INNER -CITY NEWS

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

30 New Apartments Coming Howe Street Financial Justice a Key Focus at 2016To NAACP Convention INNER-CITY NEWS July 27, 2016 - August 02, 2016

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Volume 27 . No. 2321 Volume 21 No. 2194

Yezenia Lebron: Ready to help other women off the streets.

Malloy One Sentence Malloy To To Dems: Dems:

“DMC”

Ignore “Tough On Crime” Ignore “Tough On Crime” How Many Lives?

2.48M Test Will Help 130 Homeless Women

Color Struck?

Snow in July?

Youth Homelessness Housing Hearing Highlights

West Haven Mayor Nancy Rossi has appointed 19 year old Sound Regional Vocational Aquaculture Center School senior Roman Khondker to the City's Community Development Administration's Citizen Advisory Committee

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

2.48M Test Will Help 130 Homeless Women

by CHRISTOPHER PEAK New Haven Independent

While she was living on the street, Yezenia Lebron dropped into hospital emergency rooms about every two months.

After using drugs consistently, she’d wasted away to 94 pounds, She needed help dealing with bacterial infections, substance use disorder and suicidal thoughts.

Once, while being treated for a potentially fatal bug that was poisoning her blood, Lebron ran out of the Hospital of St. Raphael and stood on Chapel Street, shivering in the rain.

“I was already almost dead. People didn’t think I was going to make it. To be honest, I didn’t think I was going to make it,” Lebron said. “I was tired of fighting the fight.”

Lebron now helps other women recover from their addictions with the nonprofit homeless-housing organization New Reach. She shared those details about her many hospital check-ins during a press conference on Thursday morning.

New Reach and Yale-New Haven Hospital held the press conference announced a new partnership, tentatively known as the Integrated Care Project, aimed at 130 women who find themselves in the situation Lebron was once in.

Funded by a five-year, $2.48 million grant from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the project aims to help homeless women struggling with both mental health and substance use disorders who have been showing up in the emergency room more than once a month, including one woman who’s

been in more than 100 times in a year.

The initiative will test out how follow-up care can help this group of women with “co-occurring conditions” to treat their addiction and move into their own place.

New Reach currently offers rental assistance, emergency shelter beds and permanent supportive housing. Kellyann Day, the nonprofit’s executive director, said that this grant will allow New Reach to bring together a team of specialists that it never had before “to save hospital resources, save taxpayer dollars, and most important, save lives.”

The Integrated Care Project will be implementing a rapid-response model known as the “Critical Time Intervention,” which was developed five years ago at Hunter College’s Silberman School of Social Work in New York City.

After an emergency room visit, a team of behavioral health specialists and social workers will connect patients to community-based agencies like New Reach. After being trained in how to recognize and respond to trauma, the team will help the women stabilize their mental health, talk about their family, look into insurance and motivate themselves.

Gail D’Ononfrio, the hospital’s physicianin-chief of emergency services, said that could mean flipping some traditional interview questions on their head.

For instance, team members will ask patients with substance use disorder to rate, on a scale from 1 to 10, how ready they are to enter treatment. If a patient says 4, they won’t ask the expected follow-up: What’s

holding them back from a higher score?

Instead, D’Onofrio said, they’ll ask the patient to talk about why she wouldn’t have rated themselves lower, to speak about what’s already motivating them. Then, she said, they can ask the patient what has to happen to begin treatment.

Lebron, who’s now a peer recovery specialist at New Reach after a social worker at St. Raphael’s connected her with the organization, will be helping to make sure the services fit what each woman needs.

She said that she knows that individualized approach can work, as it did for her.

She said that she’ll be able to connect with women about what it’s like to hide clothes in a bush and hope they’re still there, to feel so scared and not be able to show it.

With the services this grant will enable, offering help with all the paperwork needed to see a mental-health provider and the waiting list for housing, “I would have gotten myself together a long time ago,” Lebron said.

The team chose to focus on homeless women in particular because they’re at higher risk, while having fewer services available.

“There’s been a lack of awareness that women are struggling with homelessness nationally,” Day said. “They’re vulnerable. They’re more likely to have their own trauma from sexual assault and domestic violence.”

D’Onofrio said that some homeless women also avoid seeking treatment because they fear that child-protective services will take away their kids.

CHRISTOPHER PEAK PHOTO

Yezenia Lebron: Ready to help other women off the streets.

Day said that New Reach and Yale-New Haven Hospital still have to trouble-shoot how they’ll plan to house 130 women over the next five years, given the region’s shortage of affordable places.

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

30 New Apartments Coming To Howe Street

by THOMAS BREEN

New Haven Independent

The Feldman brothers plan to build a new 30-unit, market-rate apartment complex on Howe Street.

When the New York developers break ground this summer, neighbors want to see those construction jobs staying local.

Jacob and Josef Feldman announced their latest development project at Tuesday night’s Dwight Community Management Team meeting, held in the Amistad Academy gymnasium on Edgewood Avenue.

The brothers, who live in New York and run their real estate development and management company MOD Equities out of downtown New Haven, said they will be tearing down a vacant, two-story office building that they own at 95 Howe St. and building in its stead a six-story, 30-unit apartment complex.

“We don’t live here,” Jacob Feldman said, “but we’ve been here for about ten years, and our office is downtown, and we feel very connected to the neighborhood.”

The new 30,000 square-foot, as-of-right apartment complex near the corner of Edgewood Avenue will contain a mix of studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and

three-bedroom apartments. The Feldmans did not have a proposed exterior design for the new building with them on Tuesday night, but Jacob said they are interested in constructing a building in the historic Dwight neighborhood “that will fit in and be timeless and be unique at the same time, and complement what’s there.”

The new complex will stand directly in between two other apartment buildings owned by the Feldmans: a 36-unit apartment complex at 91 Howe St. and a 6-unit apartment building at 97 Howe.

The proposed development will also be right across the street from an 84-unit apartment complex and surface parking lot that the local real estate company Cambridge Realty Partners recently purchased for nearly $12 million. Cambridge has not yet announced its plans for that Howe Street site.

“All market?” Dwight Alder Frank Douglass asked about rents at the new apartments.

“Compared to the regular market,” Josef Feldman said. “I think we’ll be a little bit less than new construction, but still market rent.”

His brother said that their company will

not be seeking any public subsidies for the project. He said they they do not plan on building the complex, charging as high a rent as possible, then flipping the apartments to the highest bidder.

“We plan on keeping it,” Jacob said. “We hope to be here and own properties for many years to come. We try to keep our rents to make the projects buildable, but to be competitive.”

Westville resident Dennis Serfilippi asked about the Feldmans’ policy towards hiring local for their construction projects.

Jacob said they will likely hire a construction manager for this project, who will be responsible for hiring the various subcontractors providing employees for the construction project. “We always try to hire local when possible,” he said.

Serfillipi pushed back. “Local is nice,” he said. “But local isn’t good enough, in my opinion. We want New Haven. Because Branford and Guilford and Orange and Woodbridge is local. And there’s a lot of talented hardworking contractors in New Haven.”

Curlena McDonald, the management team’s vice chair, agreed. “You can make a commitment that there are gonna be com-

Dwight Alder Frank Douglass (right).

munity people that are gonna be getting jobs,” she told the Feldmans.

Jacob said that, as MOD Equities prepares to begin construction in a few months, the brothers will make sure to hire a local general contractor approved by the city’s building department. The brothers will then ask

the general contractor to put an emphasis on hiring subcontractors from New Haven and even from the Dwight neighborhood, if possible.

“I definitely agree with what you’re saying,” Jacob said. “I would love to hire local.”

nation. He said he thinks she could be a voice for encouraging parents to prevent their children from suffering because they weren’t vaccinated.

“I think it would help a lot to have a mayor who has gone through that,” he said.

During the nearly one-hour press conference, reporters quizzed Harp on a range of topics including how she manages the stress of being the city’s top executive, her run for reelection, her thoughts on climate change and the value of student testing. The reporters have already interviewed people who have filed papers to challenge Harp in this year’s election, Justin Elicker and Wendy Hamilton.

Isabel Faustino asked Harp if she considers Elicker a threat. The 11-year-old sixth grader pointed out that Elicker had run well against Harp in their previous matchup.

“I think everyone who runs is a potential threat,” Harp said. “I take every race seriously and he did do very well last time.”

Isabel (pictured above with Dave) said she was “looking for more depth” in Harp’s answer but thought she sufficiently answered the question.

Fifth-grade reporter Jayden Lis (pictured) made his question more personal: Can Harp help his neighborhood?

He lives on Henry Street, where, he said, there’s always a car parked on the sidewalk. He said people tend to think they’re allowed to park there but they’re not and it’s dangerous.

Harp promised Jayden that she’d have

her staff check it out.

One hard-charging reporter was 9-yearold Jaden Martinez (pictured). The fourth-grade reporter asked which school is Harp’s favorite. Harp said she doesn’t have a favorite school. They are all important, she diplomatically responded.

Jaden asked whom Harp would pick to replace her as mayor. Harp pointed out that she is still very much hoping to be the next mayor.

The reporter said he was “a little disappointed” in the mayor’s answer.

“She didn’t really answer who she would pick and said she would pick later because she wants to be mayor.”

The East Rock Record Journalism Project is in its sixth year of putting out the news twice a year, with more than 3,500 copies of the paper going out to New Haven schools and the surrounding neighborhoods.

About 35 student journalists get out the paper with the help of Yale University mentors, staffers of the Yale Daily News, a handful of city high schoolers, and the general supervision of veteran journalist Laura Pappano. And Pappano said Thursday that the students came up with their own questions for the mayor and decided on what story ideas to tackle. And like journalists across the world, they’re on a deadline to get out the next edition.

The biggest thing the students learn?

“How to ask questions,” Pappano said.

Harp Goes On The (East Rock) Record

by MARKESHIA RICKS New Haven Independent

When a reporter for the East Rock Record asked Mayor Toni Harp her thoughts on the anti-vaxxer movement, he got more than a policy answer he learned about her own childhood, when she battled polio.

The question came from 13-year-old student reporter Dave Cruz. He was one of the nearly 30 student-journalists from the school newspaper armed with notebooks, pens and lots of questions who put Harp in the hot seat Thursday during a press conference in the school library.

Harp is a survivor of childhood polio who contracted the disease at 4. She told Dave that when she hears about the anti-vaccine movement she thinks about all the young people who don’t have polio today because they were vaccinated against the disease.

“I couldn’t walk,” she said. “It also afflicted my lungs. I think people ought to have better info and understand the public value of not having these diseases.”

Harp said her brother contracted a disease around the same time that left him with permanent intellectual impairment.

“Measles, mumps, and rubella are things you don’t have to have if you’re vaccinated,” she said. “There is no reason for us to go back to young people being sick.”

Dave, who has fielded the question to other candidates, said after the press conference that he didn’t know that the mayor had as a child contracted a disease that has long since been eradicated by vacci-

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

One Sentence. How Many Lives?

March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

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

Two faces are colliding, soft skin on soft skin. At the left, a boy half-closes his eyes, lids heavy with the weight of something we can’t quite recognize. His mouth hangs half open, baby teeth still visible. Breath passes through. At the right, his grandmother presses her whole face into his. Her eyes, ringed with lack of sleep, are dulled pools of light. They look at him, and continue to see something beyond the frame.

The work comes from Bay Area artist Deborah McDuff, whose exhibition Impact on Innocence: Mass Incarceration runs at the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology (ConnCAT) from March 8 through April 12. Installed in the ConnCAT’s second floor gallery space, the exhibition begins March 8 with an opening reception and community conversation. More information is available here.

It is, in part, a homecoming for the artist, who spent several years in New Haven and knows Carleton Highsmith, board chair at ConnCAT and one of its original champions.

Impact on Innocence, at its most basic level, uses visual art to explore the impact that mass incarceration has not just on those serving time, but also on the families and specifically children affected by their sentences. In the year 2019, McDuff noted, prison in America is still very much an industry that leaves devastation, covert labor, and gutted families in its wake.

“What happens to the mother who is bewildered by the onset of childcare with limited funds or assistance?” asks an artist’s statement that accompanies the exhibition. “What happens to the grandmother who has to rear another generation because her child cannot shoulder his or her responsibility? What happens to an immigrant deportee once imprisoned who has to leave their children?”

McDuff started the series in 2015, taking up charcoal for the first time. A multimedia artist and poet, she found that charcoal had a sculptural quality—messy and almost three-dimensional as she drew, smudged, drew again. As she dove deep on each piece, her subjects came to life, speaking from their long, unprimed and unframed canvases. Instead of a limitation, the monochrome became a language onto itself.

“Black and white was the best way to capture my message,” she said Thursday afternoon, waiting for labels to install with works in the exhibition. “I work on social justice issues. Let me shed light on something where people aren’t paying enough attention.”

“I wanted it to be raw,” she added. “These canvases are crooked and uneven—but the subject matter is crooked and uneven too.

This is larger than life.”

Each piece has taken hours of research, McDuff leaving some of herself in the sleep-robbed eyes, long faces, furrowed brows and tiny hands of the people she depicts. On one wall, a subject titled “Latin Distrust” looks out at the viewer, eyes

shifting as his lips fold downward. His neck and chest are a canvas of coded tattoos: a teardrop to show that he has killed someone, five-pointed crown for the Latin Kings, La Eme of of the Mexican Mafia, a dizzying spiderweb that translates to years in prison among tens of others.

A hardened anxiety etches his face: deep dips around the eyes, pockmarks where full cheeks should be, a jaw that sits completely still, as if it’s waiting for something. On the wall across from him, a woman prays.

Her whole face fills the canvas, a study in sorrow as her clasped hands come before it. As he stares at the viewer, she looks heavenward instead.

