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THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

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APRIL 10, 2018

More Delays Plague “Escape” Youth Center

by THOMAS BREEN

tions helps ensure that the city doesn’t accidentally duplicate payments to the same service provider.

“There’s a lot of strategizing and orientation that we benefit from and a lot more efficiencies that we get just by having” me in this role, he said.

Bartlett’s raise from three years ago continued to be an issue, as it has in previous years’ alder hearings on the budget.

Bartlett said that the $20,000 raise he received in 2015 has been covered by special fund money, as the alders have thus far refused to increase the general fund line item for his salary. He said that the mayor’s newly proposed bud-

New Haven Independent

Two years after the city planned to open a youth activity center and homeless shelter on Orchard Street, the director of the project said that the new open date is just three months away.

Well, three months away from a date in the near future.

If the project receives some new cash in this coming year’s capital budget.

Youth Services Director Jason Bartlett offered that update during a budget workshop in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall about the mayor’s proposed $547 million operating budget for Fiscal Year 2019.

Bartlett told members of the Board of Alders Finance Committee that the Escape, a drop-in center for New Haven teens that will also provide 15 beds for homeless young men between the ages of 17 and 24, is at least a few months away from opening its doors.

To be located at 654 Orchard St., a former community outreach center owned by Bethel AME Church, the Escape has been mired in delays since the project’s inception in 2015.

After signing a 15-year lease in 2016, the city discovered a number of structural problems with the 30,000 squarefoot space, including a broken HVAC system, a leaky roof, and an electrical system in need of major updates.

On Thursday night, Bartlett said that the roof and the electrical system are the two major remaining concerns that stand in the way of the city opening this project.

He said that the $200,000 in sequestered capital funds that are scheduled to carry over from the current fiscal year’s budget, as well as an additional $50,000 that his department is requesting in next year’s capital budget, should cover the necessary costs to fix up the site.

“We are going back to the landlord to negotiate a giveback on the lease,” Bartlett said, “and have them contribute to some of the capital improvements, as well as seeking warranties on some of the work, specifically the roof.”

He reported that the church that owns the land has given the city permission to send in a building inspector who specializes in roofs. That inspector will provide the city with an estimate for how much work needs to be done to ensure that it no longer leaks, Bartlett said.

Then City Engineer Giovanni

THOMAS BREEN PHOTO

Youth Services Director Jason Bartlett at Thursday night’s budget workshop.

Zinn will request the release of the $200,000 in sequestered capital funds from the Board of Alders and coordinate the repairs to the roof and the electrical system. Bartlett said that he expects that repair work to take three months to complete, though he did not share when he thought the roof inspection would take place or when the repair work should begin.

He said that he is currently in negotiations with Bethel AME about getting some kind of reduction in the city’s $4,000-per-month lease to cover some of the cost of the capital improvement.

“This is a project that went from costing a couple of dollars to a couple of more, to more and more and more,” Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison said.

“My constituents are always asking me about the Escape, and they feel like we are putting money constantly into it, but we have no product.”

Bartlett said that the original capital outlay for the project were surplus dollars left over from a federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), and, at least to start, didn’t come out of the city’s capital fund. He said that $250,000 in capital funds, $200,000 of which was budgeted for this current fiscal year but sequestered until next fiscal year, should be enough to complete the renovations.

The center will consist of three primary spaces: a grand ballroom that will host after school programs, community group meetings and other social functions; a smaller ballroom will serve as a drop-in center for you, and will include board games and video games consoled; and a third space with 15 to 20 beds for homeless youth.

The youth homeless shelter component is the highest priority of the proj-

ect, but also the most complicated, Bartlett said. He said that the ballroom and the drop-in center would likely open before the homeless shelter, if only because the latter involves further regulations and inspections from state agencies like the Department of Children and Families (DCF).

Westville Alder Adam Marchand also asked Bartlett to give an update on his role as the mayor’s liaison to the Board of Education.

Bartlett said that, in addition to his responsibilities administering the Youth Stat student support program, the Youth at Work summer jobs program, and other initiatives overseen by the Youth Services department, he serves as City Hall point person for any public concerns about the Board of Ed. When members of the public want to bring concerns to the mayor about the school lottery system or busing, he is the person they talk to, he said.

When the mayor announced two years ago that she wanted all New Haven students to be able to read at grade level, Bartlett organized a reading a commission, set up meetings, and facilitated discussions at those meetings.

Marchand asked if his work as Board of Ed liaison takes away from the time he needed to dedicate to his Youth Services responsibilities.

Bartlett responded that the extra assignment certainly takes time, but also affords new opportunities for interdepartmental collaboration. He said that he serves as a bridge between Youth Services, the Board of Ed, Parks & Rec, and various community groups, and that his knowledge of Board of Ed budget alloca-

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get includes his entire annual salary of $105,000 in the general fund line item for his position, so as not to rely on leftover special fund money to pay for his position going forward.

The Board of Alders must approve a final version of the budget by the first week of June.

The next budget workshop, during which the Finance Committee will interview more department heads about their respective allocations in the mayor’s proposed budget, is on Tuesday, March 27 at 6 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.

It All Started With The Maple Chocolate Chip

by PAUL BASS

New Haven Independent

A moon rock landed on York Street Monday. With chocolate chips.

Cynthia Rae came up with the concoction decades ago. Now her daughter is selling her crater-shaped confections out of a new York Street storefront called “Moon Rocks Gourmet Cookies.”

“It all started with the maple chocolate chip,” Rae said, referring to her decades of coming up with original cookie recipes after her 1975 graduation from the New York City Culinary Community College Culinary Institute. Rae’s daughter, Marni RaeEsposito, opened a Hamden shop in 2015 to sell her mom’s cookies “when I was 50 and my mom was 75,” she pointed out Monday. Their new York Street shop, next to Blue State Coffee and Ashley’s Ice Cream, is the second outpost. Rae is serving as “culinary master.”

She got to hold the ceremonial scissors for Monday’s official ribboncutting at the store, surrounded by a U.S. senator and officials from Yale

(the landlord) and the city economic development office.

“If you eat these cookies,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal promised, “you’ll lose weight.” He praised mother and daughter for creating jobs (11 so far) and for showing how “women have arrived” in business.

Like Ashley’s, Moon Rocks is selling the idea of original flavors — 80 in this case — whipped up with premium ingredients purchased from other small businesses like Madison’s Savvy Tea Gourmet and Lebanon’s The Farmer’s Cow. “My secret is that I have been blessed with the ability to create great flavors with all natural ingredients,” said Rae. While maple chocolate chip remains the “original” in the batch, salted caramel (riding that sweet-and-salty wave) has emerged as the most popular flavor so far, Rae reported. Cannoli and lime coconut are up there as well.

She curried favor with one reporter by promising that she’s cooking up new vegan varieties, two of which were already on display offering a tantalizing post-Passover promise.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS APRIL 04, 2018 - APRIL 10, 2018

50 Years Later, MLK’s Labor Message Revived

by PAUL BASS

New Haven Independent

Fifty years ago today, on April 3, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his last public speech, which continues to haunt Americans today with its ringing tones of courage in the face of a possible assassination, which in fact occurred the next day.

King gave that speech in Memphis, Tenn. He was in Memphis to support striking unionized government sanitation.

That fact and the overall evolution of King’s message to include a fullthroated embrace of union rights and opposition to the Vietnam War has often been left out of the popular discussion of his legacy as American culture watered down his message and transformed him in death from a public enemy to a canonized nonthreatening saint.

That seems to have changed this week in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of his assassination. Numerous media outlets have focused on that Memphis strike and King’s expansion of the civil rights struggle into a “poor people’s campaign.”

Local union leaders Larry Dorman and Rick Melita have a take on why: The plight of government workers like those who struck in Memphis is again front and center in public life, as efforts to weaken public-sector unions have gained steam. Along with a backlash.

That backlash includes rallies against an expected upcoming Supreme Court decision overturning state laws requiring government workers to pay dues to unions that represent them to cover the costs of bargaining their contracts.

Dorman and Melita helped organized a recent protest at New Haven City Hall against the lawsuit filed in that case, in their capacity as union officials: Melita is state director for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents state and private-sector workers; Dorman is communications coordinator for AFSCME Council 4, which represents 35,000 people in Connecticut, including state and local government social workers, child abuse investigators, paraprofessionals, library workers, cops, and plow drivers. The Memphis sanitation workers on strike in 1968 belonged to AFSCME, as well.

PAUL BASS PHOTO Alder

and union member Kim Edwards addresses Feb, 17 City Hall rally against Janus plaintiffs.

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On a 50th anniversary MLK episode of “Dateline New Haven,” Dorman read aloud a 1961 quotation from King about “right to work” laws similar to the plaintiffs’ position in Janus: “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans like ‘right to work.’ ...Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer, and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us.

We demand this fraud be stopped.”

The backlash also includes walkouts by public-school teachers in right-to-work red states like Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.

“He’s almost been canonized. He’s a secular saint. Everybody’s appropriating a bit of his message to fit their own ideologies. You even hear Republicans saying, ‘He’d be a Republican if he were alive today,’ which I highly doubt.

“His original message was one of economic justice and economic freedom. We’re seeing struggles all over the country for poor people, for lowwage workers, against economic injustice. So his message is as resonant today as it was 50 years ago.”

In Connecticut Melita and Dorman argued that the campaign King led at the time of his death would translate into support for a number of fights at the state Capitol, including efforts to: • Raise the hourly minimum wage to $15.

• Pass a bill to force large low-wage employers like Walmart to cover state costs for their workers’ Medicaid and food stamp costs.

• Stop the recommendations of a state-appointed “fiscal stability”

commission comprised of corporate CEOs but no representatives of labor to eliminate state workers’ health care and pension collective bargaining rights and eliminate the estate tax.

• Raise the marginal tax rate on annual income above $500,000 or $1 million from 6.99 percent to 7.5 percent and close the federal “carried interest” loophole that has hedge fund billionaires paying lower rates on their incomes than teachers or custodians do.

“We need to ask our wealthy citizens and largest corporations to pay their fair share,” Dorman argued.

That last point puts labor on the other side of both Republicans and many Democrats at the state Capitol, who argue that the state cannot rely on new tax revenue to tackle its deep fiscal woes because, in their view, the wealthiest taxpayers would simply leave the state. Dorman responded that the number of billionaires has grown in Connecticut in recent years despite the publicized departure of a handful of financial industry executives.

Meanwhile, New Haven’s Harp administration, facing expected cutbacks or flat-lining of state aid, is seeking $3.6 million in labor concessions, even with an 11 percent tax increase, in its proposed budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

AFSCME’s Local 3144 represents the largest group of city workers, including supervisors. Dorman said he “can’t predict” yet how those concession talks will play out.

“We’re well aware that New Haven is facing financial challenges. New Haven’s financial urgencies are a reflection of Connecticut’s failure to tax wealthy people and corporations fairly,” Dorman said.

He said the local union’s relationship with the Harp administration has improved since the election of a new president, noting that the two sides have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract after years of impasse. But even with a “constructive” relationship, “there are always going to be differences,” he noted. “We’re nvever going to be completely on the same page as an employer.”

THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

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APRIL 10, 2018

Westville “New Urbanist” Vision Advances

nating a special zone just for Westville. I think that unintentionally implies that Westville may be more deserving of a certain urban form than other parts of the city.”

He said that the proposed regulations for the BA-2 zone should be rolled into the current BA and BA-1 zones, so that commercial stretches of State Street, Congress Avenue, Chapel West and Dixwell Avenue can similarly benefit from rules that promote greater density.

by THOMAS BREEN New Haven Independent

City planners voted unanimously to approve the creation of a new zoning district for Westville Village that they hope will serve as a model for how to use zoning regulations to encourage dense, diverse, mixed-use economic development throughout the city.

During the most recent regular monthly meeting of the commission on the second floor of City Hall, the commissioners gave the thumbs up to a proposed zoning ordinance text amendment seeking to establish a new Village Center Mixed Use (BA-2) zone. The proposal also updates the city’s zoning map to move Westville Village from a General Business (BA) zone to the new BA-2 zone.

The proposed zoning amendment will now be sent to the full Board of Alders for discussion and a vote before any changes to the zoning ordinance can be made.

For the past two years, the Westville Village Renaissance Association (WVRA) has worked with neighbors, local alders, City Plan staffers and students at the Yale Law School’s Community & Economic Development clinic to develop land planning recommendations designed to encourage pedestrian-friendly residential and commercial development.

WVRA Executive Director Lizzy Donius submitted five letters of support from neighbors who couldn’t make the meeting, and outlined some of the key provisions of the zoning amendment.

“The BA-2 zone removes the Floor Area Ratio limit and allows a maximum building height of 50 feet,” she told the commissioners at the meeting this past Wednesday night. “This will promote higher density construction while the height limit ensures that the neighborhood retains its village feel.”

The new regulations maintain BA-1’s building height minimum of 25 feet.

Yale law student Kendyl Clausen said that the BA-2 zone also reduces parking requirements for new buildings from one to 0.5 spaces per residential unit, and allows for on-site parking requirements to be located a maximum of 650 feet from the subject property.

BA-1 regulations currently require that on-site parking be located within 300 feet of the property.

Clausen said that changes to the use table will allow for small-scale, pedestrian-friendly commercial development like barber shops and dance schools to be allowed as of right. She

THOMAS BREEN PHOTO WVRA Executive Director Lizzy Donius pitches a new urbanist vision

for Westville to the City Plan Commission.

City Plan Commission Chair Ed Mattison (at right in photo) and new commission member Ernest Pagan.

said that convenience stores, pawn shops, pay day loans, and drive-in establishments will be prohibited.

