THE MAGAZINE ABOUT THE MAGAZINE ABOUT YA L E & N E W H AV E N YA L E & N E W H AV E N
VOL 51 / ISS 1 / SEP 2018
THE NEW JOURNAL
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
editors-in-chief Annie Rosenthal Mark Rosenberg managing editor Arya Sundaram senior editors Antonia Ayres-Brown Chris Hays Robert Scaramuccia associate editors Laura Glesby Max Graham Rachel Koh Sohum Pal Elliot Wailoo
copy editors Kofi Ansong Yonatan Greenberg Sofia Laguarda Sara Luzuriaga Eliana Swerdlow design editors Merritt Barnwell Meher Hans photo editors Robbie Short Vivek Suri web developer Philippe Chlenski
reporting supported by the Edward Bennett III Memorial Fund members and directors Emily Bazelon, Peter Cooper, Jonathan Dach, Kathrin Lassila, Eric Rutkow, Elizabeth Sledge, Jim Sleeper, Fred Strebeigh, Aliyya Swaby advisors Neela Banerjee, Richard Bradley, Susan Braudy, Jay Carney, Andy Court, Joshua Civin, Richard Conniff, Ruth Conniff, Elisha Cooper, Susan Dominus, David Greenberg, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Laura Pappano, Jennifer Pitts, Julia Preston, Lauren Rabin, David Slifka, John Swansburg, Anya Kamenetz, Steven Weisman, Daniel Yergin friends Nicole Allan, Margaret Bauer, Mark Badger and Laura Heymann, Susan Braudy, Julia Calagiovanni, Elisha Cooper, Haley Cohen, Peter Cooper, Andy Court, The Elizabethan Club, David Freeman and Judith Gingold, Paul Haigney and Tracey Roberts, Bob Lamm, James Liberman, Alka Mansukhani, Benjamin Mueller, Sophia Nguyen, Valerie Nierenberg, Morris Panner, Jennifer Pitts, R. Anthony Reese, Eric Rutkow, Lainie Rutkow, Laura Saavedra and David Buckley, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Elizabeth Sledge, Caroline Smith, Elizabeth Steig, Aliyya Swaby, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Daphne and David Sydney, Kristian and Margarita Whiteleather, Blake Townsend Wilson, Daniel Yergin, William Yuen
Dear readers, On August 24, Old Campus was in a state of happy chaos. Upperclassmen movers cheered as bewildered first years lugged duffel bags, posters, and futons to their dorms. Just over a week earlier, on the other side of College St., the New Haven Green had been host to a very different kind of commotion when first responders rushed to the scene of a mass K2 overdose. Around the city, paramedics ferried more than 70 people, all reeling from a bad batch of synthetic marijuana laced with fentanyl, to the hospital. As Yale opened its iron gates to the 1,578 members of the class of 2022, the outbreak served as a reminder of the stark inequality between the university and the city it calls home. That dichotomy is profound, and it matters. But we’d like to encourage our readers to look beyond it, to consider Yale and New Haven’s complexities and the ways that the city and university are intertwined. The New Journal was founded in 1967 as the Magazine of Yale and New Haven. Our mission is to write critically and thoughtfully about our campus and our city. Students: We publish five issues a year, and we’re always looking for writers, photographers, and designers for both print and web. No experience necessary––we’re equally committed to publishing compelling pieces and making creative nonfiction accessible to and inclusive of all voices on campus. The reporting for our cover story this issue, on the battle against cash bail, was funded by the Edward Bennett III Memorial Fund, created in honor of an alumnus who revived this publication in the 1980s after suffering a severe spinal cord injury and went on to become the first quadriplegic to graduate from Yale College. It’s our hope that this fund will make ambitious reporting projects financially feasible for anyone who’s interested. So if you have an idea for a story, pitch us this fall! A big thank you to our dedicated editors, who spent much of their summers helping our writers report and sculpt the narratives you’ll read here, and who spent 12+ hours a day last week hunting down typos in a small, stifling room with only one (semi-functional) fan. We hope you enjoy our features, which take a frank look at criminal justice and eviction in New Haven and at the battle brewing in Bridgeport, our neighbor to the west, over a plan to bring a casino to town. Also in this issue: read about the women transforming Yale’s comedy scene, the world of digital archives at Sterling Memorial Library, the psychology of roommate pairings, and lots more. Happy reading––and, as always, we’d love to hear from you. — Annie & Mark, Editors-in-Chief anna.rosenthal@yale.edu mark.b.rosenberg@yale.edu
The New Journal is published five times during the academic year by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. Office address: 305 Crown Street. All contents Copyright 2016 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher and editors-in-chief is prohibited. The New Journal is a student-run publication at Yale University. While this magazine is published by Yale College students, Yale University is not responsible for its contents. The Yale University name and trademark is owned and used by permission of the University. Two thousand five hundred copies of each issue are distributed free to members of the Yale and New Haven communities. The New Journal is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. The New Journal encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. All letters for publication must include address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for publication.
THE NEW J O U R N AL volume 51 issue 1 SEP 2018
SINCE 1967 www.TheNewJournalAtYale.com
28 cover supported by the Ed Bennett III Memorial Fund THE PRICE OF FREEDOM Cash bail keeps low-income people locked up. In New Haven and New York, two organizations are fighting against it, with different consequences for their communities. Isaac Scobey-Thal 16 feature BRIDGEPORT’S BIG GAMBLE A casino titan says it can help a struggling city. A coalition with $800 in the bank wants to stop it. Steven Lance 22
feature ON THE DOORSTEP In New Haven, eviction feeds into a cycle of poverty that’s hard to escape. Eliza Fawcett
standards points of departure 4 THE LESSONS OF ROBERTO LUGO — Addee Kim and Sarah Pillard HARD DRIVES, HARDER QUESTIONS — Amber Hu 8 snapshot WHO’S LAUGHING NOW? — Max Himpe Women are at the center of a revolution in Yale’s comedy scene. 13 essay PORCELAIN — Kyung Mi Lee 34 poem CLOSE PROXIMITY TO A GOD OF THE INDUSTRIAL WORKFORCE — Sohum Pal 35 endnote PSYCH AND THE DORM LIFE — Noah Macey
P O I N T O F D E PA R T U R E
THE LESSONS OF ROBERTO LUGO In the world of the “ghetto potter,” it takes a mess to make art. Addee Kim and Sarah Pillard
S
pectators in the luminous gallery room of Artspace press up against one another, wary of bumping into the artwork on display. Detailed portraits, written messages, penciled outlines, and colorful decals cover the walls. Music commences, and the attendees part, making way for 15-yearold Jordan Walker. He struts in time with a pulsating house beat. When he reaches the other side of the room, a grand-finale backbend provokes wild applause. The music ends, and Walker poses in front of his portrait: Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, her fist raised and brow furrowed. A man in a widebrim baseball cap takes Walker under his arm and exclaims,
4
photos by Addee Kim
“I taught him everything he knows!” “I really am a shy person, until you get to know me and that really takes a long time, but I thought, what the heck, I might as well do a dance,” Walker said later. “I was able to break out of my shell.” Walker was one of nineteen student performers in Paying Homage: Soil and Site, the show that concluded Artspace New Haven’s 2018 Summer Apprenticeship Program (SAP). Housed on Orange Street just south of the New Haven Green, Artspace focuses on providing a platform for contemporary artists to create art and connect with wider audiences. SAP, started in 2001, brings New Haven high school students under the instruction of a master artist each year. The man embracing Walker was ceramicist Roberto Lugo, this year’s artist-in-residence. For three weeks this summer, students from Greater New Haven worked with Lugo to honor their communities and the figures that have shaped them. At Lugo’s urging, for the first time, the program invited students from abroad to work alongside students from Connecticut: two teenage visitors from Riobamba, Ecuador. Lugo, who is of Puerto Rican descent and calls himself “the ghetto potter,” found ceramics inadvertently. Growing up in Kensington, a Philadelphia neighborhood, Lugo says his education was substandard. After graduating from high school, he was caught in a cycle of dead-end jobs. At 25, Lugo enrolled in ceramics classes at a community college, seeking change and companionship. “[In] my culture, mostly having blue collar types of employment...you figure out how to make things with machines,” Lugo said. “[Ceramics] seemed like the most natural way for me to work.” Today, much of Lugo’s work is Victorian-inspired porcelain-ware, ranging from urns to tea sets. The artist pointed to porcelain as a symbol of class division; the material has historically been reserved for the elite. But his pieces typically portray hip-hop artists like Kendrick Lamar, civil rights leaders like Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson, and victims of gun violence like Freddie Gray. By painting historically marginalized icons onto the pottery, Lugo says he reclaims the material. Recently, he’s been returning home to Kensington with a generator and pottery wheel. By crafting ceramics in the streets, Lugo hopes to invite pedestrians to experiment with the sometimes-alienating art form. In their own work, the summer students honored a wide range of figures––from nationally recognized icons to their THE NEW JOUR NAL