In another nearby section of the show, McDuff has shifted the conversation to the

hidden, uncompensated and under-compensated labor that transpires inside prisons, her subject seated at an an oversized sewing machine as she looks out at the viewer. To her left, her whole arm reaches toward the machine, seemingly too large for her body. Her elbow rests by a package that reads “SECRET,” a nod to the real-life story of female inmates sewing lingerie for U.S. chain stores. Her right hand wraps around the garment, a jagged piece of fabric caught in the needle of the machine. Her hair, like the fabric on which she’s been forced to work, stands rough at the edges, haloed in white. She looks miserable.

A figure drawn from McDuff’s research, the image taps into other meditations on social justice: printed ephemera calling for

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labor unions and protest in the U.S. and Mexico in the early and mid twentieth century, economic snapshots from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the height of Mexican muralismo, as similar subjects sprang to life in the public work of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco.

But perhaps the most moving pieces in the show—although they are all moving— are those that depict the children impacted by incarceration. Across from the sewing figure, McDuff has rendered six children across two rows, their faces and hands pressed up close to bars and windows that keep them from their families. They are friends only by association, all members of a club in which they did not choose to take part.

On the left, a boy with big, melting eyes turns his whole face toward the viewer, his mouth a quiet, oblong O. No words come out. Around him, the faces shift: small and looking the viewer head on with raised arms, tiny hands and kid hair done six different ways. Twelve huge eyes stare out on the verge of tears. Only one child, in the lower right hand corner, is comforted by an adult.

That dread in the pit of one’s stomach echoes again and again in pieces like “Goodbye,” as a child turns toward the viewer, and a tiny white hand breaks through the darkness to his left. It’s there again in “Cambodian Deportation,” where the face seems to melt away with the wave and sway of the canvas, and across from the six faces, where a little boy holds his hand up to his chest, as if to show you that his heart is ripping in two.

Some of the children are inspired by stories that McDuff has read or heard. While completing a series on homelessness, the artist met a mother who was living beneath a bridge with her three boys, cooking hot dogs on a small hibachi machine. While the boys were “so cute, like three little butterballs,” the mother looked like she’d hardly eaten at all. She told McDuff that she had lost her job and chosen to live with them beneath the bridge, instead of putting them in foster care.

When McDuff was working on Impact On Innocence, she said she went back to that story and countless stories like it, working through the calculus of loss that children feel when their parents are taken away from them by external forces.

While McDuff, by her own estimation, is “not marching up and down the streets, which I have done,” she’s achieved the same result. The show is a call to arms, deeply feeling as hands reach, lips kiss and comfort, and children get caught in a loop of goodbyes. It is a needed reckoning for her viewers, who realize that good and bad, black and white, really do exist on the issue of prison reform. Indeed, she tells us, there is no grey area in a system of locking people up and putting their families on the other side.

“Children don’t choose their parents,” she said. “Why should they have to serve two life sentences?”

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

SERIES DeLauro’s Call: Don’t Shoot. Research SPRING JAZZ at

by PAUL BASS

MARCH

On the third floor of police headquarters Monday morning, detectives put their heads together inside the intelligence unit’s room to try to track down perpetrators of gun violence.

Steps away in the third-floor common area, New Haven’s U.S. Congresswoman was calling for federal research into how gun violence occurs in the first place.

The Congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro, held a press conference along with public-health workers to make the case that the country can save many lives by funding the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention to study how children or veterans or domestic-violence victims ended up shot the way that federal research helped craft polices that saved countless lives by preventing car crashes.

They declared gun violence a “public health emergency” that in Connecticut’s three largest cities alone claimed 40 lives last year and sent 250 people to the hospital with injuries. Unlike, say, rabies, hepatitis, peptic ulcers, or Parkinson’s Disease, gun violence gets no federal research dollars.

“We should not be afraid of research.

I stand here because of biomedical research,” declared DeLauro, who is a cancer survivor.

DeLauro vowed to add funding for gun violence research as the new chair of the Appropriations Committee subcommittee that oversees the CDC budget. She faces opposition from NRA supporters who view research funding as a vehicle for gun control advocates to take away guns. If DeLauro, a Democrat, succeeds with adding the money in the Democratic-controlled House, her party would still need to negotiate the line item with the Republican-backed Senate.

Congress has not funded gun violence research since the 1996 passage of the Dickey amendment, which states that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” A 2018 vote in Congress clarified that that amendment does not ban research into gun violence itself. (And the late Sen. Jay Dickey himself publicly embraced such research before his death.)

“This is about research,” not banning guns, DeLauro stated at Monday morning’s press conference. “We research every other public health emergency in the nation.”

Pediatric emergency doc Kirsten Bechtel (pictured with DeLauro) suggested some “significant ” research gaps that if filled would help save victims like those whose lives she tries to save in Yale New Haven Hospital’s emergency room: How shootings happen in the first place; how firearms are stored; how they could be prevented.

She noted that similar research into causes of car crashes led to seat belt laws, childseat rules, air bags, and other measures that have saved lives.

In 2014, firearm-related deaths in the U.S. outnumbered car-crash deaths for the first time; yet only one-third of households have access to a gun, compared to 90 percent of households with a car, Bechtel said. She

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Rosa DeLauro calling Monday for federal funding for gun violence research.

said 18 children get shot each day in the U.S., four of them to death.

University of New Haven public-health prof Karl E. Minges (pictured) called gun deaths “100 percent preventable” if experts can learn more about basics about how to prevent suicides, predict domestic violence, what kinds of firearms are in households and how they’re being stored.

Statewide Project Longevity Coordinator Brent Peterkin called for research money to tackle PTSD— as in “present,” not just

post, traumatic stress disorder. He spoke of how young people, especially in black and brown communities, are dealing daily with the psychological effects of gun violence.

He spoke of working with people affected by last year’s shooting death of 12-year-old Clifton Howell in Bridgeport, and of his own experience being targeted by gun violence at 13. He’d like to see the CDC study those psychological effects so society can figure out the “kind of care” such young people “need to lead a productive life.”

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

Rally Backs Bill To Take “ICE” Out Of “Police”

by SAM GURWITT

New Haven Independent

A crowd gathered Thursday afternoon outside of the Hamden Police Department in the icy chill to offer that chant and seek to take the “ICE” out of police.

After WTNH’s Mario Boone uncovered body cam footage last month that showed two Hamden police officers threatening to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement and shoot two Latino men during a traffic stop, the protesters gathered in front of the Hamden police department to support legislation that would prevent Connecticut police from cooperating with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Unidad Latina en Acción’s John Lugo (pictured) opened the rally by describing what happened last February when Officer Andrew Lipford and Sgt. Michael Sigmon arrested a man after chasing him into his driveway.

He reminded the crowd of another incident in 2012 when the Hamden police arrested Josemaria Islas and turned him over to ICE. Islas was almost deported, but was eventually granted a stay of removal.

Shortly after the incident, the state legislature passed the Trust Act, which prevents law enforcement from cooperating with ICE in certain situations.

“The role of the police department is to have a safe community,” said Lugo. “We don’t want to see people seeing crimes or being the witness of the crime and not calling the police department because they are afraid that they are going to call immigration on them. We know that that’s a reality right now in the United States.”

He and ULA are advocating for state Sen-

No justice? No peace! No racist police! ate Bill 992, which would expand the Trust Act. Under the current legislation, said Lugo, loopholes allow law enforcement to turn people they arrest over to ICE. SB 992 would prevent the police handing a suspect over to immigration detainers unless the ICE “detainer” request has a warrant signed by a judge.

After Lugo, Hamden religious leaders took the microphone to speak.

“Today is the first day of the month of

Adar,” Rabbi Brian Immerman of Congregation Mishkan Israel (pictured above) told the crowd.

Adar is the month on the Jewish calendar when the holiday of Purim occurs. This is supposed to be the most joyous month on the calendar. “That joy of course is tempered when there is injustice in our society,” Immerman said.

He told the story of Purim, in which amid a decree to kill all Jews, a Jew, Mordechai,

stands up and reveals a plot to kill the king — and sets in motion events that save the day.

“We can’t have people hiding in our society afraid to speak up when there is injustice in our society,” said Immerman. “When the police harass people who are undocumented or who are just Latino, they make them afraid to speak up. They make them afraid to speak up in cases of domestic violence, in cases of other theft and crime that

are happening in our society and it makes everyone less safe.”

Some speakers echoed the calls of Hamden Legislative Council members for a civilian review board in Hamden.

“This is nothing but clear racial profiling,” said Chris Garaffa (pictured above). Hamden, he said, should follow New Haven’s lead in creating a board in which citizens could have oversight over the police. It took 20 years of struggle to create one in New Haven, he said, and Hamden should be having those conversations as well. He also voiced his support for SB 992.

Rev. Jack Perkins Davidson of Spring Glen Church told the crowd that “this is called the Trust Act for a reason.” He recounted that Hamden’s former police Chief Thomas Wydra once told him that what keeps him up at night is that people in his community do not trust the police.

“We are here to restore some of that trust,” he said.

After the rally, he told the Independent that he “understand[s] that in these circumstances adrenaline runs high.” But when we put badges on people, he said, they are supposed to be trained to remain cool when adrenaline kicks in. He added that it’s important to note that racism exists far beyond just police forces, and that everyone needs to do the work to combat it within themselves.

As the last rays of the sun began to disappear below the horizon, the crowd of about 15 quickly scattered to get out of the cold.

Some of them will appear Friday at 9 am. at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford for a public hearing on SB 992.

Posted by New Haven Independent

Evening Raises Consciousness, $200K For Young People

by STAFF

New Haven Independent

New Haven residents mingled with Pulitzer-winning journalists, law professors, and local high school students over hors d’oeuvres and chilled Thursday, Feb. 28.

The 2019 LEAP Year Event annual fundraiser brought together over 500 community members to support Leadership, Education and Athletics in Partnership (LEAP), a local nonprofit that provides free after-school and summer programs to over 1,200 young people from low-income neighborhoods in New Haven.

The event raised a record $200,000 from sponsorships, event ticket sales, and individual donations to help grow LEAP’s programs and services despite state funding cuts.

The evening began with a cocktail reception and book signing at Hopkins School, where LEAP honored Stephen Wizner, the William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He has been committed to ensuring high quality legal services for low-income families and been a LEAP board member for decades. The

reception was followed by dinner at one of 31 homes and restaurants in the Greater New Haven area. Each of the dinners was hosted by a local family or business and included a guest of honor. The guests of honor are world renowned experts and talents who kicked off discussion in their field of expertise.

“There’s so much wrong with the world; it feels good to do something right,” said Wizner. Tai Richardson, a former LEAP student who is now a member of the LEAP board, presented Wizner with an award designed by local artist Susan Clinard.

Clifton Watson, Wesleyan University’s director of the Jewett Center for Community Partnerships, was LEAP’s keynote speaker. “[LEAP] pushed me to think differently about the things that were within my capacity,” he said. “[It was] powerful, transformative work that was happening in that space across generations of Black and Brown New Haven. This was the experience that jump-started my career.”

Watson worked as a high school counselor the summer LEAP was founded in 1992,

and eventually became a full-time staff member at LEAP before moving on to lead other organizations for young people. “I learned by way of my experience at LEAP that whenever you organize across sections of folks—really represented in this room— folks from various backgrounds, and encourage and support intergenerational dialogue and collaboration around a really clearly identified mission, you have a beautiful thing with infinite possibilities,” he said. “This work I think has been so beautifully embodied in LEAP’s 26 years of service and work, and has everything to do with how I approach my current work and will continue to be the gospel of LEAP that I spread wherever I go.”

Stocky Clark, retired executive director of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Connecticut and Western Massachusetts, led reception-goers in raising $18,000 in a bid-down auction. These funds will pay for seven counselors to train and work eight weeks during the summer, which will allow 70 children to be able to attend LEAP’s free 6-week summer camp.

6

JUDY SIROTA ROSENTHAL PHOTO Stephen Wizner and Shefau Dabre-Rufus.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

N e w P u b l i c

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

Uber Edgar Hits Road For His Fare Share March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

by THOMAS BREEN

New Haven Independent

Edgar N. recently drove six college students from Toad’s Place to Fairfield. He earned $82 for the late-night, 26-mile ride.

Uber pocketed another $49 from the same trip.

Edgar decided to wheel up to Hartford to demand that the actual laborers of the rideshare economy get a fairer share of earnings from such rides.

Edgar joined two dozen local Uber and Lyft drivers at the state Legislative Office Building in Hartford to support Senate Bill (S.B.) 989, a proposed law that would increase the proportion of dollars earned by drivers for any given ride-share ride. It would also restrict the proportion of dollars allocated to the coordinating “transportation network” company.

Over 100 people turned out for the the state legislature’s Labor and Public Employees Committee public hearing, which stretched from 11 a.m. until late Thursday night, driven mostly by hours of testimony on a proposal to increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour.

A 42-year-old native of Nairobi, Kenya, and a maintenance technician who has been driving for Uber for the past four-and-ahalf years, Edgar made the early-morning commute from his Ninth Square apartment to the state Capitol to show his support for the proposed driver rights legislation.

“I ask myself,” Edgar asked, “Who did most of the work?” The drivers charged with ferrying passengers safely and comfortably from one spot to another, in vehicles where they have to cover their own gas and car insurance and upkeep? Or the company that provides the software that connects Edgar with his passengers?

The key provision of the proposed bill would require Uber, Lyft, and other on-demand ride share services to pay their drivers at least 75 percent of the amount collected from passengers on any given completed ride. It would also restrict the companies’ own share to no more than 25 percent of the total amount of money collected by one of their drivers on a given day.

Uber and Lyft do not employ drivers as full-time workers. Instead, drivers work as independent contractors, exempt from state minimum wage and federal labor protection laws.

In Connecticut, Uber drivers earn between 60 and 69 cents per mile and 20 cents per minute.

Harry Hartfield, a spokesperson for Uber, reiterated that the company does not currently function on a commission model.

