-

ing Europe and America. Putin’s daughter lives in Europe. And Lasarov [the Russian foreign minister] has kids in America.

[They] will not kill their children,” Mykytyn stated.

Jaraoslw Palylyk, president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, pushed that theme: “Is there a fixed body count of Ukrainians before NATO changes its mind? For those who say this would start World War III, we are already there!”

Oleksandr Ruslanovych, the priest at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Bridgeport, put it most plainly. “My city Sumy has 300,000 people and is surrounded.

No heat, no water, no medicine. Street fighting every day. The Russians come in and then go out. Below zero. … I am angry. [The West is] doing a lot, but it’s not enough.

“It is going on now because eight years ago we did nothing when they took Donbas and Crimea. Most of all now we need war planes and bullets. In the future we will ask you to help with our wounded soldiers. Now we need weapons.”

Speakers recommended vetted nonprofit organizations for people interested in donating money. The organizations include the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (ucca.org); Revived Soldiers Ukraine (rsukraine.org); and the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee (uuarc.org) Collections of food, clothing, medical supplies as well as financial donations are also being gathered at St. Michael Church, 569 George St., on Monday, from 4 to 7 p.m.

Local Ukrainians Dare To Be Optimistic

by ALLAN APPEL

New Haven Independent

The first Sunday of the war in Ukraine saw prayer services at New Haven’s Ukrainian churches attracting hundreds of patriotic parishioners and supportive political leaders, all determined to see Ukraine remain a free, independent nation.

Ukrainians greeted each other with “Heroyam Slava” — “Glory to the Ukrainian fighters.” Then they prayed, shared heartrending stories of killed or endangered relatives, and found hope in the continuing fight against Russian invaders.

At the Sunday service at St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church on quiet residential Fowler Street on the Westville/Amity border, parishioners trickled in greeting each other somberly with “Slova isysy hrustyoo,” or “Glory to Jesus.”

Kateryna Bodnar was one of the earliest arrivals. Gracious but clearly wracked by worry, she said her father had died on Tuesday. She is still not sure of the cir-

cumstances of the death. Family members came from various locations in Eastern Ukraine to the funeral in the small western city of Kolomyia and now can’t leave.

Her sister-in-law’s husband went to the front, telling the family, “I live in this country, and I will defend it.”

Her brother remains in Kharkiv, awakened by “shelling in the night,” she said.

She calls him constantly. “We hear something, see an explosion on the news, we call. ‘Are you OK?’ ‘We’re fine,’ he says.

Every hour we do this.”

Bodnar said in the end she is optimistic about the outcome but that it would come at a big cost. “There will be a lot of losses.”

The view was shared by her fellow parishioner Zoriana Dyka, a 20-year Connecticut resident, who drove down from Bloomfield. Her family members live a two-hour drive south of Kyiv. A brother lives near one of the airports that the Russians blew up, she said. He’s 59 years old.

He doesn’t plan to leave.

THOMAS BREEN PHOTO Myron Melnyk, at right, Sunday with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who invited him to Tuesday night's State of the Union address.

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“We know God is on our side, our land, our children. Putin never realized that no one has ever told Ukrainians how to live.

Ukrainians are strong and brave. We will fight for each house, each centimeter,” Dyka said.

Meanwhile, at the early-morning English language service at St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church on George Street, Cynthia Rutt came in from Branford, she said, because she felt “a need to be with my people.”

An editorial director with relatives in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, she said she feels her heart and mind at war. On the one hand, she said, sending in U.S. or NATO troops on the ground to help is “out of the question. That would be another Vietnam.” But, she said, “the U.S. must keep up the pressure.”

Ukrainian-Americans from all over the area, with signs and flags, gathered after Con’t on page 05

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

Docu-Series Revisits New Haven Murder

by KIMBERLY WIPFLER New Haven Independent

Eight years after a murder upended their lives, members of a New Haven family are about to tell their story to a national audience.

The family’s story in highlighted in the season four premiere of Investigation Discovery’s crime docu-series True Conviction, which airs on ID and discovery+ this Tuesday at 10 p.m.

The episode, “A Generational Curse,” centers on the murder of 15-year old Jacob Craggett, who was shot outside of his grandmother’s home in the Hill in August of 2014.

Craggett’s mother Lisa, older brother Joshua, and cousin Shayna Kendall, sat down for interviews with series host AnnaSigga Nicolazzi, a former Brooklyn homicide prosecutor.

Craggett’s mother told Nicolazzi about the youngest of her five sons, Jacob.

“He was funny, he was the class clown and a gentle giant. He used to call me Mama Lili. ‘Mama Lili, where’s my dinner?’ ” his mother recalled.

“We live in ‘the hood,’ but to me it’s not exactly where you live, it’s how you live too. I always told my sons, ‘You’re young, you’re going to make mistakes. Don’t ever make the mistake of the police knocking my door down because you’ve gone and took somebody’s life,’ ” Jacob’s mother said.

It was a Friday evening in August when Jacob and his older brother Joshua were shot in a car outside of their grandmother’s house on Vernon Street. That same evening their cousin, Shayna Kendall, was on duty as a detective in the New Haven Police Department.

“What caught my attention was the location, which was Vernon Street,” Kendall said. “When I first got the call, I had no idea who it was. When we got to the hos-

pital, I was told that two of my cousins were shot.”

The news of the incident brought back the memory of another tragedy in the family that occurred 10 years earlier on the same street, in which Kendall’s brother Jason also fell victim to gun violence. Kendall’s brother had been playing with his cousins at their grandmother’s house on Vernon Street when he was approached on the porch. As he began to retreat into the house, he was shot in the back.

Lisa Craggett, mother to Jacob and Joshua and aunt to Kendall and brother Jason, ran down the street to Jason’s aid that night in 2004. “He pleaded not to let him die.”

Kendall said the news of Jason’s passing was “life-changing” for the entire family.

“When Jason died, I was lost, and I felt defeated. I felt that life was not worth living because, in any given moment you can be standing on the porch at your grandmother’s house and get shot.” She said the following investigation motivated her decision to pursue a career in law enforcement.

“I can’t talk about the loss of my brother without talking about the detectives who worked so hard to bring justice to the person who killed my brother. When I was at a place of not knowing what to do with my life, it was those interactions that spoke to me to say, ‘Here I am, from this city. I want to do and be exactly what these detectives chose to be for my family.’ ” In March of 2014, Kendall was promoted to detective, where she said it was her mission to give grieving families “the same support” that she received.

Kendall joined her aunt Lisa Craggett in the hospital the night that Joshua and Jacob were shot. “[Lisa’s] youngest was no longer here. As one can expect, she completely broke down, and she was not the same.

She just was not the same,” Kendall said.

That night, Jacob died and Joshua sur-

Lisa Craggett, mother of New Haven gun violence victim Jacob Craggett, appearing in True Conviction episode.

vived. For Tuesday night’s TV epsiode, Joshua recalled the moment, as shots began firing at their car, with Joshua in the passenger seat, Jacob in the back, and cousin TJ driving.

“Everything happened so fast. I turned around to the back seat and threw Jacob down. And then, as I’m trying to see, I got shot in the back.

“Shots kept going off, so I kinda made peace with what I thought was gonna happen. I was just ready.”

After the shots seemed to cease, Jacob exited the car to help Joshua out, and Jacob was shot in the back.

After Joshua woke up in the hospital, he asked about his brother: “The first thing

I said, they heard me say his name, and then everybody started crying. It’s a lotta guilt to hold, man.”

He felt survivor’s guilt.

“When Josh came home from the hospital, I just heard him bawling, just breaking down,” his mother Lisa said. “And I went back there, and I held him, and he was like, ‘Ma, do you blame me?’ I said, ‘No, son. It’s not your fault. No, I don’t blame you, Josh. No I don’t. And you can’t blame yourself.’ ” The True Conviction episode also details how now-retired homicide detective Mike Wuchek pursued the case and built a case against a suspect. In December of 2016, a jury found Lamont Edwards guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to 85 years in prison. Police have yet to identify another shooter at the scene that night.

Eight years after losing Jacob Craggett, and 18 years after losing Jason Kendall, the family continues to grieve and reflect on the loss of their loved ones.

“He was a kind, respectful, human being. It’s not telling how far he would’ve gone. He was a good kid. I’m going to honor my son’s name, talk to people, talk to teens, you know, do whatever I can to contribute what I’ve gone through to try and help someone else,” Lisa Craggett said of her son.

“When I think of both of them, I think of their spirit and their personalities. I don’t think of how they were murdered or what we had to endure with the system. So I reflect on exactly how I remember them, not so much their death,” Kendall said.

The episode ends with an appeal to viewers to help police with the investigation: “If you or anyone you know out there holds that key, the last piece of the puzzle of the identity of the second person, bring it to police so that Jacob Craggett’s homicide case can finally be closed.”

Tong, Unions Back Captive Audience Bill

by Christine Stuart

New Haven Independent

The Judiciary Committee debated a bill Friday that seeks to limit what employers can say to employees in the workplace. The issue is not a new one and only one state has passed similar legislation, but the bill is backed by the unions and Attorney General William Tong.

“Nobody has a right to force workers to sit down and listen to speech about religious or political issues which they object,” Tong said Friday. “No employer has the right to threaten, intimidate or bully their workers.” a green button that says support and red button that says oppose Former Attorney General George Jepsen tossed cold water on the so-called captive audience bill in 2011 following an 11-hour debate in the House saying it conflicted with federal labor law.

Ed Hawthorne, president of the Connecti-

File photo of Attorney General William Tong

cut AFL-CIO, said this year’s version is different because it’s not an outright ban on these meetings. He said that’s what Jepsen objected to years ago.

He said the bill just gives the employee the right to get up and leave these meetings.

“These are mandatory, closed-door meetings during work hours where workers are often threatened and harassed about joining a union,” Hawthorne said. “One nurse was even put in the hospital supply closet with managers back to the door.”

Hawthorne said the bill will give the employee the right to not attend meetings that are about an employer’s politics, union organizing or religion.

“This legislation will protect a worker’s constitutional rights to freedom of speech and conscience,” Hawthorne said.

He said it doesn’t prevent employers from talking to employees about any issue pertaining to their work.

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The Connecticut Business and Industry Association opposes the legislation.

“The practical impact of this bill is that employers will never be able to hold a meeting and have honest conversations with employees without the risk of people walking out,” John Blair, associate counsel at CBIA, said. “For instance, an employer could not update employees regarding the law and regulations impacting their jobs, wages, benefits, FMLA, and corporate and community charitable giving and social activities.”

He said the language in the bill mirrors bills from previous years all of which failed because “of legal opinions that they are preempted by federal law from governing workplace communications. Those opinions noted that the National Labor Relations Act has exclusive authority over workplace interactions and therefore preempted by federal law.”

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

Con’t from page 03

Local Ukrainians

the service at St. Michael’s for an 11:30 a.m., post-prayer service press conference to be attended by Mayor Justin Elicker (who was with the congregation for the entire service) along with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Rep Rosa De Lauro, and Gov. Ned Lamont.

Among them was Olena Stanislavskyy, a member of the Ukrainian-American Club of Southport. She greeted her friend Larysa Czerepacha Persano, who was attending with her two sign-carrying kids Nicholas and Zoryana.