own relatives. Adara Huq chose to honor prominent Black trans activist Marsha P. Johnson, a leader in the 1969 Stonewall uprising. In the portrait, Johnson poses in front of collage of bright colors and wears a shirt patterned with the outlines of protesters holding up signs reading “Stonewall means fight back.” “The movement has been white-washed a lot,” Huq said. “Not a lot of people know or realize that a Black trans woman was the lead of it.” India Wolterstorff’s piece paid tribute to Estelle Griswold, who gained notoriety for the Griswold v. Connecticut case brought before The Supreme Court, which set the stage for reproductive rights by legalizing contraception for married couples in Connecticut. Griswold was the former head of Planned Parenthood’s New Haven branch, where Wolterstorff herself teaches other teens about sexual health. “It was really important to me to do someone who is local to New Haven,” Wolterstorff said. But none was so lucky as apprentice Jaida Stancil, whose subject came to the opening celebration. Stancil honored her grandmother, a construction worker in Connecticut, for her strength in choosing a field that employs few Black women. “Yeah, she’s going to cry,” Stancil said, nervously checking her phone as she awaited her grandma’s arrival. Helen Kauder, director of Artspace, said the program directors have begun to opt for emerging artists rather than veterans as instructors; the first summer of SAP, renowned conceptual artist Sol Lewitt, 73-years-old and at the peak of his artistic career, led the program. They’ve also focused on recruiting artists who resemble the majority-Black and Latinx students at SAP. “What I found really refreshing working with these students was that we were able to find intersections and support one another. It created this space where we understood each others’ plight and we could celebrate in one another’s differences,” Lugo reflected after his own performance. Compared to Sol Lewitt, whose wall drawings involve carefully calculated instructions to be executed with incredible precision, Lugo is less scrupulous. “I’m sort of a perfectionist, and Roberto helped me let go a little bit because clay doesn’t always turn out how you first want it to when it gets fired,” Wolterstorff said. Resourcefulness oftentimes doesn’t lead to perfection; in these cases, messy is most beautiful. A Wexler Gallery video from 2016 captures Lugo in an abandoned lot near his childhood home, spinning clay from the detritus that he finds in the neglected urban space. In the video, Lugo intently constructs his potter’s wheel from what seems to be a spoke, hubcap, rope, and an empty tin can. He sifts dirt from the lot, and pours a discarded 40-ounce beer over the unmolded mass, forging clay. Slapping his wet clay pot onto a graffiti-covered cement wall, Roberto can be heard reciting a poem: “I got my two hands up, one is up to ask a question, and the other SEPTEMBER 2018
is up ‘cause I have the answer –– to prove to you, I can make something beautiful out of dirt. I am ghetto. I am resourceful. I am brown.” The commercial art world doesn’t always encourage messiness. Critics prefer stark white walls to the urban lot. Messy is the antithesis of Josef Albers: it’s the borders of the students’ murals crafted from scrap clay into intricate design. It’s the scene of nineteen teenagers frantically installing their work the day before the opening, doodling on empty space of the gallery walls. To Lugo and his students, it’s a source of pride.
– Addee Kim is a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College and Sarah Pillard is a sophomore in Silliman College.
5
P O I N T O F D E PA R T U R E
HARD DRIVES, HARDER QUESTIONS In Yale’s archives, digital records provide a new portal to the past. Amber Hu
“
Can you imagine what it might be like for a child whose parents are not allowed to be married?” The day was March 26, 2007. Anna Heller, a 39-yearold social worker from Willimantic, Connecticut, testified during a twelve-hour hearing before the Connecticut legislature on H.B. 7395, which would grant same-sex couples in the state the right to marriage. She spoke on behalf of Love Makes a Family, an organization that lobbied for the bill. Heller’s testimony, and the rest Love Makes a Family’s records, are now housed at Yale Manuscripts and Archives, in the northeast wing of Sterling Memorial Library. More than sixteen miles of pages line the walls of the main reading room. But the Love Makes a Family archives aren’t found in the bound books lining the walls or folders stashed in the Library Shelving Facility; they sit in two desktop computers sitting patiently in the far-right corner, waiting to be dusted off and started up. “That’s where you’ll be working today,” the librarian at the reference desk said to me, gesturing towards the corner. After spending an hour skimming through dinner party planning correspondences by Love Makes a Family’s associate director, Carol Buckheit, I stumbled upon an email exchange in which she sent a copy of Heller’s testimony to a professional writer, Alison Cashin. I double-clicked on the Word document, waiting for the software to boot up. But what appeared was not a wall of black text; it was a red sheet full of cross-outs and underlines that covered the original draft like a heavy blanket. To professional archivists, emails and Word documents are more than lines of text on a computer screen; they are “born-digital” archives, materials created and preserved in a digital form—including audio
6
illustrations Meher Hans
recordings, floppy disks, digital musical scores, and entire hard drives and laptops. Two decades ago, Yale’s archives were limited to physical objects like books and manuscripts. Now, Yale owns the virtual records of contemporary public figures ranging from playwright Paula Vogel’s teaching files to poet Charles Bernstein’s academic emails. Archivists are becoming more interested in born-digital materials, which often reveal crucial information missing from physical materials. This was certainly the case in Buckheit and Cashin’s emails: Buckheit: Can I ask your wise counsel on one question on the attached? I’m afraid some of this reinforces that gays should not have kids because we are hurting them emotionally—what do you think? Cashin: Oof. You’re totally right, Carol. As a rule, I try to avoid anything that can be seen as reinforcing stereotypes—this totally does that…we are trying to emphasize the messages that correspond to other testifiers’ messages. Buckheit and Cashin’s goal was simple: to frame Heller’s story in a more loving light, replacing phrases like “I wish I did not have to spend my adolescence in fear” with “I feel blessed with my mom’s love and support throughout my childhood.” Heller’s testimony was not a spontaneous release of emotions but a careful construction, crafted and approved by the organization to optimize Heller’s two short minutes in front of the judiciary committee. The week before my library visit, I met with Mary Caldera, the head of arrangement and description at Manuscripts and Archives. She works with the archives of historically excluded groups, including ethnic minorities and LGBTQ communities. “A lot of the little off-hand correspondences used to be more formal,” Caldera said. “But now, most people have these phone conversations or write quick emails, which can be very informal and reveal a lot more about what they really mean.” By combing through essay drafts and brief emails, archivists uncover the author’s thought process. And because electronic material is often seen as disposable, born-digital archives serve as a repository for an author’s most private musings. For the testifiers of Love
THE NEW JOUR NAL
Makes a Family, born-digital archives reveal sentiments in more detail than physical archives likely would. Caldera is one of four members of the Born Digital Working Group at Yale, created in January 2015 to devise guidelines and assemble resources for born-digital archives. “We want to make sure the libraries are able to store digital materials as well as we store all our other materials,” she said. One of the resources the group has incorporated is the Digital Accessioning Service, a collection of technological equipment used to redact personal information like Social Security and bank account numbers, scan for viruses, and capture files from digital media. But employing high-tech preservation methods is not the only challenge the group faces. It must deal with issues when its forensic toolkit interferes with donors’ rights to privacy. To learn more about these ethical quandaries, I met with the Beinecke Library’s digital archivist Gabby Redwine at 344 Winchester Avenue, a long, sweeping building with lofty glass windows, home to the Beinecke’s back-end technological services. Redwine is the first person at Yale whose job is entirely dedicated to born-digital archives. “One of the main issues that comes up is intentionality,” Redwine explained. “What sets born-digital apart from physical archives is that we can capture information from digital media that hasn’t been overwritten.” Redwine explained that when users drag their files into the trash bin, most think those files are beyond recovery. But really, the computer only deletes the file “pointer”—a roadmap that leads the computer to the file—while still keeping the file itself. This means when Redwine and her colleagues receive a hard drive, they can use the Beinecke’s forensic tools—which, she noted, are the same tools the FBI uses—to uncover mounds of deleted files that the donor may not have intended to hand over. When archivists work with materials from well-known cultural icons like Vogel or Bernstein, deleted files are a gold mine of novel drafts, essay fragments, and browsing histories. But, until they receive consent from the donor, they must follow library policy, abstaining from opening those gigabytes of potentially valuable but sensitive information. The available born-digital archives are enough to give us a glimpse into the private lives of all sorts of people, from authors to activists to everyday citizens. Often, the most colloquial exchanges are the most
SEPTEMBER 2018
striking. On October 10, 2008, more than one-and-ahalf years after Heller’s testimony, Buckheit received an email from Laurel Hoskins, a friend of Love Makes a Family, about a Connecticut Supreme Court ruling: “I KNOW you are NOT sitting around your computer right now because the decision JUST came down and Stephen and I are just THRILLED and you must be over the top! 4 to 3 decision is good enough. So what if all our money is in the toilet—start planning your weddings!” – Amber Hu is a sophomore in Saybrook College.