Rather, Uber pays its drivers a set rate based on time and distance, and does not correlate the price paid by the customer with the wages paid to the driver.

Furthermore, he said, Uber doesn’t just provide software. It also covers state insurance required specifically for drivers who ferry passengers for money.

“If this bill passed not only would drivers have to pay as much as $4,500 a year more in insurance costs out of their own pockets,” Hatfield wrote in a statement, “but it

Connecticut Drivers United at the state Legislative Office Building.

THOMAS BREEN PHOTO New Haven Uber driver Edgar N. en route to state Capitol.

A full house at Thursday’s Labor and Public Employees Committee meeting.

Legal aid attorney James Bhandary-Alexander and Uber driver Rosana Olan.

8

would also make it significantly harder for people o hail an Uber. There’s a reason no other city or state in the country has passed a bill like this.”

Cruising up I-91 in the comfort of his black Mercedes-Benz GLE 350, Edgar could think of one big reason Connecticut should pass S.B. 989: He and his fellow drivers do almost all of the work on any given ride share ride. Why shouldn’t Uber and Lyft share more of their profits with them?

As Luke Bryan’s “Most People Are Good” played softly on Country 92.5, Edgar recalled the recent ride he gave to the six college students heading from a concert at Toad’s to their campus in Fairfield.

The students loved the ride, he said, because of the time and money and care he invests in his vehicle and in the service he provides. He remembered giving the students complementary bottles of water and sticks of gum. He had recently taken his SUV to the car wash. He had even given his can of Coke to one of the passengers simply because he had asked.

When he dropped the happy customers off at their destination after the 30-minute ride, Edgar checked his phone and saw that he had earned $81.86 for the trip. He scrolled further down in the Uber app on his phone, and saw that the company had earned $48.70 in service and booking fees on the ride. The customers had paid over $130 in total, of which Uber took home 37 percent.

“I have all these things to do to impress my client,” Edgar said, “but then the client is not paying me enough for the service.”

Instead, much of that money goes to Uber.

“They made $50,” he continued. “For what?”

Hartfield provided the Independent with three recent examples where Uber paid more to a driver than the customer paid for the Uber ride. Hartfield said that it is not an uncommon experience for drivers to be paid more than the total cost of a ride.

Edgar said that last year he earned around $5,000 driving part-time for Uber, but that he had to spend around $1,200 of those earnings on car purchase payments, insurance, gas, and cleaning bills. And that’s after significantly cutting down on his Uber driving between 2017 and 2018, he said, due to Uber decreases in driver pay. (Other

full-time drivers who testified on Thursday said they earned between $30,000 and $40,000 a year, but had to spend over $10,000 each year on car expenses.)

“I love to drive,” he said. Uber and Lyft, a rival ride-share service he started driving for last month, give him a chance to be in his car, meet new people, and earn money on weeknights and weekends to support his wife and five children.

Several other local Uber and Lyft riders associated with the group Connecticut Drivers United testified Thursday.

Rosana Olan, a 36-year-old full-time Uber driver from West Haven, said that last week she earned an average of $7.50 per hour for during her 38 hours ferrying passengers for Uber. And that was before car expenses, like gas. After expenses, she earned an average of $1.71 per hour.

“It’s very unfair that a $100 billion company is getting rich through customers and us,” she said. “We provide the car. They don’t provide the car.”

When she started driving with Uber a year ago, Olan said, she comfortably earned $800 working 30 hours per week. But then Uber dropped its per-mile pay rate from 89 cents to 65 cents.

“I keep driving because I’ve been doing customer service for many years,” Olan wrote in testimony she submitted to the committee, “ever since I was younger and worked with my mom. I love driving, no mater what weather or condition. But I mostly wanted to drive because I thought I would make good money. This is not true anymore.”

Branford-based driver Guillermo Estrella brought his Uber driving summary from 2018 with him on Thursday.

He drove 42,925 miles and completed 4,579 trips. He earned just under $43,000 while Uber took home around $25,000 based on his work. After car expenses, Estrella’s net income was closer to $30,000 for the year.

“I only make $5,000 more than Uber,” Estrella said. “And I work the whole year round!”

New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) Attorney James BhandaryAlexander said that it’s a sad day when a company worth well over $100 billion like Uber threatens to pull insurance payments with the prospective passage of a bill that would provide a kind of minimum wage to drivers.

“Gaps in Connecticut and federal law leave transportation network company drivers without meaningful protections,” Bhandary-Alexander wrote in testimony he submitted to the committee. “There is simply no good reason that drivers should be forced to labor under exploitative working conditions.”

Edgar wasn’t able to stick around Hartford long enough to testify before the committee. He had to make it back to New Haven to drive a private client to an afternoon doctor’s appointment. He also had to get back to the Elm City for his full-time job as an on-call maintenance technician for a local property management company.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

Housing Hearing Highlights Youth Homelessness

by MARKESHIA RICKS New Haven Independent

The city’s affordable housing crisis is not just a matter bedeviling working families. It hits homeless teens and young single parents too.

That message came across clearly, in personal terms, during two hours of testimony Thursday night at a joint Community Development-Legislation Committee public hearing at City Hall on a task force report dealing with the city’s affordable housing crunch.

Supporters of the comprehensive report from an Affordable Housing Task Force came out en masse to press the urgency of the issue. The task force devised six main recommendations for areas of action that the Board of Alders will have to figure out how to legislate.

Those recommendations do not include many of the suggestions that the Room For All Coalition put forth including its emphasis on teen homelessness, and many supporters pointed out the omission in their remarks.

Testimony Thursday night of a group of young people who serve on the Youth Continuum Advisory Board who had all been touched by homelessness resonated strongly for Fair Haven Heights Alder Rosa Santana, who promised to take action.

Chelsi Torres, a young mother of three and a military veteran, said she has been seeking affordable housing for five years and been

homeless for two of those years.

“Do you know how hard it is to give up your children just because you don’t have a home to call your own?” Torres asked.

Santana said that listening to the stories of teen homelessness in the city “breaks my heart to still hear today that we still have so many homeless youths.”

“It’s not easy when being kicked out of your home and you’re on the street sleeping in cars,” she said. “This is a story that has been going on for 20 years, and I thought we had done a better job but we have not. It’s my promise to you that I will make every effort I can to hopefully help make a dent for youth.”

Destiny Staggers, a Youth Continuum board member who also testified before the committee, said she welcomed Santana’s efforts and asked that city officials keep meeting with young people like her so they can be part of that solution.

“I know I’m young,” Staggers said. “But I feel like we all could do something.”

Next Steps Thursday night’s hearing had no specific legislation attached to the various recommendations from the Affordable Housing Task Force. That means that the joint committee’s only vote was to accept the report and recommendations and then read and file them. It will be up to alders to come up with legislation that would put any of the affordable housing fixes into motion.

MARKESHIA RICKS PHOTO

Members of the Youth Continuum Advisory Board testify the need for affordable housing for teens and young single parents.

Wooster Square Alder Aaron Greenberg, who served as the non-voting facilitator on the task force, said the alders can tackle some short-term ideas, the first of which is creating a commission to oversee city, state and federal policy that is responsible for reporting on the state of affordable housing in the city. He said thatT:9” the commission would preserve the nine months of work that went

into the recommendations and the input of all of those who helped create them and then advance them.

“This is the beginning of the legislative process,” he said Task Force member Ed Mattison said that the City Plan Commission, which he chairs, and its staff are the likely avenue for han-

dling the recommendations that call for making changes to the city’s zoning code to increase the number of safe, affordable housing including any efforts like inclusionary zoning. The commission has already produced an advisory report endorsing the Affordable Housing Task Force’s recommendations.

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

Let’s Clamp Down on Tobacco and Vaping

Product Access for Young People

By Julianne Malveaux, NNPA Newswire Contributor

WELL­WOMAN CHECK­UPS. IT’S WHAT WE DO. With 682,208 preventative check-ups, screenings, exams and counseling services last year to young women like you, we know women’s health care.

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Nearly half a million people die every year from complications from smoking. About a tenth of them never put a cigarette to their lips – they die from exposure to secondhand smoke. Death from tobacco is, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the leading cause of preventable death. But too many people, enticed by advertising, think that smoking is so “cool” that they embrace it. And the tobacco industry spent more than $9 billion on smoking advertising, or about a million dollars an hour.

For too many, cigarettes are a desperate addiction, encouraged by pernicious advertising. The addiction hits folks of color – Black and brown folks — hardest. We are more likely to be exposed to heavy advertising, more likely to become addicted, and more likely to die from complications of smoking addiction. Public policy can help ameliorate this challenge, perhaps, by further restricting who can buy tobacco and when. Because addictions start early, public policy can help by supporting efforts underway to limit the sale of nicotine to those who are under 21.

Instead, unfortunately, some would prefer to restrict the sale of vaping products in particular to keep them out of the hands of children. Why not just further limit the sale of all tobacco products? The companies that manufacture vaping products, like the market leader Juul, are to be commended for attempting to protect young people from the deleterious effects of their products. But their recently accelerated activism is only one small step toward ensuring that young people are protected from the harmful effects of smoking, and they cannot do it alone.

Very recently, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb, resigned for “family reasons” (don’t you love it when white men suddenly discover their families when they are in hot water). At the same time, we learned that too many chains, like Walmart, Kroger and Walgreens, along with gas stations, are breaking the law by selling cigarettes and other nicotine products to young people.

But here’s the deal. It doesn’t make sense to regulate the sale of nicotine products, like vaping, without looking at the sale of nicotine products, like cigarettes. Children (yes, despite their protests, I think of anyone under 21 as a child) shouldn’t be purchasing alcohol or tobacco. Period. End of conversation. They aren’t grown. They are susceptible to addiction. The law should protect them and penalize those who make it easy for them to access these products.

But the law does not protect. Instead, legislators selectively go after some prod-

10

ucts, while protecting others. If legislators understood the damage that nicotine and tobacco products do to people, especially young people, they’d be rushing to outlaw them. Instead, because tobacco is big business, the industry is protected. Furthermore, products that attempt to ameliorate the harmful sides of smoking, like vaping, are subjected to unreasonable scrutiny, even outlawed. To their credit, vaping companies are owning their role in possible addiction and standing for a ban on selling any nicotine products to children.

Part of this is personal for me. I’ve written before about my mom’s smoking addiction, which has led to her developing COPD and emphysema diseases in her ninth decade.

But it’s more than the personal. It’s about the ways that public policy can protect young people, even as they make poor choices.

Follow the money, goes the trope. Who benefits from youngsters buying tobacco and nicotine products? Why do legislators protect them? Why would legislators crack down on vaping, but not cigarettes? Who benefits? If we follow the money, we have to monitor the lobby. Who has power in this game?

We always need to follow the money when we look at the ways that some products are offered to the market and others are restricted. We always need to follow the money when we realize that there are always beneficiaries in a society that has predatory capitalism at its roots. We don’t need more children being exposed to addiction. We shouldn’t outlaw vaping products without outlawing the sale of tobacco to children. I appreciate some manufacturers for joining many others in standing up against companies like Walmart, Walgreen’s and the others that are making big dollars selling tobacco and nicotine products to children.

It needs to stop. Now. Legislators need to step up and protect our children from this destructive addiction!

Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist. Her latest book “Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy” is available via www.amazon.com for booking, wholesale inquiries or for more info visit www.juliannemalveaux.com Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BlackPressUSA.com or the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

West Haven Mayor Nancy Rossi has appointed 19 year old Sound Regional Vocational Aquaculture Center School senior Roman Khondker to the City's Community Development Administration's Citizen Advisory Committee

Roman Khondker, 19 is administered the Oath of Office by Planning and Zoning Commissioner and Justice of the Peace Steven R. Mullins as Mayor Nancy Rossi looks on while holding a copy of the Holy Quran. Rossi appointed Khonder to the West Haven Community Development Citizen Advisory Committee.

Khondker, who ran unsuccessfully for State Representative last year as a Republican in West Haven’s 116th House District was sworn in by Planning & Zoning Commissioner and Justice of the Peace Steven R. Mullins. The ceremony was attended by Rossi, who held a copy of the Holy Quran for Khonder during the ceremony, as well as Sound students and faculty, Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti, Seymour First Selectman Kurt Miller and numerous state legislators..

According to CDA officials, Khondker

will help consider grant applications and allocate Community Development Block Grant funds for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development for programs that serve low income to moderate income people.

Khondker immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh with his family when he was ten years old. Since then, they have lived in Delaware and most recently West Haven. Khondker has been accepted into numerous colleges throughout the country, but plans to attend school in Connecticut.

Nasty Women Prove Sublime THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

By Lucy Gellman, Editor, The Arts Paper newhavenarts.org

There’s the neat rectangle of lace, then the figure in black and white underneath.

There, staring back with a face like glass, is Rebecca Ann Lattimer Felton, the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. Her hands sit gingerly by her lap. Beneath her, in the folds of her skirt, a spray of red text take over.

“I do not want to see a negro man walk to the polls and vote on who should handle my tax money, while I myself cannot vote at all,” it begins. “ … If it need lynching to protect women’s dearest possession from the ravening human beast, then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary.”

Long after the end of her life, Felton has become part of Complicit: Erasure of the Body, the third annual exhibition from Nasty Women Connecticut. After the launching with a 2017 exhibition downtown after the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the group has expanded to hold not just annual themed exhibitions, but also panels and workshops, an annual film festival, and ongoing #MeToo testimonials project.

Over 160 artists are featured in the current show, which runs through March 31 at the Yale Divinity School on Prospect Street and has a full month of events planned with the exhibition. Over 1,000 people attended an opening reception Friday evening.

“Amplifying voices became something that was super important to us,” said Louisa de Cossy, one-third of Nasty Women Connecticut with Attallah Sheppard and Lucy McClure. “Bringing people’s voices in to see other events.”

