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Lives “Interrupted” Find Space To Heal

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

The stories filled the room one by one, thick and heavy in the air. Two sons, stolen long before their time in two separate acts of gun violence. A young woman killed in her mother’s driveway by a weapon of war. An adult who withstood childhood sexual abuse to protect her siblings. A detective whose quick assumptions about a victim stayed with him—and are now changing policing in Hamden.

All of them were interruptions. All of them led to the same room on Edgewood Avenue, where dozens gathered with the hope of healing. By the end of a single af ternoon, all of them had opened the door to new ways to talk about trauma.

Those stories came to Westville last Fri day, as Interruptions: Disrupting The Si lence author, podcaster, playwright and educator Rev. Odell Montgomery Cooper and members of Connecticut Violence In tervention Program (CT VIP) gathered at BLOOM for “A Healing for Generational Trauma,” a roundtable dedicated to break ing the stigma and silence around violence, grief, and intergenerational trauma.

For three hours, roughly four dozen par ticipants cycled through the space, learning how to address and survive the “interrup tions” in their own lives—and stem the spread of generational trauma that is cen turies running. The project is personal to Cooper, who lost her son Jonathan to gun violence in 2016, and suffered a brain an eurysm the following year, on what would have been his 26th birthday.

She has since started what she calls “a movement,” dedicated to addressing and ending intergenerational trauma through a book, play, podcast series and curriculum that all grew out of her experience.

“Today is about you,” she said Friday, standing beside CT VIP Executive Director Leonard Jahad. “We invited you here for you. Recognizing trauma was something that I had to fight through because no one knew how to help me that looked like me. It was untreated. And I suffered.”

“We know that the trauma in our commu nity has been ignored,” added Jahad, who knew Jonathan and remembered him as a sweet and talented young adult. He pointed to the difference in resource allocation that he saw after the Sandy Hook massacre, when the nearby town of Newtown was able to bring in grief counselors and child and adult therapists. “A lot of our trauma goes unrecognized and goes untreated.”

To heal, he and Cooper said, people have to find a way to talk about the interruptions that they’ve experienced. Before an after noon of aromatherapy, reiki, nourishing food, and an outdoor fire pit for emotional wellness, the two split attendees into three sections, each led by a trained facilitator. Cooper and Jahad drifted between rooms, listening as groups got started.

At the far end of the shop, attendees crowded in, slipping into their seats as ivy and fabric flowers peeked out from the walls. Across the room, there was a cross-

section of Cooper’s own life: bereaved mothers who are part of a group they never asked to join; Hamden Mayor Lauren Gar rett, who governs the town where Jonathan was killed; friends and godparents who had loved and still love Jonathan; Det. William Onofrio, who was assigned to Jonathan’s case as a rookie cop.

At the front, facilitator Natasha KoonceWebster clasped her hands in her lap and looked around the room, making eye con tact with every attendee. No sooner had she asked what brought them into the space than a steady stream of interruptions began to flow through it. For many attendees, the specter of gun violence was everywhere.

“An interruption is something that chang es what you’re going through,” KoonceWebster said. “I think that what happens to a lot of us is that you get stuck.”

From the middle of the room, Patricia Brown-Edwards recalled losing her two sons, Dennis Carr and Kyle Brown-Ed wards, almost two decades apart from each other. In 1997, her 19-year-old son Dennis was gunned down while sitting in a drive way on Congress Avenue, when a bullet intended for someone else ended his life.

Seventeen years later in 2014, her son Kyle was killed outside of her mother’s home. Her mother, who is now 93 years old, al most never leaves the house.

In the years since, Brown-Edwards has had multiple heart attacks, including during a meeting of a survivors of homicide sup port group she attends with Cooper. She’s arrived at the hospital dead on arrival six times, she said. After learning there was no heart disease in her family, Brown-Edwards recalled asking her cardiologist if it was possible to suffer from a broken heart—a phenomenon associated with stress that is in fact documented.

Friday, she said, she had willed herself to come out to BLOOM because the act of grieving—and surviving—is a process with no end point. “I am looking for myself for some kind of peace,” she said. This year,

she is struggling with the additional infor mation that the man who murdered Dennis will be getting out of prison this year, ear lier than his original sentence. Every time she hears about a legal proceeding, she re lives that day.

“I think a lot of people, when they grieve, they think, ‘This is where I should be right now,’” said Koonce-Webster, who de scribed her own interruption as living with Multiple Sclerosis. “A lot of times, we just need to be there for people. People will let you know what they need.”

The stories kept coming. Beside BrownEdwards, Pamela Jaynez remembered los ing her son, and then her nephew, to gun violence. She has since become one of the founders of the New Haven Botanical Garden of Healing, which sits not far from BLOOM on Valley Street.

As he listened, Omar Ryan nodded know ingly, quiet as he waited to speak.

Now a violence prevention professional with CT VIP, Ryan “was part of the prob lem” in the 1990s, he said. After ending up

“Thank you for being here,” KoonceWebster said. She looked around to see if people had other interruptions that they wanted to share.

Onofrio, who was the detective assigned to Jonathan’s case, piped up from the side of the room. Six years ago, he was a rookie detective on the force. He saw the file for a 25-year-old Black man, killed close to a restaurant and bar that had a reputation for getting violent. He assumed Jonathan had been drinking.

“I couldn’t be more wrong,” Onofrio said, his voice shaking at points. At the time he was murdered, Jonathan was a budding au dio engineer with a job as a barista, work ing and living in New York City. Onofrio hadn’t seen any of that. When he met Coo per, “I think I failed to pursue the trauma she was going through,” he said. “I was

very procedural.”

He remains grateful for the guidance he got on the job—and the grace that Cooper extended to him. In 2016, Cooper told him “to step back” and rethink everything he thought he understood. When he did, he learned the deeper story of who Jonathan was—a gentle, artistic spirit whose smile lit up a whole room. A young adult who loved his family so much that he’d come back from New York for his cousin’s birthday. He was driving home from that celebration when he was shot and killed at a traffic light in a case of mistaken identity.

“I think learning from each other is one of the best things we can do,” Onofrio said. Six years after Jonathan’s death, his time with Cooper has changed how he thinks about his role. He talks about internal bi ases, trauma, and hard-to-unlearn assump tions with other cops on the Hamden Police force. He also thinks about internalized and vicarious trauma—and talks about it with fellow officers.

His voice splintering, he said that some times he gets home after a day on the job, and wakes his kids up just to let them know he’s there.

“I think we get so used to seeing it on t.v. that sometimes we get desensitized to it,” Koonce-Webster said. “When will we start caring about every child like that’s our child?”

From the center of the room, Darlene Gal berth remembered how after the murder of her daughter outside of the family’s home, “no one came to show concern.” She was exhausted and angry, she said. Cooper, who had appeared in the doorway, listened at tentively without saying a word.

“How do we address it and take care of ourselves?” she said after a long pause.

Finding The Healing

In BLOOM’s “Yellow Room,” facilitator Melanie Pettigrew-Lee ran through a dif ferent set of interruptions. With her marker flowing across an oversized pad of paper, she got to work writing down people’s re sponses to their thoughts about the word “interruption’’ and the connotation it held.

The words “stop” and “unplanned” bubbled up as Pettigrew-Lee wrote each of them down. As attendees kept talking, some suggested more finite examples such as death and domestic violence.

“When was the last time you felt an in terruption that made you feel not normal?” Pettigrew-Lee asked, leaving the floor open.

Martina Campbell immediately chimed in to answer the question, tying her loss of normalcy to when she was sexually abused by her step-father as a child.

“The healing comes from telling a story over and over again, and helping someone else get out of it,” Campbell said. “And be cause I went through the experience, I can see it in others before they get to where I got.”

She dispelled the notion of healing through

in the state’s carceral system, he dedicated his life to breaking a cycle of violence.

“It’s unrealized trauma,” he said.

Art & Politics Mingle At Lamont-Artspace Meetup

by ABIBA BIAO

A Ninth Square art gallery transformed into a networking arena for local creatives and a political podium for the state’s gov ernor as Democratic incumbent Gov. Ned Lamont visited Artspace to promise support for Black and brown artists and small business owners.

That took place Friday evening at the non profit contemporary art gallery at 50 Or ange St.

“I’ll tell you what my dream is,” Lamont declared during a short speech delivered to a crowd of artists and other working professionals who had gathered for the networking event. “My dream is what I’m looking at right now… I love this Artspace.

Every race, color, creed, gender identity… you are welcome here in the state of Con necticut!”

Lamont, a Democrat, is running for a sec ond four-year term as governor against Re publican challenger Bob Stefanowski. In recent weeks, both major-party candidates have stepped up their campaign visits to New Haven, which historically has pro vided the largest Democratic voter turnout of any city in the state.

Admiring the “energy” in the audience and the art lining the walls, Lamont said, “I’ve noticed in life that talent is widely distributed, but opportunities are not. If I have one goal as a former entrepreneur and business guy and now governor, it’s to give people that opportunity,” he said.

Lamont said the state should help individ uals looking to “become their own boss”

grow the skillsets needed to run small busi nesses and noted that his administration is focused on providing entrepreneurs in his torically underserved communities with financial resources. For example, Lamont announced a $150 million program back in July that will provide loans to small busi nesses and nonprofits in low-income areas to access working capital.

“This stuff doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because we deeply care about each and every one of you who you are where you want to be. Give you the re sources, give you the opportunity you need,” Lamont said.

Leaders at Artspace, like Gabe Sacco, a visual cultural producer with the art gal lery, said he supported Lamont’s visit to the community space and saw Lamont’s campaign values as “in alignment with what Artspace is doing and committed to the cultural equity plan of New Haven spe cifically.” Laurel McLaughlin, the director of curatorial affairs at Artspace, said she was pleased that Lamont visited the gal lery because it further marked the organi zation’s commitment to “having deep po litical conversations” as part of its work to support “experimental artists that promote civic discourse in particular.”

Many of the individual artists who at tended the event did so not just to hear the governor’s pitch, but to connect directly with other creatives.

Farihah Begum, a 29-year-old food blog ger, said she decided to drop by the event to connect with other food photographers.

“If I can find people who have similar interests, I’d love to have a conversation with them,” she said.

While Begum and other professionals milled around the room, making new con nections and showcasing one of the ways Artspace seeks to build community and creativity, politicians continued to take

turns underscoring Lamont’s dedication to supporting places like Artspace.

“Without you in this city, we will not be who we are,” Board of Alders Majority Leader and Amity/Westville/Beaver Hills Alder Richard Furlow said to the crowd of artistically minded individuals in front of him.

He then turned his attention to the gov ernor, and the upcoming election on Nov. 8. He described Lamont as an elected of ficial “who supports small business, who supports the arts, who supports creativ ity because this is the group that brings life and vitality to the city.”

Artspace coordinators Gabriel Sacco, Laurel McLaughlin and Steve Roberts.

Food photographer and blogger Farihah Begum with fellow attendees Krystal Jackson and Keyri Ambrocio.

City Is Overdue For A Gun-Violence Action Plan

by SHAFIQ ABDUSSABUR (Opinion)

Let’s take a deeper look at gun violence in New Haven. A look beyond the retroactive approach of throwing resources to violence-plagued communities after the fact.

New Haven, like most of the urban police agencies, has been suffering from a smaller than usual pool of police applicants. Nationwide distrust of police, and the approach taken with aggressive police reform, have turned away many prospective applicants. Meanwhile, what must not be ignored are the events since Ferguson (2014) that sparked the Black Lives Matter Movement, and brought to light several aspects of racial disparities that exist between the police and the Black and Brown communities they serve. Fast forward to the George Floyd incident in May 2020 that sparked worldwide demand for police reform. Many elected officials panicked and cut police budgets as a political “downpayment” for the upcoming phase of police reform.

New Haven is no stranger to social and political movements and protests. On the evening of May 30, 2020, roughly 70 people turned out to attend a nearly fourhour protest. Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrators and other police reform advocates boldly protested outside the home of the New Haven mayor in efforts to pressure him and his administration to take immediate action on police reform by defunding the police department. They sought to see the New Haven police budget cut and money reallocated towards wrap-around resources for underserved communities in New Haven. On May 31, thousands took the streets and occupied I-095, then had a standoff with police at 1 Union Ave.

Later that week, on June 5, 2020, a crowd of 5,000 demonstrators gathered on the Green at 3 p.m. Members of the Citywide Youth Coalition read a list of demands that included redistribution of $33 million in police department funding to schools and other organizations, elimination of school resource officers (cops), “ending the triple police occupation of New Haven” by Yale, Hamden, and New Haven police — and the demands went on. That same month, the City of New Haven announced a new round of budget cuts; the majority of the cuts were to the police department. Forty-eight positions were eliminated resulting in an 11 percent reduction in the size of the police force. The $4 million cut of the total police budget was consistent with a radical approach made by many mayors through the untested strategy of “defunding the police.”

Thus the revolution of New Haven’s police reform has begun.

New Haven was not alone in this, as other urban cities were beginning to establish this formula for external change. What happened to George Floyd did not happen in New Haven, but the effects di-

rectly impacted the New Haven community, and other urban populations around the nation. The demonstrators at the May 30, 2020, protest stated, “We are grieving and going through the grief of seeing Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, Jason Negron, Zoe Dowdell, Stephanie Washington, Paul Witherspoon, other people shot and killed in this city who never got justice.”

Police Budget Cut To The Ballot

I saw this as a very important opportunity for the City of New Haven to really hear what the community was asking the city’s management and public safety leaders to do. This was the perfect moment to start the process of creating a Community Inclusive Public Safety Plan that could serve as a short-term and long-term Blueprint for Community Wellness.

I had hoped that the result of the community concerns, raised by the protestors and demonstrators, would have produced a platform where police officials, community leaders, activists, educators, youth advocates, elected officials, artists and others could form a city commission think tank. With this, they would discuss, analyze, and create a draft of what the future of public safety should look like over the next five to ten years.

The follow-up feature to that should have included assuring that the major crime factors, like gun violence, would not be at risk of increasing, and that overall community safety could have the greatest chances of being achieved in the city.

The final resolve should have also included declaring that any significant changes

to the yearly police budget affecting dayto-day community safety should have been placed as a voting question on the 2021 November ballot: Should the Police Budget be Cut by Approximately $4 million? With the issue on the ballot, all New Haven voters would have had a fair and equal voice.

The Perfect Storm

In 2020, the pandemic and racial divisions together weakened community safety. Gun crimes shot up across urban centers in the U.S., and many city leaders and police chiefs across America scrambled to come up with a response. In July of 2020, New York Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea tied the rise in shootings to increased amounts of prisoners released because of Covid-18 measures. Furthermore, the partial shutdown of state courts during the pandemic had led to delayed gun case prosecutions. Michael Sean Spence, director of policy and implementation at Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit group, observed,“What we’re seeing is almost a perfect storm. The pandemic has exacerbated the root causes of gun violence.”

New Haven police leaders and other public officials would later adopt a similar public response in mid-July 2020, summing up the cause of the record-breaking gun crimes on the streets of New Haven as the result of Covid-19.