7
SNAPSHOT
WHO’S LAUGHING NOW? Women are at the center of a revolution in Yale’s comedy scene.
Max Himpe photos by Vivek Suri
F
ive women strut onto a makeshift stage with a smug swagger. The audience that fills the auditorium in Yale’s Linsly-Chittenden Hall is already laughing. With their baseball caps tilted sideways on their heads—and scratching their nether regions—the performers lumber to a line of chairs. “Do we really think it’s a good idea to be taking ‘men’ out of ‘comedy’?” asks Ned, played by Raffi Donatich, in an aggressively deep voice. “Then it would just be ‘Cody’,” Fred, played by Sarah Al-Shalash, replies, screwing up her brow, so slack-jawed she’s almost drooling. The other characters nod vigorously. Then, from Luke, Emma Chanen’s character: “Your mum’s a chode!” Donatich and Chanen pantomime a ‘snip’, scissor-banging their fingers in celebration of their joke. So began the ‘cold open’ of Disast-Her, an April 13 sketch,
8
stand-up, and improv showcase featuring 20 women from Yale’s comedy scene. The opener imagined a group of Yale’s male comedians devising a rival showcase. The sketch skewered bad dick jokes, misguided allyship (hoisting a woman up on your shoulders does not “elevate her voice,” guys) and problematic icons (Daniel Tosh, anyone?). But eviscerating the patriarchy wasn’t the night’s only aim. Other improv scenes invited the viewers to worlds strewn with dead cows and broken treehouses; stand-up comedians told tales of study abroad misadventures and medical mishaps. Two months prior, a newly-formed stand-up collective for women and non-binary comedians hosted its first event, The Coven Presents: We Just Said That. Jokes ranged from the cure for catcalling to being called out at the Colbert Report. This event, too, was a smashing success: stage managers had to turn away a long line of would-be audience members at the door of the Jonathan Edwards Theater.
THE NEW JOUR NAL
Yale has a grand total of six sketch groups, five improv groups, two stand-up troupes (including The Coven) and a plethora of regular stand-up open mics. With the notable exception of shows by the Sphincter Troupe, a non-male sketch comedy group founded in 2001, rarely does a comedy line-up at Yale feature zero dudes. To The Coven’s founder, Chloe Prendergast, the two new non-male comedy line-ups that cropped up in a semester emerged from a new consensus about problems in Yale’s comedy scene. “The show proved that this kind of night had value,” she said. ENTERING THE SCENE Chloe Prendergast didn’t consider herself funny before coming to Yale. But when she became the Art Director of the Yale Record, the country’s oldest college humor magazine, she was told she didn’t need to be. Anyone can pitch a cartoon; she just needed to approve the image. Prendergast said it’s unlikely she would have said yes to stand-up without the encouragement of an experienced woman comedian, the Record’s then Editor-in-Chief, Rachel Lackner. Lackner was one of the few recurring woman performers at Yale’s amateur open mic night, the Cucumber, and encouraged Prendergast to perform. Today, Prendergast is both the Record’s publisher and a staple on the Yale stand-up circuit. She’s not the only one. Grace Wynter, a stand-up comedian and member of the Sphincter Troupe, said, “When I was 14, I told my friend that I want to be the Black Tina Fey. I didn’t consider myself a funny person; I was just someone who liked comedy.” A personal outreach message from Sphincter motivated her to audition. Zoë Loewenberg, the former director of musical improv group Just Add Water (of which I am also a member) was discouraged from comedy for another reason: “Improv is not cute. You don’t look hot doing improv. It’s high risk. Comedy is counter to my gender role.” Just this year, at one set of auditions for stand-up troupe The Opening, fifteen men and one woman turned up. Lane Unsworth, director of the Cucumber, didn’t find that surprising. “I get reached out to by guys but I need to reach out to girls [when recruiting for shows],” she said. “Being a woman in charge made recruiting women much easier.” And stand-up isn’t the only comedic extracurricular facing concerns about representation. A meta-scene performed by the sketch troupe Fifth Humour last year highlighted similar issues. The scene began with Addee Kim trying to recall her favorite sketch from a previous Fifth Humour show. She told cast member Zoe Ervolino that one of the performers was this “white guy, darkish hair and sort of Jewish.” That description didn’t narrow it down. So, on the command of her whistle, Ervolino summoned the male members of Fifth Humour to march shamefacedly onto the stage. The group resembled a police line-up: nine white, dark-haired men. While the bit was specific to Fifth Humour, the point it made speaks to racial and gender disparities in Yale’s comedy scene at large. According to Prendergast, Last Comic Standing was the final catalyst in the creation of The Coven. Organized every year by the Yale College Council, Last Comic Standing offers any undergraduate comedian the chance to open for an established comic. The winners are determined both by YCC judges and popular vote. In last’s year’s competition, three of the seven finalists were women, but not one made it
SEPTEMBER 2018
into the top three. “I very much disagreed with the outcome of that show,” says Prendergast. “And I wasn’t the only one.” For her, this result reinforced a truth about Yale comedy: Women aren’t just underrepresented, they’re underappreciated too. That same night, the idea for The Coven was born. “THAT’S NOT A PHONE, IT’S A BANANA” Not only are women discouraged from entering the Yale comedy scene: once they join, they often face unique difficulties. To foster collaboration and world-building onstage, for instance, many improvisers have been taught a cardinal rule: “Make your partner look good.” But woman improvisers at Yale say they can’t always count on their male counterparts to follow it. In a “long-form” game at one group’s show a few years ago, the premise was a madcap one. To tie up the ending of the story, one character needed another character’s eyes. But a male performer had developed a joke about his character refusing to give away his cornea. A woman improviser tried to end the story, but the male performer denied her because his ‘cornea’ joke was getting a lot of laughs, making the woman the butt of the joke rather than its architect. Zoe Ervolino, the brains behind the Disast-Her showcase, a member of Fifth Humour, and director of an improv group, The Viola
9
yale institute of sacred music
Upcoming Events
free and open to the public; no tickets required ism.yale.edu
saturday september 15 7:30 pm
Don’t Shoot, Just Listen Inspire: A Choir for Unity Marquand Chapel, 409 Prospect St., New Haven A co-presentation with Yale Glee Club
saturday september 29 5 pm
monday october 8 4:30 pm
Choral Evensong Yale Schola Cantorum / David Hill, conductor Music of Paulus, Vivanco, Harris, and Holst Christ Church New Haven, 84 Broadway at Elm
Sacraments and Postcolonial Planetarity Reimagining the Sacramental Signature of All Things in the Era of Environmental Degradation Kristine Suna-Koro Miller Hall, 406 Prospect St., New Haven
friday october 12 7:30 pm
Handel: Alexander’s Feast
sunday october 28 4 pm
Jeanine De Bique, soprano
An ode to the power of music Yale Schola Cantorum / Juilliard 415 / Masaaki Suzuki, conductor Trinity Lutheran Church, 292 Orange St., New Haven
Works of Mozart, Strauss, Wolf, Previn and folk songs from Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica Marquand Chapel, 409 Prospect St., New Haven
10
THE NEW JOUR NAL