This year, the exhibition’s location emerged midway through nomination hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, by which de Cossy said team members were “all kind of triggered.” Not long after Professor Christine Blasey Ford gave her testimony, the three heard from Laura Worden, a student and curator at the Divinity School.

Worden found herself thinking about Kavanaugh’s own history with Yale, and suggested the Divinity School as a possible venue for the group’s annual show. Soon, the four were working through the show’s logistics and theme, which probes the limits of complicity—to what degree one has helped commit an act of wrongdoing—as it pertains to sexual violence.

Despite their excitement, de Cossy said all four also thought about what it represented to take the exhibition out of downtown and put in into an institutional and literally sacred space.

“When we entered into partnership with Yale, we were really conscious of what that meant,” she said. “Because Yale is complicit to a lot of events that happen to a lot of people here. So a lot of the work speaks to that. And the fact that Divinity [School] was open to the space meant a lot … it’s definitely across the community.”

The group has involved several communi-

New Haven artist Howard El-Yasin lifts the veil on one of Aly Maderson-Quinlog’s pieces.

ty partners, rolling out collaborations with the New Haven Pride Center, Black Lives Matter New Haven, Artspace New Haven, and the Yale Center for British Art among others.

Now, almost 200 works line the school’s first-floor hallways, replacing clean offwhite walls with bodies in various states of injury and undress, breasts and uteri that exist all of their own, and depictions of the Virgin Mary as an exhausted, tried and muted woman. A wash of almost entirely desperate or frightened female faces, they are difficult to take in all at once, warranting a second or even third look.

There are works like Sara Zunda’s Growth, an illustration small and tucked away enough that it’s easy to miss at first glance. In the piece, a woman stares from the frame, her hair haloing a face that looks absolutely exhausted. Her palms reach out, right hand grasping left thumb. Her nail polish matches her lipstick and eyeshadow, all of which are red. Bits of foliage wrap through her hair and up her wrists, a seem-

ing nod to the Garden of Eden that could also hold Naomi Alderman’s The Power.

Or Linda Cardillo’s Innocence Taken, a multimedia installation that hangs on the side of a hallway. From a background designed to look like brick and driftwood, a three-dimensional face emerges, shiny and chrome where flesh should be. Silvery gauze and webbing stretch across her face, blooming out behind her. Maybe she is a necrophilic Marianne, symbol of the French Republic gone all wrong.

Or she’s the very ghastly thing that happens to women when that friend gets too close, or that college party doesn’t stop where it’s supposed to, or that doctor gives a pelvic exam that is not hippocratic at all, or that employer thinks that silence is the price of one’s job. We can lean in close and never hear what she has to say: her mouth is covered by layers of fabric. A white flower, perhaps a symbol of what once was, sprouts through her right socket.

Others take a wider, almost theoretical approach. As viewers enter the exhibi-

11

tion, artist Patti Maciesz has invited them to “Bill The Patriarchy” with a huge, eyecatching installation in red and orange marker. With a series of charts that spread across the wall, she has diagrammed out what that means in terms of uncompensated labor.

In a sliding glass case nearby, multimedia artist Zohra Rawling has submitted her own take on erasure of the body with her Snow White, a ceramic oval with an bulbous, red and blue eel, and words by local writer, editor and musician Brian Slattery.

“Maybe it shows that Snow White isn’t really what you thought it was,” she said at Friday’s opening.

But the most moving works in the show are those that speak the theme right into being, then turn the school’s ostensible sublimity on its head. In Aly Maderson Quinlog’s Lift The Veil, five identically framed portraits of early suffragettes and woman politicians sit waiting for the viewer, each beneath an identical rectangle of paper thin, ornate white lace.

When those strips are lifted, the full impact takes a minute to take hold. Under a portrait of each figure—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Felton, Carrie Chapman Catt and others—words jump out in red, inscribed in history. Over and over, these women advocate for the continued oppression of Black men: of lynching, of owned bodies, of men as property and not as citizens of this land. Their faces bear no trace of the trauma and violence they have been able to wield, condemning others as they seek to free themselves.

It hits like a train: here are five women who went down as trailblazers, beloved by a revisionist history, exposed for the bigots they are. The lace is a delicate touch that goes a very long way—in the act of removing this supposedly pure, demure veil, the viewer must ask themselves where they fall on these statements. Are they, too, complicit in upholding structures of oppression? Or do they seek to tear the veils from the images, and then tear down the figures in the images themselves?

Up the hallway, Brooke Sheldon’s Hi, My Name Is Mary takes on not just that legacy, but the concept of divinity itself. In the piece, the Virgin Mary looks right out at the viewer, her eyes locked with whomever is right in front of her. A halo, flat and ribbed as a gold plate, sprouts behind her.

Folds of blue and white fabric drape her shoulders and chest; the habit comes up over her cheeks and forehead. But where her mouth is—rosy, if we are to take anything from centuries of art history—there are layers of white packing tape, plastered over it in an oblong X shape.

On a label accompanying the work, Sheldon makes clear that the piece is not meant to be purely profane: she describes herself as struggling with her own lifelong Catholicism. And so, as we stare at this silenced and holy and very mortal woman, we struggle with the church right along with her. Sheldon’s work compels us to

ask: for whom is this a figure of solace, and for whom is it one of pain? When was she silenced, and by what forces? That son of hers, where is he now?

Further into the exhibition, a number of surprising, sometimes viscerally moving pieces bring the theme home. Veracious, in the back hallway, is literally meant to bring the viewer to their knees. Beneath a framed, gilded portrait with a space cut out for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, a small stool with crushed red velvet sits ready for the viewer with a benediction. Only once the viewer is kneeling do the words become visible—accompanied by a series of data points about the newest, more conservative, majority Catholic Supreme Court of the United States.

May your bravery be contagious, its five stanzas begin.

And your example continue to guide us.

Help us bear our trials with honor, And have the courage to be vulnerable.

At the end of that hallway, Susan Clinard’s Surviving Sexual Trauma: The Shedding and Shelving of Memory stops the viewer in their tracks. Or, at least, it should.

There’s a lot going on around it: a whole collaged body takes up a section of wall across the hall, a terra cotta clitoris and armored pair of breasts wink out from the next room.

But Clinard’s figure is breathless and urgent in her quiet suffering. In her left hand, she holds a little mummy-like white doll, small and soft like several other figures she has already made. With her right, she touches the clean arc of her back, just to make sure she’s still there. There are strainers filled with foam where her breasts and uterus should be.

On a nearby shelf, there are the compartments of her memory for all of us to see— shed skin, thoughts wrapped in string and hung by their feet, white tulle that peeks out from where it has been stored. A long, skinny black tangle looks like it could be a necklace or a set of tiny entrails. We are bearing witness to this woman’s pain and her recovery, and it is terrifying.

“The viewer is not just you, it is all of us, as we awaken from our toxic slumber of institutional masochistic and patriarchal behavior, as both women and boys step up to speak the truth about surviving their sexual trauma” reads an accompanying label.

“She asks us to see her and acknowledge her story ... our story.”

It conjures not only a palpable, thrumming sense of fear, but also an absence of self that feels intimately, horribly familiar and hollow at the same time. Our hearts clench as this woman looks over her shoulder with wide, panicked eyes, because we have been there. At least, many of us have been there.

Indeed, we want to breathe and process and vent. But we’re scared, too. What if we open our mouths, and nothing comes out?

Or the words do come, and nobody else hears anything at all?

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

Dr. Samella Lewis: The Godmother of African American Art

By Shantay Robinson, Black Art In America blackartinamerica.com

We need to be made aware of Dr. Samella Lewis’ accomplishments as an institution builder for a better understanding of how to create generational progress in our communities. If you are at all interested in African American art, you need to know who she is. Although she is an artist in her own right, she sacrificed her career as an artist to educate other people about African American art. At 96 years-old, she still creates artworks, but her more prominent role for much of her life has been that of an institution builder. She has started galleries and a museum, wrote books and established an art magazine.

Dr. Lewis has seen this world change drastically, and she has played a pivotal role in its progress. While African Americans in contemporary times have a tremendous voice, in that we can let the world know where we stand on issues, Dr. Lewis, came of age in the Jim Crow South, a time when speaking up could result in dire situations. But she made her voice heard despite potential negative consequences. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 27, 1923, Lewis came of age in the era of Jim Crow, a system she would later be reprimanded for fighting to abolish. In an interview with Baila EMS Films, she claims to have been run out of many places including Florida by its Governor due to her fight for desegregation.

“Art is not a luxury as many people think – it is a necessity. It documents history – it helps educate people and stores knowledge for generations to come.” – Dr. Samella Lewis Society was not just or fair, but she defied the odds and became the first African American to receive doctorates in Fine Art and Art History. Dr. Lewis attended Dillard University, Hampton Institute, and Ohio State University. She taught as a fulltime professor at Morgan State University, Florida A&M, State University New York Plattsburgh, California State Dominguez, California State Long Beach, and Scripps College. She founded International Review of African American Art and the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles.

She has written several books about black art and artists. And she did all of this while being a wife and mother.

Although Lewis is an accomplished scholar, she was an artist first. As a young person, Lewis spent time in the French Quarter looking at art. During an outing with a friend, she came across a black woman whose lover was an Italian portrait painter.

Lewis was able to take private lessons with him free of charge for two years. Later she would enroll at Dillard University in New Orleans where a young Elizabeth Catlett served as her professor. Lewis was impacted by the relationship she shared with Catlett, as it let her imagination run wild. Catlett wasn’t as demure as Lewis was taught to be. Catlett was bold, and that frightened Lewis. An instructor at Dillard suggested Lewis switch schools. And Catlett was able to obtain scholarships

“Mother and Child” by Dr. Samella Lewis

Dr. Samella Lewis at home. Photo by Najee Dorsey

“Together We Stand” by Dr. Samella Lewis (Poetry By Maya Angelou)

from University of Iowa and Hampton Institute for Lewis who was careful to choose Hampton for the support she might gain from an HBCU. She then went on to Ohio State to obtain her master’s and doctorate.

Dr. Lewis began working at a time before both the Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Rights Movement. Being a working mother was not new to black women at the time Dr. Lewis began her career. But she was able to accomplish so much professionally while raising two sons. While white women protested for equal opportunity to that of men under the law and to gain the right to upper-level work, black women never really had the choice as to whether they would stay at home to be full-time mothers or find work to support their fami-

lies. Black women were forced to work as slaves performing work equal to men and later as sharecroppers in fields after emancipation to provide for their families. Their situations after slavery were not unlike that of enslavement. Post emancipation the majority of working black women found opportunities as domestic help in private homes. Prior to the Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Rights Movement black women had few choices for employment in order to care for their families. But Dr. Lewis did the unthinkable. She became a Doctor of Philosophy, an accomplishment that is still quite impressive for anyone of any race.

Raising a family while teaching and starting businesses is a challenging task for any-

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one, but Dr. Lewis made it work. With her husband and two sons, Dr. Lewis was able to accomplish so much through perseverance and determination. Her son Claude recalls, “A lot of times when she worked at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, I was taking classes over there as a kid.

So, wherever she was working it was kind of a family involvement…I think it was conscious. If [she has] to work how can [she] still be around [her] family? It was either conscious or that’s just how they moved. When you move in certain ways, your life plays out the way it should.”

Claude remembers times when his family would prepare to ship the magazine, Black Art: An International Quarterly to subscribers. He also recalls working at the galleries they opened. His involvement in his family business seen by outsiders looks glamorous, but to him that’s just what life was like. He recalls: “I knew what she was doing. I might not have known how important it was till maybe I got a little older like high school or something. I met all these great people and famous artists. But it was like regular life to me. They were just regular people.

And all of them came through. And I think that’s why I make music and I do some photography and my son went to art school. I think that creativeness and just that freedom of expression stuck with me because that’s all the people that came around. They were all each individual fantastic people, but I just thought that it must be like that for everybody. I think when she did the magazine, I was older and when I was in high school they opened their first gallery. It was like, okay wow, we actually have a business. Before that I was just part of it I didn’t really think that much about it.

I didn’t think it was anything special at the time. And they inspired a lot of people.”

While Dr. Lewis has accomplished a lot during her working years, the work she put in, is still making an impact on the African American art world. The publication she created, Black Art: An International Quarterly, which she personally financed in its first two years of existence was established in 1976, and was transferred to the care of

Hampton University in 1992. The title of the publication was renamed, International Review of African American Art, and it still focuses on the artwork of African American artists. While some of her books are out of print, others such as African American Art and Artists, Samella Lewis and the African American Experience, and Art: African America are still available for sale. Although she opened three art galleries, which are no longer open, one of her major contributions to the African American artworld is the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles. The museum was founded in 1976 by Dr. Lewis and other scholars to increase public awareness of African American art. It is located on the third floor of the Macy’s department store at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall.

Dr. Lewis thought it was necessary to start somewhere people could exhibit their work and start something that would document what African American artist were doing.

She told Baila EMS Films, “I thought it was necessary to at least start something so that people would have a place to exhibit their works and to house their works.”

While at the time she was writing books, she started a magazine because they are essentially more affordable than books. Eugene Foney, longtime friend of Dr. Lewis met her in the 1990s at John Biggers’ home whom she attended Hampton Institute with. He says her dedication to the culture is most striking, as she created materials about African American artists at a time when there weren’t a lot of materials that showcased these artists. Although Foney describes Dr. Lewis as lighthearted, warm and caring, it is obvious that when it comes to taking care of business, she definitely gets the job done.

While she never stopped creating art, at 96 years-old, she is more focused on her art these days. Dr. Lewis doesn’t sketch.

She employs an intuitive practice where the marks she makes on the canvas tell her where the artwork is going. She doesn’t paint portraits. Her figures are shaped by her imagination. Dr. Lewis’s work was featured in the 2011 Hammer Museum exhibition, Now Dig This: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980. And in 2016, Dr. Lewis had a show at Stella Jones Gallery in her hometown New Orleans, Louisiana.