Others gathered round as they were waiting for the pols exchanging hugs and “Slava Okraini,” or “Glory to Ukraine,” to which the response was “heroyam slava.”

“If we don’t stop Putin now,” said Stanislavskyy, “Ukraine will not be enough.”

“We are born Ukrainian,” Stanislavskyy stated. “We can’t help but be optimistic.”

Inside the church, Melvin Melnyk, who along with Carl Harvey had helped organize the event, shared that slowly growing feeling: “I was pessimistic, but they’ve been putting up a better than expected resistance, if they can only get more weapons.”

“What’s encouraging is the high morale in our fighting force,” Melnyk said.

As the crowd made their way from the sanctuary to the reception hall/gym to await the political figures, Bruce Marshall, associated with the church for three decades through his wife, showed this reporter a text his daughter received from a 27-year-old Ukrainian woman who was befriended by family members last year when she was a student in Connecticut: “Spending birthday in a bunker. If you want to give me a present, donate to the Ukrainian army. Details are here.”

“The human face of all this,” said Marshall, as the speeches began.

Blumenthal said to help keep up awareness he has invited Melnyk to be his guest at the upcoming State of the Union Address on Tuesday night.

Gov. Lamont, in a voice shaking with anger, echoed the call to boycott not just Russian vodka but Russian energy as well.

“You guys are really doing the pushing,” Lamont told the more than a hundred parishioners and activists who filled St. Michael’s hall. “We’re giving you support to push.”

U.S. Rep. DeLauro underlined that as of Sunday morning, Congress had already authorized $1 billion in aid to Ukraine. “And I commit to you, as chair of appropriations, we will be there to sustain Ukraine to make this fight,” she said.

She concluded quoting Ukraine President Vlodomir Zelensky: “I am here, the fight is here, the weapons are our truth. Glory to Ukraine.”

Then the Congresswoman added, “God bless Ukraine and God bless the United States of America.”

Mayor Elicker said New Haveners and Americans should be prepared for sacrifices, like paying higher prices, in supporting Ukraine. If Putin is not stopped, he said, echoing others, the creeping aggression

Petitioners Hit Doors To Fight APT Clinic

by LAURA GLESBY

Sadie Flowers has seen her block of Hazel Street address crime and grow more peaceful as community connections tightened.

“We don’t want to go back,” Flowers, who has lived on the street for 35 years, said as she signed a petition against the APT Foundation’s plans to move offices and a methadone clinic nearby on Dixwell Avenue.

Flowers’ door was just on one of four streets’ worth of houses in Newhallville that six canvassers visited on Sunday afternoon to gather signatures against the APT Foundation’s plans.

Jeanette Sykes, a Hazel Street resident and a leader of the Newhallville-Hamden Stronger Together coalition that has organized against APT, knew Flowers as a neighbor so committed to election day that she keeps an “I Voted” sticker pasted on her front door.

When Sykes knocked on Flowers’ door on Sunday, Flowers revealed that she already knew about the APT Foundation’s plans.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she said, reaching for a pen.

Sunday’s door-knocking spurt was part of a larger mobilization effort among Newhallville neighbors against the prospect of a methadone clinic. The APT Foundation purchased the former Elm City College Prep school building at 794 Dixwell Ave., between Cherry Ann and Elizabeth Streets, for $2.5 million in December, without prior neighborhood outreach.

(The organization had called former Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn, who no longer lives in the area and whose voicemail was full, and did not attempt to reach other community members.)

Since neighbors found out about the sale through an article in the Independent, they have started community conversations, gathered signatures, and hosted rallies against the move. They’ve made a point of saying they support drug treatment in general and don’t seek to disparage people seeking help. Rather they cite the APT Foundation’s rocky relationship with neighbors of its Hill location, where residents have reported ongoing violence and drug dealing in the immediate surroundings and poor communication with the clinic.

APT Foundation CEO Lynn Madden has maintained in response that the organization provides critical services for patients living with addiction, and that it cannot be held responsible for everything that occurs outside of its doors. The organization has taken some efforts to bolster security in the past, although neighbors have argued that it could be doing more.

“We’ve done a lot of work there on our Congress Avenue location with the city, including the police department and the management team of Hill north,” Madden said in a comment for a previous

LAURA GLESBY PHOTO Ethel Berger, Jeanette Sykes, and Robyn Porter divvy up streets.

Kamaz Williams and Arsemas Dent.

Independent article on the issue. “There are significantly improved circumstances there… Many of the problems that are laid at the feet of the APT Foundation are probably shared by all of us in that neighborhood, not solely by APT Foundation or the persons that are.“ On Sunday, Sykes critiqued this response. “They only care about what’s going on inside their doors,” she said of APT in her pitch to neighbors. She cited a police report showing 49 arrests at APT’s Long Wharf and Congress Avenue locations between 2015 and 2020.

She argued moving a methadone clinic to Newhallville location would negatively affect both neighbors and clients.

Newhallville is “residential,” she said, and the clinic should be somewhere “industrial.”

“We are pro-treatment,” she maintained at each door. She said she worries that a methadone clinic would attract opioid dealers seeking to prey on people seeking treatment for addiction. In a neighborhood that has historically worked to keep the drug trade at bay, Sykes argued,

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“there’s a lot of temptations here.“ As Sykes strolled past the corner of Hazel and Winchester with her clipboard of petitions, James Harvey called from across the street: “What are y’all selling?”

“Just giving out some information,” Sykes called back.

“I could use some information,” Harvey replied.

Sykes crossed the street to talk to him, maneuvering around ice from the previous week’s storm. When Harvey realized that Sykes was referring to the former school building, he raised other possible community uses for the space: “That’s the perfect building. You could have meetings, classes there.” He signed the petition.

Steps away from him, Kamaz Williams and Arsemas Dent were chatting outside an apartment building, near a corner store.

Sykes got their signatures next. “They’re gonna cause more problems,” Dent said of APT, shaking his head. “I’m too old

to be running.” He and Williams said they’ve been working to make the street safer.

“Things have calmed down a lot,” Sykes agreed.

Another Hazel Street resident, Elsie Ramos, said she was motivated to sign the petition because of the three schools in the area. She has younger siblings, and feared that a clinic would lead them to encounter needles and substances lying around on the street.

Their signatures will eventually make their way to City Plan and the state’s Department of Public Health, both of which will be considering approvals for the project; and the mayor’s office, Sykes said.

She estimated that about 1,500 people have signed so far.

As Sykes knocked on familiar doors, two of the other canvassers encountered a handful of new faces. State Rep. Robyn Porter, who lives in Newhallville, and former Ward 19 Co-Chair Ethel Berger, who lives in adjacent Prospect Hill, made their way up Winchester Avenue, where a number of new houses have popped up near Division Street.

Georgette Assoumou, who has lived in Newhallville for 10 years but recently moved to one of those new buildings, took a break from cooking to chat with Berger and Porter.

Berger made her pitch to Assoumou: APT is “not a good neighbor,” she said, and on Cherry Ann Street, near the proposed location, “that street has spent a lot of energy reclaiming the area.”

“This is a pressing issue,” Porter said.

She encouraged Assoumou to come to weekly community meetings on the matter and “make your voice heard.”

“If it is keeping the neighborhood safer,” the petition is worth signing, Assoumou concluded. “A signature can change a lot of things.”

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

Judiciary Committee Takes On Death Notification

by Lisa Backus

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After the families of two women who died in Bridgeport on the same day in December demanded action on claims they were not properly notified of the deaths of their loved ones by city police, the Judiciary Committee has taken up the cause through legislation.

HB 5349 would require police to notify the family within 24 hours of the discovery of a death or document the reasons why the family or next of kin wasn’t notified within that time frame. The proposed law would require the Inspector General to investigate if timely notification isn’t made and give the IG authority to recommend sanctions including suspension or revocation of involved officers’ police certification.

“The family of Lauren Smith-Fields found out from the landlord and the family of Brenda Lee Rawls found out from the last guy she was with,” said attorney Darnell Crosland, who is representing both families. “That’s incredible. The police department has a policy that they must notify in person, and if not, they must notify by phone. But the families found out two days later by other people.” a green button that says support and red button that says oppose The bill inspired by Smith-Fields, 23, and Rawls, 53, who both died on Dec. 12, will be the subject of a public hearing Wednesday.

Autopsies determined that Smith-Fields died of an accidental fentanyl overdose, while Rawls died from cardiac arrest, Crosland said. The families plan to sue the city based on the lack of an investigation into either death, Crosland said.

Smith-Fields hadn’t been heard from in a few days, so her family went to her apartment and found a note on the door telling people to contact her landlord, Crosland said. He said the landlord told her family that she had died.

Rawls also hadn’t been in contact with her family for a few days, so they went to see the man she was last with, Crosland said. He told them she had died two days before and handed them her clothing which he had in his possession, Crosland said. “She was already at the morgue,” Crosland said.

There was a small incident report written on Smith-Fields’ death and no police report written on Rawls’ death, he said. When Crosland went to the police station with the families to talk with acting Chief Rebeca Garcia, he said she refused to speak with them.

The deaths and the lack of notification became public when the families marched on the city on Jan. 23, what would have been Smith-Fields’ 24th birthday, he said.

When Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport, heard about the deaths and the families’ claims that they weren’t properly notified, he asked the Judiciary Committee to raise a bill that would prevent future heartache.

“It’s very important for us to explicitly define this issue,” Felipe said. “It’s something that should be done.

I think it should be a human right. I wanted it codified.”

During the short legislative session, only committees can raise bills. Judiciary Committee Co-Chair Steve Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, agreed to take up the legislation after hearing from Felipe and local city council members, he said.

“I wish a bill like this wasn’t necessary,” Stafstrom said. “I wish these situations were handled differently.”

Stafstrom said legislative leadership seems inclined to support the bill. He’s looking at the public hearing as a way of vetting the proposal, which may need to be tweaked, he said.

An investigation by city officials resulted in two officers placed on paid administrative leave as of Jan. 30. The sergeant who was their supervisor retired before his actions could be investigated, city officials confirmed.

Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim issued a statement the same day expressing that he was “extremely disappointed” with the leadership of the police department, and its actions were “unacceptable.”

“The Bridgeport Police Department has high standards for officer sensitivity especially in matters involving the death of a family member,” Ganim said in the statement. “It is an unacceptable failure if policies were not followed. To the families, friends and all who care about the human decency that should be shown in these situations, in this case by members of the Bridgeport Police Department, I am very sorry.”

A spokeswoman for the city said that Ganim’s office is working on “thoughtful and comprehensive” testimony to submit for the public hearing.

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

New Haven Women Recognized During Connecticut Cobras Inaugural Basketball Season in Bridgeport, Connecticut The Connecticut Cobras of The Basketball League celebrated Women’s History Month during it’s inaugural season home opener Friday night, at the University of Bridgeport.

New Haven’s own Carla Morrison of Sisters of Today and Tomorrow was one of the women honored, along side her Hillhouse High School (c/o ‘88) classmate Carla Johnson, both women mentor young girls in Connecticut, helping to develop their confidence, character and leadership abilities.

The recognition took place during halftime of the home opener. Honorable Jeanette Morrison, New Haven Alderwoman, Ward 22, accepted the recognition on her sister’s behalf.

“It was an amazing night,” stated Wanda Brown-Cummings, Co-owner of the Connecticut Cobras, who is the only black woman owner in the league.