Question, said this is a common phenomenon. “‘That’s not a phone, it’s a banana.’ The person who says that is a man in my mind,” she said. Sometimes audiences only reinforce this dilemma, according to Ervolino. She came up with a theory about what she calls ‘the frat boy laugh.’ “When a joke ‘goes well’, we’re listening to the loudest people laughing,” she said. And, according to Ervolino, men are often the loudest laughers. When an audience is dominated by male laughter, a joke at men’s expense might not go over well. In one case at a Just Add Water improv show last semester, a group of men in the audience audibly live commented the show, pointing out the women they found unfunny or unattractive. In a sign of progress in Yale’s comedy scene, women’s leadership of comedy groups has been on the rise. Last year, four of the five mixed-gender sketch groups on campus— Red Hot Poker, Fifth Humour, The Good Show, and Odd Ducks—were directed by women, along with four of the five improv groups. On a Wednesday evening in April, five female comedy directors trickled into a room in the Center for Teaching and Learning. They greeted each other with warm smiles and generous laughter. And as our conversation about directorship warmed up, they nodded eagerly at their shared experiences. “I’ve never seen a message in the GroupMe from a woman asking what time or where rehearsal is,” said Emma Chanen, director of the Good Show. “The men struggle to consult resources and make it happen for themselves.” Raffi Donatich, then director of Red Hot Poker, jumped in: “Literally last semester, one member of my group––whom I love––goes, ‘When is the show?’ and I’m like, ‘Tonight! In hours!’ We’d been rehearsing all week!” As they laugh, it’s clear this is all too familiar. “It’s hard because I’m so bad at logistics,” Tessa Palter-Poston, director of improv group Purple Crayon, confesses. “But at least I have frequent shame about it.” Then, there’s the question of how women should go about leading in majority-male spaces. Chanen again: “I take up a f***-ton of space in Good Show. I’m unapologetic about that. They’re welcome for the feedback.” However, when she finds that members of her group have been talking over her for ten minutes straight, “I wonder if that would be the same if I were a man.” Hums of agreement emerge from the other directors. Donatich also noted that the family culture of Yale comedy groups led to ‘mommification’, a term for when women directors are treated as maternal figures rather than leaders. Outside the meeting, Ervolino voiced concerns with how men and women handle sensitive material. The burden of initiating discourse often falls on women. “When anything is available to be made into a joke, there are a lot of opportunities to mess up,” Ervolino said. “It’s hard to be the only one bothered [by insensitivity]. Just because a space is comfortable and everyone is close doesn’t mean that certain things are allowed.” As rush season began this fall, Ervolino asked to withdraw a sketch about gay women, written by a straight man, that she felt could alienate the audience and prospective members. She also started conversations on ensuring women get funny parts on stage and using gender-neutral character names. For a non-male group like Sphincter, these types of problems are rarer. “The language [of Disast-Her] had an element
SEPTEMBER 2018
“I take up a f***-ton of space in Good Show. I’m unapologetic about that. They’re welcome for the feedback.” of ‘wouldn’t it be so nice and new,’” said former member Anna Piwowar, who graduated this spring. “To Sphincter, it’s not. This is our lived experience of writing sketches. It’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like in a room where that’s not the case.” In Sphincter rehearsals, every suggestion is applauded; no idea is shot down. “We’re not writing for the intention of being funny to everyone. We write to the intention of what we believe in,” said member Yuni Chang, who graduated in May. Members still joke about a Bulldog Days Show where they performed a sketch about hypermasculine culture at Goldman Sachs and another about a woman getting eggs sucked out of her uterus—to radio silence from the audience. More than half of Sphincter’s line-up is made up of women of color. But improviser Lillian Ekem, a member of Purple Crayon who participated in Disast-Her, expressed some concerns about the showcase’s lack of racial diversity. “As a woman of color going to these rehearsals of improv, it’s been mostly white,” she said. “At a place where I’m supposed to feel part of the majority, I’m still a minority.” Ervolino and Prendergast are aware of that the spaces
11
they’ve cultivated still reflect issues of representation within the comedy scene. “It’s a very white group of women. That’s something about comedy in general and comedy at Yale,” Ervolino said. Similarly, despite their efforts at inclusivity, neither event has hosted a non-binary or trans performer. “It’s weird to know that this is already a failure, in some aspects,” Ervolino said. But, she added, a more inclusive comedy scene “needs to start somewhere.” THE SHOWCASE The night of Disast-Her, LC101 was packed to the brim. The line outside snaked to the basement toilets. Audience members cheered performers’ names before the show had even started. Backstage, Ervolino anxiously paced between rooms. Improvisers were warming up, sketch performers were fine-tuning, and the stand-up comics sat in the audience, nervously reviewing their sets. But once Ervolino sat down to watch, her anxieties dissipated. “The whole point of the showcase was that these women knew what they were doing,” she said. At the warm-up, even the woman house manager joined in. Much like at the very first meeting, no one introduced themselves by what group they were in. Performers from each group shared their respective warm-up rituals, something comedians at Yale are often fiercely secretive about. But not tonight. These performers were part of a community. Just before the improvisers took to the stage, a growing ruckus echoed from the corridors of LC. It was one word being repeated over and over again: “Women. Women! Women! WOMEN!” As they ran out onto the stage, the crowd roared, then sat back to listen. – Max Himpe is a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin College.
12
THE NEW JOUR NAL
E S S AY
PORCELAIN Kyung Mi Lee
1
On a layover in El Salvador, I noticed the staring. I kept locking eyes with strangers— the old man by the window, a woman digging through her purse, the child coming out of the bathroom. I felt flattered until I heard, “¿Quién es la china?”
illustrations by merritt barnwell
China: a small porcelain doll on display for the world to see, fragile, foreign, china.
2. I grew up reading the Western classics in Korean. They came in full-shelf packages: Les Miserablés, Little Women, King Lear, translated to satiate a child’s growing mind. When the words were finally read to me in their original form, I cried because I did not know how to pronounce Gloucester.
3. They say the term gook originated from mi-guk, the Korean word for America. My people shouted mi-guk! at the pale-faced, jeep-roaring, gum-chewing liberators, pointed and hollered mi-guk! the way our white saviors have come to shout gook. Gook: flat-faced, stub-nosed, slit-eyed, yellow-skinned American.
4. A reddit thread that reads: “I am only interested in the best: Asian women. Why is that? Could it be their fine skin and long silky hair? Could it be that unlike white women, they remember what it’s like to be a woman: to be docile and submissive and respectful to a man? Could it be their delicate, playful personalities? I believe it is all of the above.” SEPTEMBER 2018
5. A boy once recited Keats to me, as if he spoke the language of his forefathers: “bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art.” I remember wishing that they were my forefathers, that my bosom would rise and fall as a fair maiden’s breasts, that they had planted in me the same words so true and benign. I lay naked in the provocation of our bodies hooked into a shadow, his soft brunette hair against the tan of my skin, and I let him speak to feel the Romance of what it means to be white.
6. I was there for the revival of Miss Saigon. Under the bright lights of a fictitious Saigon, the carnage of a 1975 bar scene unfolded before my eyes. I dwelled on the deranged romanticism of living through the ‘Nam, the unapologetic vulgarity of scantily-clad, stick-skinny women prancing around with topless G.I.s. I wonder what it feels like to be thrown around.
13
To be humped, cheaply bent over, to offer my every move to a man.
7. I was sitting in the passenger seat of a red Toyota Corolla, facing a boy whose arms were intertwined with mine. It was well past curfew but making out in empty parking lots is a favorite American pastime. He flashed me a smile in the way that well-meaning boys do before muttering, “I love when you do your hair like that. It just looks so—I don’t know. Elegant? Like a geisha or something. I like it.”
8. “Do you have a boyfriend?” My mom asked one day. “No, not really.” A white lie. “That’s okay. Just don’t bring home a boy with blue eyes.”
9. During World War II, the Japanese snatched young girls from their homes in Korea and shipped them off in boatloads to barracks across the Pacific. Comfort women, we call them. They lay, teeth clenched, under the weight of the blood red sun as it rose and fell within them.
10. Comfort (n.): “a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint.” A state of physical intimacy awarded for bravery in battle. A state of constraint by the imperial army. Rape.
her to America. He replies, “Oh, come on. Not tonight!” To which she pleads, “But I’ll make a good wife!” The bar owner walks over, slaps Gigi, and throws her to the ground. To ease the sudden rise in tension accompanied by a musical halt, he says: “It’s alright, gentlemen. It’s just Gigi. You know she likes it rough.”