According to her son, Claude, Dr. Lewis’ birthday has been misreported because when she was born, society didn’t provide birth certificates to African American people. Dr. Lewis was actually born in 1923. There’s something so amazing about the fortitude of freedom fighters like Dr. Samella Lewis. Although she came of age at a time when under the law African Americans didn’t have equal rights, she fought for what she believed in and made no apology about it. While she was taught to be demure for her personal safety in the time of Jim Crow, she, like so many others, knew she had to be strong. Because of her we can understand how progress is made.

It is made through a continual struggle for change and the building of community that can be passed down through generations of people.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

Winfield, Elliott Team Up To Back Bill Allowing Inmates to Vote

by Jack Kramer

HARTFORD, CT — Instead of sponsoring separate legislation, Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven and Rep. Josh Elliott, D-Hamden, have teamed up to get behind a new bill that would restore voting rights to individuals who are incarcerated.

“Having a bill worked on by both someone in the Senate and the House gives it a better chance of passage,” Elliott said a press conference Wednesday at the Legislative Office Building.

“Voting is a fundamental right of every American and we should not be in the business of limiting it for our citizens who are incarcerated,” Winfield said. “While a person may be incarcerated they do not lose all of their rights during this time and the right to vote upholds all other rights.”

The legislation goes further than a separate bill that would restore parolee voting rights.

Currently, someone on probation can have their voting rights restored, but someone on parole cannot.

Elliott and Winfield are also supporting legislation that would give an estimated 6,200 individuals on parole the right to vote.

Proponents of passing such legislation point out that Connecticut is among the last states on the east coast to pass legislation restoring voting rights for this population.

Seventeen states have passed similar legis-

lation to restore voting rights for parolees.

The Sentencing Commission has backed the measure to restore parolees voting rights. It also did so last year but it never came up for a vote in either the House or the Senate.

The commission also backed the measure last year but it never came up for a vote in either the House or Senate.

The bill didn’t receive much attention last year in the midst of the budget crisis that dominated most of the session, but it was a priority for the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus.

A deal was brokered to let them debate the bill for a limited period of time in the House last year, but it never got called for vote.

Proponents said that across all New England states, Connecticut’s laws governing votings rights restoration are the most restrictive. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire voting rights are automatically restored as soon as an incarcerated individual is released from custody, even if they are serving terms of parole or probation.

In Maine and Vermont, incarcerated individuals never lose their civil right to vote - even while they are incarcerated.

One of those speaking in favor of the legislation at the press conference was the Rev. Jeff Grant, co-founder and ministerdirector of the Progressive Prison Project/ Innocent Spouse & Children Project.

Grant served 14 months in prison for taking money from a client’s escrow account when he was practicing law.

“But I was one of the lucky ones,” Grant said. “Because I served in a federal prison when I got out I was able to vote again.”

“I regard my right to vote as a holy, fundamental right,” he said. “Unfortunately that is not a right for people in the state system.”

Elliott said the bill is beneficial because it lets former inmates feel invested in the community.

Secretary of State Denise Merrill supports a bill that would restore voting rights to parolees.

“This bill would remove the confusion over parole versus probation and simplify the restoration of voting rights to the physical release from prison,” Merrill said.

“Reattaching voting rights to people as they leave their period of confinement doesn’t just alleviate confusion that can dampen registration, it also will help people to reintegrate into the civic life of their community,” Merrill said. “Voters who exercise their right to vote sooner are more likely to become lifetime voters.”

Both Winfield and Kennard Ray, chair of the Full Citizen Coalition to Unlock the Vote, said not allowing parolees to vote is a system to promotes racial prejudice since, proportionately, there is a large percentage of people of color who are parolees.

“Is that the legacy we want for Connecti-

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JACK KRAMER / CTNEWSJUNKIE PHOTO

Sen. Gary Winfield

cut,” asked Ray. Winfield added: “Our society is not judged by how we treat the most well-off among us but how we treat those who are in our minority groups, economically disadvantaged, and in one way or another forgotten.

“To take away the right to vote does not, as some would suggest, speak to what they have done, but it speaks to who we are.

And, it does not speak well of us,” Winfield said.

When it was pointed out to Winfield that during a public hearing on the bill that there was no stated, or submitted testimony opposed to the bill, he cautioned to not read too much into that.

“Opposition isn’t always spoken,” Winfield said, “especially when it comes to issues of economy, issues of race.”

The General Administration and Elections Committee has until April 3 to forward the legislation to the Senate.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

Students To Legislature: It's Time Undo Racism Latina to learn about her own history in school. Somehow, she told legislators, she has made it through the final semester of high school with almost no knowledge of her African-American and Latinx ancestors and their role in both world and American history.

“Being both black and Puerto-Rican, I know very little about either of my histories other than the fact that slavery and genocide were involved in both,” she said. “Many students I go to school with don’t know what it’s like to go to bed hungry, many don’t understand the fear of police regarding the their safety, many don’t understand being watched in the store just because you got a little melanin.”

by Lucy Gellman, Editor The Arts Paper newhavenarts.org

Hartford—Before Wednesday, Taylin Santiago had never heard of Luis Muñoz Marín. She could conjure Rosa Parks, but drew a blank if asked about Claudette Colvin. She told classmates about her Afro-Latino heritage, but didn’t have any history to fill in their questions.

Now, she wants to make sure that never happens to another student again.

A senior at New London High School, Santiago was one of almost 100 students and educators to testify Wednesday afternoon in support of raised H.B. 7082 and H.B. 7083, both proposed bills that would add African-American and Puerto Rican Studies requirements to public school curricula across Connecticut. Proposed

by State Rep. Bobby Gibson, a Democrat who represents Bloomfield and Windsor, the bill follows last year’s passage of a law that requires the inclusion of Holocaust and genocide studies in public school curricula.

Howard Sovronsky, president and CEO of Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford and one of the fiercest advocates of last year’s bill, kicked off the hearing with a passionate testimony, noting that “studying our shared history, learning about each other’s accomplishments and pains, only strengthens the bonds that connect us on this amazing journey we call America.”

After Wednesday’s hearing, during which the bills received overwhelming support— they will go to a private committee meeting where legislators decide whether to push them to the Connecticut House of Representatives.

Student turnout came largely from New London-based Hearing Youth Voices and New Haven-based Students for Educational Justice (SEJ), as well as a handful of Windsor-based students and educators who are in Gibson’s district. In partnership with Citywide Youth Coalition, CT Students for a Dream, Elm City-UROC and Hearing Youth Voices, SEJ has been actively working on a series of proposed amendments for the bills, which representatives of the organization presented in testimony Wednesday. Read them in their entirety here.

In particular, SEJ is pushing for a combined bill on the history of race and racism in the United States, with the inclusion of several amendments and a new title. The amendments advocate for required racial bias trainings, as well as the formation of a “Curriculum-Building and Oversight Committee” comprising teachers, students, and experts on race theory within the state’s existing Department of Education.

Those amendments are a welcome addition for students including Santiago, who spoke about her struggles as an Afro-

“We are trying to live and work around a system not built for us,” she added.

Committee members shifted in their seats as she spoke. Behind her—and despite the fact that State Sen. and committee chair Doug McCrory had cautioned them not to—a packed hearing room let out murmurs and mmms of approval.

State Rep. Robert Sanchez, a Democrat who represents New Britain, raised his hand.

“During this whole time, give me some examples of what you have learned about African-American history or Hispanic history in school,” he said.

“I have no names,” Santiago said.

“None?” he asked.

Clockwise, from top left: Co-Op HS senior Brycen Thompson, Shane Brooks, Bloomfield Mayor Suzette Debeatham-Brown, who told a story of visiting a classroom and being asked if she was the person who “ended slavery,” and Jonathan Gonzales-Cruz of CT Students for a Dream. “Learning about the creation of the concepts of race, whiteness and anti-blackness in our country would be beneficial not only to youth of color but to white students as well, in order for them to get a full picture of race relations in the United States,” said Gonzales-Cruz.

“From slavery to the civil rights movement is about what I know, and even then I feel like I can’t tell you much more than Martin Luther King was involved,” she said. “It’s a very basic knowledge of that.”

Sanchez brought out a string of names including Luis Muñoz Marín, the first elected governor of Puerto Rico. Santiago shook her head just slightly.

“No,” she said.

“It’s Like Whiplash”

photos by Lucy Gellman: Taylin Santiago, one of dozens of students to testify in favor of H.B. 7082 and 7083 Wednesday. The bills, which received overwhelming public support, will now go to committee.

Dominick Burrel: “I personally am sick and tired of being in a elevator with white folks feeling the discomfort I feel when they clench their bag tighter to them, or when I’ve been accused me for being ‘racist’ for speaking up on my opinions, when now is the day to speak up.”

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Benie N’sumbu, a senior studying creative writing at Cooperative High School in the Arts & Humanities (Co-Op) in New Haven, told legislators Wednesday that she was excited to support the bill as a measure “that directly hits at the core of the racial disparities in America.”

At the age of five, N’sumbu immigrated with her family to New Haven from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Through elementary and middle school, Black and Latinx classmates told her “that I acted white white,” a label she realized came from her quiet presence in classes, good grades and neat-edged English when she did speak up. The longer she was in school, the more she struggled with holding on to her Congolese heritage.

“It was like the more American I became,

the less African I became, and I felt I couldn’t be both,” she said. Of her classmates’ taunts, she added that “this resulted in years of internalized racism that I am still working toward dismantling toward this day.”

Then her sophomore year, N’sumbu met SEJ Founder and Director Hillary Bridges in a writing class at school, on a day that Bridges had been invited to come and speak about her work in New Haven.

Bridges used words that N’sumbu had never heard: internalized racism and antiblackness. In N’sumbu’s head, something clicked immediately.

“I didn’t have the words for it,” she said before the hearing, recounting Bridges’ visit to the class. “It’s like whiplash— you’re going to go through your entire life thinking this thing.”

N’sumbu said she considers herself lucky to be at Co-Op, where her literature, language and history courses offer her reading and writing options that she doesn’t see her peers getting in other schools. In her history courses, N’sumbu was rocked by reading Ida B. Wells’ letters against lynching and learning about slave rebellions on both Haitian and American soil.

Then last year, her AP English Language teacher pushed her to write on Matthew Jacobson’s Whiteness of a Different Color, which outlines race as a social construct. The essay that came out of it, a critical look at immigration and racism in her own life, became the basis of her testimony Wednesday. This year, she’s been taking a deep dive into Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. She praised faculty at CoOp, which is still overwhelmingly white, as digging beneath the surface of widely accepted history curricula.

But, she added before the hearing, “you shouldn’t have to wait until you’re in high school, or in an AP class” to get basic exposure to those texts.

“Did you have exposure to any AfricanAmerican history up until … AP was what, your junior or senior year?” asked State Rep. Patricia Billie Miller, a Democrat who serves Stamford.

“Just the basics,” answered N’Sumbu.

“We talked about slavery, civil rights in middle school, and then learning about Martin Luther King and all of that. But we never really dug deep into the history of race and racism in the United States.

In talking about what was going on, you know, before the Civil War.” “Right,” Miller responded. “So did you learn anything about the black codes, Jim Crow laws, Brown v. Board of Education?”

“My history of African-American history started from slavery up until the civil rights movement,” she answered.

“I Personally Am Sick And Tired” Con’t on page

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

NEW HAVEN’S GRASSROOTS COMMUNITY RADIO STATION!

125

www.newhavenindependent.org

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

THE TOM FICKLIN SHOW Mondays 10 a.m.

MAYOR MONDAY!

MERCY QUAYE

Mondays 11 a.m.

Mondays 1 p.m.

“THE SHOW”

“DJ REL”

MICHELLE TURNER Tuesdays 9 a.m.

“WERK IT OUT”

ELVERT EDEN Tuesdays at 2 p.m.

MORNINGS WITH MUBARAKAH

“JAZZ HAVEN”

Wednesdays 9 a.m.

Wednesdays 2 p.m.

STANLEY WELCH

“TALK-SIP”

LOVEBABZ LOVETALK

Thursdays 1 p.m.

Mondays-Fridays 9 a.m.

ALISA BOWENSMERCADO

YEARS

FRIDAY PUNDITS Fridays 11 a.m.

TO THEE WE SING Thursday, April 4 • 7:30pm Lyman Center • Southern Connecticut State University New Haven Symphony Orchestra William Boughton, conductor Harolyn Blackwell, soprano & narrator Elliott Forrest, visual artist New Haven All-City Orchestra The NHSO marks the 80th Anniversary of Marian Anderson’s groundbreaking performance at the Lincoln Memorial with a concert that celebrates the perseverance of the human spirit and the ability of music to speak to power. This resonant, poignant performance will use the words of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr; original art by Elliott Forrest; and music by Aaron Copland, Joseph Schwantner, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and others to commemorate and examine what it means to be an American.

Tickets on Sale Now! (203)787-4282 | NewHavenSymphony.org 15

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

COMMENTARY:

March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

Demystifying Student Performance Via Parental Engagement

By Sharonica Nelson, Ed.D. Professor, Professional Education Consultant, Author Once students reach middle school, parents often become less engaged with their child’s academic environment. They don’t walk them in the school’s doors anymore, they don’t communicate as often with teachers, and they are less like to visit the school unless there is a special program or sporting event after hours. This is especially true for African American parents.

As a former classroom teacher in an urban, predominantly Black school, I have first-hand knowledge of this. During middle school, school becomes more or less a mystery to parents. However, under Every Student Succeeds Act, there is a push for parents to be more involved with academic environment of their child.

Studies show that when parents are more actively involved in their child’s schools, the child tends to perform better academically. Therefore, parental engagement is an important concept of discussion in terms of African American children’s performance.

Although parental engagement has a strong correlation to student academic performance and achievement, why is it that African American parents appear disproportionately less engaged than parents of other races?