However, it is important to go back to the May 30, 2020, protest and the initial action requested of the community as it related to their desire for police reform, all of which started long before Covid-19.

The community’s calls for police reform, or police restructuring, were not intended to happen at the expense of putting Black, Hispanic and Latino communities in more danger. New Haven’s reactionary reform resulted in a total cut in 48 critical positions in the police department, which included cutting approximately 24 vitally needed detective positions. Had a more thoughtful city management approach been done, filling those 24 detective positions would have ensured that the city would have the proper resources to adequately investigate the hundreds of open cold, gun-related cases.

New Haven Versus Afghanistan

From January 2019 until August 2021, a total of 48 United States soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. From the start of January 2019 until September 8, 2021, a total of 53 people were killed in New Haven. These numbers should shock the conscience of every Yale health pProfessional, law enforcement professional, and city official.

Afghanistan, a country of 252,072 square miles, with a population of approximately 31 million people, is known as a training ground for terrorists. New Haven, a city in Connecticut with 20.1 square miles and a population of approximately 130,331 people, is said to be known as the Model of Community Policing.

How is it possible that New Haven’s death toll due to gun violence since 2019 was higher per capita than that of the soldiers who are deployed into a war zone?

The initial steps to New Haven’s police reform should have included making sure that significant measures were in place to stabilize and reduce gun violence in the most vulnerable neighborhoods and highrisk populations. A safety assessment or safety impact study should also have been done to determine New Haven’s top public safety priorities before police budget cuts were made.

From Jan. 1, 2015. to Nov. 2, 2021, there have been approximately 634 total gunrelated shootings (fatal and non-fatal). Approximately 545 remain unsolved. These numbers are important because they represent people who are in our New Haven communities who have used a gun to violate the safety of others. These individuals freely move about our city spaces without any consequences.

These numbers also represent the 99 gun homicides and the trauma experienced by the surviving victims, their families, and friends, as well as those traumatized in the 545 non-fatal gun-related crimes.

I have worked with many residents who have had family members gunned down in the City of New Haven. I have had my own personal loss in my family due to gun violence in the city. The major grief factor that continues the trauma is knowing the person who shot your family member will likely not be arrested or made to take responsibility for their actions.

Case closures help grieving families

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MAYA MCFADDEN PHOTO Shafiq Abdussabur.

Gun-Violence

through the mourning process. The often deescalate community behaviors that lead to more gun crimes.

Therefore, the other component to this early action to police reform should have been setting up a direct-trauma mobile recovery system for families and friends directly impacted by gun violence. That system should look at delivering those es sential wraparound services that the fam ily may need to aid in their recovery.

As New Haven approached the Spring of 2021, gun homicides in the city were beginning to surpass that of 2020. There was a new rapid increase of gun vio lence among Black, Hispanic and Latino teen males between the ages of 14 and 15-years old.

There’s also an unprecedented gun ho micide rate for Black 14-year-old males that threatens infiltration of our school en vironments.

By the beginning of summer 2021, New Haven still did not have a Public Safety Plan that could serve as a Blueprint for Community Wellness. Gun violence con tinued ripping at the heart of the soul of the city by creating a cloud of terror in ev ery neighborhood.

Sustainable Police Reform

On June 16, 2021, I publicly released “10 recommendations to Curb Urban Gun Violence,” a strategic crime plan to help get New Haven back on track.

I was confident then, and I am confident now that the immediate implementation of those recommendations would get the city back on track. Recommendations include:

• Establishing weekly community trauma and resource canvassing at shooting vic tim’s homes/incident area.

• Identifying youth, young adults, and women who are at risk of being victims of gun violence.

• Creating a blue-collar career placement summer program for high school grads

and young adults; Installing cameras in areas where shootings have occurred and/ or have the potential to occur.

• Creating resident officers by partnering with private property owners.

• Increasing racial diversity in the police department in the areas of district com manders and recruitment.

• Expanding the homicide division by add ing more Black, Hispanic, Latino investi gators.

• Restoring walking beats in the daytime and evening hours in each of the 10 po lice districts.

•Re-establishing community blockwatch programs.

• Prioritizing traffic calming by installing speed bumps, humps and electronic speed feedback signs.

Put Priorities Over Politics

Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, present-day New Haven is experi encing a crisis of violent crimes and gun violence. New Haven’s city management desperately needs to work on creating a comprehensive public safety plan im mediately.

This is not the time to continue the 18-month experiment of a proposed Crisis Response Team. As a former alder, I can attest that the program lacks budget trans parency, cultural competency, and proof of implementation.

As a result of reactionary city politics, the 48 police positions that were cut in 2020 could have been restructured to cre ate a special unit of detectives to investi gate, resolve, and develop arrests for the 500=plus unsolved firearm assault in vestigations that have now become cold cases. The 500 unsolved cases that exist represent the perpetrators who continue to move about New Haven communi ties without any consequences. Thus, crime escalates.

We must approach New Haven’s gun vi olence as an ongoing health epidemic and make decisions that create sustainable po lice reform. We must come to understand that we did not get here because the police

failed our New Haven communities. We must come to realize that we did not get here because our New Haven communi ties failed the police. We got here because leadership starts at the top, and city man agement failed to lead from the front. This city management approach of micro managing public safety and its partners is not the key to get our police department back on track.

A sustainable police reform approach should include an action accountability plan that saves the lives of people who are most at risk through early identification and prevention with a reporting method that tracks effectiveness. It should also include action programs that are focused at getting our New Haven youth into high school career trade and vocational pro grams and then actually getting them good paying jobs.

Additional programs should present youth with alternative opportunities that introduce them to career pathways like the Peace Core or the National Guard.

Another key piece is to have curriculum based social investment programs that will teach coping skills and interpersonal conflict skills to all our high school stu dents that will help them better navigate challenging social conditions.

Like most urban centers, New Haven honestly does not need any more people or outside programs that seek to create a study on why Black, Hispanic and Lati nos are constantly getting shot and killed in New Haven. We are now approaching the end of 2022 and, unfortunately, we are now in a citywide safety crisis that con tinues to threaten most every person who lives, works, and dares to play in New Haven. This is not the New Haven I re member when I was growing up. Now, as a New Haven grandfather, I want a Better New Haven so that every New Haven resi dent’s child and grandchild can grow up in safe and thriving communities.

Shafiq Abdussabur is a retired New Ha ven police sergeant and former Beaver Hills alder.

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Bookspace Dreams Spring To Life On Edgewood Avenue

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

A bright 4 p.m. light poured through the front windows of Possible Futures, setting new book displays inside aglow. Copies of Soul Food Sunday, Felon and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous peeked out onto the street. At the front of the space, Sekai Tengatenga snuggled into a sun-warmed couch, immersed in a copy of The Tea Dragon Society. A few yards away, her baby sister Shamiso lifted Debby Slier Cradle Me into the air, and then fitted one corner into her gummy mouth.

Every so often, laughter bubbled up from the center of the store, where kids lined up to be measured in the first breaths of a new school year. A monstera plant spread its thick leaves toward the ceiling, nourished by the sound of their conversation.

It’s a familiar scene at Possible Futures, the new-old brainchild of bibliophile and former People Get Ready co-owner Lau ren Anderson nestled at 318 Edgewood Ave. Eight months after People Get Ready closed its doors on Whalley Avenue, the bookspace opened on Edgewood Avenue, in what used to be a branch of the New Haven Free Public Library. Anderson, who sees it as a next chapter in her antiracist bookstore dreams, has been working for months to welcome the neighborhood back.

After a soft opening in August, the space opened formally in early September. This month, it is charging into fall with a mak ers’ circle, author and educator talks, and a pop-up at Elm City Lit Fest. Learn more here.

“It’s really exciting to have a place avail able for people to gather,” Anderson said on a recent Tuesday, as her dog Sugar pad ded around the store, resting in circles of sunlight that pooled on the floor. “It feels like a long time since I’ve been in a book space.”

That sense of enthusiasm—geekery for not just books, but also for the people who gather around them and get lost in their pages—is evident from the moment a reader comes upon the building. Above the windows, passers-by can still make out a faded sign for a neighborhood branch of the New Haven Free Public Library, which at some point made way for Miss Dee Dee’s Dance Studio. After that studio moved, the first floor sat empty for years, Anderson said—meaning that she had her work cut out for her when she moved in.

Now, she’s transformed the corner and the space. From the sidewalk, the bright storefront beckons with huge front win dows, books lining the sills from the in side. Along the exterior, sprigs of lavender sprout beside a spray of red and white be gonias, their faces turned toward the sky. A display from Your Queer Plant Shop hangs beside a mural by members of Students for Educational Justice. At the center of the piece, a rainbow-patterned road leads toward a city that could very well be New Haven.

There are reminders of community like this everywhere. Kenia and Michael Massey’s Black Corner Store sits just down the street, as does Augusta Lewis Troup School and a Coin Op Wash & Dry. Neighbors from Edgewood and nearby Sherman Avenue often duck in to see what’s new, and find that Anderson is on a familiar basis with them within minutes.

On the walls, she has installed children’s

handwritten notes and drawings beside paintings from her partner, the artist Chris Barnard. One, a portrait of Sugar by bud ding artist Isla Javier-Jones, has attracted a fan base of pint-sized humans and dozens of adults alike.

On a recent Tuesday, neighbors and new customers drifted in and out, pausing at the snugly packed shelves and displays of locally made jewelry, handmade soaps,

candles and all manner of book-based swag. Towards the front, Anderson chat ted with Edgewood Avenue neighbor Lindsey Tengatenga, cooing as she lifted her infant daughter Shamiso into her arms.

Behind them, copies of African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song and Make Good the Promises waited for eager eyes. As if on cue, Shamiso burst into a wide, dimpled smile.

On the space’s cozy couch, Tengatenga’s older daughter Sekai sank into the cush ions with Kay O’Neill’s The Tea Dragon Society, and let herself get lost in the words. Anderson smiled across the room, taking it in: she routinely invites custom ers to stay and read, whether or not they purchase a book before leaving. It’s part of why she prefers “space”—which inher ently connotes gathering—to “store.”

“It’s the best thing ever,” Lindsey Ten gatenga said as she half-danced over to the board books in the back, and settled on a rug beside Shamiso. “I think that we need these spaces where people can come and be together and imagine a better future. I’ve traversed so much more of my own neighborhood because this is here. It’s a treasure.”

Towards the back, Edgewood Creative STEAM Magnet School student Aeriana Blackmon buzzed over a display of chil dren’s books and rearranged a few that had slid out of place. In every title, a new universe waited for the right reader. There was the English-Ojibwe Gaawin Gindaas win Ndaawsii and Kiss by Kiss / ocêh towina: A Counting Book for Families in English and Cree, copies of Little You and Besos for Baby waiting for a pair of chub by baby hands. Sophie Beer’s Love Makes A Family sat at attention behind them, as if it was keeping watch.

As Anderson’s neighbor on Elm Street, Aeriana started helping around the store in July, as Anderson was still setting up the space. She’s stuck around because she loves volunteering in the storefront, where hours of calm might be pierced by an in flux of loud, giggling students glad to be back at school and parents who haven’t found a time to catch up in months.

At the register, BAMN Books founder and self-described book nerd Ny and her 4-year-old nephew Jasiah made their final selection for the day, cradling copies of Malcolm Little and How Do Dinosaurs Learn To Read?. Born and raised in New Haven, Ny said she’s thrilled to have a new all-ages bookspace “right in the heart of where I grew up.” Even before they were out the door, Jasiah was immersed in the pages of How Do Dinosaurs Learn To Read, entranced by the illustration of a triceratops charging through a library.

As a kid, the library at Wexler-Grant Community School was her safe place, Ny said. Now, Possible Futures has recreated it in the core of Edgewood for a younger generation. As she browsed, Anderson opened and unboxed a puzzle for Jasiah, his eyes gleaming with delight. By the end of an hour in the store, he was making

friends with Sugar.

“It’s amazing,” Ny said. “I’ve seen the hard work that she’s put in and I’m excited about how she’s going to bring the com munity together.”

In just over a month, Possible Futures has also built a steady and devoted fan base, including people who followed Anderson from Whalley Avenue over to Edgewood. Driven by her love for books, Inner City News Editor and WNHH Community Radio host Babz Rawls-Ivy has started a fundraising campaign to cover the cost of books for kids who would not otherwise be able to afford them. New Haveners can participate by sending a payment with the hashtag #BabzBookJoy to Possible Fu tures (@possible-futures) on Venmo or leaving a donation at the bookstore.

Dr. Beryl Irene Bailey, a longtime edu cator who raised her daughter in the third floor apartment above the store from 1988 to 1993, said she sees it as transforming the corner. As a kid, Bailey grew up in Edgewood, where Augusta Lewis Troup and Timothy Dwight Schools (the latter closed in 2009) sparked in her a love of teachers and teaching. For her, 318 Edge wood Ave. was a “family house,” where she helped raise her niece, her sister Deir dre and her daughter. Her dad, a World War II veteran who passed earlier this year at 99, lived on the second floor.

Seeing a bookspace on the first floor marked a full-circle moment, she said. In her work, Bailey is in the process of writing a historically, culturally respon sive read aloud curriculum that reflects the diversity of the country students live in. In early September, she met Anderson through Elm City LIT Fest Founder IfeM ichelle Gardin, with whom she attended Hillhouse four decades ago. When she saw the books organized in the space, she said, it was love at first sight.

“I have 72 children’s books in this cur riculum, and when I saw them on her shelves, I said, ‘She’s definitely knows what’s going on!’” she recalled in a recent phone call. “She had titles that I didn’t have. I said, ‘Wow, this is great.’ She lit erally is catering to that community and providing a much-needed resource.”

Bailey added that she loves thinking of neighborhood kids coming into the store to read, whether they’re on the block be cause their parents are doing laundry or they and their friends live nearby. What moved her most, she added, was watch ing the warmth and familiarity with which Anderson interacted with every person who came through the door.

“Just the fact that she’s on a corner where I’m sure there used to be a lot of negative traffic,” she said. “I think she has repurposed that corner. Imagine children who can walk across the street and spend time reading.”

Possible Futures is open Tuesday and Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Visit its website here www.pos siblefuturesbooks.com

Cop Shot; Alleged Shooter Arrested

by THOMAS BREEN and PAUL BASS

Police Friday made an arrest in Hartford of a 36-year-old New Haven man accused of having shot New Haven cop Chad Curry earlier in the day.

Hartford and New Haven police worked together with federal law enforcement agents to make the arrest. The two departments’ SWAT teams surrounded a house on Putnam Street in Hartford. The alleged shooter eventually came outside and surrendered without incident, according to New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobson.

Curry was shot during an incident that occurred at Blatchley Avenue and Chapel Street in New Haven Friday around 1:30 a.m.

Curry, a nine-and-a-half-year veteran cop known for deescalating tense situations, responded to a single-vehicle crash. He heard the crash, called it in, and drove to the scene.