Brown-Cummings expressed her pride in the Connecticut Cobras home opener and her desire to get the New Haven community involved.

“There was a lot of representation from the Bridgeport and Norwalk area,” says Brown-Cummings. My goal is to get New Haven engaged.” As a native of New Haven and Co-owner of the Connecticut Cobras, Brown-Cummings says she looks forward to building bridges with organizations in New Haven, including the QHouse, ConnCat and more.

For more information, log onto: www. connecticutcobras.com

Cobras playing against Reading

Picture 1: Alderwoman Jeanette Morrison; Anthony Hill, Owner of Connecticut Cobras; honoree Carla Johnson and friend.

7

Meet your Connecticut Cobras

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

Murphy, Public Health Crew Seek To Combat Health Misniformation

by LAURA GLESBY

New Haven Independent

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy is looking for Congress to allocate $45 million toward public health communication efforts — funding that local pandemic experts said is sorely needed to fight a web of anti-vax and anti-mask conspiracy theories.

That was the upshot of a roundtable conversation with researchers and policymakers held on Monday morning at the Yale School of Medicine.

Murphy shared news of the Promoting Public Health Information Act, which he proposed last week along with New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján. The act would establish a Public Health Information and Communications Advisory Committee within the federal Department of Health and Human Services, as well as other outreach and education efforts on public health.

He heard back some of the challenges that local health departments and medical institutions are facing as they work to win the public’s trust.

The pandemic revealed that “an incredible array of players are interested in spreading misinformation,” Murphy said. A strong health communications apparatus is necessary not only for managing Covid-19, but for future

Chris Murphy and Saad Omer Monday at Yale med school roundtable.

public health crises, he argued. “Whatever the next public health emergency is, it’s gonna happen again.”

Saad Omer, a vaccine researcher and director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, noted that worldwide, health professionals such as nurses and doctors are the most trusted source of medical information. Future campaigns could leverage existing relationships between medical providers

and their patients, he suggested.

Meanwhile, trust in national bodies like the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health has wavered, Omer said.

State Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani stressed the importance of being honest about uncertainty in health communications, particularly when science around public health interventions continues to develop

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and change.

“It’s important to recognize what we know and what we don’t know,” she said. “The more people have trust in public officials, the more they will be a little forgiving if we have to change because the science changes.”

The roundtable speakers agreed that shifting messages and scientific uncertainty make combating the confident messages of conspiracy theorists

all the more difficult. “We have to be much more sensitive to the risks the public is going to take during a time of emergency,” Murphy said.

New Haven’s Health Director Maritza Bond shared her strategy of working with trusted community members, such as religious figures, in order to convey public health messages.

“We made an effort to communicate the good, the bad, and the ugly,” Bond said. She shared a mantra of “transparency, transparency, transparency, no matter how hard the information is.”

Still, communication adjustments may not be enough on their own to combat misinformation.

Sten Vermund, dean of the Yale School of Public Health, noted that as part of preparation for the next pandemic, research on issues like mask effectiveness should be fully funded so that communications from health officials can be clear and unwavering from the outset.

And earning trust in official public health messaging may require repairing healthcare institutions that have often failed Black, Native, Latino, immigrant, and queer patients.

“We can’t disaggregate misinformation from the lack of trust in healthcare institutions,” Murphy said.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

Bolaji COVID Patient

“To everyone who saved my life and my baby’s life too... thank you – from both of us.”

“I was 34 weeks pregnant when I found out I had COVID. While I was on the ventilator and sedated, I delivered Joseph by C-section, and I couldn’t see him for a month. But the doctors and nurses at Yale New Haven Health, they took care of us.”

At Yale New Haven Health, we’re grateful to all the healthcare workers out there who care for others.

So that others can live.

9

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

IN MEMORIAM:

Valerie Boyd, Zora Neale Hurston Biographer, Dies

By Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D, NNPA Newswire Culture and Entertainment Editor

Valerie Boyd, world-renowned author of the definitive biography of Zora Neale Hurston, Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, died February 12, 2022, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. In the interest of full disclosure, Valerie was a colleague, collaborator, mentor and great friend.

A native Atlantan, Valerie Jean Boyd was born on Dec. 11, 1963, to Roger and Laura Jean (Burns) Boyd. Her mother was a homemaker, and her father owned a gas station and later a tire shop in the Bankhead area of the city where she grew up. Valerie was super proud of her family, especially her father and his accomplishments which were significant, particularly for a Black man who grew up in the segregated South. Val would tell exciting stories of her Dad’s businesses, the interesting people that frequented the gas station and how the tire spot was so tiny, they had to roll the tires out of the shop and stack them up outside in order to work the cash register inside of the shop. Valerie’s eyes were windows to the soul and the stories she told were funny, poignant, engaging and painted a vibrant picture of Atlanta, the city she loved.

Having grown up watching the trailblazing broadcast journalist Monica Pearson on television, Val was able to see herself as a journalist and decided to pursue a career in journalism. She set her sights on Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and the rest is history. In 1985, she graduated with a degree in journalism.

Following her undergraduate career, Val returned to Atlanta, becoming immersed in the arts and culture scene and joining the new wave of Black writers and creatives who called the southern Black

mecca home.

Valerie had a storied career as an arts editor at the Atlanta Journal & Constitution starting as a copy editor, writer and eventually Arts Editor. She was also Senior Editor for The Bitter Southerner and a contributor to the Oxford American and other anthologies including In the Tradition: An Anthology of Young Black Writers (1992), edited by Kevin Powell and Ras Baraka. A major figure in the new wave of Black talent shaping culture and the craft of writing in major Black cities, Boyd co-founded and launched the magazine HealthQuest: The Publication of Black Wellness in 1993. Like her father, Valerie was an entrepreneur at heart.

She launched EightRock, a journal that focused on African American arts and culture.

A founding officer of the Alice Walker Literary Society and a member of the National Book Critics Circle, Boyd earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative nonfiction writing from Goucher College, which would prove helpful as she blazed trails in writing the definitive biography of Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston. Val learned about Hurston as a student at Northwestern when she was assigned the book, There Eyes Were Watching God. It was there where Val’s interest in Hurston was ignited. She would travel to Eatonville, Florida, Hurston’s birthplace to attend a festival celebrating the beloved writer. Following a discussion with Robert Hemenway, a white author who had written a biography of Hurston in 1973, Val knew a Black womea had to write the story and she was that Black woman. Val was so committed to telling Hurston’s story, she left the AJC and moved to Florida to better understand the woman who’s life story would usher her into literary royalty.

Valerie is best known for her detailed

Valerie Boyd and illuminating work on Hurston. The Southern Book Critics Circle chose Wrapped in Rainbows for the 2003 Southern Book Award for best nonfiction book of the year. The American Library Association selected her biography of Hurston for a 2004 Notable Book Award. In 2017, she received a Governor’s Award for the Arts and Humanities from Governor Nathan Deal and First Lady Sandra Deal.

The award recognizes outstanding individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to Georgia’s economic, civic, and cultural vitality. Boyd will be posthumously inducted in the 2022 Georgia Writers Hall of Fame where she will join fellow illustrious writers Tayari Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, Clarence Major, Jericho Brown, W.E.B. DuBois, Pearl Cleage, Clarence Major, John Lewis,

James Alan McPherson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Alice Walker, and Kevin Young among others.

Val was not only a writer; she was a foodie and lover of culture. Valerie served as a board member for the Southern Foodways Alliance and was known to curate food experiences for friends and family. She once curated a food experience which told the story of Zora Neale Hurston through food with a menu planned by award-winning chef Mashama Bailey.

Renowned food writer John T. Edge was a close friend of Valerie’s and she loved when he came to town because he had the inside scoop on restaurants. She stayed abreast of the happenings around food in Atlanta. You literally would get a call from Valerie and the next day you would be at a biscuit pop-up in Bankhead. Also a foodie, Val turned me onto restaurants in Atlanta and Athens, most notably Serpas, which closed during the pandemic and The National. We used to devour Serpas’ salmon chips and The National’s cheese stuffed dates.

One of my fondest memories of Valerie is the last time I saw her in person where we raided her snack cabinet. We were collaborating on a new digital publication on African American Health (HealthPlus) and decided to meet in person. I picked up sandwich boxes from Alon’s Bakery & Market and headed to her beautiful home in scenic Pine Lake. Ever the big sister, she offered to CashApp me money to pay for the food. I reminded her she was one of the most giving and generous people I had ever met, so it was my pleasure to buy lunch for someone who had mentored and given so much to me.

We had a lot in common – southern Black women, locs, writing, lovers of African American literature and history, Northwestern, Goucher, UGA, Black Con’t on page 19

Nikole Hannah-Jones Wins Social Justice Award at NAACP Image Awards, Speaks on CRT

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Contributor The 53rd Annual NAACP Image Awards, which were held in person this year on February 26 at the Pasadena Civic Center, honor African Americans in entertainment and culture.

Established in 1909, the NAACP is the oldest civil rights organization in the U.S. and was formed by W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells.

Jennifer Hudson won for Entertainer of the Year and outstanding actress for her portrayal of legendary singer Aretha Franklin in “Respect.” Outstanding Actor was won by Will Smith in “King Richard” and Daniel Kaluuya of “Judas and the Black Messiah,” who won for outstanding supporting actor.

The President’s award, given in recognition of special achievement in public ser-

vice, was awarded to Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

But a special moment arrived in the ceremony as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times Magazine was awarded the Social Justice Impact Award.

Hannah-Jones, creator of “The 1619 Project,” told the audience, “As a student of history, I know that the work that I do and the life I live would not be possible without the decades-long efforts of the NAACP to force this country to live up to its highest ideals. I decided to use my pen as my weapon to fight. I’m grateful for the community that built me… But this award is not really about me. I’m being recognized for The 1619 Project.”

“As of now, some 36 states have passed or are considering bills to make it harder to teach about racism and inequality. Politicians are using the power of the state to whitewash an already whitewashed history.

Books and ideas about the Black experience, about the LGBTQ community, are being banned. These anti-history laws go hand in hand with regressive policies that aim to restrict our civil and voting rights.

A healthy society does not ban ideas, and attacks on books are an attack on democracy,” Hannah-Jones added.

Hannah-Jones was referring to the recent Republican focus on stopping programs that attempt to promote “equity’ and/or discussions on the historic impact of 400 years of anti-Black polices has gripped the GOP in many red states.

Hannah-Jones’s book “The 1619 Project” has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 14 weeks.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent journalist and the host of the podcast BURKEFILE. She is a political analyst who appears regularly on #RolandMartinUnfiltered. She may be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at

10

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

March Survivor of the Month -

Theresa Roberts-Robinson Sisters’ Journey, Inc. My name is Theresa Roberts-Robinson and this is my story of Hope.

I first received the phone call on March 19, 2018 – one day before my 51st birthday. My doctor stated that my biopsy came back positive. He then explained that my diagnosis was positive for DCIS, short for Ductal Carcinoma In-Situ Cancer, Stage 0.

Ductal means that it is located within my breast duct glands.

Carcinoma is cancer of the skin or from epithelial cells, in this case, the cells in the lining of my breast duct glands.

In-Situ means that it is in the original state and has not gone beyond that point.

After receiving my annual mammogram, I was notified that the doctor wanted to see me again because they noticed something on my mammogram that caused some concerns. It was explained to me that I had calcium spots on my left breast.