Studies have shown that there are many factors that may hinder Black parents from being active in their child’s schooling.

Factors include lacking confidence when speaking to education professionals or fear of seeming incompetent, being the sole provider in the household with work hours that conflict with school hours, and not knowing how to approach school officials with proper questions specific to individual child concerns.

These and many other nuisances keep Black parents from approaching schools to be more active in their child’s academic career. Nevertheless, for the sake of maxi-

mum student success and potential, it is important that parents are actively engaged in their child’s schooling.

It is imperative that Black parents are not only involved but also engaged in their child’s schools. Parents must not only be involved through participating in schoolplanned functions, but they must also create their own spaces and opportunities for active engagement to demystify student performance. There are many ways to do so, which include: Use school system provided platforms to keep up with grades. The school system may provide this service for free, and it may be associated with a special code or password for log in. Parents should check with the school secretary for information on this. Frequently checking student grades and holding them accountable for their grades can send strong messages to students in terms of performance.

Know when reports cards are due. School systems may send home a calendar with this information, they may provide automated calls as a reminder, and the dates may be readily accessible on the school

system website. It is ultimately up to the parents to stay abreast of report cards and not wait until the last grading quarter to show concern over grades. It’s too late then.

Email teachers. Email is a quick form of communication that most people use directly from their phones. Most teachers use emails frequently. Make use of this to maintain constant contact and communication with your child’s teacher. Most teachers prefer to hear from parents with concerns of student progress and would happily engage to inform parents concerning their children.

Check teacher webpages. Many teachers have webpages that they frequently update with pertinent information pertaining to their classroom. This information may include due dates, skills and concepts to be covered, and materials needed for upcoming projects and assignments.

Create a parent network. Many parents may not have the time or resources to be involved with the formal PTA (Parent Teacher Association). They may decide to create social media groups that keep

all parents abreast of current happenings within the school. This could be a simple, easy way to connect to other parents of students within same educational setting for accurate, current information concerning the child’s school.

Regardless, of the age or grade of a parent’s child, parents have a right to know about the current happenings of the classroom and school. However, the school and parent relationship shouldn’t be one-sided with school doing all of the work in terms of providing the opportunities for parents to become engaged. Parents must understand the importance of their involvement in their child’s educational trajectory, take the reins, and create their opportunities for being actively involved.

Although, middle school is the time when most parents become less engaged in the child’s school, it should be a time when parents maintain engagement. To demystify further, parent involvement weighs heavily on children’s performance. And simply put, children need to see parents in their academic spaces for better performance, even in middle school and beyond.

Meet the First Ever Black Woman Judge to Be Appointed in the State of Alaska even as she convicts them or delivers their sentence. That is something she perceives as progress in the justice system.

“I still felt that there was some respect that someone that looked like them was actually in the courtroom, and that’s, you know, we take it for granted but there’s something about that,” Washington said in an interview with Alaska Public Media. “Justice is experienced, and so I feel like we sort of up the game of justice when the court system looks like the people we serve.”

During her childhood, she spent most of her time trying to fit in. She was on her 8th grade when they moved from New Orleans to Alaska. At that time, she wasn’t that much aware that she was a minority. Even-

Blacknews.com

Anchorage, AK — In 2010, Pamela Scott Washington made history as the first Black woman to be appointed as a judge in Alaska. Almost a decade since then, she still upholds the significance her position has in the community and how it allows her to help resolve conflicts through the justice system.

“Justice is not just done. Justice is seen.

And justice is experienced,” Washington believes. And throughout her tenure, she lives by that.

As an African-American sitting on the bench in the courtroom, most people of color would express appreciation of her

tually, she learned to do what everyone else did, joined organizations, participated in activities, and tried to reduce the gap between the different race.

That’s when she realized that it is better to see the USA and its diverseness as a ‘salad bowl’ instead of a ‘melting pot’ which was the term more widely taught.

Washington explained that as a melting pot, it could be deemed that “people come from all over the place and they try to blend in, and if you throw everything in a pot, we all look the same.”

She, therefore, believes that “true diversity is more like a salad bowl, where you can have all sorts of ingredients… and to-

gether these flavors are pretty amazing. But you can still see each ingredient, so you don’t have to lose who you are and what you bring to the table just to really be a part of the big whole.”

However, she had been honest in stating that even though people have been more aware of issues in race and inequality in Alaska and in the whole United States, it wasn’t enough to really unite people.

“I think the good thing about it is, is what’s happening has made us aware and take note and be deliberate about how we move forward and how we engage with our brothers and sisters and people in the community, like us and not like us,” she said.

Burberry Apologizes for Designing a Hoodie With a Noose Around the Neck

Nationwide — Fashion brand Burberry has apologized for designing a hoodie with a noose around the neck which was showcased during its London Fashion Week show. The design, which received harsh criticism online even from one of the brand’s own models, has already been pulled out from the collection, the fashion house said.

“We are deeply sorry for the distress caused by one of the products that featured in our A/W 2019 runway collection,” Burberry CEO Marco Gobbetti said in a statement provided to CNN. “Though [the] design was inspired by the marine theme that ran throughout the collection, it was insensitive and we made a mistake,” he continued.

Liz Kennedy, the model who wore the hoodie on the show, was the first to express criticism about the noose. She said she tried to object on having the noose

placed on her neck, but her concerns were just dismissed.

“Suicide is not fashion,” Kennedy wrote on her Instagram post. “It is beyond me how you could let a look resembling a noose hanging from a neck out on the runway.”

Kennedy also noted the “horrifying history of lynching” associated with the noose. However, she claimed that some of the staff were even joking about the design before the show while the noose was hanging from the ceiling.

“I had a brief conversation with someone but all that it entailed was ‘it’s fashion.

Nobody cares about what’s going on in your personal life so just keep it to yourself,’” she said.

The UK’s Mental Health Foundation also condemned the design and cited the need for fashion houses to be more careful and diverse in their creative process.

“It is disappointing to see this representation in our day and age considering how much ground we have covered in mental health in recent years,” said Antonis Kousoulis, associate director of research at the charity. “Highly influential global brands like Burberry certainly have a role to play in giving a voice to diverse views, respecting people with lived experience, and being role models.”

Meanwhile, Riccardo Tisci, Burberry’s chief creative officer and the designer of the A/W 2019 “Tempest” collection, apologized over the controversial design as well, saying he now realized it was “insensitive.”

“It was never my intention to upset anyone. It does not reflect my values nor Burberry’s and we have removed it from the collection. I will make sure that this does not happen again,” he added.

16

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN’S SUMMIT

A Sisters’ Collaborative “25 Years: Empowering Our Community”

Saturday, March 23, 2019 9:00 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.

Achievement First Amistad High School 580 Dixwell Avenue New Haven, CT

 Collaborative Youth Workshops  Interactive Adult Seminars  Powerful Panel Presentation  Vendor Marketplace & Information Tables  Continental Breakfast and Heart Healthy Lunch

aawsummit@gmail.com This event is free to the public

Questions about your bill?

Yale New Haven Hospital is pleased to offer patients and their families financial counseling regarding their hospital bills or the availability of financial assistance, including free care funds.

By appointment, patients can speak one-on-one with a financial counselor during regular business hours. For your convenience, extended hours are available once a month.

Date: Monday, March 18 Time: 5 - 7 pm Location: Children’s Hospital, 1 Park St., 1st Floor, Admitting Parking available (handicapped accessible) An appointment is necessary. Please call 203-688-2046.

Spanish-speaking counselors available.

17

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College Announces 2019 National Black Writers Conference Biennial Symposium: Saturday, March 23, 2019, Brooklyn, NY 2019 Symposium, “Playwrights and Screenwriters at the Crossroads,”

Will Pay Tribute to the Late Award-Winning Poet and Playwright Ntozake Shange

Brooklyn, New York -- The Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY, announces open registration for the 2019 National Black Writers Conference—the nation’s premier gathering of students, writers, authors, scholars, and literary icons on the topic of Black literature.

The event will take place at Medgar Evers College, CUNY (located at 1650 Bedford Ave., between Crown and Montgomery Streets, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn) on Saturday, March 23, 2019 from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm. The one-day symposium offers a series of panel discussions, a public town hall, dramatic readings, a bookstore, and special performances for anyone interested in attending. Registration is open online at www.centerforblackliterature.org and will also be available on-site at the college.

This year’s theme, “Playwrights and Screenwriters at the Crossroads,” is in response to the growing number of awardwinning film and theater works produced in the U.S. by Black writers; the symposium will continue the discussions around “Race, Healing, and Activism in Black Literature” and broaden its focus to spotlight, for the first time ever, playwrights

and screenwriters. It will also pay special tribute to Obie Award-winning renowned poet, playwright, and novelist Ntozake Shange, who transitioned in 2018. Ifa Bayeza, playwright, producer, novelist, and sister of Shange, will serve as the keynote speaker. See program schedule below for other guest speakers and highlights.

From August Wilson to Ntozake Shange; George C. Wolfe to Dominique Morisseau; from F. Gary Gray to Ava DuVernay, contemporary Black playwrights and screenwriters are making huge strides in theater and film. Additionally, writers such as Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, Rosa Guy, Ntozake Shange, and Alice Walker have had their works published in print and presented on stage.

Dr. Brenda Greene, the Executive Director of the Center for Black Literature, reflects on the goal of the Symposium. “We are at a crossroads and as the number of plays and films by Black writers expand, we want to explore the nature of the plays and films being produced. Are Black playwrights and screenwriters writing for Black, white or mixed audiences? What is the nature of the subject matter and themes promoted by

producers and directors of Black plays and films? Are Black playwrights and screenwriters more focused on entertainment than on the complexity of the Black experience in America?” What is the future for Black playwrights and screenwriters?

For more information and the full program, interested participants may visit the 2019 National Black Writers Conference Biennial Symposium website at www.cen-

terforblackliterature.org.

THE MISSION OF THE CENTER FOR BLACK LITERATURE

The mission of the Center for Black Literature is to expand, broaden and enrich the public’s knowledge and aesthetic appreciation of the value of Black literature.

Through a series of programs that build an audience for the reading, discussion and critical analysis of contemporary Black literature and that serve as a forum for the

research and study of Black literature, the Center convenes and supports various literary programs and events such as author readings and book signings, writing workshops, panel discussions, conferences and symposia. It is the only center devoted to this in the country. For more information, call the Center at 718-804-8883 or visit our website at www.centerforblackliterature. org.

Embracing Disability Inclusion Within The Fitness Industry

by Jasmine Danielle The fitness industry is currently booming with many new and innovative ideas. It’s truly fascinating to see how many different ways we can work to achieve a single fitness and health goal. There are a lot of unique and exciting fitness programs out there. Some of the industries finest trainers design results-driven fitness programs that come equipped with regressions and explosive progressions, but I’ve noticed that these programs don’t often cater to special populations.

Reasons vary, but some people are either

confined to chairs or can’t stand for long periods of time and I often wonder whether most trainers ever truly consider these populations when designing programs. Of course, the industry is becoming more inclusive, however we don’t see many mainstream images of fitness for disabilities and varying body types, let alone commercialized fitness programming.

Everyone needs physical activity in order to achieve optimal health, however there’s a large population of disabled folks who don’t get enough aerobic activity, even those who are able to be physically active.

This means we need more than just accessible entryways and bathrooms. We must also consider senior citizens and those who can’t stand long because of their weight.

Bringing fitness programs for all bodies to the forefront of fitness can make a world of difference for many people who feel for-

gotten or ignored.

There are some fitness professionals who do stand out for their efforts to emphasize the importance of inclusivity. Their efforts have helped people who have been “othered” for most of their lives find the joy in working out.

There are fitness professionals who have gained popularity via their YouTube Channels for their chair workouts. Fitness professionals like Paul Eugene, have been working in the industry for years and have made it a point to provide chair and wheelchair workouts with aerobic and fat burning themes. Some instructors specialize in specific types of chair exercises, like Alexis Perkins who designs cardio dance chair workouts for senior citizens and people going through physical therapy.

As far as visiting gyms and attending classes, it depends on where you go. Not

all fitness spaces are created equal. Some gyms are prepared to accommodate people with disabilities and limited mobility and others have no action plan at all. Instructors and trainers who are well educated can immediately come up with modifications and solutions. Some gyms even have equipment that adapt for seated users.

Whatever the situation may be there are resources and organizations doing the work to educate and make fitness more accessible to those with limited mobility. For more information on these organizations visit the websites of the Center for Disease Control Prevention, the United Spinal Association, the Christopher and Dana Reeves Foundation, and of course the everpresent YouTube.

It’s extremely important to speak with a health professional before getting involved in any fitness program if you’re dealing

with an injury, illness, weight issues or a disability. Medical clearance and advice can make a huge difference as doctors can suggest appropriate exercises, activities, and routines that are suitable for any condition.

Jasmine Danielle is a Los Angeles based dancer and fitness trainer. She received her BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has studied with FiTour, the National Federation of Personal Trainers, and the Equinox Group Fitness Training Institute. Jasmine is currently a Group Fitness Instructor for Equinox, Everybody Los Angeles, and Sandbox Fitness. Her fitness modalities include ballet, dance cardio, barre fitness, TRX, treadmill interval training, cardio kickboxing, jump rope, indoor cycling, and metabolic conditioning.

Legendary songstress Dionne Warwick announces, “She’s Back,” first new album in five years Project kicks off with release of a new rendition of “What the World Needs Now” Legendary Grammy Award winner DIONNE WARWICK will release her first new album in 5 years, “SHE’S BACK,” on May 10th. Produced by her son Damon Elliot, the album will be released via his Kind Music and Entertainment One (eOne). The lead-off single will be an updated version of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic, “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” which Di-

onne recorded during the 1960s.