12. The Japanese men who loved geishas colonized women who look like me—their lords once ruled my mother tongue and land. They ripped the sangtu off the heads of my fathers, exposing scalp, snipping away a reverence for our ancestors as they tossed hair-knots to the ground.
13. I wonder if Gigi really does like it rough. Did Vietnam like it rough when American soldiers fell from the sky?
14. I like being choked in bed. I like the feeling of fingers around my throat, of careful asphyxiation, of having the breath crushed out of me – I giggle. 15. I keep thinking maybe I like it rough the way Gigi likes it rough, and perhaps the real trophy of war is this doubt they’ve managed to cast. – Kyung Mi Lee is a sophomore in Pauli Murray College.
11. In Miss Saigon’s Dreamland sequence, one of the “girls,” Gigi, resists the advances of an American G.I. While he is impatient to undress her, she desperately tries to convince him to take 14
THE NEW JOUR NAL
SEPTEMBER 2018
 15
F E AT U R E
BRIDGEPORT’S BIG GAMBLE A casino titan says it can help a struggling city. A coalition with $800 in the bank wants to stop it.
Steven Lance I. THE EAST END When he first heard about the casino, Dr. Charlie Stallworth, a Connecticut state representative and the pastor of East End Baptist Tabernacle Church in Bridgeport, was skeptical. He didn’t think the developer, MGM Resorts International, was serious about the project, and he didn’t like the advertising campaign they were running. “Maybe I’m not the brightest guy in the room,” he remembers thinking, “but don’t try and manipulate me.” So, last September, when Stallworth heard about a press conference and groundbreaking ceremony in a vacant lot on the waterfront, he stayed away: “How are you going to have a groundbreaking for something that’s illegal to build?” A few construction workers wore hard hats for the cameras, but the event that morning wasn’t really a groundbreaking. There were no shovels. Instead, standing in a tent beside artists’ depictions of a glitzy complex with yachts parked out front, Jim Murren, MGM’s president and CEO and a Bridgeport native, said construction could start on a $675-million resort and casino as soon as the state passed a bill to make it legal. “The idea of being able to bring thousands of jobs, hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, to a city where I was born that needs this so desperately is very rewarding for me,” he said. The site MGM had chosen was in the East End neighborhood, three blocks from Stallworth’s church: a patch of concrete on an old industrial channel in Bridgeport Harbor. This spot was now the center of a battle over where—and whether—Connecticut would open its first casino off a Native American reservation. MGM was already on track to spend more than $4.7 million on lobbying and associated costs within 18 months. Only recently, the gambling titan had sued Connecticut, attempting to block a similar proposal from the state’s two federally recognized Native American tribes, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Mohegan Tribe (both of which already operate casinos on their reservations). Now, it was launching a charm offensive: community meetings, union rallies, donations to nonprofits and scholarship funds, talks at Rotary clubs, web and TV advertising, and glossy brochures mailed to homes in Bridgeport and New Haven. “Support 7,000 total jobs,” one brochure said, “at no cost to taxpayers.” The state’s two largest 16
illustrations by Julia Hedges
cities were each promised something. Bridgeport would get $8 million a year for hosting the casino, MGM promised. New Haven would get a jobs-training center. And Connecticut would get $50 million up front in licensing fees before the first card was dealt. Back in September, Stallworth had his doubts about the casino. But he knew his city was struggling. “Bridgeport has been stereotyped as that place where bad things happen,” he said. “We have to change that.” Once a proud producer of everything from sewing machines and luxury cars to bayonets and rifles, Bridgeport flourished during World War II but began losing jobs and residents soon after. Deindustrialization in the ‘70s and ‘80s hit the city hard. Crack, crime, and suburban flight made things worse. By 1990, Bridgeport’s murder rate was the highest in New England. Its budget was deep in the red. According to Stallworth, Bridgeport still hasn’t fully recovered. “Just to ride through the neighborhood, you see trash, you see sidewalks broken,” he said. “If I were sixteen, I don’t know if that would motivate me to try to push forward in my life.” Stallworth met with MGM executives at his church early this year to hear their pitch. The jobs and revenue projections they quoted got his attention. “Bridgeport has not had an economic boost, or a jobs boost, since who knows when,” he said. And he appreciated that their plans included some family-friendly entertainment options, like a theater and a boardwalk mall. By spring, he concluded that MGM Bridgeport was the city’s best chance for a rebound. Reverend Christopher Leighton thought differently. Leighton, the priest at St. Mark’s, an Episcopal church about two blocks from Dr. Stallworth’s church, opposed the casino from the start. His grandfather, a well-to-do accountant, lost everything to illicit gambling and left his son, Leighton’s father, in crushing debt. Leighton’s father took out his bitterness on his children. “I remember being beaten by my father for nothing,” the priest told me. “It’s a drama I wish I never had to go through.” A grandfather himself now, Leighton helps run a summer bible school for East End kids. “I don’t want to see the kids we’re trying to help get sucked into a life that could destroy them,” he said. Stallworth’s support for the casino, Leighton said, probably stems from his thinking as an elected official, pursuing Bridgeport’s economic interests rather than following his heart as a preacher. “I’ve heard people say, who are in supTHE NEW JOUR NAL
port of it, ‘You can’t legislate morality,’ Leighton said. “It’s like, wait a minute, we do that all the time: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’” But Stallworth said he feels no tension between politics and faith on this issue. “I’m in the same place as a pastor, as a person, as a politician,” he said. “I support it. I have stood in my church and said, ‘I’m looking forward for it to come.’ I hope it comes.” By March, the two East End pastors were manning opposite sides of the barricades. Stallworth signed on as a sponsor of House Bill 5305, which would set up a bidding process for a new casino with requirements roughly tracking MGM’s proposal. Leighton, meanwhile, joined the Connecticut Coalition Against Casino Expansion (CACE) and testified against the bill. “Gambling may be entertaining for some,” he said at a legislative hearing, “but for many whose stories are too shameful to tell, gambling causes casualties.” Leighton told me opposing the casino can feel isolating. His impression is that the overwhelming majority of Bridgeport residents want it. (In a poll of registered Bridgeport voters MGM commissioned last fall, 74 percent said they were in favor.) Michele Mudrick, one of the coalition’s founders, said CACE is outmatched financially as well. “It’s like a David and Goliath fight we have here,” Mudrick told me in April. “We have $800 in the bank[…] and they’re literally spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.” In May, as the 2018 legislative session closed, Stallworth’s bill passed the Connecticut House of Representatives. Four days later, short on votes, the bill’s sponsors in the Senate withdrew it, promising to come back stronger in 2019. In another round of direct-mail flyers later that month, MGM vowed to continue the fight. “With support from people like you,” the flyer said, “we are closer than ever” to victory. Since then, the battlefield has gone quiet. But both sides are preparing for the bill’s return. II. UNCASVILLE On the winding route to Mohegan Sun, one of two casinos that tower over the oak and hickory forests of southeastern Connecticut, the snow is falling heavier now and sticking. It’s a Wednesday night in March, and I’ve taken a wrong turn onto a road the plows haven’t reached. Cars move slowly, following each other’s tire-tracks. Others have given up, or drifted too far onto the shoulder; they wait in the darkness, hazard lights blinking. It’s supposed to snow like this until morning. It’s warm inside the casino, where there are no windows to gauge the weather outside. The gambling floor is vast, spanning more than 300,000 square feet. In one section, simulated stars dot the ceiling. In another, animatronic wolves turn their heads as if scanning for prey. The flashing SEPTEMBER 2018
lights on slot machines—old ones, squat with metal handles, and new ones shaped like giant smartphones—blur in the cigarette smoke and artificial waterfall mist. Melissa, who declined to give her last name, got off work about an hour ago. She’s slouched in her seat, watching a video interlude on a “Sex and the City” slot machine. Later tonight, she’ll brave the roads home to North Stonington, where her two kids are waiting. I ask why she’s here. “Because I work at the other one,” she responds. “I can’t gamble there.”