“I am really eager to see all the wonderful things that could happen” because of this amendment, said City Plan Commission Chair Ed Mattison.

“The only thing that I would say from many years of doing this zoning stuff is that it doesn’t happen immediately, and it doesn’t happen without a lot of effort. You have to convince other people with money that this is something that can be made to work, and that’s a continuing effort. You can’t

quit.”

The lone dissenting voice at Wednesday night’s hearing came from Yale chemist Robert Hale. Hale said that he agrees with the “new urbanist” principles of the proposal. He called a zoning amendment specific to Westville the wrong way to go about achieving them.

“The zoning code is already long,” he said, “and I think we need to be mindful of the detrimental effects of adding on more language.”

“Moreover,” Hale continued, “there are unsettling implications of desig-

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He also said that the commissioners should consider including language in the zoning amendment, if it passes, that allows for Single-Room Occupancies (SROs) to be constructed within the zone as of right. A form of affordable housing that allows for individuals who cannot afford or do not want to live in their own home or apartment to live independent, SROs have become an increasingly hot topic in New Haven in the past few months after the sudden closing of the Hotel Duncan last year.

“Although Westville is a very special place,” Mattison said, “there are other places that could benefit from the same treatment. My feeling ultimately, though, was that this would be a pilot project. It would give us the opportunity to see whether zoning changes can indeed” successfully encourage dense, mixed-use neighborhoods.

He also said that SROs were a topic near and dear to his heart, and that, while not going so far as to include any specific language about them into the proposed zoning amendment, he hoped that alders and his fellow commissioners would consider how best to use zoning to promote affordable housing development going forward.

The Board of Alders voted earlier this month to create an Affordable Housing Task Force, which has not yet met and is still awaiting appointments from the mayor.

John P. Thomas Publisher / CEO

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Editor-in-Chief Liaison, Corporate Affairs Babz@penfieldcomm.com

Advertising/Sales Team Trenda Lucky Keith Jackson Delores Alleyne John Thomas, III

Editorial Team Staff Writers

Christian Lewis/Current Affairs Anthony Scott/Sports Arlene Davis-Rudd/Politics

Contributing Writers David Asbery Tanisha Asbery Jerry Craft/Cartoons Barbara Fair

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

_______________________

Contributors At-Large

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

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS APRIL 04, 2018 - APRIL 10, 2018

Electronic Billboard Bill Advances

by MARKESHIA RICKS

Hartford—New Haven State Rep. Pat Dillon said she received some criticism from colleagues when she introduced a bill that would reinforce cities’ authority to regulate the brightness of digital billboards. Weren’t there more important things for her to draft legislation about?

Then a new sign at Whalley Avenue and Emerson Street was powered on.

“Now, they understand and are telling me how horrible it is,” she said Monday after a meeting of the state General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.

Her bill made it out of committee with an overwhelming 37 to 2 vote.

The continually changing electronic sign, which is near the intersection of Whalley Avenue and Emerson Street, has especially upset parents of nearby Chapel Haven residents. They say they fear that the sign will not only distract drivers but make crossing the intersection difficult for adults with disabilities. City officials said they are powerless under state law to stop such signs from going up. Dillon then moved to change that law to give them the power. (Even if Dillon’s law passes, it would not retroactively affect the new sign on Whalley.)

One of the bill’s two no votes Monday came from State Rep. Doug Dubitsky, a Republican who represents the towns of Canterbury, Chaplin, Franklin, Hampton, Lebanon, Lisbon, Norwich, Scotland, and Sprague. The other came from Republican State Rep. Ben McGorty, who represents Shelton, Stratford, Trumbull.

Dubitsky said he couldn’t support the bill because he believes it was a matter for the legislature’s Planning and Development Committee, not Judiciary.

Dillon didn’t disagree. She said that the version of the bill that the committee was voting on was different from the initial bill that she introduced. The original bill would have given cities and towns like New Haven the power to penalize offenders. Now it ensures they have the power to regulate the signs, including their height, brightness and location.

Dubitsky still was unmoved. He asked that the bill be sent to the planning committee. However, that committee has already passed its deadline for hearing and considering bills this short session. The majority of the 23 joint committees have hit their deadlines for considering bills.

The Judiciary, Appropriations, and the Finance, Revenue, and Bonding committees will be among the last to

7 Entrepreneurs Get Seeded

by THOMAS BREEN

New Haven Independent

New Haven Independent

MARKESHIA RICKS PHOTO Dillon with Furlow and Valencia Goodridge at the Capitol.

wrap up their business on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, respectively.

“I can’t support this bill because I don’t believe we are the committee of cognizance,” Dubitsky said of the billboard bill Monday. “We know nothing of zoning.”

After the successful vote, Dillon said she had met with her committee colleagues on both sides of the aisle beforehand so that people would understand the bill’s goal. She noted that the zoning regulations of many towns and cities in the state had not contemplated such signs and likely need new language that reflects how technology has changed advertising. The outdoor advertising proponents oppose the legislation.

Dillon brought the bill when Westville alders and outraged neighbors asked her to draft legislation after the owner of the BD Food Market and Deli at 1057 Whalley Ave. had erected the double-sided, 230-square-foot sign seemingly overnight.

Westville Alder Richard Furlow said neighbors have been further outraged now that “the sign is on full blast at night.” He said he plans to introduce local legislation comparable to Dillon’s that would limit the hours of operation and brightness of the sign.

Seven local entrepreneurs received over $1,000 in seed money and a crash course on how to make their businesses work after completing the first round of an incubator program run by two New Haven small business advocates.

Collab, a new entrepreneur training and support program run by New Haveners Caroline Smith and Margaret Lee, finished working with its first cohort of aspiring local business people at the end of March.

The six-week incubator program provided seven ventures with $1,000 to $2,000 in funding, an individual mentor, case by case access to pro bono legal and marketing services, and weekly classes at the Grove about how to hone their pitches to potential investors.

Collab also provided the entrepreneurs with childcare, transportation, and interpretation and translation services to ensure that the program was as accessible as possible.

“What stuck in my head overall for the program,” Smith said, “is that I think we were able to prove that, one, there was demand for accessible entrepreneurship support, and two, brilliance can come from every single neighborhood and from multiple cities around Connecticut.”

Smith said that Collab received 75 applications for the first round of its entrepreneur incubator program. Of the seven ventures that made the cut, six are women-led, six are led by people of color, and five are led by women of color.

The entrepreneurs that completed the program include: • Cityseed Sanctuary Kitchen: a multicultural cuisine catering service that employs refugees and new immigrants.

• CodeSmash: a technology, emotional intelligence, and entrepreneurship program for young people in Greater New Haven.

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THOMAS BREEN PHOTO

Collab founders Margaret Lee and Caroline Smith.

• Comfort Theraputics & DBA Lotusleaf Therapeutics: the developers of a pregnancy sleep system attuned to the needs of pregnant women.

• My City Initiative: a merchandise brand based out of Bridgeport with a focus on developing local pride.

• New Haven Counts: a high school entrepreneurship program.

• Rock the Beat DJ Camp: a DJing program that integrates Common Core State Standards.

• SciKit: a subscription service that allows high school teachers to rent hands-on STEM education kits at affordable monthly rates.

Lee said that the six-week educational program taught entrepreneurs to clarify their own stories and reasons for starting their businesses, to develop their value propositions and to build prototypes. The program culminated with a Pitch Day, in which the entrepreneurs gathered at the Grove to pitch their ventures to neighbors and potential investors.

“We’re really interested in the relationship between individual empowerment and community change,” Lee said. She said Collab is interested in focusing as much on the individuals

behind the businesses as on the businesses themselves.

“A lot of their complaints are with not being seen,” she said about the entrepreneurs that Collab targets. She said Collab’s incubator program provides advice, safety and support in addition to mentorship and funding.

“We are about New Haven,” Smith said. “It’s what we know best.”

Applications for the second Collab incubator program are due on April 2.

Last week, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy recognized Collab with this month’s “Murphy’s Innovator of the Month” award.

“Connecticut residents are full of brilliant ideas,” read Murphy’s press release, “but often lack the funding and exposure they need to bring those ideas to life. That’s where Collab comes in – since just last year, they’ve helped diverse entrepreneurs in the food, STEM, maternity, and arts fields get their businesses off the ground. I’m sure many other New Haven-area entrepreneurs will benefit from Collab’s work in the years to come.”

Posted by New Haven Independent

THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

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APRIL 10, 2018

Layoff Plan Reveals Paperwork Problem available. That’s judged by how aggressively the district spread the word about vacancies in newspaper classifieds and online job forums, as well as the number of non-retired candidates who applied, interviewed and didn’t get the position.

All that information must be sent up to the Connecticut Teachers’ Retirement Board (CTRB) in keeping with federal and state laws that put limits on double-dipping.

(In non-shortage areas, retirees must take a pay cut, earning no more than 45 percent of the maximum full-time annual salary for a position, and their employer must send another form verifying their salary. Other teachers choose to have their pensions suspended while they’re back at work.)

A Freedom of Information Act request to the CTRB turned up only three New Haven educators who’d sent in their forms.

Reggie Mayo, who gets a $14,684 check from the pension fund each month, told the state he’d be working at 45 percent of his salary as interim superintendent. (Mayo returned from retirement to fill the post while the board sought a replacement for former

by CHRISTOPHER PEAK New Haven Independent

A decision to eliminate the jobs of 25 retired educators working part-time has revealed a longstanding problem at the Board of Education: a failure to follow proper procedures in filling positions with retirees.

The reason it matters: The process is supposed to ensure that positions go to new teachers, with the potential of creating a needed pipeline of talent, instead of to retirees who double-dip on pensions and paychecks.

The Independent discovered that problem after the Board of Education learned Monday about layoff plans.

Twenty-five retired educators who’ve returned to work in the schools parttime will receive a final notice that their careers are over the first in what might be a wave of pink slips, as the school district tries to close a multimillion dollar budget deficit.

Next week, 72 retired, part-time employees, who are still on the school payroll, will receive notifications that their work is being cut back. Twentyfive of them will be laid off entirely.

The other 52 will see their hours reduced by half, effective April 20.

Then, by June 13, when the school year ends, all non-essential part-time staff defined as any employees who do not contribute directly to a student’s classroom experience or meet a state requirement will be eliminated.

Over the summer, the superintendent’s transition team plans to analyze which non-essential part-time positions they can afford next school year.

Those reductions to the district’s 1,210 part-time positions will result in about $280,000 savings, a finance official told the Board of Education’s Finance & Operations Committee on Monday evening at 54 Meadow St., in an unplanned announcement that wasn’t previewed on the meeting agenda.

The reduction in part-time staffing is one of the first three major budget cuts that Superintendent Carol Birks’s team has proposed so far to start closing a $6.7 million gap in this year’s school spending. Along with minimizing work orders to contractors and asking the unions for concessions, she’s hoping to quickly make up $1.45 million.

Birks is being aided by Darrell V. Hill, Hartford’s former chief financial officer, hired part-time himself to stabilize the district’s finances during the transition. Hill has been tasked with closing this year’s deficit and preparing at least $5 million in cuts next

CHRISTOPHER PEAK PHOTO

Budget adviser Hill and Superintendent Birks detail layoffs.

Superintendent Garth Harries.) Two other high-school teachers said they’d be working in shortage ares where it’s hard to find new hires.

New Haven Public Schools didn’t send in any paperwork for the 72 parttime retirees, who all work under 20 hours a week.

Board President Darnell Goldson has made an issue of the retirees who’ve been brought back out of retirement, questioning how and why they got the job. Almost a year ago, at a school board meeting, he asked Mayo to produce a list of hires. No sheet ever surfaced.

“I would be disappointed if the proper forms were not filed with state authorities. It has been quite a challenge trying to determine the extent to which we have rehired these retirees and what exactly most are doing,” Goldson stated Tuesday. “I have every confidence that the Superintendent, the CFO, and the Human Resources Director will correct whatever issues arise during this transition process, and get to the Board the information we will need to make the tough decisions for the district.”

Rep. Arce Resigns After Month of Silence

by Christine Stuart CT. Junkie News

Board members Joe Rodriguez and Tamiko Jackson-McArthur.

year, after the mayor halved the Board of Education’s requested budget increase.

“I know this is always hard, especially to walk into this, but I commend you and Mr. Hill for being thorough and deep-diving,” Tamiko JacksonMcArthur, a board member, told Birks at Monday’s meeting. “You’ve got a plan to keep the quality of services while taking care of what you need to money-wise. We’re in a budget crisis, and you’re making courageous decisions.”

So far Birks and Hill have met with 27 principals to discuss further sitebased cuts. They plan to meet with the rest by mid-week.

“We’re also looking at central office, not just schools,” Birks added. “For the entire staff, we’re really analyzing costs.” But while those reductions are

still being drawn up, retirees will be the first to go.

Missing Paperwork But before the retirees officially leave from the school district, the district’s human resources office will likely ask them to fill out paperwork that the district should have already submitted to the state when they started.

Teachers who are already receiving a state pension are allowed to return to work at a public school only under select circumstances all of which must be documented by the employer.

Under the state’s reemployment rules, retired teachers can return to a strapped area 14 priority school districts (including New Haven) or 10 shortage subject areas for one year.

If they want to stay on for a second, the school district must document that no qualified, non-retired candidate is

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HARTFORD, CT — After weeks of speculation over whether he would resign, Rep. Angel Arce of Hartford finally submitted his resignation letter Thursday to the Secretary of the State.

The letter says he plans to resign April 9, “upon completion of my work on projects and programs in my district.”