In addition to ten tracks of new songs as well of remakes of pop/soul gems, “She’s Back” will be packaged with a bonus disc of Ms. Warwick’s 1998 album, “Dionne Sings Dionne,” which features her greatest hits, remastered for this package. “She’s Back” also includes duets with Kenny Lattimore (“What Color Is Love”), Musiq Soulchild (“Am I Dreaming?”) as well as Bone, Thugs & Harmony’s Krayzie Bone (“Déjà Vu”).

“She’s Back” is Ms. Warwick’s 36th

full-length studio recording, and her first dedicated R&B/soul album in fifty years, since the release of Dionne’s stellar 1969 Scepter LP, Soulful, which she co-produced in Memphis with the late Chips Moman (who manned the boards for Dionne’s then-label mate, B.J. Thomas).

Ms. Warwick is one of several legends to be chosen to receive one of the Grammy Awards’ highest honors this year – the Lifetime Achievement Award. She joins music greats such as George Clin-

18

ton & Parliament-Funkadelic, Billy Eckstine, Donny Hathaway, Julio Iglesias as well as Sam & Dave in this bestowed class. The honorees were mentioned in the Grammy Awards live telecast earlier this month. A separate award presentation ceremony and concert celebrating the honorees will be held the day after the release of “She’s Back,” on May 11, 2019, in Los Angeles.

Additionally, Dionne will begin a highly anticipated concert residency in Las Vegas on April 4, 2019.

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19

THE INNER-CITY INNER-CITY NEWS March 2019 - March 2019 NEWS- July 27,13, 2016 - August 02, 19, 2016

Dispatcher

PVC FENCE PRODUCTION NOTICE

Galasso Materials is seeking a motivated, organized, detail-oriented candiLarge CT Fence Company looking for an individual for our PVC date to join its truck dispatch office. Responsibilities include order entry Fence Production Shop. Experience preferred but will train the and truck ticketing in a fast paced materials manufacturing and contracting right person. Must be familiar with carpentry hand & power tools company. You will have daily interaction with employees and customers and be able to read a CAD drawing and tape measure. Use of CNC as numerous truckloads of material cross our scales daily. We are willing Router machine a plus but not required, will train the right person. to train the right individual that has a great attitude. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE. Authority, Reply to Hiring Manager, PO Box 1776, East Granby, CT 06026.

HOME on behalf of Columbus and the New Haven Housing This is an INC, in-shop production position.House Duties include building EOE/M/F/D/V. is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments at this devel-

VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE

fence panels, posts, gates and more. Must have a valid CT driver’s opment 108 Frank Street, New Haven.

Maximum income limitations aplicense & belocated able toatobtain a Drivers Medical Card. Must be able ply. Pre-applications will test. be available from resume 9AM TOto5PM beginning Monday Ju;y to pass a physical and drug Please email pking@ atlasoutdoor.com.

AA/EOE-MF 25, 2016 and ending when sufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have

DELIVERY PERSON NEEDED

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 preCT fence guardrail con-Orange Street, Third applications must be returnedLarge to HOME INC’s&offices at 171 tractor looking for a shop welder/helper. Duties include but are Floor, New Haven, CT 06510.

Welder/Helper:

Part Time Delivery Needed One/Two Day a Week,

not limited to cutting & notching pipe to build gates, and fabbing, plating posts, truck & trailer repairs. Ability to mig weld steel and aluminum is a plus. Some road work may be required. All necessary equipment provided. Must have a valid CT driver’s license and be able to get a DOT medical card. Required to pass a physical and VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES drug test. Medical, vacation & other benefits included. Starting pay @ $17.00 per hour. Please email resume to pking@atlasoutdoor.

HOME INC, en nombre de la Columbus House y de la New Haven Housing Authority, está com AA/EOE-MF

NOTICIA

Must Have your Own Vehicle

APPLY TODAY

If Interested call

(203) 387-0354

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 Bridge Repair Crew Openings máximos. Las pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando Martes 25 Operators, Foreman M/F. Drivers CDL,Laborers, julio, 2016 hasta cuando se han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente 100) Welders, Concrete Work en las oficinas de HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas por correo a petición Accounting Department has two immediate openings for full llamando a860-664-8042, HOME INC al 203-562-4663 durante esas horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse Fax 860-664-9175 time Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable professionals a lasmichelle@occllc.com oficinas de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CT 06510 .

EOE 10 Hour OSHA in a fast-paced office environment. Must be highly organized, Females and Minorities encouraged to apply possess good computer skills, be detail oriented, and able to manage multiple projects. Benefits include health, dental & LTD insurance plus 401(k). Send resume to: Human Resource Administrative Assistant Dept. P O Box 388, Guilford CT 06437.

Listing: Accounting

Must have DOT Construction Exp. Involves traveling to Job Site for record keeping. Reliable transportation a must. NO PHONE CALLS EMAIL RESUME TO michelle@occllc.com 242-258 Fairmont Ave EOE/AA Females and Minorities are encouraged to apply

NEW HAVEN

EMPLOYMENT SPECIALIST - (P/T)

Assist individuals receiving services in identifying and making choices about their social, vocation and personal goals. Duties include case management, job development/placement/retention services and job support as needed. Requires use of personal vehicle. B.A. in a related field; plus 2 yrs’ related experience or equivalent combination of education and experience. Pay rate $16.61/hr.

Apply to: GWSNE, 432 Washington Ave., North Haven, CT 06473/Fax (203) 495-6108/ hr@goodwillsne.org EOE/AA - M/F/D/V

SHOP InvitationCARPENTRY to Bid: Large CT Fence Company looking for a full-time carpenter for our Wood Fence Production nd Notice 2 The GUILFORD HOUSING AUTHORITY Shop. Experience preferred but will train the right person. Must be familiar with carpentry ********An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer**********

2BR Townhouse, 1.5 BA, 3BR, 1 levelis, currently 1BA accepting applications for its efficiency and one hand & power tools and be able to read a CAD drawing and tape measure. This is an inbedroom apartments at Guilford Court and Boston Terrace shop production position. Duties include mortising & drill wood posts for fence panels, All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 Old Saybrook, CT in Guilford, CT. Applicants must be age 62 and over or on building fence panels gates & more. Must have a valid CT driver’s license and be able to highways, nearConnecticut bus stop & shopping center State of (4 Buildings, 17 Units) 100% social security or federal disability and over the age obtain a Drivers Medical Card. Must be able to pass a physical and drug test. Please email Pet under 40lbOffice allowed. Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258 resume to pking@atlasoutdoor.com.

AA/EOE-MF of Policy Tax Exempt & Not Prevailing Wage Rate Project of 18. Applications maybe obtained by calling the applicaand Management tion line at 203-453-6262, ext. 107. Applications will be acCT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s NewatConstruction, Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, Castcepted until May 30, 2019 3:00 p.m. Credit, police, and Certificate Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates landlord checks are procured by the authority.

Smoke free in-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Siding, in response to the Church’s Ministry needs.

The cost is $125.

Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:30The State of Connecticut, Office of 3:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., B.S. Request for Qualifications housing.

Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, (203) 996-4517and Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, Pastor of Pitts Chapel Policy Management isD.D. recruiting for U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster EQUAL OPPORTUNITY HOUSING Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

Elm City Communities

Architectural and Engineering Services

an Information Technology Analyst 1 (confidential) position.

St. New Haven, CT

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

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY

Housing Authority City of New Haven d/b/a Elm city Communities is currently seek-

ing Qualifications for Architectural and Engineering Services A complete copy of the Further information regarding the duties, Bid Extended, Due Date: August 5, 2016 requirement may be obtained from Elm City’s Vendor Collaboration Portal https://neeligibility requirements and application ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT - Portland Anticipated Start: whavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway August 15, 2016 beginning on Wednesday , FebruSealed bids are invited by the HousingisAuthority of the Town of Seymour instructions for this position available Project documents available via ftp link below: ary 20, 2019at 3:00 PM Assistant for data entry, filing, reception, phones, and corporate staff supuntil 3:00 pm on Tuesday,at: August 2, 2016 at its office at Administrative 28 Smith Street, port. Working knowledge of Haz. Wastehttp://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage Regs., Manifests, AP & billing. OSHA certification a +.

Forward Seymour, CT 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement atresumes the to RED Technologies, LLC Fax 860-218-2433; or Email to HR@redtechllc.com RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE. https://www.jobapscloud.com/ Elm City Communities Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26 Smith Street Seymour.

Fax or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com CT/sup/bulpreview.asp?R1= HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses 190207&R2=7611CN&R3=001 Haynes Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483Request for Proposals A pre-bid conference will be held at the Housing Authority Office 28Firefi Smithghter Town of Greenwich Environmental Services AA/EEO EMPLOYER Street Seymour, CTofatConnecticut 10:00 am, on is Wednesday, The State an equal July 20, 2016.

Do You Want A Job That Makes A Difference?

opportunity/affirmative action employer Become A Town of Greenwich Firefighter.

Bidding are available the fromapplications the Seymour Housing Of-information and apply online visit www.governand documents strongly encourages To Authority view detailed women, and persons fice, 28 of Smith Street,minorities, Seymour, CT 06483 (203) 888-4579. mentjobs.com/careers/greenwichct with disabilities.

Current Starting Salary: $60,910. The Town of Greenwich is

dedicated to Diversity & Equal Opportunity Employment; Town of

The Housing Authority reserves the right to accept or reject any or all bids, to 101 Field Point Rd, Greenwich, CT, (203)861Greenwich, HR Dept., reduce the scope of the project to reflect available funding, and to waive any 20 informalities in the bidding, if such actions are in the best interest of the Housing Authority.

Housing Authority City of New Haven d/b/a Elm city Communities is currently seeking Proposals for Environmental Services A complete copy of the requirement may be obtained from Elm City’s Vendor Collaboration Portal https://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway beginning on Wednesday , February 20, 2019at 3:00 PM

NEWS- July 27,132016 - August THE INNER-CITY INNER-CITY NEWS March , 2019 - March 2019 02, 19, 2016

Heavy Equipment Operator & Skilled Laborer

Human Resources

ELECTRICIAN

Our growing construction company currently has 2 open positions available.

All work is 1st shift and we work only in the State of Connecticut.

Human Resources Assistant -The Town of Wallingford Human Resources Department is seeking a responsible and detailed orientated individual to provide clerical and administrative support in all areas of a full-service HR Department. Applicants must possess a H.S. diploma or GED plus 3 years’ experience in office work of a responsible nature with some experience performing HR related work. A combination of experience and training may substitute on a year-for-year basis. Salary rate: $22.37 to $26.78 hourly, plus an excellent fringe benefit package.

The closing date for applications is March 22, 2019 Apply: Department of Human Resources, Town of Wallingford, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492, Fax: (203) 294-2084 Phone (203) 294-2080. EOE.

– Telecommunications company looking for low voltage cable installer with a C or T license, specializing in fusion/splicing, testing and termination. Also must be familiar with all aspects of indoor & outdoor cable installation, aerial bucket work, pole work, messenger, lashing, manhole & underground installation. Good salary with full benefits. Fax resume to 860-282-0424 or mail to Fibre Optic Plus, LLC 585 Nutmeg Road North, South Windsor, CT 06074 Attn: Don Ballsieper Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer

NOTICE

HeavyHOUSING Equipment PREOperator VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE Ideal candidate will have experience operating all types of heavy equipment on large municipal construction jobsites. AHouse minimum 3 years’ experience required.

HOME INC, on behalf of Columbus andofthe New Haven Housing Authority, Skilled Construction Laborer is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments at this develIn needlocated of a skilled construction laborer has Maximum experienceincome prepping, forming,apopment at 108 Frank Street, Newwho Haven. limitations pouring and finishing sidewalks.

Additional skills Monday a plus. Ju;y ply. Pre-applications will beconcrete available from 9AM TO 5PM labor beginning Both positions OSHA 10pre-applications Certificate (Hazwoper Certificate a plus).

25, 2016 andrequire ending current when sufficient (approximately 100) have Positions require taking and of passing test / background check.

Apply been received at the offices HOMEa drug INC. Applications will be mailied uponbyreemailing yourHOME resumeINC to TradeMarkLLC@att.net or faxhours. to 860-314-1428. quest by calling at 203-562-4663 during those Completed preWomen & Minority applicants are encouraged to apply. Street, Third applications must be returned to HOME INC’s offices at 171 Orange An Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity Employer

Floor, New Haven, CT 06510.

NOTICIA BRISTOL HOUSING AUTHORITY Request for Proposal for Construction Manager – at Risk 3:00House p.m.,yFriday, March 2019 Authority, está HOME INC, Responses en nombre de la Due Columbus de la New Haven 1,Housing

VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES

Bristol pre-solicitudes Housing Authority (“BHA”)y is seeking a qualified firm to serve as desarrollo Construc The aceptando para estudios apartamentos de un dormitorio en este

tion Manager proposed rehabilitation of Se D.J.aplican Komanetsky Estatesde(the “Projubicado en atla Risk callefor 109itsFrank Street, New Haven. limitaciones ingresos ect”).

BHALas is requesting a “Statement of Qualifications to Request for máximos. pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09 a.m.-5and p.m.Response comenzando Martes 25 Proposal” from interested parties for the Project. The Project is anticipated to be funded julio, 2016 hasta cuando se han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente 100) primarily with financing from the State of Connecticut Department of Housing (“DOH”), en las oficinas de HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas por correo a petición the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (“CHFA”) and BHA. Prior successful experillamando a HOME INC aland 203-562-4663 durante esas horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán ence working with DOHCHFA-funded affordable housing developments of remitirse this scale a las oficinas HOME en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CT 06510 . is mandatory to de qualify forINC consideration for the Project.

A full copy of the Request for Proposal and access to drawings are available by contacting Carl Johnson, Dir. of Capital Funds at (860) 585-2028 or e-mail cjohnson@bristolhousing. org.