“I’ve heard people say, who are in support of it, ‘You can’t legislate morality,’ Leighton said. “It’s like, wait a minute, we do that all the time: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’” The other one is Foxwoods Resort Casino, 10 miles away on the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation. When it opened in 1992, Foxwoods was the only casino in New England; within a few years, it was the world’s largest. The Mohegans—relatives and onetime enemies of the Mashantucket Pequots—received federal recognition as a tribe in 1994, and opened Mohegan Sun here in Uncasville two years later. For the next decade, this corner of Connecticut attracted gamblers from all over the East Coast. Back then, an old-timer at the penny slots told me, there was a line behind every machine. Slot machines are illegal in Connecticut. But on tribal lands, state gambling restrictions, like indoor smoking laws, apply differently. Back in the ‘90s, the state promised the tribes a monopoly on slots; in return, the tribes would pay Connecticut 25 percent of their slot-machine winnings. The state’s most profitable year was 2006—payments for that year totaled $430 million. Then came the financial crisis. By 2012, Foxwoods was $2.3 billion in debt. The Mohegans owed $1.6 billion. And they were encircled by competitors: New casinos had popped up in Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maine. With more regional rivals, Connecticut’s casinos have since shrunk their gambling floors and expanded into tamer forms of entertainment: an outlet mall, an expo center, a 33-story zip-line, a WNBA team. As of late 2016, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun employed 43 percent fewer people than in 2006. The two casinos still accounted for over 13,000 jobs, and operated more than 7,000 slot machines. But last year, those machines won the state just $270 million. Dr. Clyde Barrow, a University of Texas economist who consults for the tribes, told me the number of casinos in the Northeast has exploded since 2006—from 12 to nearly 70. 17
And more are coming. MGM Springfield, a billion-dollar gambling resort, opened in Massachusetts last month. Wynn is building a casino near Boston. Over the summer, MGM bought a century-old racetrack and slot parlor in Yonkers, New York, which industry observers expect will expand dramatically. To compete, the Connecticut tribes plan to construct a “satellite” casino in East Windsor, Connecticut—just 17 miles from Springfield. The idea, which won the legislature’s approval in 2016, is to intercept gamblers heading north for the border. According to MGM, a casino in Bridgeport will do the same things, but better, potentially earning Connecticut more than Foxwoods and Mohegan combined. Bridgeport is closer to major population hubs like New York. But a casino there would break Connecticut’s compact with the tribes and throw the future of Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun into doubt. Melissa believes workers like her will suffer no matter what happens. “The more casinos you have,” she said, “the worse it is for us.” She’s been at Foxwoods for 17 years, off and on, and remembers the downturn when Twin River Casino opened an hour away in Rhode Island. “There’ll be layoffs,” she predicted. Dr. Barrow’s data support Melissa’s fears. “There’s no doubt,” he said, “that if you open a third casino in Connecticut, some of its revenues will be cannibalized” from Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. In a 2015 study, Dr. Barrow’s consulting firm predicted that increased competition could cost the two casinos as many as 5,800 jobs by 2019. The only downturn approaching that scale to date was during the Great Recession. Hundreds of workers and tribal members lost their livelihoods then. In 2010, still insolvent after laying 18
off eight hundred employees, the Pequots stopped paying stipends to tribal members, forcing some families to rely on a communal food bank. (In the boom years, those annual stipends had exceeded $100,000 for each adult.) Chuck Bunnell, the Mohegan Tribe’s chief of staff, told me he thinks MGM Bridgeport will never materialize. “Obviously, let’s hope it doesn’t,” he said. “But, if we’re being honest with each other, we have to accept that that would cause layoffs and be devastating for this region of the state.” And adjusting for competition from MGM Springfield is “inevitable,” Bunnell said. The tribes will try to keep downsized workers employed until the East Windsor casino opens—2020 at the earliest—so they can transfer there, he said. Although most employees aren’t members of the tribe, Bunnell said, the Mohegans “consider their employees part of their extended family.” But transferring to East Windsor, halfway across the state, isn’t an option for Melissa. “I have thought about it,” she said, “but I’m divorced and I have two kids. The travel would take too big of a toll.” III. BARNUM AVENUE Nick Roussas, the owner of Frankie’s Diner in Bridgeport, started out bussing tables at the age of 9. By 12 he was cooking burgers and fries on the line. Now, at 41, Roussas is the president of the neighborhood redevelopment zone, a marshal for the Juneteenth parade, and a board member for six nonprofits. He’s also a near-daily presence at the diner, where he works at least 50 hours a week. Roussas has three rules for conversations with customers: “You don’t take sides on religion, politics, or baseball.” He bends two of them. It’s no secret that Roussas is a diehard Yankees fan. He’s taken a side in the casino debate, too. “Why can’t we have something like the Yankees here in THE NEW JOUR NAL
Bridgeport?” he asked me. “That’s what I think MGM can do for us.” Growing up around Barnum Avenue, Roussas witnessed Bridgeport’s decline first-hand. “This neighborhood used to be a lot nicer,” he said. “You had G.E. You had Remington Arms. Columbia Records was here. Singer Sewing Machines. Frisbee Pies.” Customers at Frankie’s still reminisce about a time when you could quit a good job in the morning and get a new one by lunchtime. When the factories closed, things changed. “A lot of people started selling their houses,” Roussas recalled. “People started buying the houses very cheap, renting them out.” Slumlords and renters didn’t keep up the buildings. The city didn’t keep up the streets. A halfway house moved in near the diner. “If this neighborhood had stayed stable,” he said, “if people owned their homes, maybe that wouldn’t have happened.”
It’s no secret that Roussas is a diehard Yankees fan. He’s taken a side in the casino debate, too. “Why can’t we have something like the Yankees here in Bridgeport?” he asked me. “That’s what I think MGM can do for us.” The state has neglected Bridgeport, said Peter Carroll, the president of the county’s Building Trades Union, who grew up here, too. “In New Haven, they have Yale, and Hartford’s the capital,” he said. “Stamford has all the spill-over from New York City. But Bridgeport always seems to be the stepchild.” The contribution MGM would make to the local economy, Carroll said, is “desperately needed.” Michele Mudrick of CACE agrees that Bridgeport needs jobs. But the city and state need to get creative about promoting these goals, she said. “Casinos are made for people to lose their money, and making people poor is not a good economic development tool.” Karen DelVecchio, executive vice president of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council, said MGM’s investment is too big to pass up. “The fact is, there are not a lot of entities that can come in and invest $675 million,” she told me. “If there were another business that could do that, we would be thrilled to hear about it.” Last October, Bridgeport and New Haven submitted a joint bid to host Amazon’s second corporate headquarters. “Bridgehaven” was cut in the first round. Short of Amazon—which says it will invest $5 billion in its next home and hire 50,000 employees making over $100,000 a year—a casino is the city’s best shot, DelVecchio said. Roussas knows the casino won’t solve all of Bridgeport’s problems. He understands it’s designed to take people’s SEPTEMBER 2018
money. But he hopes the promised jobs will trigger a chain reaction. Bridgeporters will go back to work. They’ll buy houses instead of renting. They’ll raise their kids here, sending them to schools improved and beautified with casino money. They’ll have what Roussas calls “pride of ownership.” They’ll be happier. “That’s all it takes—one thing like this to spark things up,” Roussas said. “That’s what we’re looking for.” IV. WATERBURY Thirty miles north on Highway 8, in Waterbury, another former factory town, Scott Nelson thinks a casino will affect his city, too. Nelson is the director of problem gambling services for Midwestern Connecticut Council of Alcoholism, an addiction treatment center here. “If you’re within a fifty-five-mile radius of a casino,” Nelson told me, “your chances of developing a gambling issue go up.” In a 1999 report to Congress, the National Gambling Impact Study Commission cited evidence that problem and pathological gambling were twice as prevalent within fifty miles of a casino. Recent studies have found a similar correlation. Nelson explains this in terms of access. “The more accessible gambling is, the more people tend to participate in it,” he said. “And once you are in that environment, certain risk factors have the opportunity to take hold.” Right now, lottery scratchers are the biggest problem for Nelson’s gambling clients. Fantasy sports betting is growing. If a casino opened in Bridgeport—fifty-five minutes away by train or thirty minutes by car—Nelson would anticipate more clients with slot-machine addictions. But he wouldn’t expect them right away. “Nobody goes to the casino for the first time, loses more than they intended, and then immediately walks in the door to see us,” he said. “There’s a pattern of problems over months, years—decades in some cases— before they’re able to get through the door to see us.” Melodie Keen, the director of outpatient services at Connecticut Renaissance, a behavioral therapy center in Norwalk, agreed. “By the time I see people,” she said, “they’ve lost everything.” If MGM Bridgeport opens, Nelson believes the patients at his clinic will be especially vulnerable. Some have criminal records. Many are people of color. Few are affluent. All these factors put them at a higher risk for gambling addiction, he said. Research bears out Nelson’s concern. According to a paper by Dr. Timothy Fong of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, lower socioeconomic status correlates with more severe gambling problems, and African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and American Indians are all overrepresented among pathological gamblers—as are individuals with a history of substance abuse. “But it can happen to anyone,” said Keen. Her Norwalk 19