One of the people involved in the crash fled on foot. Curry drove along as the man fled east on Chapel.

Curry called out to the man to stop. The man fired bullets into Curry’s cruiser window.

Curry went out into the street. The man shot at him as he continued fleeing. Curry fired back.

“Signal 4,” Curry called through his radio. That’s the code for “officer needs assistance.”

Two bullets hit Curry, at least one of them inside the cruiser, perhaps one on the

street, according to the police chief. Curry’s ear was grazed. A bullet was lodged in his shoulder.

You can watch the encounter on dash cam video released by the state inspector general’s office Friday afternoon. The video appears at the top of this article. No one else was hit by the bullets, according to Jacobson. A vehicle and a building were hit.

“Everything was done by the book,” Jacobson said at a Friday afternoon press conference of Curry’s work. “He had no choice but to defend himself and fire back.”

Curry was transported from the scene by fellow officers to Yale New Haven Hospital, where the bullet was removed and Curry was treated for non-life-threatening

injuries. He was in good enough shape to be released, though he did break his shoulder, according to Jacobson.

Police charged the arrestee with firstdegree assault, assault on a public safety officer, criminal possession of a firearm, reckless endangerment, carrying a pistol without a permit, and unlawful discharge of a firearm. He was being held at 1 Union Ave. Friday afternoon on a $1 million bond. He is expected to appear in court Tuesday.

The arrestee also had an outstanding warrant related to a separate domestic violence incident.

“The officer did an amazing job under extremely dangerous and life-threatening circumstances,” Chief Jacobson said of Curry.

The chief said he visited Curry at home before the press conference. He said Curry was “doing well,” “up and walking,” making jokes.

The state inspector general’s office is investigating the incident, as is customary in police-involved shootings. The state’s attorney’s office and the state police are assisting New Haven police in their investigation.

Police ask that any witnesses who have not yet spoken with the Police to contact the New Haven Police Department Investigative Services Division at 203 – 9466304. Callers may remain anonymous or submit tips anonymously by calling 1 – 866-888-TIPS (8477), or text “NHPD” plus your message to 274637 (CRIMES).

THOMAS BREEN PHOTO Officer Curry at a July press conference celebrating his de-escalation work.

November Election Q: Should CT Vote Early?

by NOEL SIMS

New Haveners will have the chance to vote this second Tuesday of November about whether or not they should be able to vote in future elections before the second Tuesday of November.

That early voting question will be on the ballot this Nov. 8 for all Connecticut voters.

At Thursday night’s latest meeting of the Board of Alders City Services and Environmental Policy (CSEP) committee meeting, Aaron Goode of the Connecticut League of Women Voters urged alders, city officials, and anyone else listening to raise awareness about the coming statewide ballot referendum.

“It’s really important that we get out the word,” Goode told alders. “Our voters deserve to have the opportunity to know about this in advance and have their voices heard.”

So. What question will be on the ballot? And what does it mean?

In addition to seeing the names of candidates for federal and statewide office on Nov. 8’s general election ballot, New Haven and Connecticut voters more broadly will also see the following question:

“Shall the Constitution of the State be amended to permit the General Assembly to provide for early voting?”

A “yes” vote to that question would permit the state legislature to develop rules around how Connecticut voters would be able to cast their ballots in person at designated polling places before the actual day of a general election.

A “no” vote would mean that Connecticut would remain one of only four states in the country not to allow voters to cast their votes early in person.

According to materials that the League of Women Voters provided at the committee meeting, when Connecticut voters were given the option to vote early by mail in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, turnout was almost 80 percent. (Early voting is different from voting by absentee ballot because the former allows eligible voters to vote in person at a polling place before election day without the need to cite any excuse. The League of Women Voters also pointed out that early voting could accommodate long-distance commuters, people who may lose wages if they miss work to vote, and elderly or sick voters. It would also help cut lines on election day. They cited a 2016 Gallup poll which found that 80 percent of all voters and almost equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans favor early voting.

According to Goode, confusion about how to vote on the referendum may keep it from passing, despite widespread support

for early voting.

“The last time we had a referendum on the ballot was in 2014,” he said. “There were 8,000 people who left it blank that voted in other races and that was almost the total margin statewide by which it failed.”

He said that an effort by the committee and the full Board of Alders, as well as other city and state officials, would be necessary to help citizens know how to vote on this referendum. A sample ballot from the League of Women Voters shows the referendum in a small box on the right side of an already confusing page.

In a written response to a series of election-focused questions provided to the CSEP committee on Thursday, New Haven Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans described the early voting ballot question in this way:

“Connecticut Question 1, the Allow for Early Voting Amendment, is on the ballot in Connecticut as a legislatively referred constitutional amendment on November 8, 2022. A ‘yes’ vote supports amending the state constitution to authorize the state legislature to provide by law for in-person early voting before an election. A ‘no’ vote opposes amending the state constitution, thereby maintaining that early voting is not authorized in the state.”

Election Day is November 8!

ready to vote, Connecticut! Here’s what you need to know for Election Day 2022.

Make sure you’re registered to vote. The online registration deadline is November 1.

If you’re unable to vote in-person on Election Day due to being out of town for a period of time, because of the sickness or disability of your own or someone else, or because of the continued presence of COVID-19, you can still vote. Apply for an absentee ballot.

A state constitutional amendment is on the ballot this year. Voters can decide about allowing the option for early voting in Connecticut.

are often two-sided, so remember to flip your ballot over on Election Day.

voting information—including

your polling place—visit myvote.ct.gov

The Office of Secretary of the State

Aaron Goode: Let's not repeat 2014.

Trailblazer Gala Fêtes The Breadth Of A Diaspora

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

The whole dance floor was vibrating, drenched in blue and purple light. On a stage, DJ Fire bounced with the crowd, one arm perpetually suspended in the air.

On the floor, hands rose and swayed in time with the lyrics. Knees and shoulders un locked to the beat. Somewhere in the cen ter, a couple clasped hands and sank into a rhythm of their own making. The song fad ed right into the Master KG’s “Jerusalema,” and somehow the floor doubled in size, a rainbow of glitter, georgette, and organza. It marked the culmination of the Jamaican American Connection’s annual Trailblazer and Scholarship Gala Saturday night, held at the Omni New Haven hotel on Temple Street. Back in person for the first time since 2019, the event celebrated steel pan virtuoso Kenneth Joseph and JAC member and treasurer Richard Simpson, a senior director of research and development at Medtronic. In addition, it awarded scholar ships to students Kayla Smith, Tara Mal colm, and Jaye-Ann Walters. All of them are college freshmen who plan to study nursing.

By the end of the evening, it became a joy ful and long-needed celebration of the Ca ribbean diaspora, complete with pre-taped steel pan demos, acceptance speeches wo ven with laughter and patois, plates stacked with plantain, callaloo, salmon, and jerk chicken, and a dance floor soaked in soca and dancehall. The timing is particularly meaningful: the island celebrates 60 years of independence from the British Crown this year.

“It’s very hard to explain to people why we need to be together,” said JAC President Karaine Smith-Holness, at times holding back tears. “Not just as Jamaicans, or Trini dadians, but everybody across the diaspora. If we come together, there’s nothing we can’t do.’”

In Connecticut, there are nearly 40,000 state residents who were born in Jamaica, according to the most recent U.S. Census. Roughly 56,000 more people in the state claim Jamaican heritage, from first genera tion college students to artists, professors, doctors, and cultural ambassadors. As if on cue, Gov. Ned Lamont announced nonstop airplane service from Hartford to Jamaica earlier this month.

From the moment attendees stepped out onto the second floor lobby in sequins, all manner of bright silk, tencel, and deathdefyingly high heels, that call for solidar ity seemed to echo everywhere. Outside the ballroom, friends and colleagues posed against a backdrop of green, black and gold ribbon, the strings dancing in the light as they formed the colors of the Jamaican flag. Inside, they took in a glammed-up JAC backdrop from DJ Fire (a.k.a. Tafari Turner), complete with the organization’s acronym hanging in large black letters be hind him. A Jamaican and American flag waved from the monitor below.

They didn’t have to wait long for the party to begin; it was everywhere. On stage, DJ Fire slid into Kes’ “Hello,” making it hard

for attendees not to dance as they greeted friends, buzzed from table to table and found their seating assignments. Taking the mic in the center of the dance floor, emcee and Braata Productions Executive Director Andrew Clarke called latecomers into the room, tossing out the promise of dinner that seemed ever closer.

But it was when he called the audience to attention for the American and Jamaican national anthems that something shifted, and it felt like the gala was officially un derway.

At first, a listener could have heard a pin drop. Drums and bombastic horns rolled across the room, the Star-Spangled Ban ner booming from a speaker on stage. But when the word’s to Jamaica’s anthem be gan—Eternal Father bless our land! Guard us with Thy Mighty Hand!—hundreds of voices rose in unison. The song drew a line right back through history, tying the song’s birth to New Haven’s vivid present.

No sooner had it ended than both speak ers and awardees drove home the sheer magic of the night, including the ability to gather after so long in isolation. When Smith-Holness announced that “we’re fi nally here,” the room erupted in applause.

Taking the podium just moments after her, Consul General of Jamaica Alsion Wilson also called it a blessing to be together.

She remembered listening to the radio in her car earlier in the day, and hearing that Jamaica was no longer under a tropical storm watch as Hurricane Ian veered West.

It felt like fate.

“I said, ‘God bless Jamaica,’” she said.

Later in the evening, she walked attendees through the process of applying for dual cit izenship as they nibbled their way through the dessert course, thick cheesecake kissed with a dollop of chantilly cream.

Awardees, too, carried that sense of mo mentum with them. Accepting the first trailblazer award from Dr. Sherene Mason, a pediatric nephrologist at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and herself a proud Jamaican immigrant, Simpson re called growing up as the child of a single mother, watching her strive and struggle as she tried to make the road easier for her son. As he spoke he looked to the table where she sat in a long blue gown, holding on to every word.

His story is the story of so many Jamaican Americans in the U.S., he told attendees.

Simpson was born in Jamaica, and then moved to the U.S. when he was still young. In Connecticut, he thrived, earning degrees from Fairfield University and then later Southern Connecticut State University. He pointed to both the difficulty of the United States and its possibility, noting that “we get to take the opportunity of all it has to offer.”

While he is known publicly for his work at Medtronic, he said, his life is so much richer than that: he also acts as the treasurer for JAC, cycles avidly, and is an adoring father to two daughters. Walking out onto the dance floor, he presented the award to his mother, Elsa, who beamed as he held his arms out to her for an embrace.

That spirit flowed through an acceptance speech from Joseph, a native of Trinidad and Tobago who moved to the U.S. in 2008 for a graduate degree in music, and has led St. Luke’s Steel Band since 2010. Born and raised in Trinidad, Joseph started playing the steel pan when he was eight years old, and his godmother gifted him lessons after a glowing report card. It was June 1990, and little did Joseph know, the instrument was about to change his life.

Originally, he didn’t like the drum’s

sound—a tinkling, ringing and resonant bounce that he has come to welcome as it rises from the pan. But as he learned how to play, he stayed with it. He did not have music classes in his high school, and so learned on his own and took music theory instead.

He did not plan for the pan to be his life, he said Saturday. Instead, it was ultimately a job manager at a fast food restaurant who urged him to return to school for music, which he did. After studying at the Univer sity of the West Indies, he headed to North ern Illinois University for his graduate studies in music. In New Haven, he both directs the St. Luke’s Steel Band and is the dean of student culture at Booker T. Wash ington Academy.

“It’s amazing, to be recognized by another organization outside of your own,” he said, noting that Saturday marked Republic Day in Trinidad and Tobago. “It speaks vol umes. The pan ancestors are the ones who I have to channel [tonight], because without them and what they have done, there would be no me.”

When he plays pan, he added, he knows that he is carrying on a tradition of struggle and of resilience; that there are people who died so that he could study and teach the instrument. Because Joseph’s family was unable to make the gala—he has two sisters in New York, and his parents and a third sister live in Trinidad—he brought along his pan family.

In the last 12 years in New Haven, he has become beloved by musicians at St. Luke’s, where he routinely makes magic inside the Whalley Avenue sanctuary. At the church, he teaches multiple groups, including the PANdas, PANstars, and PANatics.

“I hope that my journey can inspire oth ers,” he said to applause as he accepted the

award.

In many ways, that delight and depth across a diaspora is the story of the JAC as it continues to evolve. After bringing back its annual Caribbean Heritage Festi val in the summer of 2021, the June fes tival moved downtown last year, building new partnerships with the Shubert Theatre and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. As it has continued to grow, it has worked to both amplify the voices of Carib bean Americans and support students, par ticularly those pursuing higher education. Since starting its gala, JAC has awarded 25 scholarships.

Giving out one of the scholarships, Dr. Kimala Bisasor-Williams praised the orga nization as looking out not only for adults living across the diaspora, but also for the young people who are the future of the or ganization. She smiled as she brought up Tara Malcolm, a 2022 grad of James Hill house High School who is now at Southern Connecticut State University.

It has also crowned a few “honorary Ja maicans,” including former New Haven In dependent reporter Markeshia Ricks, who now leads the Youth Arts Journalism Initia tive, and Launch Consulting LLC Presi dent Kia Levey-Burden. Saturday, SmithHolness thanked Ricks in particular for her steadfast support of JAC and the gala, from 2 a.m. phone calls to last minute planning details.

Indeed, even keynote speaker Anthony McDonald captured it as the gala’s ceremo ny neared its end, and DJ Fire prepared the crowd for a night of dancing. The child of Jamaican immigrants raised in New Jersey, McDonald recalled feeling “an additional weight on my shoulders” from the moment he walked into the Shubert, and made his tory as the theater’s first Black executive director (and theater’s first leader of color ever, since its founding in 1914).

He knew that he was breaking a bar rier that had existed for over a century, he said—and wanted to bring other people in the community with him.

“I asked them, ‘What has the Shubert done for this Caribbean community?’” he remembered asking his colleagues, genu inely curious. The answer was nothing at all. And so he started planning.

Even before the theater’s doors were open, he began to think about the perform ers he wanted to bring into the space. They were artists who reflected not just his lived experience, but all of New Haven’s. In just over a year, he has brought in the Jamai can jazz pianist Monty Alexander, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and musicals meant to provide enough variety for everyone. Next year, he said with a smile, audiences will be able to witness the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, back in Connecticut for the first time since 2004.

“My roots, my history, my love for Ja maica runs deep,” he said to thunderous applause. He urged attendees to come to shows, and spread the word that the Shu bert, steadily, was changing to look more like its home city and state. “Let’s end the false narrative that we don’t support one another.”

Kenneth Joseph (second from left) with Danielle Sanderson, Hayden Worrell and Donna Pantin-Worrell.

Renters, Homebuyers Get $4M Lifeline

by THOMAS BREEN

Tatania Sellers was pregnant, in between jobs, and looking for some way to get herself and her kids into an apartment — not into a homeless shelter.

Thanks to a newly launched city aid program, she and her family were able to move into a new home on Starr Street in her “time of need.”