A biopsy was ordered to confirm my diagnosis.

April 19, 2018 was my first surgery. A lumpectomy was performed to remove the cancerous tissue. I later found out that the first surgery was unsuccessful in removing all the bad tissue. Therefore, I had to have a second surgery one month later.

The second surgery also was unsuccessful at removing all of the bad cancer tissue. I now faced the decision of having a mastectomy done on one of my breasts, which was a very difficult decision for me, but

God was still faithful.

In October 2018, I made the decision to have a third lumpectomy, which was successful. My doctor was able to remove all the cancer tissue. Within a couple of months, I underwent several treatments of radiation to kill any remaining cancer cells. I am now going on four years of being cancer free and I thank God for allowing me to overcome this journey of my life. I also would like to thank my surgeon for his effortless perseverance of continually trying and succeeding; and finally, I thank my family and friends for all their love and support during this time of my life.

SNOWY DAY | NEW WORLD Friday, March 18 | 7:30pm Lyman Center for the Performing Arts Southern CT State University New Haven Symphony Orchestra Alasdair Neale, music director Flora Hawk, soprano Lianna Wimberly Williams, soprano Korin Thomas-Smith, baritone

Blessings.

Proposed Bill Would Make Faking COVID-19 Vaccine Card Against The Law

Dvorak Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”

by Lisa Backus

The Judiciary Committee is proposing a bill that would make it a misdemeanor punishable by one year in jail for forging a COVID-19 vaccination card.

The bill would make altering or forging a COVID-19 card or an electronic record of COVID-19 vaccination on par with the state’s forgery law, said Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, while expressing support for the bill.

“This would seem to be a common-sense addition to our criminal laws,” Looney said.a green button that says support and red button that says oppose “The law is saying, don’t do this, there is a criminal penalty,” Judiciary Committee Co-Chair Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, said.

Looney was the only person to speak on the proposed law during a lengthy public hearing on several issues before the Judiciary Committee Friday.

According to the state Department of Public Health website, those who are not vaccinated should not buy fake vaccine cards, make their own vaccine cards or fill-in blank vaccination cares with false information.

“By misrepresenting yourself as vacci-

Simerson The Fallen Ravel Mother Goose Suite Excerpts from The Snowy Day Music by NHSO Composer-inResidence Joel Thompson Inspired by the children’s book by Ezra Jack Keats All audience members will wear masks & present proof of vaccination or neg. Covid test (administered less than 48 hours prior).

Learn more at NewHavenSymphony.org.

nated when entering schools, mass transit, workplaces, or businesses, you put yourself and others around you at risk of contracting COVID-19,” the DPH said.

• How to report suspected use of fake COVID vaccination cards The unauthorized use of an official government agency’s seal such as from the DPH or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a crime and might be punishable by federal law, the DPH said.

The website gives instructions on how to report suspicious activities involving COVID-19 vaccine cards.

The agency has not investigated any cases of forged vaccine cards, said Christopher Boyle, spokesman for the DPH.

For Tickets: (203) 787-4282 NewHavenSymphony.org 11

Mutual Aid Mission Catches Fire THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

by NORA GRACE-FLOOD

Mariam Andino Pagán doesn’t earn enough money working at the Clarion Hotel to afford a place to sleep at night — but she did find clothing and supplies in the basement Wednesday, as a community rescue mission that began with a local fire expanded to more people in need.

The rescue mission is in response to a Feb. 14 fire that destroyed a 22-unit apartment complex on 42 Warner St. in Hamden. Donations from around the Northeast flooded the town’s Keefe Community Center to support over 60 tenants who were displaced from their homes. The damage to the building was so severe that the complex will have to be demolished, meaning residents lost all of their belongings, from beloved pets to family heirlooms to everyday essentials. (On Wednesday, Fire Marshal Brian Dolan reported that an inspection revealed that “the fire started in the pantry closet of Unit B12. Inside the small closet was a mini freezer. The mini freezer was plugged into an extension cord that was plugged into a wall outlet inside the closet. The mini freezer was the only item plugged into the outlet. No other sources of ignition were noted in the closet.)

People from around Connecticut — and

neighboring states — were so affected by stories of those without homes to return to that the town is now overwhelmed with goods to give away. Through this Saturday, volunteers are distributing those items not just to burned out tenants, but to countless others facing homelessness this February.

Keefe Center Clerk AnnMarie Karavas reported that all of the Warner Street residents — the vast majority of whom are being put up at the Clarion Hotel for the next few weeks while they search for new apartments — came by Tuesday morning to find basics to keep themselves clothed, warm, and occupied for the foreseeable future. They had over 1,000 garbage bags of goods to choose from.

On Wednesday, Keefe leadership opened up the event to the general public, determining that there was enough for anyone in need to come by and fill up a bag or two.

The beneficiaries included workers from the Clarion itself.

Mariam Andino Pagán, who has been experiencing homelessness since she moved by herself from Puerto Rico to Connecticut seven months ago, took a break from scrubbing hotel suites Wednesday morning to browse the basement, where supplies are stored.

Clothing drive volunteers, including Mother Jean Carr of Pitts Chapel Unified Free Will in New Haven, help organize donations.

“I work here, but I don’t got nothing,” Pagán told the Independent.

“I didn’t have anything warm today,” Pagán said, picking out a fluffy down jacket to seal in heat not offered by her thin sweater. “God is good.”

Though tenants have been staying in the hotel, Pagán has been sleeping in parks around town at night while cleaning the

Clarion during the day. Sometimes, she said, “Peoples that I’ve met in the park” let her into their homes to rest.

On Wednesday, she went back to work with a coat — and a coloring book and set of markers. “That’s for therapy,” she said. “I need therapy,” she continued, before collapsing into a volunteer’s arms for a hug and a cry.

“I left Puerto Rico,” she said, “because I was tired of the gunshots … and to find someone to take care of me.” She added that, at least this week, she felt she had found that sense of safety.

On the other side of the aisle, Lisa Albert of Wallingford was packing a sack of games for her 9-year-old grandson and folding pairs of scrubs to give to her certified nurse assistant friend without a car or free-time to find fresh uniforms for work.

Albert is dependent on donations as well as a volunteer who distributes free goods to others without food, clothes or shelter.

The past year has been especially hard on Albert. On March 18, her mother passed away. She and her boyfriend have been able to continue living in her mom’s home, along with her grandson, who she has custody of, thanks to various Covid-19 programs that helped her pay her mother’s mortgage.

She said she fears she will soon be “facing homelessness.” In July, she had to get hip replacement surgery and was written out of her job at a group home until January. However, in December she started up another job in an Amazon warehouse, running up and down stairs 12 hours a day on her new hip.

“Girl, I quit the gym,” she said. She also got Covid-19, she noted, for the first time

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

‘Good Times’ Actor, Johnny Brown, Passes Away at 84

by Barry Anderson, BlackDoctor.org

Actor and comedian Johnny Brown, best known as the beloved actor who played the housing project superintendent “Bookman” on the hit sitcom, Good Times, has passed away. He was 84.

“It’s too terrible. It will never not be.

It’s a shock. He was literally snatched out of our lives. It’s not real for us yet,” his daughter Sharon Brown, an actor and composer, wrote Friday. “To articulate the depths of profound sadness,” Sharon’s caption read in part. “This is my mom’s husband for sixty-one years, mine and JJ’s dad, Elijah and Levi’s Pop Pop, older brother to George and brother in law to Pat and extended family to Chris, Hihat, Damian, and Derell. So, there will be more to say but not now. Dad was the absolute best. We love him so very much.”

Sharon told TMZ that her father was at the doctor’s office in L.A. on Wednesday getting his pacemaker checked. But shortly after that visit he went into cardiac arrest and collapsed. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Sharon told the outlet that the doctor’s appointment was routine, making his sudden death a huge shock to the family.

“Good Times” was originally a spinoff from “Maude” and centered on the Evans family, led by mother Florida (Esther Rolle) and James Evans (award-winning actor John Amos) in a Chicago housing project. It also featured Jimmie Walker, who became famous for his trademark “Dynomite!” phrase, and a young Janet Jackson.

In addition to his four-year run on the show, Brown frequently appeared on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” and enjoyed a lengthy singing and stage career.

Brown’s “Bookman” character was often teased about his weight by Walker’s character “JJ” and other members of the Evans family.

“Sometimes you can do too much of a thing, and it doesn’t come natural,” Brown said in 2019. “With everybody [calling Bookman] ‘buffalo butt’ in a scene, it loses something. … They even had Janet [Jackson], who had just come on the show, answering like Mr. Buffalo Butt.”

“And they used it in every show. They used it when I walked in the show, all through the scene. When I left the scene, they used it. I couldn’t say anything because I have a wife and two kids to support. Now at my age, I would have to say something.”

Brown was born on June 11, 1937, in St. Petersburg, Florida, and raised in Harlem.

He won an amateur night competition at the Apollo Theater; starred in nightclub acts with his future wife, June, and with tap dancer Gregory Hines Jr. and drummer Gregory Hines Sr.; and recorded songs for Columbia and Atlantic records.

While working in the Catskills, Brown met Sammy Davis Jr., and the legendary entertainer would prove to be an inspiration. “He did all the things I wanted to do,” Brown said in a 1996 interview. “I wanted to be a well-rounded, complete entertainer; I didn’t just want to sing or tell a joke.”

Other credits include “The Flip Wilson Show,” “The Jeffersons” and “Martin.”

He appeared on Broadway with Sammy Davis Jr. and Cicely Tyson in the 1960s.

In addition to his daughter and his wife, Brown also leaves behind his son, John Jr. He will be missed.

(CIRCA 1970: Photo of Good Times Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) (L to R) Actors Ja’net Dubois, Johnny Carter, BernNadette Stanis, producer Norman Lear, Jimmie Walker and Ralph Carter, winners of the Impact Award for “Good Times” pose in the press room at the 2006 TV Land Awards at the Barker Hangar on March 19, 2006 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images)

13

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

March Is Women’s History Month

Ida B. Wells-Barnett 1862-1931

By Arlisha R. Norwood, National Women’s History Museum Fellow | 2017

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence. As a skilled writer, WellsBarnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South.

Ida Bell Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16th, 1862.

She was born into slavery during the Civil War. Once the war ended Wells-Barnett’s parents became politically active in Reconstruction Era politics. Her parents instilled into her the importance of education. Wells-Barnett enrolled at Rust College but was expelled when she started a dispute with the university president.

In 1878, Wells-Barnett went to visit her grandmother. While she was there WellsBarnett was informed that a yellow fever epidemic had hit her hometown. The disease took both of Wells-Barnett’s parents and her infant brother. Left to raise her brothers and sister, she took a job as a teacher so that she could keep the family together. Eventually, Wells-Barnett moved her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee. There she continued to work as an educator.

In 1884, Wells-Barnett filed a lawsuit against a train car company in Mem-

phis for unfair treatment. She had been thrown off a first-class train, despite having a ticket. Although she won the case on the local level, the ruling was eventually overturned in federal court. After the lynching of one of her friends, WellsBarnett turned her attention to white mob violence. She became skeptical about the reasons black men were lynched and set out to investigate several cases. She published her findings in a pamphlet and wrote several columns in local newspapers. Her expose about an 1892 lynching enraged locals, who burned her press and drove her from Memphis. After a few

months, the threats became so bad she was forced to move to Chicago, Illinois.