clients include high rollers ferried to casinos in private jets or limos and given complimentary suites once they arrive. Representative Juan Candelaria of New Haven, who co-sponsored the casino bill last session, said he was sympathetic to concerns about gambling problems but that it’s ultimately a question of individual autonomy. “I mean, no one is obligated to gamble,” he told me. “We make that choice,” Rep. Candelaria added. “And yes, opening up the casino opens up, probably, the ability for the individuals to go and gamble, but at the end of the day, it’s the individual’s choice.” Many Americans feel that way, said Nelson, the Waterbury clinician. In a recent poll, 51 percent of respondents named “moral weakness” as a likely cause of gambling addiction. But the idea that gambling addiction involves more of a choice—and thus more of a personal failing—than drug addiction is false, Nelson said. “I always think about it this way,” he said. “If somebody with a gambling addiction could bottle up that feeling they get from sitting at the card table, put it into a syringe, and inject it into their arms so they didn’t have to leave the house to go to the table, they would do that.” Some MGM backers have argued that the potential harm to a small number of individuals with gambling addictions shouldn’t stop Bridgeport and Connecticut from collecting the revenue they need. “I talk to a lot of people who deal with a lot of things,” Stallworth, the pastor, told me, “and I think I’ve had one person who said to me, you know, ‘I have a gambling problem.’” Meanwhile, Rep. Candelaria said, casinos work for everyone else. “That revenue is creating not only jobs,” Rep. Candelaria said, but also “going to different areas, where people will benefit at the end of the day.” Nelson compared this framing to the arguments drug manufacturers have advanced to avoid liability for fueling the opiate epidemic. “‘We developed this medicine in good faith, and if some people misused it and it led them to heroin, that’s not our problem’,” he said. While gambling addiction doesn’t lead to overdoses, it can be lethal. As many as one in five compulsive gamblers—a higher rate than any other addiction—attempt suicide, according to statistics from the National Council on Problem Gambling. According to Dr. Earl Grinols, an economist at Baylor University who has studied casinos’ social costs, gambling addiction will likely claim more victims if Bridgeport gets its casino. “Some of them will commit suicide,” he said. “Some of them will engage in crime, like embezzlement. There’s no doubt it’s going to cause those things. The question is, is that at a level that’s acceptable to the state of Connecticut?”
20
But where casinos are concerned, Nelson suggested, Connecticut may have passed the point of coolly weighing risks and benefits. The state hit a kind of jackpot once before, winning millions in revenue from Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. Now, as competition increases and money gets tighter, lawmakers want to try their luck again. A potent psychological factor in gambling addiction, Nelson said, is “the fantasy of gambling creating a life-changing event.” It’s unique to gambling, and it’s one reason casinos can be so compelling—both for individual gamblers and for the cities and states that host casinos. “Nobody with an alcohol addiction can pick up a beer and think to themselves, ‘If I drink this next beer, my life can be drastically changed,’” he said. But gamblers can dream. So can Bridgeport.
– Steven Lance graduated from Yale Law School in 2018.
THE NEW JOUR NAL
Interested in working on The New Journal? We’re looking for writers, photographers, illustrators, and web designers! No experience necessary. Reach out at thenewjournal@gmail.com.
SEPTEMBER 2018
 21
ON THE DOORSTEP
In New Haven, eviction feeds into a cycle of poverty that’s hard to escape. Eliza Fawcett illustrations by julia hedges
ONE LITTLE BOX Grace Luysterborghs lives on the fourth floor of the Robert T. Wolfe Apartments, in a studio apartment with big windows overlooking Union Station. But she likes to keep her curtains closed. It’s “one little box,” she says. There’s a bathroom right by the entrance, a tiny closet, a small kitchen, then her bed and dresser. Luysterborghs was thankful when she secured her apartment in the Wolfe complex at 49 Union Avenue, a New Haven Housing Authority–owned property for the elderly and disabled, in early 2015. Before moving into the building, she’d lived for over fifteen years in a spacious apartment in West Haven. In late 2014, she had to stop work as a nurse’s aide to prepare for a knee replacement, and her landlord simultaneously tried to evict her, she says. She was forced out of her apartment—although it was never formalized—and was 22
briefly homeless. Then she landed a spot in the Robert T. Wolfe Apartments. Years after the surgery, the swelling in her knee has never really gone down, Luysterborghs says. She still has trouble walking. Sometimes the cramps in her legs are so bad that she can’t get out of bed in the morning. When Luysterborghs moved into the Robert T. Wolfe Apartments, her rent was $59 a month. She prioritized it, and paid it on time. At the end of last year, though, her disability assistance went up, increasing her rent to $202. Her case manager at a local behavioral therapy program informed the Housing Authority of the change. But the paperwork confused Luysterborghs, and she accidentally submitted her old Social Security information. The Housing Authority discovered the error after she’d paid the original rent, Luysterborghs says. And suddenly it was too late. In January, she found an eviction notice affixed to her THE NEW JOUR NAL
front door, informing her that she hadn’t paid her $202 rent for that month. She had three weeks to leave. Over the next few months, Luysterborghs met with her property manager to resolve the issue and paid her outstanding rent. But her case continued to advance through the court system, and the eviction loomed. Eventually, a hearing at housing court was set for the end of April. “It’s been hectic because I’ve been dealing with a lot of depression, a lot of stuff,” Luysterborghs says the day before her hearing, sitting at China King, a takeout restaurant on Chapel Street. Sixty years old, Luysterborghs has a wide face and blue eyes that quickly lift with an easy smile and, just as quickly, collapse into sadness. She grew up on the eastern edge of New Haven and attended Wilbur Cross High School. When she was a child, her mother balanced three jobs. Luysterborghs has worked all her life, too. She raised three sons, one of whom just got out of rehab. The youngest drowned in 2011 at the age of twenty-one. And even as she faces eviction proceedings, she’s been taking care of her two-month-old grandson every day. If she is evicted, she will lose her spot in public housing. And there’s no other place waiting for her. “I’m upset about what I’m going through,” Luysterborghs says. Through the plate glass windows of China King, she can almost make out the white gleam of the New Haven County Courthouse, where she’s scheduled to appear the next morning. “I’m going through stress, I’m going through back pain. I cry.” For Luysterborghs, the prospect of an eviction is frightening, overwhelming, and isolating. But eviction has become commonplace for the city’s poorest renters. The Eviction Lab, a nationwide database of over eighty-three million eviction records, estimates that four evictions occur in New Haven every day, reflecting the pervasiveness of housing instability and poverty on the municipal and national levels. And comprehensive solutions may be a long way off. FORCED OUT The eviction process begins with a Notice to Quit Possession, like the one Luysterborghs found on her door. Every week, New Haven County State Marshal Brian Mezick serves dozens of notices to tenants across the city. Eviction papers—most of which stem from nonpayment of rent—launch tenants into a legal process that most navigate without an attorney. Mezick is in his thirties, a clean-shaven man with short blonde hair and slight sideburns. He’s been a state marshal for the past two years, handling evictions for private landlords and the New Haven Housing Authority. If a defendant fails to appear in housing court, or loses SEPTEMBER 2018
her case, she can be evicted in about four weeks. Other times, cases can drag on for many months. If a judge upholds an eviction, Mezick oversees the removal process. There’s a certain boyishness about Mezick, who often shows up to evictions wearing a brown bomber jacket with a sheepskin collar and dark boots. But the state marshal ID hanging around his neck betrays the reason for his presence on tenants’ doorsteps. “I’m not there to be a cowboy, an enforcer, overly hostile. I try to speak in calm, low tones,” he says. “I make sure the landlord is not on the premises—there’s no need to agitate the situation.” One April morning, at an eviction at a Housing Authority apartment near West Rock, Mezick watches as the movers work quickly, carrying armfuls of a woman’s possessions out the door.