Sellers shared that story Tuesday afternoon during a city-hosted press conference on the second floor of City Hall. The press conference itself marked the official launch of two housing assistance programs run by the Livable City Initiative (LCI) out of City Hall and funded by federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars.

The first provides up to $5,000 in security deposit assistance for low-income renters, while the second boosts the city’s existing downpayment assistance program for income-eligible homebuyers by up $15,000 per recipient. Both fall under the heading of the so-called “I’m Home Initiative,” which the alders dedicated a total of $13 million to in August.

Out of that larger allocation, $3 million is dedicated to the security-deposit assistance program, while $1 million is dedicated to an expansion of the downpayment assistance program.

Standing alongside Mayor Justin Elicker, LCI Executive Director Arlevia Samuel,

and Downtown/East Rock Alder Eli Sabin, Sellers told the reporters and city staff assembled before her about how the security deposit assistance program has already changed her life for the better. And it did so over a month ago, even before it officially launched.

A 30-year-old Brooklyn native who has lived in New Haven for the past 16 years, Sellers held back tears as she thanked city staffers for helping her “in my time of need.”

Already a single mother raising two kids, Sellers said that she had to leave her previous job at a local post office when she became pregnant with her third. She wound up needing to have a C section. She found herself looking for an apartment while recovering from surgery. She ultimately found a single-family house on Starr Street to rent — but didn’t have enough money on hand to cover the cost of the security deposit, which was equal to two months’ rent, or $3,600.

“I came here a few days after I had my surgery with my newborn baby,” she remembered about coming to City Hall late this summer. “And they literally sat here and took the time out, before the program even opened, to help me.”

She said she was able to get a commitment from LCI to cover the $3,600 security deposit, allowing her to move into her Starr Street home on Sept. 1. Her landlord agreed to hold off on collecting the security deposit on the assurance that the city would be covering it. She said the city sent out that aid directly to her landlord last week.

“I really appreciate that,” she said. “That was a very nervewracking” time. She wanted to find a safe place for her and her kids to live, and “didn’t want to go into the shelter” instead.

Now she’s applying for work at the Amazon warehouse in North Haven, where she once held a job, and at FedEx. She’s sending out those applications without having to worry for now about having a roof over her family’s head.

She urged others to come to City Hall or call or go online to apply for the same program she did. “For you out there, they are willing to help you guys,” she said to anyone who may be listening who is in a similar spot to the one she was in a little more than a month ago. “Come down to City Hall, and they will help you if they can.”

“People Need Housing”

Elicker, Samuel and Sabin spent most of Tuesday’s press conference detailing exactly how these two newly launched programs will work.

“Everyone knows that having a safe, warm, clean, quality home helps you thrive,” the mayor said. “And if you don’t have those attributes, you’re not going to be successful in whatever endeavor you go on.”

Samuel agreed. “People need housing,” she said. “There is an affordable housing shortage.”

With the newly launched security deposit assistance program, she said, “hopefully more people will be able to find a home and move in quicker rather than being homeless or living with a friend.” And the expanded downpayment assistance program will help more aspiring homeowners “have as much equity” as they can when looking to buy a house. How do these programs work?

The security deposit program covers security deposits worth up to two months’ rent, or a cap of $5,000, for renters who make no more than 300 percent of the federal poverty guidelines for the New Haven/ Meriden area. That translates to between $38,640 for a one-person household to $79,500 for a family of four.

Samuel said that income-eligible renters can also receive an additional up to $1,500 in utility assistance through this Con’t on page 22

Alder Sabin, Mayor Elicker, and LCI Director Samuel.

Baseball Legend Helping to Rebuild Africatown

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

AfricaTown is considered a dying municipality in Alabama that sits along the Gulf Coast and next to Mobile.

At its peak, Africatown had about 12,000 residents. Now, about 1,800 call it home. It is famous – or infamous – for the Clotilda, the last slave ship that landed in the United States in 1860.

It is the home of some of the last survivors of the transatlantic slave trade and the birthplace of legendary New York Mets outfielder Cleon Jones, who caught the final out in the 1969 World Series that clinched victory for the Miracle Mets.

Through their charitable “Last Out Community Foundation,” Jones and his wife of more than 50 years, Angela, help repair storm-damaged homes in Africatown and assist the small community in rebuilding efforts.

Jones, 78, actively participates in the efforts.

“Like I tell my wife, I’m old, but I’m not dead. I can walk up the ladder and do what needs to be done,” Jones remarked. “In my younger days, I could walk up the ladder, but I could jump off the house getting down. I can’t jump off the house anymore. Now I walk down the ladder. I have to be careful.”

The “Last Out Community Foundation” was formed to raise funds to refurbish and build affordable homes, combat blight, and provide positive youth programs in Africatown.

Growing up in the small community during the 1940s and 1950s left a mark on him, stated Jones, who credits greats like Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, and Billy Williams for helping to shape the person he became – one who, despite his success, never forgot his roots.

“We service the community by painting houses and restoring houses,” Jones told the New York Post.

“And since the storms (Hurricanes Sally and Zeta), we’ve had a lot of roof problems in which the storms blew the roof off.

“When I grew up in this community, we had 12- to 14,000 people. Now we are looking at 1,800. That says we are a dying community. I know I can’t replicate the community, but we can still fight to restore it as best we can and preserve the history of the community.”

Jones is best remembered as a vital member of the 1969 Mets.

During the 1960s, the Mets had a reputation for frequent losses, suffering a record 120 defeats in their debut year of 1962.

In their first six years, the Mets lost an average of 108 games. But, in 1969, the underdog Mets launched themselves into

the 1969 World Series and the history books when against all odds, they miraculously defeated the mighty Baltimore Orioles.

Jones closed his glove on the final out, a flyball by the Orioles’ Davey Johnson that sent all of New York into a celebration.

Now, Jones wants to celebrate giving others in his beloved community a second chance.

“It takes money and manpower and materials, all of those things,” Jones said.

“What I’ve been doing is reaching out to businesses in the area seeking materials and help to do certain things. The people, they reach out to you — maybe not as much as you would like or hope, but they hear you. With the pandemic, it just adds fuel to the fire. You don’t get a chance to shake hands with people and reach out to them where you can make things happen.”

Black Chef Makes History, Triples Orders of All-Natural Soul Food Seasoning Mix, From 3,000 to 10,000 Bottles

By BlackBusiness.com

Meet Darren Campbell, a chef entrepreneur from Charleston, South Carolina who is the founder and CEO of Palmetto Blend, a Black-owned soul food seasoning product that offers an authentic taste to food with no artificial preservatives.

Palmetto Blend is a premium seasoning mix that combines the perfect measurements of seven all Natural spices that bring out the flavor in everything you cook. Darren grew up eating in his grandmother’s kitchen. He recalls on Fridays when his grandma would cook fish and red rice dinners to raise money for the church. People would be lined up to get some of that home-cooked flavor.

Palmetto Blend seasoning follows the rich Gullah tradition of making food with love by providing customers with a taste of southern soul in a bottle. Darren comments, “Whether it’s seafood, meats, or vegetables, your taste buds will be dazzled by the flavors that my seasoning mix unleashes in your foods.” Customers can purchase online via our website or from one of the 20 locations in and around Charleston SC. Last year, we partnered with a co-packer to handle the increasing demand. Since then, Palmetto Blend has tripled in orders from 3,000 bottles to 10,000 bottles and is posed to go national in 2023.

Chef Darren has been cooking up delicious meals for over two decades and is well known for the rice dishes that he makes during family gatherings. He comments, “Growing up in Charleston, SC allowed me the chance to enjoy real Gullah and southern dishes.” He is also the author of Charleston’s Gullah Reci-

pes Cookbook which features 50 favorite family recipes. These recipes emphasize Charleston’s fresh seafood such as Shrimp and Grits and tasty desserts such as Sweet Potato Pie, along with traditional Sunday dinner favorites such as Collard Greens with Fried Chicken and Macaroni and Cheese.

The Gullah people cooked with local ingredients that they grew in the field, caught from the river, and brought over from Africa. Charleston’s Gullah Recipes satisfies the hunger for authentic, easy-to-prepare Southern dishes. Palmetto Blend and Charleston’s Gullah Recipes are adding depth to Southern flavor.

For more details and/or to buy the product, visit PalmettoBlend.com

Cleon Jones

Darren Campbell,

Oakland OPINION: Law enforcement is what we do to people. Public safety is what we do with people

By Gregory Hodge

As a mayoral candidate, I want to see De partment of Violence Prevention’s (DVP) current budget of $28M doubled to $56M. That would allow us to create a Behavioral Health Unit that supports our neighbors and families who are at the center of this crisis. Let’s vote for City officials who will fund it at a level that can rise to the challenge of this moment.

Law enforcement is what we do to people. Public safety is what we do with people.

The City of Oakland has an agency that is charged with leading and coordinating our prevention efforts with people, aptly called the Department of Violence Preven tion (DVP), which is loosely patterned on the Richmond Office of Neighborhood Safety, a model that I helped launch in 2008. Over a five-year period, homicides in Richmond decreased by 70%. Instead of vaguely following its structure, let’s properly implement the pieces that are proven to reduce violence in our streets. A vote for me is a vote to fully implement the Mobile Assistance Community Re

sponders of Oakland, known as MACRO. This initiative shows substantial promise as its staff works to intervene in non-vi olent 911 calls, freeing up police services to address violent criminal behavior. We should create a community ambassador team that employs formerly incarcerated, returning neighbors who know the streets.

To further illustrate just how discon nected our leaders are, there was a shoot ing near Frank Ogawa Plaza during a City Council meeting on National Voter Registration Day. City Council took a brief recess and then immediately re sumed business as usual. While gun vio lence rampaged outside, they were inside discussing the proposal to provide over $250M in public funds for the Oakland A’s Howard Terminal ballpark development. While they were deciding how to spend our tax dollars without letting us vote on the matter, another tragic, senseless homi cide took place literally outside the doors of City Hall.

Two more killings happened that same evening in East Oakland. Four others in the preceding week in other parts of town. The crisis rages on with virtual si

lence from those charged with keeping up safety.

Data shows that only about 200 indi viduals are responsible for most of our

violent crime. In many ways, these indi viduals are both perpetrators and victims of the violence we see.

Prevention work is critical to our safety.

Law enforcement resources should be fo cused on the most serious, violent crimes. Our capacity to investigate, arrest and hold people accountable can be vastly im proved as we free up the human and tech nical resources to do so.

National Voter Registration Day was Sept. 20. Let’s use the tool of voting to bring solutions to our most challenging problems. Mail ballots will begin arriving shortly after Oct. 10 and Election Day is Nov. 8. Register and make a plan to vote. Encourage new voters to get involved. Encourage our returning, formerly incar cerated neighbors to vote. Let’s make the turnout for Oakland historic and address the safety crisis at hand.

You can register to vote at the California Secretary of State’s website at http://www. registertovote.ca.gov.

To learn more about our platform, go to http://www.hodgeforoakland.com.

The post OPINION: Law enforcement is what we do to people. Public safety is what we do with people. first appeared on Post News Group. This article originally appeared in Post News Group.

WGA Caddie Academy Awarded $125,000 From PGA TOUR

To Support Programming That Reaches Underserved and Underrepresented Youth

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida & GLENVIEW, Illinois – The PGA TOUR announced that the Western Golf As sociation (WGA) Caddie Academy is the recipient of a $125,000 award. The nonprofit organization, headquartered in Chicago, was selected by the NV5 Invi tational presented by Old National Bank – a Korn Ferry Tour event contested at The Glen Club in Glenview, Illinois – as the charitable beneficiary of the inaugural PGA TOUR Charity Challenge.

Founded in 2012, the WGA Caddie Academy is a unique summer work pro gram that provides caddie opportunities to promising high school students from around the country who show academic excellence and leadership potential. This past summer, more than 140 participants attended one of five Caddie Academy chapters nationwide to caddie daily for seven weeks while living together. After successfully completing three summers, these students become eligible to apply for the Evans Scholarship – a full tuition and housing scholarship to college.

“For young people who don’t have ac cess to caddie programs where they live, the WGA Caddie Academy offers a sup portive community and an opportunity to experience the benefits that caddying pro vides,” said John Kaczkowski, President and CEO of the WGA and Evans Schol ars Foundation. “As we expand this lifechanging initiative, these funds will help us reach more students nationwide and in still in them the core values that will guide them on the golf course and throughout their lives.”

The Caddie Academy began in the Chicago area with an initial group of 12 participants. Today, it has grown to five chapters nationwide, with a sixth loca tion to open in Ohio next summer. Current chapters include:

• Caddie Academy for Young Women (Lake Forest, Illinois)

• Caddie Academy for Young Men (Evanston, Illinois)

• Eastern Caddie Academy (State Col lege, Pennsylvania)

• Minnesota Caddie Academy (Minne apolis, Minnesota)

• Seattle Caddie Academy (Seattle, Washington)

Participants are chosen during their freshman year of high school based on showing outstanding academics, leader ship and character. The average house hold income of participants in the Caddie Academy is $30,000, and more than 90% of the program’s participants are students of color.

The Caddie Academy’s structured sum mer program is centered on four major components: caddying, academic devel opment, community involvement and per sonal growth. Students get the opportunity to earn money, meet role models, learn invaluable life lessons and eventually earn a college scholarship. To date, 118 Caddie Academy graduates have been awarded

During the 2021-22 PGA TOUR season, as part of the PGA TOUR Charity Chal lenge, host organizations across the PGA TOUR, Korn Ferry Tour and PGA TOUR Champions had the opportunity to select a local charitable beneficiary with specific programs and services that address diver sity, equity and inclusion in underserved or underrepresented communities.

Every week, the amount of FedExCup points each tournament’s eight-player fantasy-style roster earned was totaled, and the team with the highest total each week won a $5,000 contribution to its charitable beneficiary. Each team’s Fed ExCup points were counted throughout the 2021-22 PGA TOUR season, and the team with the highest accumulation after the BMW Championship was crowned the season-long winner, earning the top prize of $100,000 for its charitable partner.

The NV5 Invitational earned $25,000 throughout the season and the Charity Challenge grand prize of $100,000.

Get to know two of this year’s partici pants in the WGA Caddie Academy: Melanie Tapia was born and raised in Chicago – and always knew the ex pectations that came with being a firstgeneration child. Her parents came from Ecuador, seeking more opportunity while continuously emphasizing education and hard work. Melanie received a high school scholarship to attend a boarding school, “leaving behind home, family and friends,

just like my parents had, to receive the ed ucation they dreamed of for me,” she said. Through school, Melanie was connected to the Caddie Academy, where she spent her next few summers learning the game of golf. By excelling in school and on the course as a caddie, Melanie earned a full tuition and housing Evans Scholarship to Northwestern University, where she is now a freshman. “Going to college has provided me with new learning experi ences – and the life-changing opportunity to fulfill my dreams of a better future for myself and my family,” she said.