His resignation comes a month after the Hartford Courant confronted him with inappropriately affectionate comments he made in messages to a then 16-year-old girl.

“I do not want my presences to be a distraction to the very important work that occurs at the Capitol,” Arce, who has been stripped of all his committee assignments, said in his resignation letter. “I also do not want my family, friends, and supporters to be burdened in any way.”

The resignation letter comes the same day legal counsel for the House finished drafting a resolution to appoint a select committee of review to begin expulsion proceedings.

“Representative Arce has done the right thing by resigning his seat from the legislature,” House Speaker Joe

CTNEWSJUNKIE FILE PHOTO Rep. Angel Arce

Aresimowicz, said. “The residents of Hartford’s 4th District deserve new representation at the Capitol and now that process can begin.”

A special election could be held 45 days after the April 9 resignation, but Gov. Dannel P. Malloy will set the date.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS APRIL 04, 2018 - APRIL 10, 2018

White-Collar Online Support Group Celebrates 100th Meeting

Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc. proudly announces that the 100th weekly meeting of its national online White Collar/Nonviolent Support Group will be held on Monday, April 16th at 7:00 pm EDT. It is the first confidential online support group in the United States for people prosecuted for white-collar and other nonviolent crimes.

The group is open to all individuals who have white collar or nonviolent criminal incarceration issues. Each Monday evening, the meeting takes place live online at 7:00 pm EDT (6pm CDT; 5pm MDT, 4pm PDT) Jeff Grant, JD, M Div, Co-founder of Progressive Prison Ministries, Greenwich, CT, and Co-host of the Criminal Justice Insider radio show broadcast from New Haven, CT, said, “We are extremely proud and grateful to reach this milestone for the group. When we started the group nearly two years ago, we had a dream that people living in shame, guilt, fear and isolation could form a supportive community embracing compassion, empathy and kindness for each other, dedicated to reaching out to offer support to others living in isolation, afraid to seek help.”

With members in 19 states and grow-

Jeff Grant, JD, M Div, Co-founder of Progressive Prison Ministries, Greenwich, CT, and Co-host of the Criminal Justice Insider radio show broadcast from New Haven, CT,

ing, the group is moderated by clergy as part of a program of pastoral counseling to best ensure confidentiality. Most participants have gone through their legal/ prison issues in chief and are out the other side.

Participation in the group is easy: Progressive Prison Ministries sends out weekly login instructions to members with a unique link for that week’s online meeting on GoToMeeting. Those interested in joining can get information and join the meeting by contacting

the hosts at https://prisonist.org/whitecollar-support-group. Each week, participants can choose to login via video on a computer, tablet or smart phone that is equipped with a camera, or audio only via phone. Anyone currently on supervised release, probation or parole, MUST first discuss his or her participation with their P.O. See prisonist.org for more details.

“The overwhelming majority of people prosecuted for white-collar crimes are not the rich and famous who are the

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subjects of sensationalized headlines,” Grant said. “In reality, they are people who live down the street, whose children go to school with yours, who got in over their heads to the point of selfdestruction.” Grant continued, “Many have been stigmatized by their own families, friends and communities, and the business community. Their children have been taunted, ridiculed and bullied at school. They are whispered about, pointed at and disdained. They have been shunned in their churches, synagogues, and civic organizations. They cannot afford to feed themselves, their families, or to heat their homes. They sit with the blinds and curtains drawn waiting for the day their homes will be sold out from under them.”

About Progressive Prison Ministries: Established in 2012 in Greenwich, Connecticut, Progressive Prison Ministries is the first ministry in the United States created to support individuals, families and organizations with white-collar and other nonviolent incarceration issues.

Grant said, “Most white-collar criminals can’t go back to their old lives and careers, so what choice do they really have? Why not embrace a completely new life, with new options, and new op-

portunities centered on spirituality and doing the right things? The most fortunate are those who figure out that their attempts to solve problems in isolation are not working, and that they no longer have to go it alone.” More information is available at Progressive Prison Ministries and on its social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.

About Progressive Prison Ministries’ Co-Founders: Co-Founders Jeff Grant and Lynn Springer were recently featured in a twelve-page article in Greenwich Magazine: “The Redemption of Jeff Grant,” March 2018 issue. Jeff is also the Executive Director of Family ReEntry, a Bridgeport, CT based criminal justice organization with offices and programs in eight Connecticut cities. After serving almost fourteen months in a Federal prison for a white-collar crime he committed when he was a lawyer, Jeff began his own reentry – earning a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

For additional information, please contact Jeff Grant, JD, M Div, (203) 4056249; info@prisonist.org.

Birks Lays Out Transition Plan THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

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APRIL 10, 2018

by CHRISTOPHER PEAK New Haven Independent

Carol Birks has a lot to do in her first four months as superintendent: visit every school, form a district-wide improvement plan, hire top administrators and close a multi-million dollar deficit.

She outlined that work Monday night at her first Board of Education meeting since taking the job. The two-and-ahalf-hour meeting of the usually fractious board, held at Celentano School on Prospect Hill, was uncharacteristically congenial.

During the next four months, Birks will take a “listening tour” throughout the city, review data and documents and hire new staff, according to a 135day transition plan she presented.

“This is an aggressive plan,” Birks said in her first report about what she’s been up to during the first week on the job.

“People usually take a lot longer to do this, but we have to do this quickly, because we have a lot of work to do.”

As the first step in the handover, Birks said, she will conduct a series of community meetings around New Haven, including a public town hall at Gateway Community College on April 3 at 5:30 p.m., where “internal champions” and “national experts” will discuss the district’s strengths and weaknesses.

Birks also plans to host a forum for school employees and a board retreat.

At the get-togethers, she said, she wants to hear how people would answer the question, “What would you do if you were the superintendent?”

After that, Birks said, she plans to review the district’s guiding documents, taking another look at school improve-

CHRISTOPHER PEAK PHOTO

Birks unveils plans Monday night.

Darrell V. Hill gives the latest budget figures.

Joey Rodriguez takes the oath.

ment plans, the curriculum, union contracts, employee evaluations and board policies. She also wants to pull tons of data, both quantitative and qualitative, to give a sense of how students are performing academically.

“What are the numbers telling us?” she asked. “But also, what are the perceptions? How do people feel about the organization, which is important.”

Finally, in the transition’s last phase, Birks will put all those findings into

practice. “We have a great deal of intellectual discourse going on, everyone’s passionate. But we need to accelerate and get some action going,” she said. In particular, that means hiring staff who can carry out the vision, like top budget and academic chiefs, she said.

“We need to run the organization,” Birks said.

“How are we developing people?

What pipelines do we have?” she asked. “We should have an organization where people are ready to go into the next seat, so we don’t have to while I’m glad you did conduct a national search to have people ready to assume key roles within the school district.”

Darnell Goldson, the board president, agreed with that priority, but he said that each new hire would be accompanied by reductions. (The board members haven’t done that so far with the promotion of an executive assistant and the hire of several part-time financial consultants.) “We’re committed to not growing the budget,” he said.

One of those new staffers might be Darrell V. Hill, Hartford’s chief financial officer up until his resignation last November. The school board for now has brought him on part-time. Paid with former finance chief Victor de la Paz’s unbudgeted salary, Hill is constructing a back-up plan.

Hill, a former city manager in Norfolk, Virginia, provided the board Monday night an update on the district’s current budget deficit. Starting at $13 million, school officials were able to cut the gap down by half. Hill will now try to zero it out during the last quarter.

Showing some provisional numbers, Hill said that the school district

could save $360,000 by cutting back on part-time workers, $510,000 by pausing some contracted services, and $580,000 by winning union concessions, like on how pay-outs occur for retirees.

Reached after the meeting, David Cicarella, the teacher’s union president, said any changes to their collective bargaining agreement should be a “last resort.” He said he’d need to “verify they have in fact done every possible cut in personnel and programs before they come to us asking for concessions.”

Even if those three big-ticket items get through, the district would still be $5.25 million in the red, Hill pointed out. Further “budget-balancing strategies” might include freezing all nonessential hiring and travel, limiting overtime, consolidating programs, reviewing end-of-year activities, and reducing site budgets at magnet schools.

Once this year’s numbers are under control, Hill plans to provide a multiyear financial forecast for where the district’s headed. Because costs increase each year while the state and city usually flat-line their funding, the budget has a “structural imbalance” that must be resolved each year.

“Our expenditures are outpacing our revenues,” he explained. “Each year, unless there’s new funding, we will have to reduce something, be it head count or programs or all of those.”

That document, which will look ahead for at least three years, will be essential for long-term planning, giving more time to deliberately plan cuts — rather than leaving it to the last Con’t on page 09

Lawmakers Tardy In Reviewing Their Own Sexual Harassment Policies

by Christine Stuart CT. Junkie News

HARTFORD, CT — Allegations of sexual harassment in a Congresswoman’s office grabbed headlines and may have helped remind Connecticut legislative leaders they promised to examine their own sexual harassment policies.

In January, Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, said legislative leaders planned to introduce legislation through the Joint Committee on Legislative Management and hold a public hearing on the sexual harassment policy for the state Capitol complex.

No such legislation was ever introduced and the Joint Committee on Legislative Management never met.

It will be the six session in a row that the committee has failed to meet and raise any issues.

Legislative leaders from both parties said they didn’t forget. They just haven’t had time to get together and discuss the current policy which was adopted in July 2014.

Senate Democratic leadership and House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, said Monday that they plan to hold some type of public hearing on April 16 to address the issue.

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Senate President Martin Looney and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff last year outside the governor’s office

CTNEWSJUNKIE FILE PHOTO

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“It’s in the works,” Klarides said.

“All four caucuses believe strongly that we should internally have our conversations and then come out and do public hearings and forums on it.”

However, the discussion won’t happen as part of the Legislative Management Committee. That committee’s deadline to forward legislation to the House and Senate was March 19.

It’s unclear what if anything can be done following the April 16 public hearing if any improvements to the current policies need to be made.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS APRIL 04, 2018 - APRIL 10, 2018

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quarter of the school year, like Hill’s doing now.

While Hill reviews this year’s agenda, Birks is also looking at résumés for the applicant who will eventually take over the role full-time.

She’s also reviewing vendors for a full audit of the district’s books, another role the board approved last month with the rest of De la Paz’s salary. The proposal to hire a strategic planner has temporarily been put on hold as a low priority, Birks said after the meeting.

“I just want to thank you, board members and community, for entrusting me with 22,000 gifted, talented, beautiful jewels in all of our care, as well as the 3,000 employees,” Birks said.

The presentation of the entry plan swayed at least one skeptic.

Ed Joyner, who voted against Birks’s hiring, said she’s starting off in the right way. “I needed this,” he said.

“I’m more optimistic about the leadership of the school district than I’ve been since I’ve been on the board. Dr. Birks, I think you’re going to be a great superintendent, if this is any indication.”

One last item on Birks’s to-do list was added by Joey Rodriguez, the newest Board of Education member, who was sworn in at the start of the meeting. Rodriguez, a longtime activist in Fair Haven, urged the administration to study the cost of translation services for Spanish speakers to access school board’s documents and meetings.

“I recognize we are in tough financial times,” Rodriguez said, “but if we are going to preach the importance of our parents participating, we should meet their needs.”

Cop Commission Considers Community Commenting

by ALLAN APPEL

New Haven Independent

The Board of Police Commissioners wants to hear what the community has to say about community policing. It’s just not sure quite how.

The commissioners the ultimate bosses of the NHPD agreed at their monthly meeting Tuesday night at 1 Union Ave. to explore adding a regular public comment agenda item.

They then debated questions such as: • How many minutes should be allotted in total on the otherwise busy agenda? How much time per speaker?

And what if issues a member of the public brings up are inappropriate for the commissioners to discuss like, for example, an ongoing Internal Affairs investigation?

• Should there be a written form, submitted before the meeting, signed by a possible discussant with his or her topic in order to pre-empt disappointment or excessive expectation? Or might this be construed as prior restraint?

The regular meetings are open to the public except when personnel issues, or drafts of documents, and other matters are discussed in either executive or special closed sessions.

Commission Chair Anthony Dawson has long spoken of the desire for his group’s monthly meetings to be as transparent as possible. At times he gives members of the public a chance to speak at his discretion.

On their regular monthly meeting Tuesday night at 1 Union Ave., Dawson led the commissioners in a discussion on whether and how to formalize

ALLAN APPEL PHOTO

Police Commissioners Greg Smith, Kevin Diaz, and Donald Walker.

public participation.

“In the spirit of transparency, it would be appropriate for public comment,” said Commissioner Evelise Ribeiro.

“But give the community the courtesy to see if [an issue] is appropriate in this forum, or elsewhere. It might be important to get a list of speakers beforehand. And also the amount of [speaking] time. And to let speakers know if we can take action at that time.”

Commissioner Stephen Garcia concurred but added in addition to guidelines or rules, maybe a written form could be developed with speaker and topic indicated. The idea, he said, was “not to limit but to keep it manageable.”

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“What do we do if we get 20 people?” asked Commissioner Kevin Diaz.

“Three to five minutes per person,” said Ribeiro.

Dawson and the commissioners reached a consensus to proceed to work on an approach.

However, whatever they come up with would first have to be okayed by the city’s lawyers. (Click here and here to read about positions the city attorney attorney assigned to the commission, Michael Wolak, has taken on public accountability, transparency and First Amendment questions.)

Local activist Melinda Tuhus — who is also a reporter — said the ultimate public comment forum’s usefulness

would “depend on how restrictive it ends up being.”