In 1893, Wells-Barnett, joined other African American leaders in calling for the boycott of the World’s Columbian Exposition. The boycotters accused the exposition committee of locking out African Americans and negatively portraying the black community. In 1895, Wells-Barnett married famed African American lawyer Ferdinand Barnett. Together, the couple had four children. Throughout her career Wells-Barnett, balanced motherhood with her activism.

Wells-Barnett traveled internationally, shedding light on lynching to foreign audiences. Abroad, she openly confronted white women in the suffrage movement who ignored lynching. Because of her stance, she was often ridiculed and ostracized by women’s suffrage organizations in the United States. Nevertheless, Wells-Barnett remained active the women’s rights movement. She was a founder of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club which was created to address issues dealing with civil rights and women’s suffrage. Although she was in Niagara Falls for the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), her name is not mentioned as an official founder.

Late in her career Wells-Barnett focused on urban reform in the growing city of Chicago. She died on March 25th, 1931.

Anti-Lynching Bill Passes House, Expected to Clear Senate

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation to make lynching a federal hate crime.

Named in honor of Emmett Till, the young Black boy whose suffered an horrific murder at the hands of white men in Mississippi in 1955, the bill outlaws lynching.

According to the bill’s text, “Whoever conspires to commit any offense … shall (A) if death results from the offense, be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.” “(B) In any other case, be subjected to the same penalties as the penalties prescribed for the offense of the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.”

Specifically, the legislation makes lynching a federal hate crime, punishable by up to life in prison.

The measure faced defeat for more than 100 years, with lawmakers attempting to pass the legislation more than 200 times.

The House finally passed the bill on a 422-3 vote. Three Republicans opposed the bill: Reps. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), and Chip Roy (R-Texas).

Many believe it will also have success in the U.S. Senate.

“The House has sent a resounding message that our nation is finally reckoning

14

with one of the darkest and most horrific periods of our history, and that we are morally and legally committed to changing course,” said Congressman Bobby Rush (D-Illinois), who is retiring at the end of his term.

Congressman Rush, who founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, had promised to do all he could to push the legislation through before his retirement.

The congressman recalled that he was 8 years old when he saw photos of Emmett Till’s brutalized corpse in Jet Magazine.

“That shaped my consciousness as a Black man in America, changed the course of my life, and changed our nation,” Congressman Rush asserted.

New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory

Booker noted that between 1936 and 1938, a flag posted outside of the national headquarters of the NAACP read, “A man was lynched yesterday.”

“That was a solemn reminder of the reality Black Americans experienced daily during some of the darkest chapters of America’s history,” Sen. Booker remarked.

“Used by white supremacists to oppress and subjugate Black communities, lynching is a form of racialized violence that has permeated much of our nation’s past and must now be reckoned with,” the Senator continued.

“Although this bill will not undo the terror and fear of the past, it’s a necessary step that our nation must take to move forward.”

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

Black Teen Still Missing From South Carolina One Yeaar Later

BlackNews.com Nationwide — The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is asking for the public’s help to find Semaj Goodwine, a missing 16-year-old boy on the one-year anniversary of his disappearance.

Semaj was only 15-years old when he left his aunt’s home in Camden, South Carolina, on March 7, 2021, and did not return. Although he was reported missing from South Carolina, he is originally from Georgia.

Law enforcement believes that Semaj could still be in South Carolina and may

still be in Camden or the surrounding areas. It is also possible that he traveled to the Covington, Georgia area. No one has heard from or spoken to him since he was reported missing last March.

Semaj is 5-foot-5-inches tall and weighs 100 pounds. He is a Black male with brown hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call the Newton County Sheriff’s Office at 678-625-1400 or the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST. Learn more about his case at https:// www.missingkids.org/poster/ NCMC/1415068/1/screen

TidalWave Comics is proud to announce the addition of Stacey Abrams comic book to its popular “ Female Force” Series focused on female empowerment. “Female Force: Stacey Abrams” will be released onA March 2nd.

TidalWave has profiled politicians for more than 12 years using the unique storytelling properties of comic books.

Politician and voting rights activist Stacey Yvonne Abrams is committed to serving her home state of Georgia. After serving in Georgia’s House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017, she ran for Governor in 2018. Stacey lost that race in a nail biter. Instead of resting on her laurels, she founded Fair Fight Action 2020, a group dedicated to helping the Democrat Party financially while bolstering voting rights. Most credit Fair Fight Action 2020 for flipping the senate in the 2020 election.

Written by Michael Frizell, drawn by famed comic book artist Joey Mason, this 22-page book is available both digitally and in print and can be found on multiple platforms.

“We wanted to showcase the strong women in today’s society that have inspired generations and shaped the culture of today,” Davis said. “Kids and adults alike can look up to these women as great role models. One of the coolest things about the comic books is that we found schools using them for reluctant readers.”

The latest biography comic book joins TidalWave’s ever-growing library of more than 200 comic book biographies.

Previous titles have profiled Kamala Harris, Dolly Parton, Sonia Sotomayor,

15

Michelle Obama, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Condoleezza Rice and Cher. These biographical comics, written by some of the most talented writers in the comic world and beyond, deliver an informed and illustrated look into the lives of these figures.

“Comics should be for everyone! I like writing for TidalWave because we’re not trying to generate controversy when it comes to profiling political figures. Our goal is to tell a great story and make our subjects accessible to all,” said writer Michael Frizell.

“Stacey Abrams’ joyful and unapologetically down-to-earth approach is good medicine in our current political climate... Frizell’s account of her foundations and career invoke that same warmth, and I hope readers enjoy learning about Stacey’s journey as much as I enjoyed drawing it,”said artist Joey Mason.

The biography comic format allows TidalWave writers to delve into the history of newsworthy figures and explore what shaped them. Several media outlets, including CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, “The Today Show” and Time and People magazines, have featured the company’s line of biographical comic books.

TidalWave is a multifaceted multimedia production company with the mission of delivering dynamic storytelling in a variety of forms by developing graphic and literary fiction and nonfiction, audio, film and more. The company’s wide range of diverse titles delight readers through its creative and innovative storytelling available in high-quality print and electronic formats.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

Forget What You Heard: Diabetes Does Not Run In Your Family!

by DeMario Easley, BlackDoctor.org

You have probably heard it time and time again. “Diabetes runs in my family”. Although many hereditary diseases exist, things like diabetes and high blood pressure are not one of them. The truth is, dietary decisions get passed down resulting in the same outcome. Chances are the choices your parents make with their diets will become your own. This is why education on what you are putting in your body should be at the forefront of your adulthood. The earlier you get ahead of the dieting curve, the better things will be for you in the long run. Fried foods, starches, and sugary drinks are often referred to as comfort foods. While they can be temporarily comforting, they can eventually cause major complications!

Lighten Up Celebratory Foods Events like weddings, baby showers, Super Bowl parties, and Sunday dinners are the foundational environments for these unhealthy foods. Although these foods can be enjoyed in moderation, too

much of them can eventually harm.

One of the great things about changing your diet early is that you may not have to completely go cold turkey. Instead, you can go for some great alternatives! Instead of meatballs with ground beef, you can try turkey meatballs. Turkey will have a significantly lower amount of fat and sodium. Instead of frying your chicken or fish in grease, try baking them or using an air fryer.

Ultimately, you want to avoid grease as much as possible. If you absolutely have to use grease, grapeseed oil is a great idea.

For those party-goers who love a great snack at a home event, a charcuterie board is perfect and versatile. You can start it off with anything from carrots, broccoli, cheese, crackers, and much more!

The Truth About What You’re Drinking The truth is, when you’re having a good time at a party or the movies, chances are you won’t be craving a tall glass of water.

More than likely people are choosing sodas, juices, sugary teas, or alcohol.

Like most foods, moderation is always a

great idea. Use that same mind state with your beverages while you are out having fun.

Most of your favorite liquors are packed with sugar whether from what’s being mixed in it or the alcohol itself. Your fa-

vorite juices are also loaded with syrup leaving you prone to diabetes over time.

One of the best ways to take control of your sugar intake is to strategize. Take a week or so and watch your patterns throughout the day. Do you drink more

juice on Wednesdays? This is an important thing to discover when trying to make a change in your drinking habits.

Create Good Habits When it comes to eating and drinking habits, many of them are adapted from whoever you grew up around. As you grow older it becomes your responsibility to break the bad habits.

Perhaps consider a time period where you aren’t focusing on taste when you consume food. Use this as a way to reset your body then develop a routine.

Some may even find it beneficial to schedule out when they eat or drink. This is a great way to start and once you fall into a routine you won’t have to worry about an actual schedule.

It takes a full 3 weeks to develop a routine, which means you’re just 21 days away from having the healthy eating habits you always wanted. Once you have tried out this new lifestyle it’s important to spread the word to your family and friends who have struggled with eating habits as well!

Black Unemployment Rate Improves Amid Historic Jobs Report

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

America – and most notably Black America – is back to work, declared President Joe Biden as he announced one of the most robust job reports in modern times.

“History has been made here,” the president declared.

The economy created 467,000 jobs in January, and the unemployment rate for Black workers fell to 6.9 percent and dropped to 5.8 percent for African American women.

The president highlighted the 6.6 million jobs added to the U.S. economy in the year since he took office.

“It comes alongside the largest drop in the unemployment rate in a single year on record, the largest reduction in childhood poverty ever recorded in a single

year, and the strongest economic growth this country has seen in nearly 40 years,” President Biden asserted.

He also acknowledged the struggles that many American families still face, noting that prices have increased sharply during the pandemic.

“Average people are getting clobbered by the cost of everything,” President Biden said. “Gas prices at the pump are up. We’re working to bring them down, but they’re up. Food prices are up. We’re working to bring them down as well.”

White House officials said they plan to enact policies to slow inflation.

Before the president’s remarks, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 222-210 to pass the COMPETES Act, a bill to help America keep up with China in the semiconductor chip industry.

The legislation seeks to tackle such economic issues as supply chain disruptions and a global shortage of semiconductor chips, essential for producing smartphones, medical equipment, and cars.

The bill would introduce several changes to American trade rules to level the playing field for domestic businesses and combat China’s market-distorting trade practices.

“Democrats are prepared to build on this extraordinary economic momentum: continuing our work to lower families’ costs, strengthen our supply chains, and make more goods in America,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared.

“Under the leadership of President Biden and House Democrats, our nation will continue to Build Back Better to create more good-paying jobs and lower costs for families across America,” Pelosi stated.

2022

16

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

Black History of Health: Halle Berry

by Karen Heslop, BlackDoctor.org

Though Halle Berry is well known for her acting these days, she actually started out as a model. This venture eventually led to her being crowned the first runner-up in the 1986 Miss USA pageant. It wasn’t until three years later that she moved to New York to pursue a career in acting. While things started slowly, Halle got her big break in the romantic comedy ‘Boomerang’ in 1992.

Working consistently, Halle eventually received awards for her performances in “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge” and “Monster’s Ball”. Though her career has mostly centered around acting, she has been a spokesmodel for Revlon since 1996 and made her directorial debut with the Netflix drama “Bruised” in 2020.

Halle Berry isn’t only known for her acting prowess, however. Over the years, she’s been very vocal about being diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 22.