As a young girl, Star Brooks always wondered what college was like – but didn’t know if it was something she’d be able to experience herself. “Life in my family has not been easy, but working hard has always been my priority,” she said. Spending her summers with the Cad die Academy pushed her entirely out of her comfort zone, but her desire to be a “role model of integrity” led her to stick out the challenges – and find a new fam ily of support along the way. Now a se nior at the University of Illinois – and the first in her family to go to college – Star is pursuing two college degrees and hopes to go into sports marketing. “I can clearly see how my caddie experiences have con tributed to my character and helped me become the person I am today,” she said. “I have learned so many leadership skills, all of which will help me make my future dreams become a reality.”

About the Korn Ferry Tour

Founded (1990), owned and operated by the PGA TOUR, the Korn Ferry Tour identifies and develops golf’s next stars, preparing them to compete and win on the game’s biggest stage. The Korn Ferry Tour, which has served as a path to the PGA TOUR since its inception, will be gin awarding 30 PGA TOUR cards based off its points list in 2023, with the No. 1 player earning exemptions into the fol lowing year’s PLAYERS Championship and U.S. Open. With more than 600 PGA TOUR titles, 28 major championships and six FedExCup champions, Korn Ferry Tour alumni make up over 80 percent of the PGA TOUR’s current membership.

To learn more about the PGA TOUR, the Korn Ferry Tour and to follow the seasonlong quest for a PGA TOUR card, visit PGATOUR.COM or follow the Korn Fer ry Tour on social media.

Six Korn Ferry Tour events are televised annually on GOLF Channel in the United States, with tournament programming also available via 22 linear TV partners in 170-plus countries and territories. Over 70 hours of live coverage is available in 130plus countries and territories. Program ming is also available via the OTT plat form GOLFTV powered by PGA TOUR in every market outside of the United States (240-plus countries and territo ries), excluding China, Korea and Russia, with live coverage distributed in 130-plus countries and territories.

Find Space

forgiveness, saying that other emotions can coexist equally alongside the healing pro cess and serve as a catalyst for change. She acknowledged that for years, she has car ried the grief and the trauma so others in her family don’t have to. Friday, she was laying some of that burden down.

“So yeah, I’m angry,” she said. “I’ve al ways been angry. But the healing comes from saving someone else. Because I had siblings, too. And I allowed myself to be the victim so they weren’t.”

“You know, it’s easy for us to say that hurt people hurt other people, but caring people care for other people too,” Pettigrew-Lee responded. “And sometimes we care at the expense of sacrificing not only our sanity, but also our safety.”

Teaching people to talk about breaking that cycle is part of the work, she said. Across the space, snippets of conversation floated through the air, each followed by a suggestion on how to speak about them. As she headed towards a CT VIP table outside, facilitator Shaina Smith said that her work is now dedicated to making sure people have the vocabulary to talk about that trauma.

Born and raised in Bloomfield, Smith has lived that herself: she was the victim of sexual assault when she was a child. It was only years later, when she was 19, that she learned the words for what she had experi enced. She got to the point where “I know I can function with it,” she said—and she’s trying to pass that message on.

“You know how they say music is the universal language? Unfortunately trauma is too,” she said. “You’re never going to meet somebody that doesn’t have trauma. So that’s what I’m trying to convey to the adults, and to the youth too. They don’t know that they have a voice. That you’re allowed to speak of your trauma.”

Back inside, BLOOM owner Alisha Crutchfield-McLean said she was glad to host the roundtable, and would welcome the Interruptions crew back anytime. She and Cooper met years ago, introduced by a cousin well before the Edgewood Avenue storefront was open. They bonded over not just their hometown—both hail from Boston—but the fact that they’d both ex perienced death of loved ones as a major interruption in their lives.

“We just instantly connected,” Crutch field-McLean said. “We’ve been friends since then.”

It was that sense of connection that made her excited to open the space to attendees Friday, Crutchfield-McLean said. When she opened just over a year ago, her vision for the space was driven by a desire to gath er community. Now, she’s doing it.

“BLOOM is blooming,” she said. “It takes on a mind and an energy of its own. I just nurture it. I maintain it. I make sure that it’s good to be ready for people every day.”

Learn more about “Interruptions,” includ ing how to bring the curriculum to your place of work go to www.revodellresil ience.com

Korn Ferry Tour’s NV5 Invitational Wins Inaugural PGA TOUR Charity Challenge the Evans Scholarship.

GOVERNOR LAMONT

IS WORKING FOR US BY:

Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour

Passing paid family leave so workers can care for sick loved ones

Suspending the 25-cent gas tax

Expanding healthcare to 40,000 people

Making historic investments in public education, including new funding for early childhood education

The Stigma Around Male Domestic Violence

How do we discuss this issue and what can we ultimately do to help?

By Brianna Patt How Male Abuse is Minimized

In an op-ed by Neffer Kerr titled, “Strong & Silent: Breaking the Stigma of Abuse Because Black Men Are Victims, Too,” by Ebony Magazine, Kerr recalls learning that her male friend, who was over six feet tall and gave off a facade of confidence, was being abused. All of these issues en tered the forefront of her mind when Yas mine Elder killed Darius Ellis in 2017, forcing him to drink bleach. Kerr went on to express the dichotomy that male vic tims face due to how we view Black men, as well as calling for the creation of safe spaces for them to seek the help they need.

“We need to make sure we are open to what someone is saying and not negat ing their experience by telling them they are allowing it to happen or laughing at them because of their gender. The most detrimental thing you can do to someone who is attempting to share their pain is to minimize, ridicule, or call them a names. We always claim we want the men in our lives to be honest with us, but that can not happen in an emotionally hostile or dismissive environment. Abuse knows no color, race, age, ethnicity, socio-economic status, or gender,” Kerr said.

According to Analysis of Family Vio lence Fatalities in 2020 found that of the 228 Texans killed by their intimate part ners, 40 women killed their male partners, a 28% increase from 2018 and 2019, with 30% being Black.

The downplaying and ridicule male abuse victims face is something, accord ing to Ryan Thomas, Community Educa tion Program Manager at Hope’s Door New Beginning Center, linked to how children are socialized.

“From a young age, girls are taught to disregard their boundaries, or you have to let boys cross if it’s because of love or affection, and boys were told, “stiff upper lip, don’t cry, you play like a girl.” So, we’re taught from a young age to deval ue women. Society wants us to be in the “man box.” So, men are supposed to be dominant and aggressive and all this stuff. That sets up a hierarchy already where one gender has power and control over the other. Essentially one’s dominant, one’s submissive and that’s the exact power and control dynamics of an abusive relation ship. Society tells us that men should be dominant and women submissive. So, this doesn’t line up with reality, that often times men are abused. So, those gender stereotypes- we know that the more than someone adheres to them more strictly, the more likely they are to be accepting, abuse or violence in a relationship both as the abuser and as the victim as well,” Thomas said.

In an article done by the World Eco nomic Forum, Vanita Sundaram stated

that among the young people she spoke to about whether or not violence was unac ceptable provided a variety of responses, with them stating that men are innately violent. Women hitting men was seen as “unproblematic,” with people arguing that women are physically weaker and frail (thus, their use of violence was less sig nificant).

“This distinction between different forms of violence makes wholesale prevention difficult. Given that gender appears to be a primary influence on young people’s views on violence, schools should priori tize teaching about equality between the genders in order to effectively challenge the acceptance and justification of some forms of violent behavior,” Sundaram said.

The Effects of Domestic Violence On Men

Thomas points out that while the physi cal scars of the abuse men face will in evitably dissipate the deeper wounds are emotional.

“The pain is temporary but being made to feel stupid, ugly, worthless, lazy. That lasts a whole lifetime. And so that’s also minimized as men are not allowed to show emotions. So being made to feel stupid or to wear this and lazy, doesn’t just show on the outside,” Thomas said.

In a paper titled, “Black Men’s Intimate Partner Violence Victimization, Help Seeking, and Barriers to Help-Seeking,” Meagan A. Stewart explains that for Black

men, there’s pressure to maintain “hege monic masculinity” (the masculine ideal that society tells men to aspire to and the standards against which men are com pared). However, due to white supremacy, they can’t get these masculine ideals and are instead stereotyped. Stewart argues that this leads to an environment where Black men are less likely to be believed about their abuse.

“Men of Color are often unable to reach hegemonic masculine ideals due to white supremacy embedded within these ideals (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005; Rome ro, 2017). Black men specifically have been stereotyped to be aggressive, hy persexual, routinely labeled as criminals (Collins, 2009; Roth, 2004), and have a history of police, legal system, and medi cal maltreatment (Griffith et al., 2011; Jaiswal & Halkitis, 2019). These contexts create an environment where Black men may not seek IPV-related help when need ed, and if they do, they might experience disbelief by professionals and systems, and encounter police brutality as assumed perpetrators (Fugate et al., 2005; Graham et al., 2020; Jaiswal & Halkitis, 2019),” Stewart said.

According to Thomas, the effects of inti mate partner violence on men range from physical issues like a shortened life expec tancy to mental health issues.

“Devastating losses to life expectancy and health, all sorts of physical ailments like Alzheimer’s, and of course, cortisol and adrenaline, pumping through a sys

tem that can have not only those physical effects which could be stomach issues. It could be complex PTSD, anxiety, depres sion and self-destructive behaviors. I think the emotional toll that it takes, often, the deepest and then the things that we can you know when we’re young filter, you know, forever retained a kind of, you know, how we are going to react in future situations and so, the real tragedy of the year and so, that gets passed down genera tions,” Thomas said.

As for what we can do both systemically and individually to help work against in timate partner violence, Thomas states we should work to stop using gendered reasons for how we treat others. He also states that when helping victims, we should focus on offering concern and vali dation.

“The goal for anybody should be to show concern and validate. Hey, I see you, and I’m concerned, I’m worried about your safety. Then how can I help you explore options and resources? How can I sup port you in that endeavor, rather than say ing, “you need to get out.” Because what makes somebody a victim of abuse is that somebody is constantly telling them what to do with that power and control. So even if we’re trying to be helpful to a loved one, and say, “You need to get out, we’re disempowering them.” So really, it’s about understanding that anybody can be a victim of abuse, it doesn’t discriminategrandson’s abuse grandmother, males abuse males. We don’t have to be experts

in it. We just have to be compassionate hu man beings,” he said.

The Mend Project refers to this as harm ful, and backs Thomas’ statement, arguing that it can be beneficial to the well being of the victim.

“On the other hand, providing muchneeded emotional validation is easy to do and will go a long way in helping the victim. Emotional validation is the pro cess of learning about, understanding and expressing acceptance of another person’s emotional experience. You do not need to understand their emotional experience, agree with it, or know the facts behind it in order to validate it,”

Thomas also states that women are not the main assailants, which leaves a gap in the abuse that women perpetuate against men, which goes unnoticed.

“It’s more likely that for the women who do perpetrate violence against men, they’re not the primary aggressors. That does leave, of course, this gaping hole of women who do use and are violent to wards men, right. They’ll oftentimes that’s not noticed, or it’s overshadowed because of you know, the stigma. But I always just like to say, women do suffer dispropor tionately more,” he said.

Hope for Change & Understanding

While Thomas hopes the recent Depp vs Heard defamation trial can shine a light on this issue, he still does not see much change on the horizon.

“I think if any positive that could happen is that the recognition that this- whether it did or not happen to whomever-it could happen to men, right? It can have just the same social, psychological, emotional and social consequences. For the children, we cannot forget about the kids who are wit nessing this are going to be much more likely to grow up to be abusive or victims themselves. But the short answer is no, I haven’t seen that stigma change much yet,” he said.

Thomas states that we can better under stand intimate partner violence than men are afflicted with, we must better under stand abuse as a whole.

“I think understanding that domestic abuse is about power and control and that it’s not about why you stay or reasons to stay. It’s what are the barriers to leaving, right? Because only when we can under stand the whole power control dynamic, can we then understand the barriers? And then can we find a pathway out of that for est,” he said.

Resources for Black Men Facing Domes tic Violence: Hotline Resource: thehotline.org/what-toexpect-when-you-contact-us Shelters for Male Victims: FamilyPlace. org

Photo: Air Force Medical Services website

Estevanico: The Man The Myth, The Legend

The first Black person in the New World

By Merdies Hayes, Editor | Our Weekly

The history of slavery in the Western Hemisphere has, of course, been well documented but there is one name that is often overlooked in within the posterity of Black people in the New World: Este vanico.

Sometimes called “Mustafa Zemmouri,” “Black Stephen,” “Esteban the Moor” or “Steven Dorantes” (after his owner Andres Dorantes, a Spanish nobleman), Estevanico was a member of the Panfilo de Narvaez 300-man Spanish expedition which arrived in April 1528 near presentday Tampa Bay, Fla. The expedition was largely doomed from the start. This was not uncommon among the list of Span ish conquistadors who ventured to the New World seeking fertile land and un told riches imagined from the artful tales of Giovanni Verrazano who explored the northeast, Cabeza de Vaca in the Gulf of Mexico, Hernando Cortes in Mexico, Her nando de Soto near present-day Florida, and Francisco Pizarro far south in Peru.

Who was Estevanico?

Chroniclers from the 16th Century, who were contemporaries of Estevanico, con sidered him a Negro. However, modern historians claim he was descended from the Hamites who were White residents of North Africa. According to this theory, Es tevanico could not have been Black. His torian Caroll L. Riley has asserted that Es tevanico was “Black in the sense that we would use the word in modern America. Actually, in modern generic terms I sus pect that Estevanico was very mixed.”

Riley also explained that if Estevanico was considered a “Negro,” his mixture must have been mainly Black. Estevanico in 1513 was sold into slavery to the Por tuguese in the town of Azemmour, a Por tuguese enclave on Morocco’s Atlantic coast. More contemporary accounts have referred to him as an “Arabized Black” or Moor, the latter term often used for Berber natives. History primarily refers to him as a Black African. A Spaniard, Diego de Guzman, reportedly saw Estevanico in 1536 and described him as “brown.”

Estevanico was reared as a Muslim— with some accounts of him converting to Roman Catholicism—but there is little historical account of his religious conver sion.

The natives of one tiny island off the mainland coast (Galveston Island near Texas), encountered a strange sight in 1528: A band of emaciated White men lying naked and near dead on the beach.

This group, in large part, was what was left from Narvaez’ expedition with de Vaca serving as its treasurer. Narvaez dreamed of riches when he reached the

Florida coast and after finding mere traces of gold, he split the group and dispatched the ships toward the River of Palms (to day’s Rio Grande) and took the land force toward a reportedly “rich” city brimming with gold and silver called Apalachen (near Tallahassee, Fla.).

A doomed expedition

Instead of finding their heart’s desire in wealth, the only things encountered in the Florida Panhandle were naked Native Indians, low supplies of food and even less game. The 260-man party lasted two weeks in this region, and eventually set out on makeshift boats with sails made from clothing. This was a fateful mistake. There was practically no food left or fresh water to drink. After constantly bailing water from their rickety crafts (and forced to drink salt water), only a few people sur vived and made it to shore. Narvaez was lost at sea.