Local lawyer Patricia Kane, who has been attending meetings out of general interest in police issues, offered a caution. Though no constitutional lawyer, she averred that asking people to write name and topic in advance might be problematical and not permissible.

“Once they provide a public forum, then they cannot have prior restraint on what to speak about. That’s First Amendment [implications],” “They’ll have to refine it,” she added.

Also at Tuesday night’s meeting, Anthony Dawson was re-elected to chair the commission, with Greg Smith as vice chair.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

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APRIL 10, 2018

For Many Black Washingtonians, Gentrification Threatens Housing and Health Gentrification can have negative effects on the health outcomes of Black residents in Washington D.C. The CDC says that gentrification has many health implications that contribute to disparities among special populations.

By Barrington M. Salmon, BlackPress Newswire Contributor This is the first article in a series focused on the health effects associated with gentrification in Washington, D.C. This series is supported through a journalism fellowship with the Center for Health Journalism at the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California.

By many measures, the revitalization of neighborhoods across Washington, D.C. has been a windfall for the city. Fueled by higher tax revenues and property values, the city is awash in construction cranes, new libraries, restaurants and retail, and more than 70 miles of bike lanes—all welcomed signs of gentrification in the nation’s capital.

Lost in the city’s waves of new amenities and newer, more affluent inhabitants, are the long-time Washingtonians who have been pushed out or who are fighting to stay in the city.

Shirley Williams is one of those residents, who decided to fight. For Williams, that fight came with debilitating consequences.

Williams said that she developed diabetes a year after she and fellow residents were displaced, for eight years, from their 54unit garden-style apartment complex at 7th and Q Streets in the Shaw neighborhood.

She has since returned. Now, there’s a new apartment building at 7th and Q named Jefferson Marketplace; an upscale pet store, a Thai restaurant and a French wine bar are located on the street level. Like her old

neighborhood, Williams said that she’s not the same either.

Williams connects many of her health problems to the uncertainty of her housing situation, a rootlessness that has spanned nearly a decade.

“I’m on dialysis now; I can hardly get around,” said Williams, a mother of three grown children. “I wasn’t weak. I could walk down to those ONE DC meetings, but I can’t do that anymore. I’m pretty sure it affected my health; I lost my eyesight… can’t see anything anymore.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the displacement associated with gentrification has many health implications that contribute to disparities among special populations, including the poor, women, children, the elderly, and members of racial/ethnic minority groups.

“These special populations are at increased risk for the negative consequences of gentrification,” the CDC said. “Studies indicate that vulnerable populations typically have shorter life expectancy; higher cancer rates; more birth defects; greater infant mortality; and higher incidence of asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.”

Dominic Moulden, a veteran activist, housing advocate and resource organizer for Organizing Neighborhood Equity (ONE DC), knows Williams well and spoke of her challenges and those faced by thousands of other residents who have been displaced by rising housing costs or who have decided to fight for their homes in court and on the streets. ONE DC is a grassroots organiza-

tion that advocates on behalf of residents who are in danger of losing their homes.

Moulden said that he’s watched the city change in significant and seemingly allencompassing ways, usually to the disadvantage of native Washingtonians.

“I’ve been here for 32 years and I organized on 14th and U Street in the ‘90s. If we talked then, I could have told you what was going to happen in every quadrant,” he said. “Our focus is on displacement— the economics of land and housing impact health and wellness, as people are moved around this chessboard.”

Moulden said that Williams’ story of declining health during a prolonged housing battle, is a familiar one.

“I’ve seen people get sick and die in the years [after they were] forced out of their homes and that includes mental health issues,” Moulden said.

In the mid-90s, according to Census data, the district had a population of 528,000 and by 2015, the population had climbed to 681,170. Washington has seen a net population gain of more than 70,000 people since the 2010 Census and more than 100,000 residents since the 2000 Census. In the mid-1990s, the city boasted a 72 percent Black population and in 2016, according to the Census, it now stands at 48 percent.

To the chagrin of the city’s Black residents, “The Chocolate City,” has become a vanilla swirl, replete with dog parks, street cars, bike lanes and cobbled streets as physical evidence of the changing demographics.

Washington, D.C is one of the most ex-

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pensive cities to live in anywhere in the United States. Million-dollar homes are commonplace in areas of the city like Kalorama and Congress Heights and it’s fairly certain that buyers would have to ante up hundreds of thousands for a home, apartment or townhouse. In 2015, the median household income in Washington, D.C. was $75,628, a 5.55 percent growth from the previous year.

Statistics from the U.S. Census, a combination of studies conducted and compiled by researchers at Georgetown University and an investigative series centering on gentrification by the nonprofit, independent news organization Truthout, estimates that more than 50,000 D.C. residents have fled the city, as housing costs spiraled out of

reach. Washington has the second highest rents in the country and more than 50 percent of the city’s affordable housing stock has vanished since 2009.

Researchers, policymakers and physicians have only begun to scratch the surface of the effects of gentrification on residents who have lost their homes or those who refuse to leave their neighborhoods, who have chosen, instead, to do battle with wealthy landlords, real estate developers and newcomers. A number of reports and studies over the past year detail the scope and depth of the health effects caused by the dismantling of low- and middle-income neighborhoods and the displacement of resCon’t on next page

THE INNER-CITY NEWS APRIL 04, 2018 - APRIL 10, 2018

Con’t from page 10 idents, some of whom have lived in Washington for decades.

Maurice Jackson, a history professor at Georgetown University and the chairman of the DC Commission on African American Affairs and Christopher King, an assistant professor at the university’s School of Nursing and Health Studies (NHS), produced a report in 2016 that found that gentrification has had a major impact on the health and welfare of the city’s African American population.

Researchers reported that many of Washington’s long-time, Black residents, who remain in the city, have experienced increased stress and financial hardship, as the cost of living continues to rise.

King said that this form of “survival stress” can increase risks for or exacerbate chronic disease conditions.

“Native Washingtonians also recognize how their communities are changing, and that results in a loss of cultural identity,” King said, noting that some African Americans have been forced to leave the area even though their families have lived in the city for generations. “This dynamic can have a profound effect on mental health and the civic engagement [of city residents].”

Gentrification in Washington has produced tension and lingering resentment between Black and White residents—old and new.

Long-time residents have complained about newcomers who have lobbied to change the names of old neighborhoods, called the police to harass families sitting on their own stoops, and pushed city officials to ramp up parking enforcement, ticketing and towing churchgoers doubleparked on Sundays—a custom in D.C. that has spanned generations. The stress and trauma associated with the city’s very real demographic and cultural shifts, not only affect where people live, but also how Washingtonians are living.

One area of particular concern to researchers and those in the medical community is the relationship between toxic stress and displacement. Experts like Amani NuruJeter, a social epidemiologist at the University of California at Berkeley are studying the impact of stress on health disparities and outcomes. While Nuru-Jeter, Dr. Roberto Montenegro and other researchers are looking at the effects of racism and discrimination on the bodies of Blacks and Latinos, others are tying displacement to toxic stress, which many believe, is likely a precursor to a range of diseases that could afflict those who are being pushed out of the city or have already left.

Studies have connected a number of maladies to toxic stress, such as mental illness, substance abuse and behavioral problems, cancer, obesity, diabetes, auto-immune diseases, asthma, high blood pressure and heart disease, kidney disease, and gastrointestinal problems.

Detrice Belt, a 33-year-old native Washingtonian and resident of Barry Farm, a public housing complex in Southeast, Washington, D.C. has been engaged in a six-year battle to stay in the community where she has lived for 20 years. She lives with her nine-year-old daughter, two pit bull terriers and a turtle. Belt vowed that

Linda Brown of Brown V. Board Dies At 75

by Gemma Greene, BDO Staff Writer

In 1951, Linda Brown was just a little girl of nine years old when her parents wanted her to go to a school of her choice. But being told that she had to go to a segregated all Black school, her parents took to the courts which led to the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education that we now live under today.

That little girl has grown up, lived a full life and died Sunday, March 25th.

She was 75, according to the National Archives, though her date of birth has also been reported as 1942. An obituary is expected to be available Tuesday.

The Brown family long has emphasized the importance many other plaintiffs played in Brown v. Board, saying their family has been given an larger-than-life starring role.

Linda Brown was in grade school when she was propelled into the growing civil rights movement of the time.

Her father, Oliver Brown, became the lead plaintiff in the Brown v. Board of Education case after attempting to enroll the third-grader in 1951 in the allwhite Sumner Elementary School near the family’s home in Topeka.

He was refused and told his daughter had to attend the all-black Monroe School, about two miles from their home. The Topeka school district maintained 18 elementary schools for white children and four for black children.

“I had playmates different ethnic backgrounds that I played with,” explains Linda in a 1984 interview with ABC News. “I had Indian friends, Mexican-American friends and white friends. And when September came, they took their school books in hand and walked four blocks to an all white school. But it was very different for me being a Black child. I took a school bus two miles across town to an all black school. Being a child at that age, I didn’t understand why I could not just walk four blocks to go to same school with the friends I played with daily because of the color of my skin.”

Oliver Brown responded by joining a dozen other plaintiffs in the NAACP’s legal challenge of segregated schooling in Kansas. Cases from the District of Columbia and four states — South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and Kansas — were consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 1954 that “separate but equal” schools violated the equal pro-

tection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

The decision effectively overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court’s unanimous (9–0) decision stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

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Topeka mayor Michelle De La Isla, called Linda Brown a role model for empowerment who made the city… … “a landmark of freedom.”

As she grew older, Linda Brown became more vocal, fighting segregation in schools again in the 1970s and traveling the country to talk about her experience in Topeka.

Carolyn Campbell, a lifelong friend of Linda Brown and a former Kan-

sas Board of Education member said, “Linda was quiet. It was difficult for Linda to be pushed into the spotlight at a young age.”

“Linda was a spiritual Christian woman that loved not only the Lord, but she loved her family and took on the responsibility of what Brown v.

Board of Education meant to her. Her legacy will be that she shared all of her life with all of us,” Campbell said.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

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APRIL 10, 2018

Howard University Students Are on Day 5 of Protests After Reports of Financial Aid Scandal

By Micha Green, AFRO Washington, D.C. Editor, mgreen@afro.com

Hundreds of Howard University students are participating in a sit-in for the fifth straight day after last week’s report that approximately $1 million in financial aid funds had been misappropriated, causing a national scandal, Black Twitter uproar, and the Internet’s gift- memes of the alleged student embezzler, Tyrone Hankerson Jr. Led by the student group, HU Resist, the student activists have occupied the Mordecai Wyatt Johnson Administration Building and presented the administration with a list of demands.

The list of demands include, an end to “unsubstantiated tuition hikes”, actively fighting “rape culture” on campus, more housing accommodations for students looking to live in gentrifying D.C. neighborhoods, the “immediate resignation” of Wayne A.I. Frederick, the school’s president, and the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees.

The students are using Twitter as a mobilizing force and are regularly updating their page in order to ask for support, such as financial, food, and sleeping bags, and keep followers abreast of their work and progress.

After protesting through the weekend and Easter holiday, the group’s April 2 tweet, asked for help with food supplies.

“Thank you to everyone that has provided support and food. We are in need of hot food for lunch. We need vegan/ vegetarian options as well. Please dm [direct message] us if you’re willing to help.”

Even in their requests for support, the student group is even giving back to the community.

“Yesterday we continued our Food Pantry and donated some of our excess food to homeless members of the community. We managed to feed about 500 people,” the organization wrote.

According to The Root, Veritas1867, the person who originally posted the now deleted Medium article that anonymously leaked the financial aid scan-

dal and named Hankerson as one of the main culprits, said that the student protestors are “just getting started”.

“The alumni and the board want to make this about numbers but this is really about people, and about how they’ve been abused,” Veritas told The Root on Sunday.

Veritas, who prefers the pronoun “they” called Howard’s president “a bully who intimidates people. He’s done that to faculty he’s done that to students for years. And he has gotten away with it. The reason this thing has gone on for so long is that people were afraid of him, but this time we’re not afraid.”

Vertias said, “Chase,” the student Con’t on page 18

First Professional Baseball Team to Be Named After an African American Woman Chicago, IL — The National Urban Baseball League is pleased to announce that it will be the first professional baseball league to have a team named after an African American woman, Attorney Vickie Pasley. The team, which will be based in Chicago, will be called the Vickie Pasley All Stars. he league is scheduled to start this year’s season on May 25, 2018. They have already secured players, organized teams and have established a league schedule. They especially want to bring this league to southern cities that don’t have professional sports teams, and they want their teams to be a vehicle that will provide affordable family entertainment, as well as an meet-and-greet opportunities for family, friends and neighbors throughout the summer months.

Mike Mayden, coach and founder of The National Urban Baseball League, says he wants to rekindle the hopes and dreams of countless baseball players that felt like their dreams of playing professional baseball had pass them by.

He comments, “We want the youth, the teen, the adults and the seniors to come out and enjoy themselves at the ballpark with each day having a special theme (Jazz/Blues Night, Senior Citizen Day, Gospel Night, Open Mic Night, Family & Friends Old School Night, and Game Day @ The Park).”

The success and continuation of this

Coach and founder, Mike Mayden & Illinois Governor, Bruce Rauner

league is based on financial support that is being appealed to local businesses, as well as community and church leaders for their sponsorship (outfield banner arranging from $750 – $2,500). Others who are interested in becoming a sponsor should contact the league at 773-744-1040.