The Bristol Housing Authority is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer

NEW ofHAVEN The Housing Authority the City of Bridgeport 242-258 Fairmont Ave Invitation Bid (IFB) 2BR Townhouse, 1.5for BA, 3BR, 1 level , 1BA

Renovation for UFAS Compliance of 58 Units at Fireside

All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 Solicitation highways, nearNumber: bus stop &119-PD-19-S shopping center Pet under 40lb allowed.

Interested parties contact @ 860-985-8258 The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport d/b/a Park CityMaria Communities (PCC) is request-

ing sealed bids for Renovation for UFAS Compliance of 58 Units at Fireside. A complete set of the plans and technical specifications will be available on March 4, 2019. To obtain a copy of the CT. Unified you Deacon’s pleasedto to offer a Deacon’s solicitation mustAssociation send yourisrequest bids@parkcitycommunities.org, please reference soCertificate Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates licitation number title on the subject line.cost A MANDATORY pre-bid conference will be1:30held in response to theand Church’s Ministry needs. The is $125. Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 at 3:30 730 Contact: PalisadeChairman, Ave, Bridgeport, 06608M.S., on B.S. March 13, 2019, 2018 @ 10:00 a.m., submitting Deacon JoeCT J. Davis, (203) Host,without General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor U.F.W.B.ofChurch 64 Brewster a bid for996-4517 the project attending conference is not of inPitts the Chapel best interest the Offeror.

Additional St. Newquestions Haven, CTshould be emailed only to bids@parkcitycommunities.org no later than March 28, 2019 @ 3:00 p.m. Answers to all the questions will be posted on PCC’s Website: www.parkcitycommunities.org. All bids must be received by mailed or hand delivered by April 4, 2019 @ 2:00 PM, to Ms. Caroline Sanchez, Director of Procurement, 150 Highland Ave, Bridgeport, CT 06604, at which time and place all bids will be publicly opened and read aloud. No bids will be accepted after the designated time.

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 Manager.

Seymour. is seeking to fill the position of Development

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

A pre-bidrefer conference willwebsite be held at for the Housing Office 28 Smith Please to our details:Authority http://www.cfgnh.

Street Seymour, CT at 10:00 am, on Wednesday, July 20, 2016. org/About/ContactUs/EmploymentOpportunities.aspx. EOE. Bidding documents are available from the Seymour Housing Authority Office, 28 Electronic Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 (203)No 888-4579. submissions only. phone calls 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

Project Manager Environmental Remediation Division 3-5 years exp. and Bachelor’s Degree, 40-Hr. Hazwoper Training Req. Forward resumes to RED Technologies, LLC, 10 Northwood Dr., Bloomfield, CT 06002;

Fax 860.218.2433; or Email to HR@redtechllc.com

Equipment Operator

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

10 hour OSHA certificate required.

CDL license a plus but not required.

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

We are an equal opportunity employer M/F.

Laborer

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

10 hour OSHA certificate required.

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

We are an equal opportunity employer M/F.

CDL Driver2nd Notice

RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE.

Invitation to Bid:

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

10 hour OSHA certificate and CT Old Saybrook, clean CDL license required.

(4 Buildings, 17 Units) Please call PJF Construction Corp. @ 860-888Tax Exempt & Not Prevailing Wage Rate 9998. We are an equal opportunity employer M/F.Project

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc

seeks: Construction Equipment Mechanic preferably experienced in Reclaiming and Road Milling Equipment. We offer factory training on equipment we operate. Location: Bloomfield CT We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits Contact: Dan Peterson Phone: 860- 243-2300 email: dpeterson@garrityasphalt.com Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc

seeks: Reclaimer Operators and Milling Operators with current licensing and clean driving record, be willing to travel throughout the Northeast & NY. We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits Contact: Rick Tousignant Phone: 860- 243-2300 Email: rick.tousignant@garrityasphalt.com Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer

New Construction, Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, Castin-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Siding, Union Company seeks: Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, Tractor Trailer Driver for Heavy & Highway ConMechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.struction Equipment. Must have a CDL License, This contract is subject to state set-aside and contract complianceclean requirements. driving record, capable of operating heavy equipment; be willing to travel throughout the

Bid Extended, Due Date: August 5, 2016 Northeast & NY. Attention Drivers Anticipated Start: August 15, 2016 We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits We have concrete mixer and triaxle dump driver openings Project documents available via ftp link below: Contact Dana at 860-243-2300.

Minimum 2 years experience. http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage Email: dana.briere@garrityasphalt.com .

Must have valid CDL with clean driving record.

Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Excellent pay and benefits.

Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer Fax or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com Apply M-F from at S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses HCC encourages the participation of all9-4 Veteran, 24 Industrial DriveCompany, Waterford, CT Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 Haynes Construction 32 Progress Youth AA/EEO EMPLOYER

860-444-9600

Applications available at: www.kobyluckinc.com An Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer

21

Town of Bloomfield

& Family Program Assistant Part Time $11.87 hourly For Details go to www.bloomfieldct.gov Pre-employment drug testing AA/EOE Deadline to apply 3/7/19

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

Women In History Making Boss Moves It's Time Undo Racism Con’t on page

by Erika Pope, BlackDoctor.org

From Negro History Week to Black History Month, the national celebration of Black excellence has become greater and more wide-spread than ever before. Black pioneers like Carter G. Woodsen and Jesse E. Moreland paved the way, but Black women definitely have kept the tempo.

5 Women in Black History You Should Know:

her, her accomplishments were overlooked and she was sometimes “erased” from the company’s public promotions altogether.

Despite the challenging times, Easley is quoted as having had, “more good times than bad”, and will go down in history as a STEM Girl Boss. (Samorodnitsky, 2018.

Massive science) Ella Baker (1903-1986)

Marsai Martin (2004-)

Barbara Gardner Proctor (1933-2018)

Ms. Gardner-Proctor is in large part the reason Black men and women have their place in the world of advertising today. Raised in “dirt poor” circumstances, Gardner-Proctor built herself up and became the creator and owner of the largest Black-owned ad agency in the world by 1976. She’s even credited for The Beatles’ huge success from her days of working in radio advertising in London.

Annie Easley (1933-2011)

In the years of the Civil Rights movement, there were many faces and names that went down in history as the leaders of the movement. Very frequently, however, there are people who do not get the recognition they deserve for their efforts and fight towards human rights and social justice. Ella Baker is a name that may not seem familiar, but she was one of the many individuals who fought beside the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Her interest in activism started when she was just a child who heard her grandmother’s stories of slavery and who faced discrimination herself growing up in the South.

These experiences led her to champion for the underserved communities of the “black, brown, and the poor”. In her adult years, she served on the staff of the NAACP before leaving and co-organizing a group that better aligned with her values; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

With Baker’s assistance, the SNCC became one of America’s greatest organizations for the promotion of human rights.

(Britannica) Dr. Alexa Canady (1950-)

The film “Hidden Figures” opened many of our eyes to the unsung stories of Black women who played major roles in the launching of the first spaceship. The film showed us there were a few Black women who were the brains behind NASA and perhaps math’s greatest algorithms. While it’s about time women like Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson had their stories told, there are still Black women who have historically worked and excelled in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) who should be recognized as well. Annie Easley is one of those women.

Similar to the leading ladies of Hidden Figures, Easley, a former Xavier University student, used her math and engineering proficiency to earn a position at NASA (then NACA- National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), working as a programmer and played a role in many crucial projects.

Much like the few Black women around

school in the middle of her college career which would have changed history as we know it. Instead, she moved forward and blazed a trail for women of color. In today’s climate, it’s become increasingly important to have Black women represented in the medical field who can understand not only the basic foundation of science and medicine but who can also directly relate to the women of color who are often misdiagnosed and refused proper medical care.

Dr. Alexa Irene Canady made history by becoming the FIRST woman and first Black neurosurgeon in the United States of America. Let that marinate for a moment. It’s no secret that Black men and women have been excelling in the medical field for years, but a feat like Dr. Canady’s more than deserves its praise.

Raised just outside of Lansing, Michigan, Dr. Canady came very close to quitting

Ringing in as the youngest history-maker on this list, she’s just getting started but has accomplished a huge milestone already in her 14 years of life. Marsai Martin became the youngest executive producer in America when Will Packer Productions decided to turn her film idea, “Little” into a reality.

Martin began her career at a young age starring in national commercials before being cast as Diane Johnson in the hit ABC sitcom, Black-ish. Since starring in Blackish, she’s been seen in a number of other television programs and films and will star in her executive produced film “Little” releasing later this year. From Civil Rights movements and science and math to the arts and international communications, women dominate in every field but aren’t always given the accolades they deserve.

It’s imperative to keep women like the ones mentioned in our conversations not only to give praise but to motivate the future phenomenal, history-making women who are quickly coming to the stage. Every day is and will continue to be the time to celebrate Black History.

Erika Pope, by day, is a Global Brand and Product Development Manager for five major brands within the beauty industry, including Aunt Jackie’s Curls and Coils.

She is responsible for social media, public relations, new product manifestation, packaging, retail distribution and retention, and trade-show management.

By night, her focus is on empowering women. She is on a mission to uplift and create opportunity for minority women to win! She believes women who are empowered are not to be underestimated. “When women have the strength and the support needed they can achieve the unthinkable.”

Erika, is ready to take her competitive, reliable and sassy attitude on the road to inspire women to be the boss of their life and make major Boss Moves, unapologetically.

Follow Erika @TheRealMrsPope and read more on my blog at www.ErikaPope. com

22

Other students appealed to legislators with stories of sheer exhaustion. Dominick Burrel, a freshman who travels from New London to Willimantic for school at Arts at the Capitol Theatre Magnet School each day, told the room that he is tired of making himself small and unassuming in white spaces, like elevators where fellow passengers hold their bags tighter, or classrooms where he’ expected to show up, and listen to white educators gloss over his ancestral history.

He said he believes that if the bill passes into law, it will alleviate some of the erasure he feels both in and outside of the classroom. Responding to a question from Miller, he added that he has only had one Black teacher in his life, in the third grade. Now, he’d like to see more of it in the classroom.

“I want to be able to learn about people that look like me, especially in the arts field,” he said. “Talk about the things we have done, and we give credit to those who deserve it.”

Echoes of his testimony rose again and again as students from around the state took took their turn before the committee.

Dahmarre Bournes, a freshman at Windsor High School, recalled the pain and frustration he felt during middle school, when an affinity group for young men of color received complaints from several white students and teachers, and was ultimately shut down by the school.

New Haven Academy student Sebastian Ward lambasted an education system in which he learned more about his background at home than he did at school. He recalled that it was his mother, and not his teachers, who encouraged him to dive into biographies of Thurgood Marshall, W.E.B DuBois, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes and other Black writers, thinkers, and makers.

By fifth grade, Ward said he had started to notice the disparity while talking about movers and shakers in American history.

That year, during which he recalled no Black History Month curriculum, the only person of color the class learned about was Crispus Attucks, still taught as the first person to be killed in the Revolutionary War. “Isn’t it crazy to think that Black men were getting shot by cops in America before America was even a country?” he said to a chorus of oooohs from those who had gathered in the hearing.

In seventh grade, Ward said he recognized a problem when the class learned about Harriet Tubman, and one of his classmates asked if she had been the woman arrested for sitting in the front of a bus. It got under his skin—especially because that same classmate was a selfproclaimed expert in the Vietnam War. “People simply do not know Black History, despite it being intrinsically attached to the history of everyone else,” he said. “The net benefit of this passing will be immeasurable. Black students all over

the state will feel far more represented in their school, ultimately leading to their achievement.”

Or twin brothers Shawn and Shane Brooks, both seniors at Science and Technology Magnet High School of Southeastern Connecticut in New London. Before the hearing, both recalled that although Black and Latinx students make up a majority of their school, the majority of teachers, administrators, and support staff are white, with no training in anti-racism or anti-bias work.

While their school offers a half-year elective course in ethnic studies, they both believe that a mandatory requirement will combat colorism and antiblackness that they see from both fellow students and faculty.

On a bright February day last year, Shawn Brooks recalled, his history class had been running on a 20-minute snow delay. In the time before the rest of the class arrived, he had suggested that students who were already present dive into a micro-unit on African-American history. He pointed out that it was, after all, Black History Month.

“We don’t have time for Black history,” the teacher replied.

It wasn’t the first time they said they’d felt erased in their own school. Earlier that same year, Shawn said that same teacher had reprimanded him for his clothing choices. He recalled walking into the classroom and hearing “take off your hoodie, you’re scaring me.”

“You Are Making History” Throughout the hearing, Gibson often paused to thank students for coming.

While they testified, he and other committee members leaned in, listening closely and following up with questions on their classes and curricula. How many teachers of color had they had? When had they first learned about Jim Crow? Did their teachers cover the African diaspora?

What about U.S. colonialism, and the fact that Puerto Ricans are indeed Americans?

As students finished their testimony and headed back to New Haven and New London, Gibson gathered them out in the hallway outside the hearing room, explaining the process that the bill must go through before it becomes a law. He praised them for their words, noting that he sensed the hearing would become a piece of Connecticut history.

“You are making history,” he told them, pausing for photos and selfies before heading back inside. In an interview following student testimony, he described himself as cautiously hopeful, noting that the legislation is long overdue in the state’s schools.

As as former coach, he added, “I’m always thinking about the follow-through.”

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

#nB

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#stoPH

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ConnecticuT Facts: 12% of the CT population is Black, yet 41% of new HIV cases are too.

African American women are highest among all women getting infected with HIV “If current HIV diagnoses rates persist, about 1 in 2 black men who have sex with men in the United States will be diagnosed with HIV during their lifetime” -CDC Things You Can Do: Get a FREE HIV TEST! Use Condoms!

Take PrEP pill daily to PREVENT INFECTION!

New HIV cases are mostly people in their 20’s

For More Information

PositivePreventionCt.org 23

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

March 13, 2019 - March 19, 2019

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