Cortes, for his part, had listened faithful ly to these “tales of riches” but found nei ther a queen called “Califia” nor gold and pearls along the west coast. He did, how ever, step ashore onto what he believed to be an island (Baja California) finding nei ther riches or fertile land, but would claim the land for the Spanish crown.

Cabeza de Vaca eventually made it to Mexico with only three men, among them Estevanico. There they recounted the hor rors of slavery, starvation, cannibalism and disease which took the lives of 90 men. They reportedly posed as shamans,

crossing the land curing sick Indians and attracting quite a following in being la beled “children of the sun” because of their long journey from the east. By the spring of 1529, those four men had trav eled on foot along the Texas coast to the environs of Matagorda Bay (about 80 miles northeast of Corpus Christi) only to be captured and enslaved by the Coa huiltecan Indians. Six years later the four men managed to escape their bondage and entered Mexico.

Arriving in Texas

Estevanico was assuredly the first Afri can to traverse Texas. In fact, historians believe he was the first African to visit the indigenous people of Mexico and may have reminded the inhabitants of the an cient sculptures of the Olmec civilization in Mesoamerica (1200-900 B.C.) which depicted persons with Black facial fea tures. Estevanico, by extension, may have been considered by the native population as a descendant of the gods. Some writers have claimed that the Olmecs were related to the peoples of Africa, based primarily on their interpretations of said facial fea tures, even contending that epigraphical and osteological evidence may support their claims. Further, some researchers have claimed that the Mesoamerican writ ing systems are related to African script.

To date, however, genetic and immu nological studies over the decades have failed to yield evidence of precolumbian African contributions to the indigenous

populations of the Americas.

By 1539, Dorantes had either sold or loaned Estevanico to Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, who later assigned him to the company of Fray Marcos de Niza, the lat ter charged with leading a follow-up trip to the region of the failed Narvaez expedi tion. In a strange coincidence, Estevanico and others were surprised to encounter de Vaca near present-day San Antonio, Texas. By then, de Vaca had been working as a trader among the various Native In dian tribes. They resided in that region for about four years with Estevanico working as a shaman or medicine man versed in several Native Indian languages and also demonstrating his prowess as a seasoned explorer.

Estevanico must have been a strange sight to the native peoples. He rode around with a special gourd trimmed with owl feathers that signified his status. He reportedly had an entourage of some 300 natives, kept two Castillian greyhounds as pets, and possessed a special “medicine” wand with bells affixed to it said to ward off (and supposedly cure) various dis eases. He also carried with him special plates made of turquoise specifically for his meals. He even had a special lodging constructed fit for a man of his stature.

Dreams of untold riches

Like the others before him, Estevanico was consumed by discovering the Seven Cities of Gold. His ultimate goal was to reach one of the seven famed cities of Ci

bola (near modern Zuni, NM) which was said to have streets paved with gold. When Estevanico and his entourage arrived at Hawikuh, a Zuni pueblo made of stone buildings several stories high, he expected to be treated as the man of stature he’d be come accustomed to.

But the Zuni’s didn’t trust him. They es pecially disapproved of his gourd covered with owl feathers which were a symbol of death to that tribe. Also, his rather unusual stories about great White kings from far away further drew suspicion among the Zuni tribal leaders. There are two general accounts surrounding the fate of Este vanico. In one scenario, the Zuni people decided he was a spy (or simply a fraud) and killed him. Some accounts contend that he offended the Zuni people so much that they staged three executions eventu ally cutting up his body into little pieces. A second theory is that the Zunis didn’t kill him and that Estevanico staged his own death with the help of his allies, therefore finally gaining his freedom from slavery. The latter theory is supported by the fact that his body was never found.

His mysterious demise

The Zunis were asked why they killed Estevanico and they said that he claimed a huge army was following him with weap ons meant to kill their tribe. Several of his Native Indian escorts reportedly escaped from the Zunis and returned to Mexico to inform Fray Marcos that Estevanico was dead. In his report to Viceroy Mendoza, Marcos said that he continued to travel north to at last enter Cibola (or Hawikuh) and upon arrival he witnessed a chief with Estevanico’s turquoise dinner plates, his two greyhound dogs, and his famed “med icine” bells.

Irrespective of his demise, Estevanico is one of many historical figures of color who manipulated their situation to move between cultures and transcend their humble beginnings. His is a true story of transformation from a slave to a man of legend evidenced by the Zunis memorial izing him in a black ogre kachina (a doll measuring about a foot high with protrud ing teeth, a black goatee and black facial paint) which they called Chakwaina.

A legendary adventure

The tale of Estevanico is more than a story told in the oral tradition. Often, the history and contributions to society by Black persons prior to European settle ment in the New World are considered less authentic and reliable in terms of literary content because it was believed Blacks did not ascribe to a written language. Es

Documentary Celebrates 40th Anniversary of Michael Jackson’s Thriller

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

When the Grammy Awards ostensibly snubbed Michael Jackson’s groundbreak ing 1979 album, Off The Wall, the thenfledgling King of Pop vowed that voters at the Recording Academy would not ignore what he would offer next.

On November 30, 1982, just over three years later, Jackson released Thriller, which earned him a then record-breaking 8 Grammy Awards, including “Album of the Year.”

To commemorate the 40-year anniversa ry of Thriller, the Jackson estate and Sony Music Entertainment said they’re cel ebrating the artistic vision that anchored the biggest selling album of all time with a new official documentary.

Directed by Nelson George, the film promises to take fans back in time to the making of the album and release of revo lutionary short films that redefined the music video format and captivated audi ences globally.

“Billie Jean” remains the most streamed Michael Jackson song and “Thriller” is the only music video that has been inducted

onto the elite National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

According to a news release, the docu mentary features never-before-seen foot age and candid interviews.

The currently untitled documentary chronicles the point in Jackson’s career that launched the singer into mega-star dom and created a pop culture phenom enon that is woven through the culture and continues to influence the worlds of music, television, dance, fashion and more to this day.

“The release of Thriller redefined Mi chael Jackson, taking him from teen star to adult superstar, who composed memorable songs, sang beautifully and reached the highest level of on-stage performance,” Nelson George said in the release.

“The album, and the short films they in spired, created a new template for marry ing music and image. It’s been a privilege to explore this extraordinary album and revisit its magic.”

When a fledgling MTV, which pro grammed white rock artists almost exclu sively, refused to play the video for “Billie Jean” Epic Records persisted.

Once the wall came crashing down,

MTV’s ratings soared, and a door was opened for a generation of African Ameri can artists.

“He was MTV’s Jackie Robinson,” said cultural critic Touré, who appeared this week on the National Newspaper Publish ers Association’s Let It Be Known to pro mote his new show, Masters of the Game.

The second studio album by Jackson as a solo artist on Epic Records, Thriller cap tured a record 12 Grammy nominations and a record-setting eight wins.

Since its debut, Thriller has sold over 100 million albums worldwide, and was the first album to be certified triple dia mond by the RIAA.

“Michael opened and explored emotional depths and pushed the boundaries of sonic innovation on Thriller,” John Branca and John McClain, Jackson’s estate executors, proclaimed in the news release.

“In the process, he breached destructive barriers in the music industry and literally united the world through his music: there isn’t a place on this planet that hasn’t been exhilarated by the music of Michael Jack son.”

“This documentary’s exploration of Mi chael’s process and impact is revelatory.”

COMMENTARY: Why ‘The Woman King’ Is Revolutionary

By Dr. Stephane Dunn and Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftal, Chicago Defender

Back in a 1974 review of the Bond-like Cleopatra Jones movie starring Tamara Dobson, Feminist and former Ms. Maga zine editor Margaret Sloan spoke volumes about Black female spectatorial desire.

Damn, that felt good she wrote. After viewing The Woman King, we know ex actly what she meant.

Cleopatra, a beautiful, kick-ass Black woman empowered by the U.S. govern ment but grounded in her commitment to the Black community, was a Black Power era fantasy character. Over 40 years lat er, Marvel’s Afrofuturist Black Panther teased us with the cinematic possibili ties of Wakanda’s supporting characters, a squad of royal Black women soldiers. The Woman King brings such women to the center and importantly marks both the evolution and realization of this on-screen representation of Black women and the cinematic evolution of its director, Gina Prince-Bythewood.

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood with screenwriter Dana Stevens, The Woman King is inspired by the real-life Dahomey female warriors, the Agojie, who were formed in the 1700s and became legend ary fighters. Viola Davis, who plays the fictional character General Nanisca – ar guably a composite nod to various African warriors like Nzinga and Yaa Asantewaa, and an emerging young Agojie, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), lead an extraordinary cast including, Lashana Lynch as the enthrall ing Izogie and John Boyega as young King

Ghezo.

The Woman King is not a biography or intended to be a neat history lesson on African women warriors and as such takes full creative license to reimagine the Agojie, threading together the histori cal realities of slavery, racial, gender, and class violence to fashion a world in which women have not only a female-centered, controlled safe space to live but literal physical and socio-political choice, voice, and visibility within the patriarchal struc ture of their immediate community and beyond.

Women characters becoming sword slashing or shotgun-toting badasses (i.e., Kill Bill and Foxy Brown) or rebels against their prescribed roles (i.e. Thelma & Louise) have often still registered as objects of the traditional gaze, rendered more exotic or erotic because they take on expected tropes of masculine toughness or step out of their domestic roles and tem porarily seize the day. Women wielding weapons as well as or better than men can too easily be deemed as radical represen tations of women with little attention to context or the problematic association of violent toughness with heroic maleness on screen.

The Woman King has a copious amount of violence and blood; brutal warring between different African nations and between the Africans and Europeans in volved in turbulent at turns reciprocal slave trafficking is one of the unfortunate realistic historical threads exploited in the film’s unapologetic anti-Atlantic slave trade and African involvement sentiment.

However, the spectacle of physical vi olence is in service to the dominant and most important critical representation in the film – women whose reaffirming col lective sisterhood is a formidable force against patriarchal oppression and to an extent racial and class oppression. The women the Agojie rescue or take captive after the battle are given the power to choose a rare life and identity for them

selves whereas men do not generally dic tate their daily movements or can willfully them to be subservient wives, daughters, or servants that they can rape and beat at will.

To become Agojie is to fight for their male king and Dahomey, but as they re mind each other, they fight for themselves and each other in service to their own dou ble-edged quest for freedom and power as

women and Dahomey people. This is not pretty work, women soldiering in battle with and against men. This is why the rare movie depiction of Black women in the community within the Agojie compound registers so magnificently.

Here neither men’s gaze nor presence is allowed. Here women dance, train, and braid each other’s hair, tend tenderly to one another’s wounds, strategize, debate respectfully, learn to transcend ethnic dif ferences, and grow their sense of individ ual and collective empowerment.

The French slavers call them “Amazons” but this dismissive historical tag holds no weight in The Woman King. The women in the film hold the controlling narrative point of view and declare themselves, “Agojie” and “sisters” and there is the possibility of a ‘Woman King’.

Gina Price-Bythewood’s Black roman tic classic, Love and Basketball (2000) marked the debut of its promising direc tor. Two Black leads (portrayed by Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps) come to bond over their passion for playing basketball and later fall in love. We loved PrinceBythewood’s exploration of a Black woman’s uneasy navigation of her pro fessional ambition and the social gender expectations as her traditional mother’s daughter and boyfriend’s girl. And yet, it settled uneasily. Her passion and ambition for basketball rises, falls and rises again with the twists and turns of her romantic relationship until she’s happily settled in domestic life and in the WNBA.

Later, in Price-Bythewood’s under-rated

PROFESSIONAL ARCHITECTURAL & ENGINEERING (A/E) SERVICES FOR CAMBRIDGE PARK REHABILITATION

NOTICE

BRISTOL HOUSING AUTHORITY REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS

VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE

The Bristol Housing Authority will receive sealed bids on or before Thus., Nov. 10, 2022 at 2:00 p.m. at their offices at 164 Jerome Ave., Bristol, CT 06010 and said bids will be reviewed by a committee thereafter.

Town of Bloomfield

Director of Building and Land Use $101,455 to $156,599

Selective ADA Walkway Project at Bonnie Acres BRISTOL HOUSING AUTHORITY INVITATION TO BID

The Bristol Housing Authority (BHA) will receive sealed bids on or before 2:00 p.m. EDT, Thurs., Oct. 27, 2022 at their offices at 164 Jerome Ave., Bristol, CT 06010 and said bids will be publicly opened and read aloud immediately thereafter.

The Housing Authority of the City of Bristol (“BHA” or “Authority”) hereby requests Qualifications from Architectural and Engineering firms and/or individuals (“Offerors”) licensed in the State of Connecticut to provide Architectural and Engineering (“A/E’) Services for the Rehabilitation of the Cambridge Park Property. BHA intends to award one A/E service contract through this solicitation process. The contract is anticipated to be for a period of approximately three years, but will be in effect throughout the reha bilitation of Cambridge Park.

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

Pre-employment

Bids will be received for furnishing all labor, materials, tools and equipment necessary to complete the Selective ADA Walkway Project at Bonnie Acres, Vance Drive, Bristol, CT 06010. The scope of work shall include but is not limited to selective ADA graded Walks and related work. Sealed bid packages to be clearly marked “Selective ADA Walkway project at Bonnie Acres.” Attention: Mitzy Rowe, CEO.

STEEL

A pre-bid walk through will be held on Thurs., Oct. 13, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. Please meet in front of the Bonnie Acres Community Building, 59 Vance Drive, Bristol, CT 06010. Attendance is strongly recommended for all bidders.

NOTICIA

BHA intends to negotiate a fixed-fee contract with the highest ranked Offeror. Responses must clearly indicate the name of the project, “Professional Architectural and Engineer ing (A/E)

APPLY NOW!

Services for Cambridge Park Rehabilitation” and the time and the date specified for receipt. The name and the address of the Offeror must be clearly printed on all cor respondence.

VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES

Steel

The Housing Authority of the City of Bristol 164 Jerome Ave. Bristol, CT 06010-3715

ATTENTION: Mitzy Rowe, Chief Executive Officer

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

A pre-submission meeting will be held Tues., Oct. 25, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. 164 Jerome Ave. Bristol, CT 06010-3715. Attendance is strongly recommended for all bidders.

Contact Scope and Requirements will be on file at the Bristol Housing Authority 164 Jerome Ave., Bristol, CT, or by contacting: Gordon Sprewell, CVR Associates, Inc. PHONE: 770-833-4248, E-MAIL: gsprewell@cvrassociates.com

NEW HAVEN

DRIVER CDL CLASS A

Full Time – All Shifts Top Pay-Full Benefits

Please apply in person:

Honeyspot Rd. Ext. Stratford, CT 06615

Contact Documents including Plans and Specifications, as prepared by J ASSOCIATES ARCHITECTS, 84 Market Square, Suite 3, Newington, CT 06111, will be on file at the BHA main office at 164 Jerome Avenue, Bristol, CT. Contract Documents can be reviewed and purchased within the Advanced Reprographics on-line plan room at http:// www.advancedrepro.net or by calling (860) 410-1020.