There was even a bit of controversy when she stated that switching to a keto diet allowed her to keep the disease under control. Even so, dealing with diabetes was the inspiration behind her new health-based platform, Re-Spin.

What Is Diabetes?

Diabetes is a condition where your body doesn’t break down sugar as efficiently as it should. This issue is attached to the body’s production of the hormone, insulin.

When you have diabetes, you’re either not producing enough insulin or your body isn’t using the hormone well. If this is happening, it can result in significant fluctuations in the sugar level in the body, which in turn affects how much energy you have.

The condition can also cause other health issues such as heart disease, kidney disease, and vision loss.

Additionally, you can get diagnosed with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. While the former is an autoimmune condition, the latter is typically influenced by lifestyle issues such as poor eating habits or being overweight. In some cases, people may not notice any signs of having the condition. However, some of the symptoms to look out for include persistent thirst, unexplained weight loss, increased frequency of urination, and chronic fatigue.

How Diabetes Is Diagnosed If you have concerns about being diabetic, your doctor may use several different blood tests to determine your status. The first option is a glycated hemoglobin (A1C) test, which can roughly diagnose whether you have Type 1, Type 2, or prediabetes.

Unfortunately, this test isn’t always accurate so your doctor may opt for other blood tests that can pinpoint what’s going on.

The options include a fasting blood sugar test, oral glucose tolerance test, initial glucose challenge test, and follow-up glucose tolerance testing. Once it’s clear which type of diabetes you’re dealing with, your doctor will move on to your available management options.

Diabetes Treatment Options As mentioned previously, diabetes can be a chronic condition for which there is no cure. In cases where your doctor thinks a healthier lifestyle can reverse your diagnosis, they’ll likely recommend a diet change and an exercise routine.

In the meantime, everyone with diabetes will be prescribed insulin to deal with their body’s insufficient supply of the hormone.

Depending on what you need, your doctor will determine how often you need to administer insulin as well as which methods work best.

While you’re taking insulin, it will be important for you to learn the signs of a diabetic emergency and how to handle them. You’ll also need to pay more attention to changes in your body such as with your feet, your blood pressure, and your cholesterol levels.

If there are any signs that you’re developing other conditions, you may receive medications for those as well. In some cases, people can be cleared for a pancreas implant, which may have a positive effect on the disease.

Diabetes is a life-changing condition that must be handled carefully. Living well with the illness typically involves sticking to your doctor’s medical regimen, monitoring your body, and making healthy lifestyle choices.

HONOREE

SAHRAA KARIMI INDEPENDENT FILM DIRECTOR & SCREENWRITER

OMNI NEW HAVEN HOTEL AT YALE 155 TEMPLE ST. NEW HAVEN, CT IN PERSON AND ON OUR VIRTUAL STAGE 12:00PM–2:00PM LUNCHEON AND AWARD PRESENTATION

2:00PM–3:00PM POST–LUNCHEON RECEPTION

Tickets start at $175.

To purchase, visit ARTIDEA.ORG/VLA Virtual options available beginning at $75

Proof of COVID-19 vaccination required for in-person attendance.

Guests will be asked to wear a mask when not eating or drinking. Additional precautions may be required based on public health guidance and City of New Haven policy effective April 6, 2022.

17

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

6888th: Black women WWII heroes finally get Congressional Gold Medal

By Deborah Bailey, Special to the AFRO

The first Black female soldiers stationed in Europe will finally receive the homecoming they deserved after serving in World War II. On Feb. 28, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 422-0 to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Black women of the 6888th of the Central Postal Directory Battalion. The Senate passed a similar measure last year, honoring the hard work of the first and only all Black Women’s Army Corp unit.

“I am honored to recognize 6888th’s selfless service, and to be able to award the highest honor in Congress to the women, including my constituent Ms. Anna Mae Robertson, whose daughter inspired me to get involved in this effort,” Moore said.

The all Black female Women’s Army Corp Unit, known as the “6888th,” was deployed to Europe during World War II to clear out years of backlogged mail. The battalion did the dirty work to ensure mail was delivered to troops, government workers and Red Cross workers stationed throughout Europe, an important element of the War effort, then and now.

Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), principal sponsor of the Senate’s 6888th Gold Medal Recognition legislation, celebrated final passage of the bill in a speech on the floor of the Senate this week.

“The passage of this legislation is

long overdue and will award the Congressional Gold medal to these brave women for their devotion to duty, military service, and their brave efforts to boost the morale of personnel stationed in Europe during WWII,” Moran said.

The women of the 6888th Battalion worked in deplorable conditions; laboring in rat infested Army hangers with broken windows in the bitter cold to clear millions of pieces of backlogged mail in weeks. After their victory in England, they were redeployed to France where they repeated their success. Facing both racism and sexism, the women soldiers came home to anonymity while White World War II soldiers were celebrated with parades and special recognitions in communities throughout the United States.

Black U.S. Military officers and family members who advocated tirelessly on behalf of the 6888th Unit also rejoiced at final passage of the longawaited legislation in Congress.

“This honor is long overdue. As a Black female general officer, I stand on their shoulders to have had the privilege and honor to serve at this rank,” Brigadier General (Ret) Twanda E. Young said. “I now honor their legacy by ensuring others can stand on my shoulders.”

The legislation to award the women with a gold medal has been sent to President Biden for his signature.

Congresswoman Moore’s office reported the following living members of the WWII 6888th Battalion:

18

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

Con’t from page 10

Valerie Boyd

Hollywood, Veta, great restaurants and snacks. We ate our delicious sandwiches from Alon’s and devoured the small bag of chips. We looked at each other and she sprinted to her snack cabinet. Yes, Val had a snack cabinet. I had a snack pantry. We would literally talk about snacks all of the time. Potato chips are a favorite for both of us so we ate chips and then cookies, giggled at our impetuousness, and eventually talked shop.

Valerie was a writer’s writer. She was the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence and Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Media. Val co-founded and directed the distinguished low-residency MFA Program in Narrative Nonfiction at the college. She was known for working with the community, mentoring students, and connecting students with faculty and industry leaders to enhance their academic training. In 2015, Valerie organized a quaint session to introduce 12 high school students to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker at UGA’s Wilson Center for the Humanities and Arts. Valerie was a great connector and collaborator.

At the time of Valerie’s passing, she had recently completed work on Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker. Hand-picked by Walker to work on the project, Boyd spent seven years researching and editing the book which will be released by Simon & Schuster in April 2022.

“Valerie Boyd was one of the best people ever to live,” Walker said in a statement from Simon & Schuster. “Even though illness was stalking her the past several years, she accompanied me in gathering, transcribing, and editing my journals Gathering Blossoms Under Fire, and stood with me until the end. This was a major feat, a huge act of love and solidarity, of sisterhood, of soul generosity and shared joy, for which she will be remembered.”

Val was also working on a project on public art in Mississippi with Academy award-nominated actress Aunjanue Ellis and had recently been appointed editor-atlarge for UGA Press. We were collaborating on HealthPlus, a digital-first publication on African American health for The Atlanta Voice which launches this month (March 2022). Unflappable, Val will be remembered for her generosity of spirit and commitment to the craft of writing, being a free Black woman and freeing others in the process.

Valerie was preceded in death by her parents Roger and Laura Boyd. Her older brother Michael Boyd passed away February 18, 2022, from cancer. She is survived by her younger brother Timothy, niece Kaylisha, and life partner of 23 years Veta Goler. She was 58.

A private service was held for Boyd Saturday, March 5, 2022. The public was invited to view Boyd’s celebration of life Saturday, March 5, 2022, at 11 a.m. EST online.

TRAIN LIVE at Job Corps

at home

Non-residential Job Corps students have the flexibility to live at home while receiving the same career training and education as those who live on campus.

All the benefits, more flexibility

NON-RES STUDENTS

RESIDENTIAL STUDENTS

CONSIDERING ENROLLING AS A NON-RES STUDENT?

Tuition-free career training and education Earn your high school diploma or the equivalent

Non-res might be for you if you are:

Train in high-growth industries

– 16–24 years old

Gain hands-on work experience

– enrolling at a Job Corps center in your hometown

Take community college classes

– responsible for taking care of

Participate in clubs and sports

children or other family members

Get involved with community projects

– motivated to train for a career

Develop friendships and connections Receive nutritious meals and basic medical care

during the day, Monday through Friday

Contact your Job Corps admissions representative for more information about non-residential opportunities at a center near you.

jobcorps.gov | (800) 733-JOBS [5627]

CAREERS BEGIN HERE

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

19

THEINNER-CITY INNER-CITY NEWS March , 2022 - March 2022 NEWS -July 27, 09 2016 - August 02, 15, 2016

Account Clerk: The Town of East Haven is currently accepting applications to par-

DRIVER CDL CLASS A

ticipate in the examination for Account Clerk II, Grade Level 11. The starting salary is $45,731/year, 35 hours per week. This is a highly responsible position requiring accurate arithmetic computations. Prior experience working with payroll preferred. High School Diploma and 2 years of in office work of a responsible nature requiring accurate arithmetic computations. Applications are available online at https://www.townofeasthavenct.org/civil-service-commission/pages/job-notices-and-tests or from the Civil Service Office, 250 Main Street, East Haven and must be returned by March 18, 2022. The Town of East Haven is committed to building a workforce of diverse individuals. Minorities, Females, HandiHOME INC, onare behalf of Columbus capped and Veterans encouraged to apply. House and the New Haven Housing Authority,

NOTICE

Full Time – All Shifts Top Pay-Full Benefits EOE Please apply in person: 1425 Honeyspot Rd. Ext. Stratford, CT 06615

VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE

is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments at this development located at 108 Frank Street, New Haven. Maximum income limitations apply. Pre-applications will be available from 9AM TO 5PM beginning Monday Ju;y 25, 2016 and ending when sufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have been received at the officesInvitation of HOME INC. will be mailied upon reforApplications Bids quest by calling HOME INC at 203-562-4663 those hours.

Completed preCrawford Manor Fire Alarm, Life, Healthduring and Safety Upgrades Re-Bid applications must be returned to HOME INC’s offices at 171 Orange Street, Third Floor, New Haven, CT 06510.

Elm City Communities is currently seeking bids for Crawford Manor Fire Alarm,

QSR STEEL CORPORATION

ELM CITY COMMUNITIES

APPLY NOW!

Steel Fabricators, Erectors & Welders Top pay for top performers. Health Benefits, 401K, Vacation Pay.

Life, Health and Safety Upgrades Re-Bid. A complete copy of the requirement may be obtained from Elm City Communities’ Vendor Collaboration Portal https://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway

Email Resume: Rose@qsrsteel.com Hartford, CT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

NOTICIA

MECHANIC TRACTOR TRAILER

beginning on Monday, February 28, 2022 at 3:00PM. DISPONIBLES VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES

ELM CITY COMMUNITIES

HOME INC, en nombre de la Columbus House y de la New Haven Housing Authority, está aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un dormitorio en este desarrollo ubicado en la calle 109 Frank Street, New Haven. Se aplican limitaciones de ingresos máximos. Las pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando Martes 25 julio, 2016 hasta cuando se han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente 100) en las oficinas de HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas por correo a petición llamando a HOME INC al 203-562-4663 durante esas horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse City Communities bids for a Elm las oficinas de HOME INCisencurrently 171 Orangeseeking Street, tercer piso,pest Newcontrol Haven services. , CT 06510 .