Donations are also being accepted online via the following link: www.nupbl.com/GoFundMe.html For more details about The National Urban Baseball League, visit www. nupbl.com

Chrissy Teigen, Model and Wife of Singer John Legend, Inks Lucrative Deal With Pampers

by Busineswomen.org

Chrissy Teigen, a model and celebrity, has just signed a lucrative deal with Procter & Gamble Co. Teigen is the first ambassador for their newest line of products, Pampers Pure diapers and wipes, which uses natural ingredients. Also a consultant, Teigen will collaborate with P&G on all the aspects of the brand such as research & development, design, and marketing.

On a YouTube advertisement just recently released by P&G, the famous Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and Lip Sync Battle co-host appeared with her daughter Luna.

Teigen, who has over 16 million followers on Instagram and 10 million followers on Twitter to date, has also been posting video clips of herself expressing her appreciation of

Pampers Pure diapers quality.

In the videos, Teigen is seen interacting with her daughter Luna who is turning 2 this April 14. Teigen and her singer-songwriter husband John Legend are also expecting a son soon.

“When (P&G) approached me to collaborate on the new Pampers Pure Collection, I jumped at the chance to work with a brand that I love,” Teigen said. “I wore Pampers... John wore Pampers... We are a Pampers family!”

The Pampers Pure disposable diapers are made of cotton and other carefully-selected materials. It has no other chemical ingredients such as chlorine bleaching, fragrance, lotion, preservatives called parabens and natural-rubber latex. The Pampers Aqua Pure, moreover, has premium cotton and 99% pure water.

“Chrissy is a great fit for Pampers and represents how many moms feel on their parenting journey in her own fun, down-to-earth way,” said E. Yuri Hermida, P&G’s vice president for Baby Care in North America. “We’ve all seen the photos of Luna in a Pampers diaper, and knowing they were a Pampers family made Chrissy an obvious choice for us.”

The new Pampers Pure products were launched last month and are now available online and at major stores nationwide. For the next two years, Teigen will be sharing her mom expertise and fashion knowhow with P&G for the new brand.

Previously, Teigen also served as a spokesperson for other P&G brands such as Olay skin care and Venus razor for women.

12

RP inner city news full page.qxp_Layout 1 3/19/18 2:49 PM Page 1 THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

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APRIL 10, 2018

THE RIDGEFIELD PLAYHOUSE LaKisha Jones: To Whitney, With Love

American idol finalist pays tribute to Diana Ross, Donna Summer, Tina Turner and Whitney Houston!

April 7

Fabulously Funny Females of Comedy

ft. Cory Kahaney, Karen Bergreen & Erin Jackson

April 20

Upright Citizens Brigade

Improv comedy from the troupe that launched Amy Poehler & more! Ft. SNL’s Sasheer Zamata

May 4

Ruben Studdard

Broadway Sings Stevie Wonder

Broadway’s hottest talents sing Stevie Wonder’s hits!

Ft. Kennedy Caughell (Beautiful), Corey Mach Kinky Boots), Austin Owen (Jersey Boys) & more!

May 14

Rhiannon Giddens

The Freedom Highway Tour

Co-founder of the Grammy-award winning bluegrass band, Carolina Chocolate Drops!

An Evening of Luther Vandross, Always & Forever

June 20

203.438.5795 • RIDGEFIELDPLAYHOUSE.ORG 13

May 3

THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

-

APRIL 10, 2018

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

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

THE TOM FICKLIN SHOW Mondays 10 a.m.

MAYOR MONDAY!

MERCY QUAYE

Mondays 11 a.m.

Mondays 1 p.m.

“THE SHOW”

“DJ REL”

MICHELLE TURNER Tuesdays 9 a.m.

“WERK IT OUT”

ELVERT EDEN Tuesdays at 2 p.m.

MORNINGS WITH MUBARAKAH

“JAZZ HAVEN”

Wednesdays 9 a.m.

Wednesdays 2 p.m.

STANLEY WELCH

“TALK-SIP”

LOVEBABZ LOVETALK

Thursdays 1 p.m.

Mondays-Fridays 9 a.m.

ALISA BOWENSMERCADO

New Haven Ind

FRIDAY PUNDITS Fridays 11 a.m.

14

THE INNER-CITY NEWS APRIL 04, 2018 - APRIL 10, 2018

African American Millennials in the Workplace are More Inclined to Use the Free Agent Option to Advance Their Career

By Lee E. Meadows, Ph.D, Human Resource Consultant

Nationwide — The concept of freedom is not lost on anyone who spends time thinking about their range of options, but for African American millennials in the workplace, the exercise of freedom is elevated and broadened by a mindset of career-movementthrough-free agency-as-opposed-tohierarchy. As an organizational consultant/leadership coach, I am privy to many conversations, observations and surface research on the patterns of African American millennials as they move through organizational cubicles and corridors in search of the unrestricted path to their career aspirations.

In doing so, what I have observed is an unwillingness to endure the tricks and taunts of a bygone era of ‘wait and see’ if your career has a chance here.

While their predecessors were encouraged to take biases head on, bounce against the barriers with tenacity and remain loyal for a lifetime, I suspect it was the physical and mental strain of stress and duress, as seen on their faces, that moves this collection of millennials to consider other, less, toll taking options.

Preceding generations, generally, managed to build their careers by climbing the corporate ladder, one rung at a time, across a stretch of time in which the 30 to 40-year marathon ended with

a gold watch and a retirement package that was strong enough to include not returning to work. It goes without saying that the organizational landscape of that era also masked a minefield that could derail a career. Once flung into this purgatory carb barrel, the only option left was to survive. Legends were created and lives were lost. To merely survive and live to tell the story was considered a badge of honor and that was enough. My conversations with some of the 11.5 million African American millennials who are working their way through the new social media hierarchical landscape reveal a much different way of thinking about the marathon.

For them, it is not enough to say, 40 years later, that ‘I survived!’ Their willingness to seek greener pastures is a testament to how the race has changed.

While I have, humorously, coined the term ‘Free Agentology’ and define it as, ‘the act of packaging and marketing a set of skills to an employer who is willing to pay above market value in order to gain a competitive edge to the extent that a contract binds the relationship together’, these millennials don’t view themselves as ‘employees’, but as skilled agents who achieve their status by being twice as skilled, but not staying twice as long. Wait-andsee is viewed as ‘Wait-and die’ (direct quote from an African American millennial who switched jobs prior to this

article), and ‘loyalty is present at the place where I am present.’

A Free Agent markets their skills to the highest bidder, knowing that, thanks to the growing span of entrepreneurial activities, the highest bidder could just be themselves! For African American millennials, the range of career/workplace options is augmented by the Talent Wars, the lack of strong Employee Engagement programs, bias built into the organizational culture, globalization, microaggressive scrutiny and leadership gaps the prevent advancement. I could argue that the process of relying on the

benevolent ‘cradle-to-grave’ trust-meto-take-care-of-you organizational/ social contract ended when this group felt the impact of the Enron-like bankruptcies, the housing market plunge, musical retail chairs and student debt that could see them using their Social Security to pay the remaining balance of their student loans. Free Agents can consider a full range of employment options because only having one option is too restrictive and provides less control over the outcome.

Any employer paying attention to social trends has to know that much of their Diversity and Inclusion ini-

tiatives, however well intended, well stall at recruitment if they don’t make an effort to look at and change many of the internal cultural practices that restrict the career advancement of African American millennials and, by definition, broaden their Free Agent options to be ‘anyplace but here!’

Lee E. Meadows, Ph.D is a Human Resource Consultant and the author of the leadership novel, “Take the Lull By the Horns! Closing the Leadership Gap,” available on Amazon. He can be contacted at LeMeadows@comcast. net

Black Consumers, Businesses Must Lead American Energy Policy Talks, Experts Say

By Freddie Allen, Editor-In-Chief, NNPA Newswire Energy experts and groups like the American Association of Blacks in Energy and the American Petroleum Institute are encouraging the Black community to get involved in the energy industry.

—Due to shifting demographics in the U.S., it’s increasingly important for Blacks to take the lead in shaping America’s energy policies.

—The American Association of Blacks in Energy is a Black think tank focused on energy policies, emerging technologies, and environmental issues.

—President Donald Trump and the Senate Democrats released infrastructure plans that include more than $1 trillion in spending.

As the debate continues over the future of energy in the U.S. and around the world, industry insiders say that now is the time for African American consumers and businesses to step

up and help shape America’s energy policy.

The country’s demographics are changing. According to the Census Bureau, the U.S. population, as a whole, is expected to become majority-minority in 2044.

“The minority population is projected to rise to 56 percent of the total in 2060, compared with 38 percent in 2014,” the Census Bureau reported.

Forward-thinking industry leaders

have taken notice and are working to recruit and train an increasingly diverse labor force.

According to the American Petroleum Institute’s “State of American Energy 2018” report, as the baby boomers retire and the oil and natural gas industry expands, job opportunities in the industry will continue to grow over the next couple of decades, requiring more workers. Researchers project that nearly 1.9 million new job

15

opportunities will be available in the industry by 2035.

“According to an IHS study, women and minorities will account for hundreds of thousands of those openings—more than 700,000 African Americans and Hispanics and 290,000 women through 2035,” the report said.

During an interview with the NNPA Newswire, Jack Gerard, the president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, said that the oil and natural gas industry is working to broaden its base in the Black community and increase awareness about the high-paying job opportunities in the industry.

Tracey Woods, the vice president of operations at the American Association of Blacks in Energy (AABE), a Black think tank focused on energy policies, regulations, emerging technologies, and environmental issues, said that it’s important for potential employees and entrepreneurs, that are interested in getting into the oil and natural gas industry, to understand policy.

AABE’s founder, Clarke Watson, un-

derstood how critical it was for Blacks to not only understand energy policy, but to also be involved in the planning and implementation of America’s policies.

According to Watson’s biography on AABE’s website, “Watson worked in the energy industry for decades, eventually starting his own consulting firm.

He founded the American Association of Blacks in Energy in 1977 after hearing of a meeting of energy policymakers that had been called by then President Jimmy Carter. No minorities were on the original guest list.”

The group’s mission continues today, because energy policies set today can have lasting socioeconomic effects for generations.

And when it comes to policies about access to STEM education and investment capital, those economic effects could mean higher wages in the oil and natural gas industry for Black workers and increased business opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Con’t on page 18

The Luxury of Black Fashion: THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

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APRIL 10, 2018

by Abdris Elba, BlackDoctor.org

“People will look foolish in the name of “fashion”. – Oladipo Efunkoya Jr., Curator at The Blvd Experience I’ve always been a firm believer that corporate and culture don’t mix. On one end you have corporate – a concoction of unapologetically artificial elitists, capitalists, appropriators, coopts and opportunists who thrive off disingenuous ulterior motives. On the other end, you have the culture – this organic and authentic being that blossoms in light of a lifestyle of the havenots, largely due to the perpetrations of corporate. The two obviously polarizing groups have very little in common yet sustain a symbiotic relationship; both need each another to propel to higher altitudes.

Wiz Khalifa echoed my sentiments in the song, “Mia Wallace,” from his album, Taylor Allderdice: “When we start out we don’t have sh*t. We really make do with what we have, and in turn, that turns into like million-dollar corporations. But what labels don’t have is that mind frame and that spark that makes that million dollars, you know what I’m saying? They know how to manifest that and make more millions off of that, but they don’t have that spark.“ Eventually the needs of corporate morph into the exploitation of culture for capital gains. Corporate’s latest dubious plot on culture? The recent “resurgence and acceptance” of streetwear by the world of high-end, luxury fashion.

A fashion blogger sent me a link to the latest Supreme x Louis Vuitton collaboration. My initial reaction was disgust, thinking to myself, “Here we go again. How many times have we seen this movie?” It was just another example of corporate pimping culture. The very same styles that were deemed “ghetto” 10-20 years ago are now the subjects of allure and highclass trends. Looks, concepts and creations of the disenfranchised are suddenly heralded by the very uppity snobs who were too good to dress in such “rags.”

Remember the controversy around the Dapper Dan puffy coat? The Harlem tailor (and the rest of the culture) looked up one day and saw a very close resemblance to his original 1989 design on the Italian runaway of a Gucci fashion show. Moncler decided to join the party by charging an arm and leg for almost the exact same design.

Mission Co-opt the Culture now results in Balenciaga charging anywhere from $800 – $1000 for some of the most basic hoodies you’ve seen in your life.

The fact that luxury brands can get away with this is even more appalling.

We’ve seen this with Burberry, Balenciaga and Vetements to name a few.

Instead of paying homage to the authenticity and lifestyles at the core of these streetwear brands, luxury brands co-opt the movements as their own.

High-end fashion solely salivates over streetwear when there’s an opportunity to cash out.

“When the private equity firm The Carlyle Group bought a 50 percent stake in Supreme earlier this month, valuing the company at a whopping $1 billion, it was the icing on a cake that

was already in the oven for a while.”

By no means am I naïve to the fact that culture will be capitalized upon, but it must benefit us more than them.

See, one of luxury brands’ most glaring flaws is their attempt to buy their cool. This notion that you can simply take a monetary route to “street cred” because you have an influx of cash to conduct trial and error experiments is quite insulting. Rather than ingratiating themselves within the culture – offering them a chance to truly grow an understanding of the history and disposition of its constituents – they buy their affiliations and collaborations with streetwear, only to jump ship after they’ve bastardized the brand.

Now these formerly sought after brands are “out of style” or “too urban,” forcing parasitic high-end

16

brands to find the next streetwear brand to leach off of. Ultimately, this all plays into the continuous narrative of the ambivalent approach to being a minority in America.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Kemji, co-founder of the digital/creative agency, KAMIZV, on this particular subject. I simply asked him one question, “What’s your unfiltered perspective on the recent mergers of streetwear and luxury brands?”