BHA reserves the right to reject any or all bids and/or to waive any informalities in bid ding, when such action is deemed to be in the best interest of BHA. All bid documents must be filled out completely when submitted.

A satisfactory Bid Bond or Certified Check in an amount equal to five percent (5%) of the base bid shall be submitted with each bid. The Bid Bond shall be made payable to the Bristol Housing Authority and shall be properly executed by the Bidder. A 100% Performance, Labor and Material Bond is also required. All sureties must be listed on the most recent IRS circular 570.

Invitation

242-258 Fairmont Ave

The Bristol Housing Authority reserves the right to reject any or all bids and/or to waive any informalities in bidding, when such action is deemed to be in the best interest of the Bristol Housing Authority. All bid documents must be filled out completely when submitted.

2BR Townhouse, 1.5 BA, 3BR, 1 level , 1BA

All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 highways, near bus stop & shopping center Pet under 40lb allowed. Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258

Windsor Locks Housing Authority

Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Waiting List Lottery Opening Notice

Interested parties may pick up an application at the Administrative Of fice of the Windsor Locks Housing Authority (WLHA) located at 120 Southwest Avenue or by downloading the application from the website www.windsorlocksct.org/housingauthority/ from Monday, October 17, 2022 – Friday October 21, 2022.

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY

New

“Attention of bidders is directed to certain requirements of this contract which require payment of Davis-Bacon wages, and compliance with certain local, state and federal requirements. This is a Federally funded project.”

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

No bids shall be withdrawn for a period of sixty (60) days after the opening of bids without the consent of BHA.

For further information, please contact Carl Johnson, BHA, Dir. of Capital Funds at (860) 585-2028 or Jay R. Victorick, J ASSOCIATES ARCHITECTS at (860) 665-7063.

Site-work,

SENIOR MANAGER, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Assistant Building Official $39.80 hourly

Pre-employment drug

Sealed bids are invited by the Housing Authority of the Town of Seymour until 3:00 pm on Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at its office at 28 Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 for Concrete

The completed application may be returned to WLHA office, or postmarked, during the week of Monday October 24, 2022-Friday October 28, 2022 at 1:00 pm.

the Smithfield Gardens

and Replacement

Smith Street Seymour.

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

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

Please note: This submission is for entry into a lottery process. The maximum number of applications selected will be limited to 400. All applicants selected by lottery and placed on the waiting list will be notified by the WLHA within a reasonable time. If you do not receive a letter within four months your application was not selected from the lottery. Placement on the waiting list does not indicate that the family is, in fact, eligible for assistance. A final determination of eligibility will be made when the family is selected from the waiting list.

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

the

Town of Bloomfield POLICE OFFICER City of Bristol $70,915 - $86,200/yr.

FHI Studio is actively seeking an innovative and self-motivated full-time Senior Manager Landscape Architect to join our team. As a manager in the landscape architect team, you are vital to partnering with the firm’s leadership team in the development of a roadmap and implementation of blending our planning and de sign services. You manage projects and oversee project team members and lead business development efforts and proposal activities that includes guiding prepa ration of proposal and presentation materials. Strong candidates have strong or ganizational and planning skills and have experience in landscape architecture and urban design and planning. Candidates must be proficient in AutoCAD and be proficient with MS Office. Experience with 3d modeling is a plus. Minimum Degree: Bachelor’s Degree in landscape architecture, urban design, or related field with 10+ years of experience. Salary ranges from $120,000 to $145,000 yearly, commensurate with level of experience. Please apply at https:// fhistudio.isolvedhire.com/jobs/ or send cover letter and resume to Bonnie Tor res, 416 Asylum Street, Hartford, CT 06103. FHI Studio is an EEO/AA /VEV/ Disabled employer.

“AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPOLYER MBE’s, WBE’s, SBE’s AND SECTION 3 DESIGNATED ENTERPRISES ARE ENCOURAGED TO SUBMIT”

“AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPOLYER MBE’s, WBE’s, SBE’s AND SECTION 3 DESIGNATED ENTERPRISES ARE ENCOURAGED TO SUBMIT”

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc seeks:

Construction

Construction

NOTICE

operate. Location: Bloomfield CT

Construction Equipment Mechanic preferably experienced in Reclaiming and Road Milling Equipment. We offer factory training on equipment

offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits

Contact: Tom Dunay Phone: 860- 243-2300

VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE

Seeking to employ experienced individuals in the labor, foreman, operator and teamster trades for a heavy outside work statewide. Reliable personal transportation and a valid drivers license required. To apply please call (860) 6211720 or send resume to: Personnel Department, P.O. Box 368, Cheshire, CT06410.

Seeking to employ experienced individuals in the labor, foreman, operator and teamster trades for a heavy outside work statewide. Reliable personal transportation and a valid drivers license required. To apply please call (860) 621-1720 or send resume to: Personnel Department, P.O. Box 368, Cheshire, CT06410.

Email: tom.dunay@garrityasphalt.com

& Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply

Action/ Equal

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc seeks:

Reclaimer Operators and Milling Operators with current licensing and clean driving record, be willing to travel throughout the Northeast & NY. We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits

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

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

0

PVC FENCE PRODUCTION

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

Electric

NOTICIA

Contact: Rick Tousignant Phone: 860- 243-2300

Email: rick.tousignant@garrityasphalt.com

VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES

Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer

Large CT Fence Company looking for an individual for our PVC Fence Production Shop. Experience preferred but will train the right person. Must be familiar with carpentry hand & power tools and be able to read a CAD drawing and tape measure. Use of CNC Router machine a plus but not required, will train the right person. This is an in-shop production position. Duties include building fence panels, posts, gates and more. Must have a valid CT driver’s license & be able to obtain a Drivers Medical Card. Must be able to pass a physical and drug test. Please email resume to pboucher@atlasoutdoor.com. AA/EOE-MF

Distribution Engineer – The Town of Wallingford Electric Division is seeking a highly technical individual to work in the design and development of overhead and underground power distribution lines. The utility serves 24,700 customers in a 50+ square mile distribution area with a peak demand of 130 MW. The position requires a B.S. degree in electrical engineering plus 2 years of responsible experience in utility engineering, or an equivalent combination of education and experience substituting on a year-for year basis. Salary: $82,968- $106,151 annually plus an excellent fringe benefit package. Apply to: Department of Human Resources , Town of Wallingford, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492. Forms will be mailed upon request from the Department of Human Resources or may be downloaded from the Department of Human Resources Web Page Phone #: (203) 294-2080, Fax #: (203) 294-2084. Closing date will be November 8, 2022. 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 rate & excellent benefits

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

Contact Dana at 860-243-2300

Email: dana.briere@garrityasphalt.com

Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer

HAVEN

Construction

Seeking to employ experienced individuals in the labor, foreman, operator and teamster trades for a heavy outside work statewide. Reliable personal transportation and a valid drivers license required. To apply please call (860) 621-1720 or send resume to: Personnel Department, P.O. Box 368, Cheshire, CT06410.

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

State of Connecticut Office of Policy and Management

Food Service Driver

The Board of Education, Food Service Department is seeking an individual to deliver food and supplies to varies Board of Education locations. Must have experience in food service. Must possess a valid State of Connecticut driver’s license and a clean driving record. Pay rate: $19.81 hourly which includes a fringe benefit package. Apply: Human Resources Department, Town of Wallingford, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492. Application Forms will be mailed upon request from the Department of Human Resources or may be downloaded from the Department of Human Resources Web Page. The closing date will be that date the 50th application form/resume is received, or October 19, 2022, whichever occurs first. EOE

SEWER TREATMENT

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

The State of Connecticut, Office of Policy and Management is recruiting for a Labor Relations Specialist.

Framed,

Selective Demolition, Site-work, Castin-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Siding,

Painting, Division

Further information regarding the duties, eligibility requirements and application instructions for this position are available at: https://www.jobapscloud.com/ CT/sup/bulpreview.asp?R1= 220815&R2=5256MP&R3=001

Bid

Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework,

Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

Maintainer II - Sewer – The Wallingford Sewer Division is seeking a qualified individual to perform a variety of skilled repairs and construction of sanitary sewers. Requires, three years employment in a field related to heavy sewer construction of which two years shall have involved a special skill in equipment or manual operation or one year of training in a skilled trade substituted for one year of experience to two years plus one year of construction experience or an equivalent combination of experience and training. Hourly $ 26.16 - $ 31.18. Applications forms may be obtained at the Department of Human Resources, Town of Wallingford, 45 South Main Street, Wallingford, CT 06492. Forms will be mailed upon request from the Department of Human Resources or may be downloaded from the Department of Human Resources Web Page. The closing date will be the date 25th application or resume is received or October 25, 2022 whichever occurs first. EOE

Due Date:

Anticipated

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

Account Clerk-Payables:

Fax

DRIVER CDL CLASS A

Time – All Shifts Top Pay-Full Benefits

EOE Please apply in person: 1425 Honeyspot Rd. Ext. Stratford, CT 06615

The Town of East Haven is currently accepting applications to participate in the examination for Account Clerk-Payables. The current vacancy is in the Finance Department of the Board of Education but this list may be used to fill other Account Clerk positions within the Town of East Haven. The starting hourly rate is $$23.97/hour, 37.5 hours per week. Candidate must possess a High School Diploma or equivalent and an Associate’s Degree in Accounting or equivalent experience, and a minimum of 3 years’ experience in accounts payable and a thorough working knowledge of Microsoft Word and Excel. Applications are available online at https://www.townofeasthavenct.org/civil-servicecommission/pages/job-notices-and-tests Haven, CT and must be returned to the Civil Service Commission, 250 Main Street, East Haven CT 06512 by November 2, 2022. The Town of East Haven is committed to building a workforce of diverse individuals. Minorities, Females, Handicapped and Veterans are encouraged to apply.

CITY OF NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT - REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS Legal Service- Retirement Fund

Director of Regional Planning and Municipal Services

NOTICE

RFP # 2022-10-1485

VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE

Intent to Response due: November 21, 2022

APPLY NOW!

RFP due date: Tuesday November 22,2022 at 11:00 AM EST.

RFP can be downloaded at https://newhavenct.bonfirehub.com/portal/?tab=login

Shawn J. Garris

Acting Purchasing Agent

CITY OF NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT - REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

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

Executive Search Firm for New Haven Public Schools Superintendent RFP # 2022-10-1486

NOTICIA

Intent to Response due: October 31, 2022

State of Connecticut Office of Policy and Management

The South Central Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG) is seeking to fill the Director of Regional Planning and Municipal Services position. Visit www.scrcog.org for the full position description, qualifications, and application requirements. Applications are to be submitted by 4:00 PM local time on Wednesday, October 26, 2022. Questions may be emailed to jobs@scrcog.org. SCRCOG is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer

Splicer / Electrician – Telecommunications Company looking for low voltage cable installer with a C or T license, specializing in fusion/splicing, testing and termination. Also must be familiar with all aspects of indoor & outdoor cable installation, aerial bucket work, pole work, messenger, lashing, manhole & underground installation. $70,000 - $90,000 salary with full benefits.

VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES

RFP due date: Tuesday, November 1, 2022 at 11:00 AM EST.

RFP can be downloaded at https://newhavenct.bonfirehub.com/portal/?tab=login

Shawn J. Garris

Acting Purchasing Agent

CITY OF NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT - REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

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

Annual Audit Services

RFP # 2022-10-1484

Intent to Response due: December 5, 2022

RFP due date: Tuesday December 6,2022 at 11:00 AM EST.

HAVEN

RFP can be downloaded at https://newhavenct.bonfirehub.com/portal/?tab=login

Shawn J. Garris

Acting Purchasing Agent

CITY OF NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT - REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

Administrative Management Services-for the New Haven Civilian Review Board RFP # 2022-10-1482

Intent to Response due: October 24, 2022

RFP due date: Tuesday October 25, 2022 at 11:00 AM EST.

RFP can be downloaded at https://newhavenct.bonfirehub.com/portal/?tab=login

Shawn J. Garris

Sealed

The State of Connecticut, Office of Policy and Management is recruiting for a Fiscal/Administrative Officer. Further information regarding the duties, eligibility requirements and application instructions for this position are available at: https://www.jobapscloud.com/ CT/sup/bulpreview.asp?R1= 220831&R2=1308AR&R3=001

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

PERSON

Fax resume to 860-282-0424 or mail to Fibre Optic Plus, LLC 585 Nutmeg Road North, South Windsor, CT 06074 Attn: Don Ballsieper - Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer

The Guilford Housing Authority is currently accepting applications for single person and two person households for apartment waitlist at Guilford Court and Boston Terrace in Guilford, CT. Applicants must be age 62 and over or on 100% social security or federal disability and over the age of 18. Applications may be obtained by call the application line at 203-453-6262 EXT 107. Applications will be accepted until November 23, 2022 at 4PM. Credit, police, landlord checks are procured by the Authority. Smoking is prohibited in the units.

Equal Opportunity Housing

CAMBRIDGE PARK RESIDENTIAL APPRAISAL SERVICES BRISTOL HOUSING AUTHORITY REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

The Bristol Housing Authority will receive sealed bids on or before Thurs., Nov. 10, 2022 at 2:00 p.m. at their offices at 164 Jerome Ave., Bristol, CT 06010 and said bids will be reviewed by a committee thereafter.

Town of Bloomfield

Assistant Building Official

$39.80 hourly

The BHA is seeking one qualified and experienced residential appraisal firm (Appraiser) to perform an appraisal on Cambridge Park a multi-family housing development located in Bristol, CT. BHA is requesting fee quotes for these services. The selected Appraiser must be properly licensed by the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection. Responses must clearly indicate the name of the project, " CAMBRIDGE PARK RESIDENTIAL APPRAISAL SERVICES" and the time and the date specified for receipt. The name and the address of the Offeror must be included on all correspondence.

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY

Acting Purchasing Agent

ELM CITY COMMUNITIES

Invitation for Bids

Cornell Scott Ridge I 437 M&N Eastern Street Fire Damage

A

Elm City Communities is currently seeking bids for Cornell Scott Ridge I 437 M&N Eastern Street Fire Damage. A complete copy of the requirement may be obtained from Elm City Communities’ Vendor Collaboration Portal https://newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway beginning on

Bidding

The

Monday, October 17, 2022 at 3:00PM.

POLICE OFFICER

City of Bristol $70,915 - $86,200/yr.

Required testing,

Authority

The Housing Authority of the City of Bristol 164 Jerome Ave. Bristol, CT 06010-3715

ATTENTION: Mitzy Rowe, Chief Executive Officer

Proposals will also be accepted by email correspondence to mrowe@bristolhousing.org received by the required time and date.

Contact Scope and Requirements will be on file at the Bristol Housing Authority 164 Jerome Ave., Bristol, CT, or by contacting: Gordon Sprewell, CVR Associates, Inc. PHONE: 770-833-4248, E-MAIL: gsprewell@cvrassociates.com

The Bristol Housing Authority reserves the right to reject any or all bids and/or to waive any informalities in bidding, when such action is deemed to be in the best interest of the Bristol Housing Authority. All bid documents must be filled out completely when submitted.