Full Time, Benefits, Top Pay

Invitation for Bids Pest Control Services

A complete copy of the requirement may be obtained from Elm City Communities’ Vendor Collaboration Portal https ://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway

beginning on Monday, February 28, 2022 at 3:00PM.

NEW HAVEN

POLICE OFFICER

242-258 Fairmont Ave 2BR Townhouse, 1.5 BA, 3BR, 1 level , 1BA All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 Competitive examinations willbus be held position of Police Officer highways, near stopfor & the shopping center in selected departments in South Central Connecticut.

Pet under 40lb allowed. partiesatcontact Maria @ 860-985-8258 Candidates may register for theInterested testing process www.policeapp.com/southcentral.

Application deadline is Monday, March 21, 2022.

CT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s Certificate Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates in response to the Church’s Ministry needs. The cost is $125. Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:30The written and oral board exams will be administered by 3:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., B.S. theGeneral SouthBishop Central (203) 996-4517 Host, ElijahCriminal Davis, D.D. Justice Pastor ofAdministration.

Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster

candidates St. NewAll Haven, CT

must possess a valid CHIP card as of March 27, 2022.

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

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY Sealed bids are invited by the Housing Authority of the Town of Seymour Fleet Manager until 3:00 pm on Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at its office at 28 Smith Street,

Proficient, self-motivated Fleet Manager needed to manage Vehicle Fleet Operations.

Seymour,for CTmaking 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk and Replacement at the Responsible decisions on the safety ofRepairs all vehicles.

Planning, directing, Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living the Facility, 26 Smith StreetandSeymour. managing, coordinating, and supervising programs for vehicle equipment assignment, utilization, maintenance, repair, replacement, and disposal of fleet vehicles.

Provide direct supervision to a team of fleet mechanics. Ensure fleet compliance with A pre-bid conference will be held at the Housing Authority Office 28 Smith all Federal, State, & local laws and regulations. Candidate requirements include: ExStreetmechanical Seymour, knowledge CT at 10:00& am, on Wednesday, 2016. trucks and tensive experience repairing July both20, commercial heavy equipment. CDL ‘A’ License. Willing to travel overnight to evaluate potential new acquisitions.

Send resume to Duccifrom Electrical Contractors, Inc. 74 Scott Swamp Bidding documents are available the Seymour Housing Authority OfRd. Farmington, CT 06032 or via e-mail to humanresources@duccielectrical.com. An fice, 28 Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 (203) 888-4579. affirmative action equal opportunity employer. EOE/M/F/D/V

The Housing Authority reserves the right to accept or reject any or all bids, to reduce the scope of the project to reflect available funding, and to waive any

Apply:Pace, 1425 Honeyspot

Rd. Ext., Stratford, CT EOE

Listing: Accounting Accounting Department has an immediate opening in Accounts Payable for an AP Operations Specialist. This full time position in a fast-paced office requires good computer and organizational skills, attention to detail, and multi-tasking. Benefits include health, dental & LTD insurance plus 401(k).

Invitation to Bid: Send resume by email to: HRDept@eastriverenergy.com or send resume to: Human 2nd Notice Resource Dept. P O Box 388, Guilford CT 06437.

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

********An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer**********

ASSISTANT TECHNOLOGY COORDINATOR

Full-time position Go to www.portlandct.org for details

Old Saybrook, CT (4 Buildings, 17 Units) QSR STEEL Tax Exempt & Not Prevailing Wage Rate Project CORPORATION New Construction, Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, Castin-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Siding, Invitation to Bid: Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, Steel Fabricators, Erectors & Welders Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

MARTIN LUTHER KING BOULEVARD Top pay for top performers. Health This contract is subject to state set-aside and contract compliance requirements. ST NEW HAVEN, CT MLK BLVD/TYLER Benefits, 401K, Vacation Pay.

APPLY NOW!

Email Resume: Rose@qsrsteel.com Hartford, CT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Bid Extended, Due Date: August New 5, 2016Construction. 11 Buildings, 56 Units, Anticipated Start: August 15, 2016 approx. 77,743 sf Project is Taxable. No Wage Rates.

Project documents available via ftp link below: This contract is subject to state set-aside http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage

TOWN PLANNER

and contract compliance requirements.

Fax or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com Bid3 Due Wed. March 9, 2022 @ 3 pm HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section CertifiedDate: Businesses Project documents available via ftp link below: Haynes Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=martinlutherking AA/EEO EMPLOYER

Full-time position Go to www.portlandct.org for details 20

Email Questions to Eric: efacchini@haynesct.com Email Bids to: Dawn: 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

NEWS- July 27,092016 - August 02, 15, 2016 THEINNER-CITY INNER-CITY NEWS March , 2022 - March 2022

NOTICE VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE HOME INC, on behalf of Columbus House and the New Haven Housing Authority, is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments at this development located at 108 Frank Street, New Haven. Maximum income limitations apply. Pre-applications will be available from 9AM TO 5PM beginning Monday Ju;y 25, 2016 and ending when sufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have been received at the offices of HOME INC. Applications will be mailied upon request by calling HOME INC at 203-562-4663 during those hours. Completed preapplications must be returned to HOME INC’s offices at 171 Orange Street, Third Floor, New Haven, CT 06510.

NOTICIA VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES HOME INC, en nombre de la Columbus House y de la New Haven Housing Authority, está aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un dormitorio en este desarrollo ubicado en la calle 109 Frank Street, New Haven. Se aplican limitaciones de ingresos máximos. Las pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando Martes 25 julio, 2016 hasta cuando se han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente 100) en las oficinas de HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas por correo a petición llamando a HOME INC al 203-562-4663 durante esas horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse a las oficinas de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CT 06510 .

CITY OF MILFORD

High Volume petroleum fuel distributor is seeking a full time Controller. Five+ years public accounting or equivalent experience in financial reporting and management. BA/BS in Accounting or Business required as well as advanced Excel and computer system skills. Candidate must have supervisory experience to manage finance staff of 8+. Position reports directly to the CFO. CPA and IT experience a plus.

Send resume to: HRDept@eastriverenergy.com or Human Resource Dept., P.O. Box 388, Guilford CT 06437.

DELIVERY PERSON

APARTMENTS AVAILABLE AT SPENCER VILLAGE I AND II

NEEDED Must Have your Own Vehicle If Interested call

Part Time Delivery Needed One/Two Day a Week,

(203) 435-1387

DRIVER CDL CLASS A Full Time – All Shifts Top

Pay-Full Benefits

NEW HAVEN 242-258 Fairmont Ave 2BR Townhouse, 1.5 BA, 3BR, 1 level , 1BA All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 highways, near bus stop & shopping center Pet under 40lb allowed. Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258

St. New Haven, CT

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY Sealed bids are invited by the Housing Authority of the Town of Seymour until 3:00 pm on Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at its office at 28 Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement at the Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26 Smith Street Seymour.

Listing: Tax Manager

High Volume petroleum fuel distributor is seeking a full time Tax Manager to handle 30+ fuel and sales tax filings in multiple states monthly. Duties also include some A pre-bid conference will be held the Housing Authorityexperience.

Office 28 Smith general accounting.

Three+ years publicataccounting or equivalent BA/BS Street Seymour, CT at 10:00 am,ason Wednesday, 20,and 2016. in Accounting or Business required well as advancedJuly Excel computer system skills. Reports to Controller. CPA a plus.

Send resume to: HRDept@eastriverenergy.com or Human Housing Resource Authority Dept., P.O. OfBox Bidding documents are available from the Seymour 388, Guilford CT 06437.

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

********An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer**********

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

********An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer**********

IN MANCHESTER, CT www.demarcomc.com

Spencer Village LLC, though its Managing Agent, DeMarco Management Corporation are pleased to announce that applications are currently being accepted for the waiting list at Spencer Village I & II located at 151 Spencer Street in Manchester, CT.

Applications will be available beginning March 1, 2022 through March 15, 2022.

Eligibility for Admission: An applicant’s gross family income must be used to determine eligibility for admission. Per CGS Statute 8-115a, the admission limits for Spencer Village I & II shall be at or below 30% and not the exceed 50% of the AMI adjusted for family size.

Only “elderly persons” are eligible. An “elderly person” means a person who is sixty-two years of age or older, or a person who has been certified by the Social Security Board as being totally disabled. [CGS sec. 8-113a] Rent Determination: Residents must pay the greater amount of either the base rent or a percentage of their adjusted gross income. Current base rent is $425.00.

All persons interested in Spencer Village I and II may request an application either in

EOE Please apply in person: person (or through a designated individual or agency) at the local site office located at 151 1425 Honeyspot Rd. Ext. Spencer Street in Manchester, CT during posted office hours.

Stratford, CT 06615Invitation to Bid: via email at compliance@demarcomc.com 2nd NoticeApplications can also be requested Or by calling 860-643-2163 x118

SAYEBROOKE Applications VILLAGEcan also be requested utilizing the AT&T relay service by dialing 711 SENIOR ADMINITRATIVE

ASSISTANT

Old Saybrook, CT Applications will be accepted by mail or in person at the: Spencer Village I & II (4 Buildings, 17 Units) 151 Spencer Street Tax Exempt & Not Prevailing Wage Rate Project Manchester, CT 06040

Full-time position

CT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s Certificate Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates in response to the Church’s Ministry needs. The cost is $125. Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:303:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., B.S. (203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster

Listing: Controller

Seeking qualified condidates to fill numerous vacancies to include, Deputy Assessor, Mechanic Sewer Line, Public Health Nurse and more. For information and detailed application instructions, visit www.ci.milford.ct.us Click on SERVICES, JOBS and JOB TITLE.

EFAX # 860-760-6221

Newto Construction, Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, CastGo www.portlandApplications received before March 1st or after March 15th will not be accepted. in-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinylare Siding, Applicants selected from the wait list in the order in which they were placed on ct.org for details theCasework, waiting list in order of random lottery Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

Equal Housing Opportunities QSR STEEL CORPORATION This contract is subject to state set-aside and contract compliance requirements.

APPLY NOW!

Bid Extended, Due Date: August 5, Manager 2016 Business : The Town of Wallingford’s Water and Sewer Division is Steel Fabricators, Erectors & Welders a highly Anticipated Start: seeking August 15, 2016 qualified business manager to perform responsible managerial work Top pay for top performers. Health in the administration, direction and supervision of the financial, accounting and billing documents available via ftp link below: Benefits, 401K,Project Vacation Pay. functions for the Water and Sewer Divisions’ business office. The successful candidate http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage must have a bachelor's degree from a recognized college or university in accounting Email Resume: Rose@qsrsteel.com Hartford, CT or business administration plus five (5) years of increasingly responsible office work AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER experiencedawnlang@haynesconstruction.com including at least three (3) years in a supervisory capacity, or an equivaFax or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 combination education and qualifying experience substituting on a year-for-year HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran,lent S/W/MBE & Section of 3 Certified Businesses basis. Salary: $91,470 - $117,031 annually plus an excellent fringe benefit package.