He offered a very healthy and informative response: “There’s no formula to the culture.

You can’t calculate it. That’s what’s so beautiful about it. These high-end brands don’t actually care about these streetwear brands or the culture itself.

If they did, they would be a part of the culture. But they don’t want to.

Before you know it you’re buying a warehouse full of Girbaud jeans, look up, and now the culture is wearing skinny jeans. They can’t calculate culture nor do they have a finger on the pulse of it. I don’t wish badly on anyone, but I’m all about the demise of the colonizer.

Let’s delve deeper. Let’s look at Nike. my humble opinion. Everyone is so enamored by the finale. We forget Nike wasn’t always the juggernaut it is now. At the beginning of all this, Nike was really going after Asic post Phil Knight’s defining moment of wanting an affordable running shoe.

They [Nike] accidentally got into the culture via Jordan [Michael] and rode the wave.

Jordan was the quintessential shooting guard. He wasn’t the most physically imposing guard we’ve seen.

What set him apart was his killer instinct. Jordan came right at the point where marketing was coming to life. It was the good times for TV too. Look at LeBron. He became the athlete of the social media era when it was coming to life.

Nike forgot culturally how they got to where they are – and it’s this very flaw that soured the relationship with Kanye. You work with creatives, but don’t give them creative control. The one group of people you don’t want to piss off is the creative directors. They have the least quantifiable work. Everyone in marketing knows that. Don’t affect the feelings and emotions that in turn affect their work. Why would you want to disrupt that?

Adidas is a German company and from everything, we know about Germans they’re a pragmatic bunch. They

For the Culture?

saw how the Nike Empire was built by inculcating themselves into the culture in the 80s and 90s and Adidas is now looking to do the same. It’s going to be very interesting in the next couple of years to see how it all plays out. Look how Adidas has played somewhat the role of the Medici Family and given Yeezus not only the platform but also the resources of the brand and capital support for his apparel. Nike wouldn’t even give him a release date for his shoes.

Nike truly cares about fitness wear.

We think buying $200 pair of shoes one or twice a month brings in revenue, and you can sell that because that 5-10% niche of your customers which are “the cools.” Here’s the dichotomy though: if you lose that niche and we all jump to Adidas, what do you think will happen?

It’s actually the people buying athletic apparel that is bringing in the money, and it’s this very group you’ll lose. Essentially, the smaller percentage (“the cools”) represents the larger piece of the pie, if that makes sense.

Your mom, for example, wants to buy some fairly affordable running shoes and apparel. She knows Nike to be hip and cool. What happens when she asks for your opinion? You’ll say those are cool, but check out Adidas instead.

If you piss off the culture, you lose your evangelists. They’ll learn eventually. We’ve seen it time and time again. They come in, take what they want from the culture and think it’ll last forever.

All these brands are malevolent.

They couldn’t buy Kanye and he called them on their bullsh*t. Now they’re trying to buy his protégés. Just look at Virgil.

Just to add insult to injury, now you walk into Aldo and see blatant knockoff Yeezy’s. The base models of the shoes are clearly bitten off Yeezy’s.

You see what’s happening with Drake and reports of him leaving Nike for Adidas. The irony is that both Drake and Kanye were in opposite positions, but came to the same conclusions – I’m not f*cking with Y’all [Nike] because I’m not getting equity (Kanye) and I’ll f*ck with Y’all, but I’m not loyal because I don’t have equity in this brand anyway (Drake).”

Abdris Elba, B.S. in Advertising – University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, Ph.D. in Trolling is a SQL/BI developer, aspiring voiceover actor and living proof that the chicken indeed comes before the egg.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS APRIL 04, 2018 - APRIL 10, 2018

Creative Arts Workshop welcomes

An African Lens An Exhibition Exploring Africa and African Identity Through the Eyes of African Artists April 6 - 23

Golden by Gelila Mesfin

PRESENTED BY YALE’S CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN ARTS & CULTURE FESTIVAL

80 Audubon Street, New Haven 203.562.4927 CreativeArtsWorkshop.org

17

THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

-

APRIL 10, 2018

Lena Waithe The “Ready Player One”

Interview with Kam Williams Lena's Towering Born on May 17, 1984, Lena Diane Waithe was raised along with her sister on the South Side of Chicago by a single-mom.

She showed an interest in writing at an early age, and was encouraged to pursue her passion by both her mother and grandmother.

After earning a degree in Cinema and Television Arts from Columbia College Chicago, she embarked on a showbiz career not only as a scriptwriter but as an actress and producer as well. She is probably best known for playing Denise on the Netflix series Master of None, although she made history last fall by becoming the first African-American female to win an Emmy for comedy writing.

Openly gay, Lena was named Out Magazine’s Artist of the Year for 2017. She is also the creator of The Chi, a super-realistic Showtime series set on the South Side of Chicago.

Here, she talks about her role as Aech in Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ernest Cline’s young adult novel of the same name. In the dizzying sci-fi thriller, she plays the protagonist’s best friend and member of a team of gamers participating in a virtual reality Easter egg hunt with a grand prize of half a trillion dollars.

Kam Williams: Hey Lena, I’m honored to have this opportunity to speak with you.

Lena Waithe: Oh, I’m honored to speak with you, too, Kam. How are you?

KW: Great! How about you?

LW: I’m good, thanks.

KW: Actress, producer, screenwriter.

Which hat is your favorite to wear?

LW: I’m a writer first. The acting thing came along because I’ve been blessed to cross paths with some phenomenal casting directors like Allison Jones, Ellen Lewis [Ready Player One], and Leslee Feldman who runs casting for Amblin Entertainment. These amazing women and God are the reasons why I’m an actor. I believe God orders my steps. He saw this for me, because I definitely didn’t see it for myself.

I’ve always been a bit of a ham and a bit of a performer for my friends in my circles, but I never, ever would have pursued it on my own. So, I’m just very grateful to these ladies for seeing something in me. But at the end of the day, I was born a television writer, and I’ll die a television writer.

That’s what I’m most comfortable doing.

KW: Well, congratulations on making history in winning the Emmy for Master of None.

LW: Thank you so much, Kam. KW: What interested you in Ready Player One? LW: I got a call from my agency at the time, saying, “Yo, we got a call about the Steven Spielberg film. They want you to come in and read for it.” I said, “Sure. Why not?” So, I went in and read, got a call back to read again, and then I call saying that Steven had chosen me to be Aech in the

Patina!

that you don’t want to escape so much that you lose the appreciation of what’s right around you.

KW: Have you managed to maintain a connection to Chicago?

LW: I have a show about Chicago [The Chi], so obviously I’m there very often for filming. And my family’s still there, too. So, I feel very connected to Chicago. I have a great love for the city, and I strive to portray it in a very honest and human light.

Lena's Towering Patina!

movie. That was a moment you can’t even imagine. Obviously, the biggest draw for me was the director, since I didn’t know the book and they hadn’t given me the script to read, because everything was very top secret. All I had were some sides. Spielberg is a famous brand, like Coca-Cola. I felt that I could trust him no matter what the project was. And I’m glad I did, because I love the movie and it’s already getting a great response. It’s a classic Spielberg adventure that you’ll never forget. It’s phenomenal!

KW: Did you read the novel before you began shooting?

LW: Yes. As soon as I was cast, I got the script and the book. I read the script, which I loved, first. Then I read the novel which I also thought was just phenomenal.

KW: I haven’t read the book. How faithful is the film to it?

LW: I think people will have to go to the theater to see, because we have a lotta fans of the book. Steven made a great point today. He said there are about a dozen different movies you could make from the book, because there’s so much going on. I’m not sure which of those twelve he would say he chose, but he did what he does best by making a really fantastic film. And I think Ernest Cline’s best seller served as a wonderful blueprint.

KW: How did you prepare to play Aech?

LW: Aech’s avatar is this 6’ tall, half-man, half-robot, very swaggy guy. My influences were Mr. T and Ice Cube. I kept them in mind while I was playing the character, because it’s an alter-ego, who you wish you were. And who’s cooler than Mr. T and Ice Cube? Nobody!

KW: Did you play video games as a child?

LW: Definitely! I remember my dad buying my sister and me the original Nintendo. I’ll never forget that day he brought it to the house. My mom was not happy about it, because nothing got done for the next few months. We were Nineties kids, so it was a big deal to us. We had a Gameboy and played Tetris all the time, before graduating to Sega Genesis. And we borrowed a friend’s Nintendo 64. I went through those different stages of gaming, since it was so easy to get sucked into it. But when I got older, it got a little too complicated for me, because I had homework to do. But I’ve always had an appreciation of the games.

They’re a lotta fun, so I get why people do it.

KW: What message do you think people will take away from Ready Player One? LW: That reality is more fun than fantasy.

The movie is one, big, great escape. But I think Steven’s saying escapism is fine, but

18

KW: Harriet Pakula-Teweles asks: With so many classic films being redone, is there a remake you’d like to star in?

LW: Honestly, I’m not the biggest fan of remakes. If I could’ve been in a remake, I’d a chosen Ocean’s 11. I love that movie.

And I’m still mad I’m not in the new one, Ocean’s 8. But Rihanna’s holding it down for all the sisters.

KW: When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

LW: Wow! That’s a good question. I see a proud, gay, black woman.

KW: Ling-Ju Yen asks: What is your earliest childhood memory?

LW: Moving in with my grandmother on the South Side of Chicago when I was 2.

Con’t on page 22 Con’t from page 12

Howard University

informant who provided what they called proof of the financial aid scandal, is experiencing intimidation from Howard’s community after his name was leaked through various social media sources.

“They want to humiliate him and silence him,” says Veritas. “And sadly, it’s working. He’s in a whole other state, he doesn’t want to talk to press.

He’s not at ease,” they said.

Veritas said they and HU Resist are now standing in solidarity with Chase and other struggling students. ““It’s time for new leadership. Alumni and the administration think this is about financial aid but the truth is that [Frederick] has created a culture at the university where people don’t hold people accountable,” Veritas said.

The students met with the administration on Sunday and at least one of their demands, extending the housing application deadline to May 1, was met.

“We have no plans to leave until our demands are met,” they said.

Howard University students hold a press conference about the protest in the Administration building. (Photo by Edgar Brookins for the AFRO)

Con’t from page 15

Black Consumers

Woods said that Black energy experts and industry leaders have to talk to people about President Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan and what it means for the Black community.

Trump’s infrastructure plan commits “$200 billion in federal funding over 10 years to stimulate state and local spending and private investment,” NPR reported. “Half of the funding, $100 billion, would be used as incentives to entice cities, counties and states to raise at least 80 percent of the infrastructure costs themselves.”

The article continued: “That’s a departure from the way many projects are funded now. Funding for federalaid highways, including interstates, is usually allocated in an 80-20 federalstate split. So, President Trump’s plan would flip that funding burden.”

Shortly before the president’s infrastructure plan went public, the Senate Democrats released a “Jobs and Infrastructure Plan” that promised a “historic $1 trillion federal investment to modernize our crumbling infrastructure and create more than 15 million good-paying jobs that American families desperately need.”

The Senate Democrats’ plan would also hit President Trump’s tax law signed late last year.

The Senate Democrats’ plan would raise the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, which Republicans cut from 35 percent to 21 percent, according to CNN Money. The Democrats’ proposal also “undoes parts of the new tax law in order to fund increased infrastructure spending.”

Woods said that when the Black Press informs the community, Black voters can hold legislators and policymakers accountable.

Woods said that with federal, state, and local funding, more than one trillion dollars will be spent on fixing bridges, highways and roads, building pipelines and upgrading the country’s energy grid. The Democrats’ plan also promised cheaper fuel and greater access to high-speed Internet in rural areas.

“That’s about one trillion dollars that you’re going to pay for,” said Woods, referring to taxpayers. “We need to ensure that we’re participating.”

Woods continued: “Our communities are, very often, not at the table and not represented and miss the moment to impact the legislation. So, when you look at the Black Press and the opportunity to get that message out about the importance of policymaking in the energy industry—that’s huge.”

THE INNER-CITY NEWS APRIL 04, 2018 - APRIL 10, 2018

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INNER-CITY NEWS July 2016 -- August THE INNER-CITY NEWS APRIL 04,27, 2018 APRIL 10, 02, 2018 2016

IT SUPPORT TECHNICIAN:

Branford CT based business looking for a fulltime IT person who is creative, dependable, needs minimal supervision to complete tasks and has the ability to interface with a wide variety of personalities. Applicant must have the ability to manage multiple local virtual servers, 40+ work stations and assorted peripherals.

In addition, this person would need the necessary coding skills to help design and develop a web-based front end for several MSHOUSING SQL serverPREdatabase projects and assist current staff VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE with SEO and website maintenance. Applicant must be proficient with VMware, MS SQL, Visual Studio equal andof is Columbus willing to learn new software packages need. Competitive HOME INC,oron behalf House and the New HavenasHousing Authority, salary and benefits. Email resume to gforshee@atlasoutdoor.com AA/EOE

NOTICE

is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments at this development located at 108 Frank Street, New Haven. Maximum income limitations apply. Pre-applications willTHE be available fromNEW 9AMYORKTO 5PMCOUNTY beginningOF Monday Ju;y SUPREME COURT OF STATE OF NASSAU 25, 2016 and ending when sufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have Index 2009203371 10, will 2009 beenNo: received at the Date officesSummons of HOMEFiled INC.December Applications bePlaintiff mailied designates upon reNassau as the PlaceINC of at trial.-The Basis ofduring venuethose is Plaintiff/Defendant Resides questCounty by calling HOME 203-562-4663 hours. Completed preat:436 Bedell Terrace West Hempstead, NY 11552.-SUMMONS WITH NOTICE Plainapplications must be returned to HOME INC’s offices at 171 Orange Street, Third tiff re- Sides at 436 Bedell Terrace West Hempstead, NY 11552,Timothy M Celenza Floor, New Haven, CT 06510.