EPA Launches New National Office Dedicated to Advancing Environmental Justice and Civil Rights

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

For the better part of a month, National Newspaper Publishers Association Presi dent and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. traveled back and forth to North Carolina.

Chavis helped spearhead plans and events in observance of the 40th anniversary of the Warren County protests.

The 1982 protests occurred after offi cials dumped polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in predominately Black commu nities.

On Saturday, September 24, Chavis wel comed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, formally introducing him as he announced the establishment of a new national office charged with advancing environmental justice and civil rights.

The creation of the new Office of En vironmental Justice and External Civil Rights delivers on President Biden’s com mitment to “elevate these critical issues to the highest levels of the government and solidifies the agency’s commitment to de

The Man

tevanico did not write a diary or narrative of his exploits.

However, two small thin volumes of literature provide a wealth of informa tion about this early explorer. John Upton Terrell published “Estevanico The Black” in 1968 and at only 115 pages, it ranks as one of the most informative books about an extraordinary figure who doesn’t al ways receive due attention in secondary education. In 1974, “Estebanico” was is sued by Helen Rand Parish. Even smaller than Terrell’s book at 128 pages, she wrote that Estevanico could be considered “new historical history” particularly for young readers.

Also, “The Moor’s Account” by Laila Lalami (2015) provides a more fictional account of Estevanico. The author created her own back story about the events that led up to his enslavement and then fills in gaps of what we know about the Narvaez expedition that would eventually place Es tevancio’s name in the history books. No one knows where Estevanico is bur ied. Hawikuh no longer exists, having been abandoned in 1670 following a se ries of wars the Zunis fought against the Spaniards and the Apache. But Estevani co’s story, recorded in colorful detail by his fellow explorers Cabeza de Vaca, Fray Marcos, Coronado, and Pedro de Castene da, endures as one of the great adventures in American lore.

As part of Black History Month, cel ebrated every February, the US Embassy in Morocco has commemorated Mustafa Zemmouri, known as Estevanico or Es tevan the Moor. Zemmouri is believed to be the first Moroccan to ever set foot in America. (Photo: moroccoworldnews.

livering justice and equity for all,” EPA officials stated.

Chavis not only introduced Regan to a large crowd in Warrenton that included lo cal and national media, but he also cham pioned the administrator’s hiring.

“When I first coined the term environ mental racism, our communities were be ing deliberately targeted for toxic waste and hazardous materials,” Chavis in formed the crowd.

“I’m so happy that the administration had the good sense to put a brother over the EPA,” he continued.

“This brother not only represents histori cally Black colleges and universities but the community – a community in Wayne County with a history like Warren County of standing up for justice.

“Thank God we have a freedom fighter at the EPA. Thank God Michael Regan is the administrator of the EPA at a time where we not only connect civil rights with envi ronmental justice, but we will have solu tions.”

Regan said the new office plans to dedi cate more than 200 EPA staff members across ten regions.

The administrator asserted that their mis sion is to solve environmental challenges in underserved communities that have been occurring for far too long.

Staffers will engage with communities about environmental justice concerns to understand their needs and Tribal, state, and local partners.

The staff also will manage and disburse “historic levels of grants and technical assistance; work with other EPA offices

Con’t from page 16

‘The Woman King’

Beyond the Lights (2014), the explora tion of women’s difficulties choosing and defining their paths and self-identity continues with a young pop singer (Gugu Mbatha-raw) struggling to navigate the expectations of her manager mother and pop stardom; a romance with a regular good guy (Nate Parker) helps her to ulti mately step into the music and self-repre sentation she truly desires.

In real life, the Agojie were devastated by Dahomey’s ongoing conflicts – wars with other African nations and participa tion in and against the slave trade with the Europeans – becoming an exhibition for the Western gaze and historical record.

But The Woman King, thank you very much, is a movie. Gina Prince-Bythewood directs her fullest, most satisfying repre sentation of Black women’s quest for autonomy and actualization. The Woman King boldly unsettles the traditional spec tacle of patriarchy and not because the women fight with such dazzling physical might and skill with their bodies or rope and machete in hand, but because the most radical thing is that the love, intimacy, and sisterhood between women, the collective power of this, sits boldly at the center of The Woman King. In American popular film, this is revolutionary.

to incorporate environmental justice into the agency’s programs, policies, and pro cesses, as allowed by law; and ensure EPA funding recipients comply with applicable civil rights laws,” Regan promised.

The Biden-Harris administration will seek Senate confirmation of an assistant administrator to lead the new office.

“President Biden and I have been clear:

Renters, Homebuyers

program. This security deposit aid will be paid directly by the city to the landlord, Samuel said.

Elicker and Samuel said that this security deposit assistance program should help roughly 600 New Haven households.

The downpayment assistance program, meanwhile, already exists and currently provides up to $10,000 in the form of a 0 percent interest forgivable loan for firsttime homebuyers looking for help with downpayment and closing costs on a oneto four-unit home.

Elicker and Samuel said that this lat est expansion of that program means that first-time homebuyers who make less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level for the area will get an additional $15,000 in downpayment assistance. That’s on top of the $10,000 already provided through this program.

City employees, teachers, firefighters, and police officers are also eligible for an addi tional $2,500 in downpayment assistance through this program.

“Folks are struggling in our city to keep a roof over their heads and build wealth long term,” Sabin said. Safe, stable, af fordable housing is critical for achieving both of those goals, he said. Thus the im portance of these two newly launched, fed erally funded, city-run programs.

we must ground our work to address the climate crisis and our greatest environ mental challenges in justice and equity,” said Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The establishment of a new office dedi cated to advancing environmental justice and civil rights at EPA will ensure the lived experiences of underserved commu nities are central to our decision-making while supporting community-driven solu tions.”

From day one, Regan said Biden and EPA had been committed to improving environmental justice and civil rights.

“Ensuring that underserved and overbur dened communities are at the forefront of our work,” Regan insisted.

“With the launch of a new national pro gram office, we are embedding environ mental justice and civil rights into the DNA of EPA and ensuring that people who’ve struggled to address their con cerns see action to solve the problems they’ve been facing for generations.”

The new office will oversee the imple mentation and delivery of a $3 billion climate and environmental justice block grant program created by the Inflation Re duction Act, a critical component of the law’s historic $60 billion investment in environmental justice.

The office also will ensure EPA’s imple mentation of other funding programs provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and regular appropriations meet or exceed the Presi dent’s Justice40 Initiative.

Administration officials said the new office counts as the latest significant ac tion under Biden’s aggressive approach to embedding environmental justice, civil rights, and equity across the government.

It follows the launch of several initia tives designed to address the impacts of those living in underserved communities

overburdened by pollution.

Initiatives include the establishment of the first-ever White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC); the launch of the Justice40 Initiative, which aims to provide 40 percent of the overall benefits of federal investments relating to climate change, clean energy, and related areas to disadvantaged communities; and more than 200 policy actions to move Biden’s ambitious environmental justice and civil rights agenda forward.

The EPA created the Office of Environ mental Justice and External Civil Rights Office by merging three existing programs at the agency – the Office of Environ mental Justice, the External Civil Rights Compliance Office, and the Conflict Pre vention and Resolution Center.

Officials said the new office would:

• Improve and enhance the agency’s abil ity to infuse equity, civil rights, and envi ronmental justice principles and priorities into all EPA practices, policies, and pro grams.

• Support the fair treatment and meaning ful involvement of all people concerning the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regu lations, and policies regardless of race, color, national origin, or income.

• Engage communities with environmen tal justice concerns and increase support for community-led action through grants and technical assistance.

• Enforce federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, or national origin (including limit ed-English proficiency), sex; disability; or age by applicants for and recipients of fed eral financial assistance from EPA.

• Provide services and expertise in alter native dispute resolution, environmental conflict resolution, consensus-building, and collaborative problem-solving.

“This is a historic day. Not just for War ren County, North Carolina, where the en vironmental justice movement began, but for the millions of Americans across this country who have been demanding and fighting tirelessly for environmental jus tice for decades,” North Carolina Demo cratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield stated.

“I commend President Biden, Vice President Harris, and EPA Administrator Michael Regan on their work to create the Office of Environmental Justice and Ex ternal Civil Rights.

Butterfield continued:

“Today’s announcement, which comes on the heels of the historic climate and environmental justice investments in the Inflation Reduction Act, is another bold example that the Biden-Harris Admin istration and Congress will ensure every community has a voice and the invest ments needed to grow and thrive.

“Working together, we will solve the climate crisis and make America’s clean energy economy the envy of the world.”

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan

IN MEMORIAM: Hip Hop Icon Coolio Dies at 59

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

Coolio, whose signature song “Gangsta’s Paradise” played a vital role in securing hip-hop as the popular music of choice, has died at age 59.

The artist reportedly died on the bath room floor of a friend’s house. While paramedics suspect Coolio succumbed to cardiac arrest, the medical examiner hasn’t released an official cause of death.

Born on Aug. 1, 1963, in Compton, Coolio’s real name was Artis Leon Ivey, Jr.

He enjoyed six top Billboard hits, in cluding 1995’s Gangsta’s Paradise, which reached 1 billion streams on Spotify earli er this year. Spending three weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 and 11 straight weeks on the Hot Rap Songs list, Gangsta’s Para dise earned Coolio a Grammy and a Bill board Music Award.

The hit single earned rankings among Billboard’s 100 Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Songs.

In addition to music, Coolio enjoyed a successful television career. He appeared on shows like “Black Jesus,” “All That,”

“The Nanny,” and “Fear Factor.”

“Peaceful Journey, Brother,” Questlove tweeted in tribute following news of Coo lio’s death.

“Heartbroken to hear of the passing of the gifted artist Coolio,” actress Michelle Pfeiffer wrote on Instagram while sharing a clip from the famous music video, where she sits across the table from Coolio.

“A life cut entirely too short. I remember him being nothing but gracious,” Pfeiffer stated.

Tributes also poured in from stars like Snoop Dogg, who posted a picture of him and Coolio from an earlier music video.

MC Hammer called Coolio one of the nicest individuals he’d known while shar ing a photo of himself, Snoop, and the late

Tupac Shakur.

“This is sad news,” Ice Cube shared.

“I witnessed firsthand this man’s grind to the top of the industry.”

Los Angeles-based artist Teddi Gold, who worked with Coolio, also mourned the icon.

“I have an immense amount of grati tude and love for Coolio,” Gold wrote in a statement.

“His musicianship, big heart, sense of hu mor, and loyalty to his friends and family were the light he shared with the world.”

He continued:

“As somebody whose music I grew up listening to, the opportunity Coolio gave me to record and perform with him was a life-changing experience I will carry with me forever. I send every ounce of love I have to his family and friends at this time.”

IN MEMORIAM: Jazz Saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, 81

By Post Staff

Jazz saxophonist Farrell ‘Pharoah’ Sand ers, a pioneer of ‘spiritual’ jazz who lived in Oakland for a time before gaining re nown in New York with John Coane’s band in the 1960s, passed away in Los An geles on Sept. 24, 2022. He was 81.

“We are devastated to share that Pharoah Sanders has passed away,” family rep resentatives tweeted Saturday morning.

“He died peacefully surrounded by loving family and friends in Los Angeles ear lier this morning. Always and forever the most beautiful human being, may he rest in peace.”

Tributes like this from on YouTube by nbaccess were seen on social media.

“Pharoah was like John Coane. So soft and tempered in the daily life and human interactions but incredibly powerful and soulful when he blown this horn…he was a truly Spiritual Man, just as John. Ornette Coleman famously said that Pharoah is probably ‘the best tenor saxophonist in the world.’ I don’t think we will hear such kind of artists for a long, long time…RIP Pharoah. Your music is your true essence and will never die!”

“My beautiful friend passed away this morning. I am so lucky to have known this man, and we are all blessed to have his art stay with us forever. Thank you, Pharoah,” said San Shepard, whose stage name is Floating Points.

“A visionary amongst visionaries. Pha raoh forever.” Thurston Moore Tweeted.

Born in Little Rock, Ark., on Oct. 13, 1940, Sanders showed early aptitude for

music, playing several instruments includ ing drums and clarinet before he settled on the tenor sax in high school.

“I was always trying to figure out what I wanted to do as a career. What I really wanted to do was play the saxophone — that was one of the instruments that I re ally loved,” Sanders told The New Yorker. “I would rent the school saxophone. You could rent it every day if you wanted to. It wasn’t a great horn. It was sort of beat-up and out of condition.”

Nevertheless, Sanders played in Little Rock’s Black clubs and sometimes from behind curtains at white venues in the seg regated city. At 19, he moved to Oakland and attended Oakland City College while collaborating with local jazz greats includ ing Dewey Redman and Sonny Simmons.

“I never owned a saxophone until I fin ished high school and went to Oakland, California. I had a clarinet, and so I traded

that for a new silver tenor saxophone, and that got me started playing the tenor.”

John Handy encouraged his talent, ad vising him to move to New York, which he did in 1961.

There Sanders was often homeless, pawning his horn and sleeping on the sub ways before he recorded his first album in 1964. He eventually got the attention of John Coane and joined his band in 1965.

According to Sanders’ web site, “(Coane and Sanders) music represents a near total desertion of traditional jazz concepts, like swing and functional harmony, in favor of a teeming, irregularly structured, organic mixture of sound for sound’s sake.”

“Sanders has consistently had bands that could not only create a lyrical near-mysti cal Afro-Eastern world,” wrote one cham pion, the late poet-critic Amiri Baraka, “but [also] sweat hot fire music in continu ing display of the so-called ‘energy music’

of the ‘60s.”

Exploring spiritual jazz — which Coane had begun to do before his death in 1967

— Sanders would go on to play with, Al ice Coane, Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra.

It was Sun Ra who supposedly suggested Sanders change his given name from ‘Far rell’ to ‘Pharoah.’

In 1969, Sanders recorded the album

“Karma,” featuring “The Creator Has a Master Plan.” It was his most renowned work, but Sanders was comfortable mov ing in and out of genres. He earned a Grammy for his 1987 album with the pianist McCoy Tyner called “Blues for Coane.”

A decade earlier, he recorded with singer Phyllis Hyman in what could be called the pop 1977 album “Love Will Find a Way.”

Sanders would go on to lead and collab orate with jazz musicians here and abroad, record and tour through the 1990s.

A composition by British electronic mu sic producer Floating Points prompted Sanders to seek out a collaboration in the 2010s. The album, “Promises,” was recorded with the London Symphony or chestra in 2019 and released in 2021 to positive reviews.

It was his first album in ten years and his last. Services for Sanders have not yet been announced.

Sources for this story include The Guard ian, YouTube, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, People magazine, National Public Radio, Facebook and Pharoah Sanders’ website.

The post IN MEMORIAM: Jazz Saxophon ist Pharoah Sanders, 81 first appeared on Post News Group. This article originally appeared in Post News Group.

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