Haynes Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 Applications Forms may be obtained at the Department of Human Resources, Town AA/EEO EMPLOYER of Wallingford, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492. Forms will be mailed upon request from the Department of Human Resources or may be downloaded from Full Time, Benefits, Top Pay the Department of Human Resources Web Page. Fax (203) - 294-2084 Phone: (203)294-2080. Applications and resumes can be emailed to: wlfdhr@wallingfordct.gov by Apply:Pace, 1425 Honeyspot the closing date will be March 29, 2022. EOE

MECHANIC TRACTOR TRAILER

Rd. Ext., Stratford, CT EOE

21

THE INNER-CITY INNER-CITY NEWS March , 2022 - March 2022 NEWS- July 27,09 2016 - August 02,15, 2016

Construction

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc seeks:

Construction Equipment Mechanic preferably experienced in Seeking to employ experienced individuals in the labor, Reclaiming and Road Milling Equipment. We offer factory foreman, operator and teamster trades for a heavy outside training on equipment we operate. Location: Bloomfield CT work statewide. Reliable personal transportation and a valWe offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits id drivers license required. To apply please call (860) 621Contact: Tom Dunay VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE 1720 or send resume to: Personnel Department, P.O. Box 368, Cheshire, CT06410.

Phone: 860- 243-2300 HOME INC, on behalf of Columbus House and the New Haven Housing Authority, Email: tom.dunay@garrityasphalt.com is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom this develAffiatrmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/V Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to applyapartments Drug Free Workforce opment located at 108 Frank Street, New Haven.

Maximum income limitations apAffirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer ply. Pre-applications will be available from 9AM TO 5PM beginning Monday Ju;y 25, 2016 and ending when sufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have been received at the offices of HOME INC. Applications will be mailied upon reGarrity Asphalt Incduring seeks: CT Fence quest by calling HOMEReclaiming, INC at 203-562-4663 those hours.Large Completed pre- Company looking for an individual for our Reclaimer Operators and Milling Operators with current licensing PVCStreet, Fence Third Production Shop. Experience preferred but will applications must be returned to HOME INC’s offices at 171 Orange and clean driving record, be willing to travel throughout the Northtrain the right person. Must be familiar with carpentry hand Floor, New Haven, CT 06510. east & NY. We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits & power tools and be able to read a CAD drawing and tape measure. Use of CNC Router machine a plus but not required, will train the right person. This is an in-shop production poContact: Rick Tousignant Phone: 860- 243-2300 sition. Duties include building fence panels, posts, gates and Email: rick.touMust have a valid CT driver’s license & be able to obtain VALENTINAsignant@garrityasphalt.com MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDESmore.

DISPONIBLES a Drivers Medical Card. Must be able to pass a physical and Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply drug test. Please email resume to pboucher@atlasoutdoor.com.

Affirmative Action/deEqual Opportunity HOME INC, en nombre la Columbus House y Employer de la New Haven Housing Authority, está AA/EOE-MF aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un dormitorio en este desarrollo ubicado en la calle 109 Frank Street, New Haven. Se aplican limitaciones de ingresos máximos. Las pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando Martes 25 Tractor Trailer Driver for Heavy & Highway Construction Equipjulio,Must 2016have hastaacuando se han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes ment.

CDL License, clean driving record, capable of (aproximadamente 100) en las oficinas HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas porSeeking correo atopetición operating heavyde equipment; be willing to travel throughout the employ experienced individuals in the labor, foreman, llamando HOME INC alexcellent 203-562-4663 horas.Pre-solicitudes deberánand remitirse Northeast &aNY. We offer hourlydurante rate &esas excellent benefits operator teamster trades for a heavy outside work statewide. a las oficinas de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CT personal 06510 . transportation and a valid drivers license reReliable

NOTICE

PVC FENCE PRODUCTION

NOTICIA

Union Company seeks:

Contact Dana at 860-243-2300

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

NEW HAVEN

Construction

quired. To apply please call (860) 621-1720 or send resume to: Personnel Department, P.O. Box 368, Cheshire, CT06410.

Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/V

242-258 Fairmont Ave 2BR Townhouse, 1.5 BA, 3BR, 1 level , 1BA All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 highways, near bus stop & shopping center Pet under 40lb allowed. Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258 CT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s Certificate Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates in response to the Church’s Ministry needs. The cost is $125. Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:303:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., B.S. (203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster St. New Haven, CT

NOTICE OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION, COMMENTS, AND HEARINGS ON CONNECTICUT’S ANNUAL STATE APPLICATION UNDER PART C OF IDEA FOR CONNECTICUT BIRTH TO THREE SYSTEM’S FEDERAL FUNDING

Posted: February 28, 2022

Connecticut’s Federal Application for Part C funds under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for Federal Fiscal Year 2022 is currently out for public comment until April 26, 2022. This document can be found on the Birth to Three Website – under About Birth to Three > Annual Part C Application on the left menu or by following this link: http://www.birth23.org/aboutb23/fedapp/.

Written comment on the application must be submitted by 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26, 2022. Comments should be sent to the attention of Nicole Cossette, by mail at the Office of Early Childhood, 450 Columbus Boulevard Suite #205, Hartford, CT, 061031835; by Fax 860-622-2789 or by e-mail: Nicole.Cossette@ct.gov.

Two public hearings concerning the proposed application will be held as follows: 1.Monday, April 11, 2022 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. remotely at the link below: Click here to join the meeting Or call in (audio only) +1 860-840-2075,,406582007# United States, Hartford Phone Conference ID: 406 582 007# Find a local number | Reset PIN 2.Thursday, April 21, 2022 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. remotely at the link below: Click here to join the meeting Or call in (audio only) +1 860-840-2075,,368909495# United States, Hartford Phone Conference ID: 368 909 495# Find a local number | Reset PIN

Drug Free Workforce

Invitation to Bid: nd State of Connecticut 2 Notice

Computer Technician I

The Town of Wallingford Public Schools is seeking a skilled individual to provide techOffice of Policy nical assistance in the setup, installation, and maintenance of computers, peripherals, and Management and software for the school district. The position requires an A.S. degree in computer Old Saybrook, CT technology or related field, plus 3 years’ experience troubleshooting and repairing PC/ (4 Buildings, 17 Units) Windows compatible computers, printers and related peripherals. CompTIA Network+ The State of Connecticut, Office of certifiWage cation, Microsoft Tax Exempt & Not Prevailing Rate Project MCP, or similar certification preferred. Experience may subPolicy and Management is recruiting for an Agency Labor Relations stitute for education on a year-for-year basis. Wages: $45,802 Annually (Contract Specialist. currently under negotiations) plus an excellent fringe benefit package. Apply to: DeNew Construction, Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, Castpartment of Human Resources, Town of Wallingford, 45 South Main Street, WallingFurther information regarding the duties, in-place Concrete, Asphaltford, Shingles, Vinyl Siding, eligibility requirements and application CT 06492.

Forms will be mailed upon request from the Department of Human instructions are available Resources or may be downloaded from the Department of Human Resources Web Page.

Flooring, Painting, Divisionat:10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, Phone # (203) 294-2080 Fax #: (203) 294-2084. The closing date will be March 28, https://www.jobapscloud.

Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

2022 or the date the 50th application is received, whichever occurs first. EOE com/CT/sup/bulpreview.asp?

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

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

R1=220224&R2=5257MP&R3=001

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY Sealed bids are invited by the Housing Authority of the Town of Seymour until 3:00 pm on Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at its office at 28 Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement at the Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26 Smith Street Seymour.

A pre-bid conference will be held at the Housing Authority Office 28 Smith Street Seymour, CT at 10:00 am, on Wednesday, July 20, 2016.

Bidding documents are available from the Seymour Housing Authority Office, 28 Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 (203) 888-4579.

The Housing Authority reserves the right to accept or reject any or all bids, to reduce the scope of the project to reflect available funding, and to waive any

The State of Connecticut is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer Due Date: August 5, 2016 Bid Extended, and strongly encourages the applications Anticipated Start: August 15, 2016 of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities.

.Lineman (First Class)

Project documents available via ftp link below: Electric utility is seeking highly skilled candidates for First Class Lineman. http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage

Applicants must be a H.S. graduate with 4 years experience as a second class lineman in electric line construction and maintenance. Also, must be experienced with energized 13,800 Fax or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com volt equipment and must be able to work extended periods of time off the ground and HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses under conditions requiring extreme care. Hourly rate: $41.46 to $46.09, plus an excelCompany, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 Full Time –Haynes All Construction Shifts Top lent fringe benefits package. The closing date for applications is March 21, 2022 or AA/EEO EMPLOYER the date we receive the fiftieth (50) application whichever occurs first. Apply: Human Resources Department, Town of Wallingford, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT EOE Please apply in person: 06492. Forms will be mailed upon request form the Department of Human Resources 1425 Honeyspot Rd. Ext. or may be downloaded from the Department of Human Resources Web Page. Phone: (203) 294-2080, Fax: (203) 294-2084. EOE. Stratford, CT 06615

DRIVER CDL CLASS A Pay-Full Benefits

22

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

Join The Inner City Newspaper As We Celebrate The Achievements Of Women During Women’s History Month!

HISTORY DURING THE MONTH OF MARCH,

The Inner City Newspaper

will present our “Annual Women’s History Month Commemorative Issues!”

These Special Edition Issues published each week during March, will be a tribute to the achievements of Women from a historical perspective as well as a celebration of the lives of women who impact our communities, Our region, and who through their works, have made an impact throughout the country.

These issues will focus on Women's Health , Lifestyle, Fashion, Careers, Entertainment, Relationships, and Comfortable Living!

We invite your business to utilize these showcase editions as a platform to place your branding messages in premium locations throughout these keepsake issues! For more information on how your business can play a prominent role in these productions, call the Inner City News Advertising Department at: (203) 387-0354.

Circulation Breakdown

Circulation Breakdown Inner-City News Market CIRCULATION BREAKDOWN

GET THE FACTS

Connecticut has

16.5% non-white population. The figure

Published: weekly / circulation:

for the inner city newspaper coverage area is an overwhelming

44%.

25,000 / Readership:

100,000 Where: over

750+ racks throughout the New Haven and

Bridgeport area.

Within the inner city distribution area, the cities with the largest non-white populations are: Bridgeport

New haven

53.1% New haven 49.3%

60% Bridgeport 40%

New Haven, Westhaven, Hamden, North Haven, Bridgeport,

This represents a vital consumer base and an important seg-

Orange, Ansonia, Milford, Waterbury

ment of the population that cannot be ignored! Media market research (MRI) reported that

30.3% of the black popu$40,000 a year!

Here are some quick facts about our readers.

35–78 College educated: 53% 46%– 54% Home owners: 34%

lation have household incomes of over

Age:

10%

Male / Female:

of this population have incomes of 70,000 or more!

Place your message where people place their trust.

The

Inner-City Penfield Communications inc.

News

Connecticut’s first choice for urban news since 1990.

5 0 Fi t c h S t r e e t ,

New Haven, C T 06515 | Phone: 203.387.0354 w w w. i n n e r c i t y o n l i n e . c o m

23

|

Fa x :

203.387.2684

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 09, 2022 - March 15, 2022

The secret’s out.

Introducing game-changing savings.

Xfinity is changing the Internet and wireless game. We’re talking the fastest in-home WiFi with speeds over a Gig and wireless on the most reliable 5G network with Xfinity Mobile. And NOW, introducing game-changing savings when you get both. Get Gig Internet and Unlimited data with Xfinity Mobile and you could save more than $800 on Internet your first year. Gig-speed Internet and reliable 5G? Now that’s a game-changer.

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