Plaintiff against Yulia Zorina, Defendant - ACTION FOR DIVORCE To the above named Defendant: YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED to Serve a notice of appearance on the Plaintiff within twenty (20) days after the service of this summons, exclusive of the day of service (or within thirty(30) days after the service is complete if this summons, is not personally delivered to you with in the State of New York; and in the case of your VALENTINA VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES failure to appear,MACRI judgment will be taken against you by default for theDISPONIBLES relief demanded in the notice set forth below. Dated: December 2, 2009 Timothy M Celenza, Plaintiff Pro INC,Terrace en nombre deHempstead, la Columbus NY House y de la New Haven Authority, estáis SeHOME 436 Bedell West 11552.

NOTICE: TheHousing nature of this Action pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un dormitorio en este to aceptando dissolve the marriage between the parties, on the grounds: DRL Section 170desarrollo subd. (2)ubicado en la calle Frank Street, New Haven. Se de ingresos The Abandonment of 109 the Plaintiff by the Defendant foraplican a periodlimitaciones of more than one year. máximos.

Las pre-solicitudes disponibles 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando 25 The relief sought is A judgmentestarán of absolute divorce in favor of the Plaintiff Martes dissolving thejulio, marriage between the se parties in this suficientes action. Thepre-solicitudes nature of any(aproximadamente ancillary or additional 2016 hasta cuando han recibido 100) relief demanded en las oficinas is:None de HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas por correo a petición

NOTICIA

Large shoreline CT based construction company Large shoreline CT based construction company seeking full-time Accounting/Administrative Assistant for busy office environment.

The position includes both accounting and customer service/administrative duties i.e. data entry in ERP system (Sage 100), reviewing and processing AP transactions, processing billing for over-the-counter sales orders, maintenance of W-9s and insurance certificates for vendors/subcontractors and assisting with 1099/ W2 preparation. Also includes answering phones with positive attitude, scheduling customer appointments for salespersons, filing and other general duties. Minimum 5 years’ experience in an office environment, strong written and verbal communication skills, ability to multi-task, working knowledge of basic accounting, strong Microsoft office (excel/word) skills. Sage 100 knowledge a major plus. Salary: $17.00 to $18.00 per hour. Email resume to Swilloughby@atlasoutdoor.com. AA/EOE/M-F

NEW HAVEN

242-258 Fairmont Ave The2BR Housing Authority the3BR, City1oflevel Bridgeport Townhouse, 1.5 of BA, , 1BA Invitation for Bid (IFB)

All new apartments, new appliances, carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 Phineas T. Barnum Apartmentsnew Ventilation Upgrades highways, near bus stop &104-PD-18-S shopping center Solicitation Number: Pet under 40lb allowed. Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258

The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport d/b/a Park City Communities (PCC) is requesting sealed bids for P.T. Barnum Apartments Ventilation Upgrades. A complete set of the plans and technical specifications will be available on March 19, 2018. To obtain a copy of CT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s theCertificate solicitation you This mustis send yourprogram requestdesigned to bids@parkcitycommunities.org, please reference Program. a 10 month to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates in responsenumber to the Church’s Ministry needs.

The cost $125.

Classes start Saturday, 20, 2016will 1:30-be solicitation and title on the subject line.is A MANDATORY pre-bidAugust conference 3:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., B.S. held at 96 Bird Street, Bridgeport, CT 06605 on April 5, 2018 @ 10:00 a.m., submitting a bid (203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster for the project without attending conference is not in the best interest of the Offeror. Additional St. New Haven, CTbe emailed only to bids@parkcitycommunities.org no later than April 13, questions should 2018 @ 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 24, 2018 @ 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, at its at 28 Smith Street, Help Wanted: ImmediateAugust openings2, for2016 1) heavy andoffice highway construction laborer.

2) CDL Driver, license only. Please contact PJF Construction Corporation @at860Seymour, CT clean 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement the 888-9998 or attielordan@sbcglobal.net. We are an equal opportunity employer M/F. Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26 Smith Street Seymour.

Town of Bloomfield

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

Human Resource Generalist $34.29 Bidding documents are available fromhourly the Seymour Housing Authority OfFor details on how to apply, go www.bloomfi fice, 28 Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483to(203) 888-4579. eldct.org 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

Field Engineer

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

Fax 860.218.2433; or Email to HR@redtechllc.com

RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE.

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc

Large CT. Fenace Company

Large CT. Fence Company is looking for an individual for our stock yard. Warehouse shipping and receiving and Forklift experience a must. Must have a minimum of 3 years’ material handling experience. Must be able to read and write English, and read a tape measure. Duties will include: Loading and unloading trucks, pulling orders for installation and retail counter sales, keeping the yard clean and organized at all times and inventory control. Welding experience a plus. Individual will also make llamando a HOME INC al 203-562-4663 durante esas horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse deliveries of fence panels and products, must be able to lift at least 70lbs. Required to pass a Physical and Drug test, have a MANAGER-RESIDENTIAL aPROJECT las oficinasESTIMATOR/PROJECT de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, NewCONSTRUCTION Haven , CT 06510 . valid CT. Driver’s License and be able to obtain a Drivers MediLeading CT based high-end residential contractor seeking a project estimator/manager to assist cal Card. Send resume to pboucher@atlasoutdoor.com AA/ our project executive with interpreting blueprints, obtaining vendor pricing, developing quotes, EOE/MF and managing multiple projects. Candidate must have experience with general contractor drawings. Sales experience a major plus. Due to growth this is a new position in our organization with a tremendous opportunity for advancement. We are looking for someone versatile, wears multiple hats and with a strong desire to succeed in our industry. Email resume to mpicard@ atlasoutdoor.com AA/EOE

Union Company seeks: Tractor Trailer Driver for Heavy & Highway Construction Equipment. Must have a CDL License, clean driving record, capable of operating heavy equipment; be willing to travel throughout the Northeast & NY. We offer excellent hourly rateor& excellent benefits BA/BS in Civil Engineering Construction Management.

Contact: Dana Briere Phone: 2-5 yrs. experience.

OSHA Certifi ed.

Email: Proficient 860-243-2300 in reading contract plans and specifications. dana.briere@garrityasphalt.com Resumes to RED Technologies, LLC, 10 Northwood Dr., Women & Minority Applicants are Bloomfield, CT 06002; Fax 860.218.2433; encouragedRED toTechnologies, apply LLC is an EOE. Email resumes to info@redtechllc.com.

Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity EmployerRemediation Division Project Manager Environmental

seeks: Reclaimer Operators and Milling Operators with current licensing and clean driving record.

We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits Contact: Rick Tousignant Phone: 860243-2300 Email: rick.tousignant@garrityasphalt.com Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming Inc Employer

seeks: Construction Equipment Mechanic preferably experienced in Reclaiming and Road Milling Equipment. We offer factory training Asphalt on equipment we operate.

Garrity Reclaiming Inc Location: Bloomfield CT seeks: Construction Equipment Mechanic NORTH BRANFORD HOUSING AUTHORITY Contact: experienced James Burke Phone: 860preferably in Reclaiming and c/o Merit Properties, Inc. 243-2300 Invitation Bid: Road Milling Equipment.

We offer factory 1224 Mill Street Building A, Suiteto102 email: jim.burke@garrityasphalt.com training on equipment we operate.

2nd Notice East Berlin, CT 06023 Women & Minority Applicants are Location: Bloomfield CT Contact:encouraged James Burke Phone: 860to apply LISTA DE ESPERA ABIERTA 243-2300 Old Saybrook, CT Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity La Autoridad de Vivienda de North Branford anuncia que ahora están email: jim.burke@garrityasphalt.com Employer We offer excellent hourly rate & (4 Buildings, 17 Units) aceptando solicitudes para el complejo de ancianos / discapacitados HillWomen excellent & Minoritybenefits Applicants are Tax & Not Prevailing Wage Project side Terrace. Para califi car,Exempt debe tener al menos 62 años o 18Rate y estar encouraged to apply discapacitado.

Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Los límites de ingresos publicados por HUD no pueden exceder los $ New(una Construction, Housing, Demolition, Site-work, Cast-We offer excellent hourly rate & 47,600 persona) y $Wood 54,400Framed, (dos personas).

LosSelective hogares también Employer deben cumplir con el ingreso mínimo requerido de $ 17,316 paraVinyl pagar Siding, el in-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, excellent benefits

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

alquiler base mínimo de la unidad. Las partes interesadas pueden recoger Flooring, Painting, Division Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, una solicitud en Hillside Terrace, 16710 Branford Road, North Branford, o pueden llamar al Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

203-488-5664 para solicitar que se le envíe una solicitud por correo.

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

Union Company seeks: Tractor Trailer

NORTH BRANFORD HOUSING AUTHORITY

Driver for Heavy & Highway Construction

WAITLIST OPEN

excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits clean driving record, capable of operating

Bid Extended, Due Date: August 5, 2016 Equipment. Must have a CDL License, c/o Merit Properties, Inc. clean driving record, capable of operating Anticipated Start: August 15, 2016 Union Company seeks: Tractor Trailer 1224 Mill Street Building A, Suite 102 heavy equipment; be willing to travel Project documents available via ftp link below: Driver for Heavy & Highway Construction East Berlin, CT 06023 throughout the Northeast & NY. We offer http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage Equipment. Must have a CDL License,

Contact: Dana be Briere Phone: The North Branford Housing Authority hereby announces that they are heavy equipment; willing to travel Fax or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com now accepting applications for the State Elderly/Disabled Complex 860-243-2300 Email: throughout the Northeast & NY. We offer HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses Hillside Terrace. To qualify you must be at least 62 years old or 18 dana.briere@garrityasphalt.com hourly rate & excellent benefits Haynes Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483excellent and disabled.

Women & Minority Applicants are Contact: Dana Briere Phone: AA/EEO EMPLOYER Income limits as published by HUD cannot exceed $47,600 (one perencouraged to apply son) and $54,400 (two people). Households must also meet the re860-243-2300 Email: Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity quired minimum income of $17,316 to afford the minimum Base Rent dana.briere@garrityasphalt.com for the unit. Interested parties may pick up an application at Hillside Employer Women & Minority Applicants are Terrace, 167 Branford Road, North Branford, or you may call 203-488encouraged to apply 5664 to request an application be mailed to you.

20

Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer

INNER-CITY NEWS July 27, 2016- - August 02, 2016 THE INNER-CITY NEWS APRIL 04, 2018 APRIL 10, 2018

Dispatcher

PVC FENCE PRODUCTION

NOTICE

Large CT Fence Company looking for an individual for our PVC Fence Pro- Galasso Materials is seeking a motivated, organized, detail-oriduction Shop. Experience preferred but will train the right person. Must be ented candidate to join its truck dispatch office. Responsibilities familiar with carpentry hand & power tools and be able to read a CAD draw- include order entry and truck ticketing in a fast paced materials ing and tape measure. Use of CNC Router machine a plus but not required, manufacturing and contracting company. You will have daily inwill train the right person. This is an in-shop production position. Duties include building fence panels, posts, gates and more. Some pickup & delivery teraction with employees and customers as numerous truckloads of material cross our scales daily. We are willing to train the right of materials may also be required.

Must have aHouse valid CT driver’s license and Housing HOME INC, on behalf of Columbus and the New Haven Authority, be able to obtain a Drivers Medical Card. Must be able to pass a physical and individual that has a great attitude. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE. is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments at this develdrug test. Please email resume to pboucher@atlasoutdoor.com. AA/EOE Reply to Hiring Manager, PO Box 1776, East Granby, CT 06026.

VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE

opment located at 108 Frank Street, New Haven. Maximum income limitations apEOE/M/F/D/V. ply. Pre-applications will be available from 9AM TO 5PM beginning Monday Ju;y CARPENTER 25, 2016 and ending when sufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have Large CTreceived Fence Company carpenterINC. for our Wood Fence ProMix upon Asphalt been at thelooking officesforofa HOME Applications will beHot mailied re- Plant Technician & Paving Inspector duction Experience preferred will train the rightduring person.those Must hours. be questShop. by calling HOME INC but at 203-562-4663 Completed prefamiliar with carpentry hand & power tools and be able to read a CAD draw- There are multiple openings in Galasso Materials Quality mustThis beisreturned HOME INC’s offices 171 Orange Street, Third ingapplications and tape measure. an in-shoptoproduction position.

Dutiesatinclude Control Department. NETTCP certification is preferred, Floor,fence Newpanels, Haven, CT gates 06510. building posts, and more. Some pickup & delivery of materials may also be required. Must have a valid CT driver’s license and be with at least one year of experience. Full time positions able to obtain a Drivers Medical Card. Must be able to pass a physical and available. Your schedule must be flexible as sometimes drug test. Please email resume to pboucher@atlasoutdoor.com. AA/EOE night shifts are required. Must be able to lift and carry 50lb buckets. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE. Reply to Hiring VALENTINA MACRI Dispatcher VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDESManager, DISPONIBLES PO Box 1776, East Granby, CT 06026. EOE/M/ F/D/V. Galasso Materials is seeking a motivated, organized, detail-oriented candidate to join its HOME INC, en nombre de la Columbus House y de la New Haven Housing Authority, está truck dispatch office. Responsibilities include order entry and truck ticketing in a fast paced materials pre-solicitudes manufacturing and para contracting company.

You will havededaily interacaceptando estudios y apartamentos un dormitorio en este Equipment desarrollo Operators and Laborers tion with employees and customers as numerous truckloads of material cross our scales ubicado en la calle 109 Frank Street, New Haven. Se aplican limitaciones de ingresos daily. We are willing to train the right individual that has a great attitude. NO PHONE Galasso Materials is seeking applicants for the 2018 paving season. Experience in máximos.

LasReply pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles a.m.-5 comenzando Martes 25 CALLS PLEASE. to Hiring Manager, PO Box 1776, East09 Granby, CTp.m.

06026. paving operations is required. Must possess current OSHA 10 card, have a valid EOE/M/F/D/V. julio, 2016 hasta cuando se han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente 100) driver’s license, and own transportation. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE. Reply to Hiring Manager, PO Box 1776, East Granby, CT 06026. EOE/M/F/D/V. en las oficinas de HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas por correo a petición ELECTRICIAN/APPRENTICE llamando a HOME INC al 203-562-4663 durante esas–horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse . a las oficinas de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CT 06510KMK Insulation Inc.

NOTICIA

Telecommunications company looking for low voltage cable installer familiar with all aspects of indoor & outdoor cable installation, aerial bucket work, pole work, messenger, lashing, manhole & underground installation. Company is also looking for apprentices to train. Good salary with benefits. Fax resume to 860-282-0424 or mail to Fibre Optic Plus, LLC 585 Nutmeg Road North, South Windsor, CT 06074

1907 Hartford Turnpike North Haven, CT 06473

DELIVERY PERSON NEEDED Part Time Delivery Needed One/Two Day a Week, Must Have Own Vehicle If Interested call

(203) 435-1387

The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport Invitation for Bid (IFB) Boiler Preventive Maintenance and Repairs Solicitation Number: 103-AM-18-S

The Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport d/b/a Park City Communities (PCC) is currently seeking bids from qualified and licensed contractors to respond to this Invitation to Bids for Boiler Preventive Maintenance and Repairs at several locations. Solicitation package will be available on March 19, 2018. To obtain a copy of the solicitation you must send your request to bids@parkcitycommunities.org, please reference solicitation number and title on the subject line. A pre-bid conference will be held at 150 Highland Ave, Bridgeport, CT 06604 on April 3, 2018, @ 10:00 a.m. Although attendance is not mandatory, submitting a bid for the project without attending conference is not in the best interest of the Offeror. Additional questions should be emailed only to bids@parkcitycommunities.org no later than April 13, 2018 @ 3:00 p.m. Answers to all the questions will be posted on PCC’s InvitationWebsite: to Bid: www.parkcitycommunities.org. Seal bids will be received until April 24, 2018 @ 10:00 AM, at which time the bids will be publicly opened and read aloud.

2nd Notice

Mechanical Insulator position.

Insulation company offering good pay and benefits.

Attn: Don Ballsieper

Please mail resume to above address.. MAIL ONLY This company is an Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer.

NEW HAVEN

Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer

242-258 Fairmont Ave GUILFORD HOUSING AUTHORITY 2BR Townhouse, BA, 3BR, 1 levelThe , 1BA Class A CDL1.5 Driver SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE is currently accepting applications for COUPLES ONLY for its one All newwith apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 bedroom apartments at Guilford Court and Boston Terrace in GuilOld Saybrook, The CT Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport 3 years min. exp. HAZMAT Endorsed.

highways, near bus stop & shopping centerford, CT. Applicants must be age 62 and over or on 100% (Tractor/Triaxle/Roll-off) (4 social Buildings, 17 Units) security or federal disability and over the age of 18. Applications Some overnights may be required. FAX resumes to RED Technologies, at Pet under 40lb allowed.

Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258 Tax Exempt & Not Prevailing Wage Rate 860.342-1042; Email: HR@redtechllc.com Mail or in person: 173 Pickering may be obtained by calling the application line at 203-453-6262, Street, Portland, CT 06480. RED Technologies, LLC is An EOE. ext. 107. An information packet will also be provided with the application.

ProjectRequest for Proposals (RFP) State Marshal Services Solicitation 102-LG-18-S Applications willNew be accepted until end of business day Construction, Wood Framed, Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, Number: Cast-

CT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s on July of31, 2018. Credit, police, and landlord checks Certificate Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation Candidates in response to the Church’s Ministry needs. The cost is $125. Classes start Saturday,by August 20, 2016 1:30the authority.

Smoke free housing.

3:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., B.S. (203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster EQUAL OPPORTUNITY HOUSING

RESIDENTIAL SALES/ESTIMATOR-FENCE

are procured

in-place Concrete, Asphalt Siding, TheShingles, HousingVinyl Authority of the City of Bridgeport d/b/a Park City Communities (PCC) is Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential currently soliciting proposals Casework, from State Marshals to provide service of process for HACB. Solicitation package will be available on March 19, 2018. To obtain a copy of the solicitaMechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection. tion you must send your request to bids@parkcitycommunities.org, please reference soliciThis contract is subject to state set-asidetation and contract compliance requirements. number and title on the subject line. A pre-proposal conference will be held at 150

Large CT based fence retailer looking for a residential estiSt. New Haven, CT mator. We are looking for someone to take a leading role in the opening of a new location. The position will be based on NEW HAVEN EARLY CHILHDOOD COUNCIL Highland Ave, Bridgeport, CT 06604 on April 4, 2018 @ 10:00 a.m. Although attendance the CT shoreline and will include both field visits and retail REQUEST FOR QUALITY ENHANCEMENT PROPOSALS is not August mandatory, submitting a bid for the project without attending conference is not in the Bid Extended, Due Date: 5, 2016 sales. Compensation will include salary in line with experibest interest of the Offeror. Additional questions should be emailed only to bids@parkcience as well as commissions based on sales volume. PreviAugust 15, 2016 no later than April 13, 2018 @ 3:00 p.m. Answers to all the questions The New Haven Early Childhood Council isAnticipated seeking toStart:tycommunities.org Sealed bids areand/or invitedhome by the Housing Authority of the Town of quality Seymour ous construction improvement service related fund enhancement (QE) projects for the period available Project documents ftp link below:Website: www.parkcitycommunities.org. Proposals shall be mailed will bevia posted on PCC’s until 3:00 pm on Tuesday, 2, 2016 toat mpicard@ its office at 28July Smith Street, product experience preferred.August Email resume 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019 for the following services: or hand delivered by April 20, 2018 @ 3:00 PM, to Ms. Caroline Sanchez, Director of Prohttp://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage atlasoutdoor.com AA/EOE Seymour, CT 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement at the curement, 150 Highland Ave, Bridgeport, CT 06604. Late proposals will not be accepted.

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY

• on-site education consultation to prek programs

Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26 Smith Street Seymour.

• mental health resources for children families in prek programs; Fax orand Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com

TRANSFER STATION LABORER

• professional development trainings related to CT Early Standards, HCC encourages theLearning participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses trauma informed care and topics required

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

Off load trailers, CT reload for trans/disp.

50 lbs., operate

by School Readiness and NAEYC.

Construction Truck and Equipment Head Mechanic

Haynes Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 Large CT based Fence and Guard Rail contractor looking for experienced, self-motivated, responsible AA/EEO EMPLOYER

industrial powered trucks and forklift. Asbestos Worker Handler An info session will be held Monday, May 12th from 2-3pm at 54 Meadow Training a +. Resumes to RED Technologies, LLC, 173 Pickering Street, conference Ofroom 3B. To receive the RFP and for established rates for each BiddingSt.,documents are06480; available from the Seymour Housing Authority Portland, CT Fax 860-342-1022; or service type, contact the School Readiness office fice, 28 SmithEmail Street, Seymour, CT 06483 (203) 888-4579. to lkelly@redtransfer.com Denised@nhps.net 203-946-7875.

RED Technologies, LLC is an EOE.

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

21

Head Mechanic. Responsibilities will include maintaining and repairing all company equipment and vehicles, updating asset lists and assuring all rolling stock is in compliance with state and federal regulations. Must have extensive diesel engine, electrical wiring and hydraulic systems experience. Top wages paid, company truck and benefits.

AA/EOE Please send resume to Mpicard@atlasoutdoor.com

THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

-

APRIL 10, 2018

Freedom Fighter Winnie Mandela Dies At 81

by Christian Carter, BDO

Long-time South African anti-apartheid campaigner, ex-wife of Nelson Mandela and former first lady Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has died aged 81.

Family spokesman Victor Dlamini confirmed earlier on Monday that Mrs. Mandela “succumbed peacefully in the early hours of Monday afternoon surrounded by her family and loved ones” following a long illness, which had seen her go in and out of the hospital since the start of the year.

Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela was born in 1936 in the Eastern Cape – then known as Transkei.

It was Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela who took his baton after he was jailed for life, becoming an international symbol of resistance to apartheid. She too was jailed for her role in the fight for justice and equality.

To her supporters, she became known affectionately as “Mother of the Nation.”

Due to her political activities, Winnie

was regularly detained by the National Party government. She was tortured, subjected to house arrest, kept under surveillance, held in solitary confinement for over a year and even banished to a remote town. She emerged as a leading opponent of apartheid during the later years of her husband’s imprisonment (August 1963 – February 1990).

For many of those years, she was exiled to the town of Brandfort in the Orange Free State and confined to the area, except for when she was allowed to visit her husband at Robben Island.

Beginning in 1969, she spent eighteen months in solitary confinement at Pretoria Central Prison. It was at this time that Winnie Mandela became… … well known in the Western world.

She organized local clinics, campaigned actively for equal rights and was promoted by the ANC as a symbol of their struggle against apartheid.

In 1985, Mrs. Mandela won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award along with fellow activists Allan Boesak and Beyers Naudé for their human rights work in South Africa.

The Award is given annually by the

Black Chef Charging White People More than Black People For Their Meals - and His White Customers Don't Mind It! BlackNewsBlog.com

Con’t from page 18

Ready Player One

I remember running around a room full of people while she was playing poker or hosting neighborhood watch meetings. I also remember getting excited about going to Dunkin’ Donuts and going to see movies like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with my dad on the weekend.

A nice meal and a purposeful advocacy? Tunde Wey, a chef from Nigeria, has been offering both through his popup stalls that serve meals and aims to change people’s racial perspectives. The lunch counter, commonly known as Saartj, however, received opposing remarks for charging white people more than double the Black people pay for their meals.

Talk of the town Wey installed his first pop-up stall at the Roux Carre market in New Orleans, Louisiana last February. The month-long lunch counter is more than just a meal service, but a sociology experiment as well.

Wey tries to teach a lesson about racial wealth disparity. In New Orleans, the median income among African American households is $25,806, compared to $64,377 for white households. Nationally, the average wealthy black family makes $140,000 while wealthy white families make $919,000, according to the Urban Institute.

After telling this, he would tell his customers the price: $12 standard price and $30 suggested price. Black customers are charged $12 while White customers would have to choose to pay $12 or $30.

“When I tell black folks what’s happening, 90 percent of them start laughing, like, ‘For real?’ They’re tickled,” Wey laughingly told The Washington Post.

Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights to an individual or group whose courageous activism is at the heart of the human rights movement and in the spirit of Robert F. Kennedy’s vision and legacy.[15] She received a Candace Award for Distinguished Service from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1988.[

“White folks, there’s this blank -- this blank look. They’re like, ‘Huh, okay.’”

Wey said that he will not be keeping any profit for himself. The net profit from the sales at the suggested price will rather be redistributed to Black customers who want it.

Social experiment results Wey did not initially expect favorable results of the experiment. He said he expected White customers not to pay the higher suggested price but it turned out that 80% actually chose to pay the higher price.

Moreover, Black customers said no

when he asked if they wanted a refund.

Some even tried to pay the suggested price of $30 because “they felt obligated to pay the higher price.”

The truth about being Black in America In 2016, Wey also traveled across the United States for provocative dinner series he called Blackness in America. He and the guests would have conversations about racism, sexism, politics, police brutality, among others, over the meals he prepared.

While there are some who considers it as cathartic, it turns out to be a debate sometimes. “This conversation is supposed to be impolite. It’s supposed to be

22

uncomfortable,” he told The Washington Post.

Future projects On April, Wey will be bringing Saartj to Detroit. But it will not be the same as how he did it in New Orleans. In coordination with Malik Yakini of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and Devita Davison of FoodLab, Wey continues to educate people through food in order to improve outcomes for African Americans.

For more information about Saartj, visit www.saartj.com

KW: The Morris Chestnut question: Was there any particular moment in your childhood that inspired you to become the person you are today?

LW: Hmm... I think there were numerous things that inspired me. TV shows like Family Matters and A Different World, and movies like Jurassic Park and Forrest Gump. I remember wanting to live in those spaces for a long time, not knowing that ultimately I would want to create stories that would make people feel the way I had felt watching those shows and movies. I was always happiest when we were going to the movie theater, no matter what we were going to see. I liked the idea of sharing that experience with a group of people I’d never met and would probably never see again.

KW: Is there any question no one ever asks you, that you wish someone would?

LW: I can’t think of one. But you’ve asked some good ones.

KW: Finally, Samuel L. Jackson asks: What’s in your wallet?

LW: My Soho House card, my Amex and my driver’s license.

KW: Thanks again for the time, Lena, and best of luck with Ready Player One. LW: Thanks so much, Kam.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS APRIL 04, 2018 - APRIL 10, 2018

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, April 16 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.

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REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE. IT’S WHAT WE DO.

23

THE INNER-CITY NEWS

APRIL 04, 2018

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APRIL 10, 2018

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3/19/18 3:00 PM