Even as she faces eviction proceedings, Grace has been taking care of her two-month-old grandson every day. If she is evicted, she will lose her spot in public housing. And there’s no other place waiting for her. The movers have an easy rapport with him, laughing and trading stories about eviction work as they dismantle the woman’s home. There was the one with roaches. The hoarder. Mezick tells them about a case a few days earlier, where a tenant in West Haven barricaded his door and threatened to shoot anyone who came in. “That’s the scary thing. You never know what people are going through,” one of the movers says. “We had this guy, we’re five minutes from his house, and the road’s all blocked off. House is going up in flames. The guy had set it on fire and then shot himself.” He pushes a few boxes onto a hand truck and wheels it out the door. During an eviction in New Haven, tenants who can’t afford private storage have their possessions packed onto a truck that is unloaded at the Department of Public Works’ Eviction Warehouse, located in a corner of the old Goffe Street Armory. Unlike some other cities, New Haven does not charge storage fees, but items that haven’t been retrieved within a month are auctioned off wholesale to the public. Only about a tenth of tenants pick up their possessions, according to warehouse manager Shawn Brown. Often, elderly people who have been evicted don’t want to tell their families what’s happening, or cannot coordinate the pickup. “Sometimes it’s pride, shame, or they’ve been sick,” Brown says. She doesn’t like to sell people’s items because “some things can’t be replaced.” But anything that isn’t claimed goes up for auction. 23
At an auction one morning in April, two men show up to bid. Brown leads them through the warehouse, where pallets of shrink-wrapped possessions sit in plywood bays. The two bidders pass their flashlight beams over a pallet piled high with chairs—a translucent iceberg of things left behind. Nothing can be opened before purchase, so bidders make their best guesses about the value of the items within the boxes and pallets. Anything that doesn’t sell at the auction is taken to the Transfer Station in Quinnipiac Meadows, New Haven’s landfill.
New Haven is particularly vulnerable to what is increasingly seen as a nationwide eviction crisis. The city has a 4.05 percent eviction rate, according to the Eviction Lab, meaning that roughly four in every one hundred renter households are evicted. “Yeah, I’ll take this for ten bucks,” says one of the bidders as he inspects a pallet. He has attended auctions at the warehouse every month for a decade. He sells other people’s former possessions at local flea markets. “I just buy,” he says. “It’s all about the gamble.” By the end of the auction, he’s spent $360 on thirty-five pallets, and will bring a 26-foot U-Haul to take it all away. For the bidders, the auction is a chance to hit the jackpot on an unassuming pallet: a well-made piece of furniture, a box of high-quality electronics, sometimes even a stash of money forgotten in the chaos of an eviction. But for tenants, it’s the end of a fast-moving process that threatens to strip them of their home and possessions. A CITY IN CRISIS New Haven is particularly vulnerable to what is increasingly seen as a nationwide eviction crisis. The city has a 4.05 percent eviction rate, according to the Eviction Lab, meaning that roughly four in every one hundred renter households are evicted. In 2016, with 1,823 cases filed and 1,481 evictions carried out, New Haven had the 69th highest rate of eviction for American cities. Of nearby Connecticut cities with similar populations, Waterbury had a 6.1 percent eviction rate—the twenty-second highest in the country—with 1,437 evictions in 2016. Stamford, with 453 evictions, did not make the top 100. In New Haven, the scars of 1960s-era urban renewal remain unhealed. A dilapidated housing stock, high housing costs, and entrenched poverty keeps home ownership out of reach for most city residents. According to the Partnership for Strong Communities, a Hart 24
ford-based affordable housing nonprofit, the median income for a New Haven renter household is $28,380, and more than half of renters spend 30 percent or more of their income on housing. State budget cuts, which have depleted resources for eviction-prevention programs, have further exacerbated the crisis. New Haven evictions are concentrated in Edgewood, Newhallville, Fair Haven, and the Hill, some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, according to Billy Huang, a researcher for the New Haven Legal Assistance Association (LAA). The eviction crisis in those neighborhoods has its roots in their own fraught histories. Beginning in the nineteen-thirties, in those predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods, families were denied home loans and other vital resources through redlining practices. In the midcentury era of urban renewal, those areas underwent further upheaval through the city’s decision to demolish working class neighborhoods designated “slums.” Evictions are on the public record, so it’s not uncommon for landlords to hold a potential tenant’s history against them. A past eviction can be disastrous for low-income tenants attempting to navigate the private housing market. And for someone living in public or subsidized housing, an eviction can permanently terminate their ability to benefit from government housing assistance. Renee Dineen, a paralegal at LAA, says that landlords in New Haven often raise rents to the highest level that the Housing Choice Voucher Program (Section 8) or the Rental Assistance Program—both federally-subsidized housing support for low-income families—will allow, which further disadvantages residents who don’t receive housing benefits. As the eviction crisis in New Haven has grown, so too have the obstacles to fighting it. One of the most pressing problems is the lack of housing attorneys. Downsizing in Connecticut legal services and state budget cuts have severely restricted the pool of available lawyers. Most tenants enter housing court self-represented. Since the nineteen-nineties, and likely earlier, the ratio of landlord-tenant legal representation has been roughly eighty to twenty, according to a 1995 Yale Law & Policy Review article by Steve Gunn. Today, on average, 81 percent of landlords in New Haven eviction cases have legal representation, compared to 10 percent of tenants, according to Billy Huang, the LAA researcher, indicating a slight decrease in recent years. Dineen says that LAA had a seventy-person staff in its heyday in the nineteen-seventies. It’s closer to thirty today. They used to take walk-in clients, she says, but now have to be far more selective about the cases they take on. Their housing unit team is just four people. Many tenants do not even make their Housing Session court date, resulting in eviction by default. Amy Eppler-Epstein, an attorney at LAA, says that educaTHE NEW JOUR NAL
tional and language barriers often prevent tenants from appearing in court. Some tenants also worry about jeopardizing their employment or think that nothing can be done to fight the eviction. But Connecticut does have a well-established system for resolving housing cases: a housing mediation program designed to give the landlord and tenant an opportunity to reach an agreement without going to trial. During meetings ranging from ten minutes to an hour, mediation specialists resolve over 90 percent of cases, according to Alexandra Gillett, who has worked as a mediation specialist since 2012. “Oftentimes, the situation that arose to bring you to housing court wasn’t catastrophic—it was temporary,” Gillett explains. “All we need to do is make a plan to help them manage the payments.” Sometimes, however, the best solution for both parties is a “graceful exit strategy.” The rare case not resolved in mediation goes to trial, usually the same day. Housing mediation specialists, legal aid attorneys and social service providers have seen the adverse effects of Connecticut’s budget crisis on their ability to help low-income renters. According to Erin Kemple, of the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, security deposit guarantee programs—which help low-income people find housing by giving landlords a guarantee of the first month’s rent—have been largely eliminated statewide. Gillett says she’s seen “a further limiting of already incredibly limited resources.” She adds that there used to be agencies to which she could refer tenants for back-rent assistance, or landlords for energy assistance. “Those programs have all but dried up, unfortunately,” she says. COLLATERAL DAMAGE Eviction strips a tenant of housing stability and jeopardizes their ability to find a new home, but its effects
SEPTEMBER 2018
can be much farther-reaching. The stress and logistical difficulties of experiencing an eviction can make it hard to hold down a job. And eviction can leave psychological scars, often leading to increased rates of depression. “When you get evicted you lose not only your home but your neighborhood and your school. You also lose your stuff, which is taken by movers or put on a sidewalk,” says Matthew Desmond, a professor of sociology at Princeton University and author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning book Evicted. “Eviction comes with a mark which can prevent you from moving into a good neighborhood and decent housing because landlords turn you away.” The Eviction Lab estimates that 2.3 million people were evicted in America in 2016, which, Desmond notes, is thirty-six times the number of people who died from opioid overdoses. The scale of the problem is enormous, he says—and it’s “absolutely underestimated” due to the lack of transparency and significant gaps in eviction record data from municipal governments. “I think that when we add all that up, we are forced to the conclusion that eviction isn’t just a condition of poverty, it’s a cause of poverty,” Desmond says. Last spring, Dr. Jack Tsai, an associate professor of psychology at Yale and staff psychologist at the Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System, was in the midst of running a nine-month observational study of tenants who appear in New Haven Housing Court for eviction cases. Every few months, he and his team checked in with about fifty participants to track their mental health. In his study, Dr. Tsai says, there were several instances in which participants reported suicidal thoughts. “Evictions are a lose-lose situation,” he says. “They’re stressful for the tenants, but they’re stressful for the landlords, too. And it’s a loss for society because people aren’t invested in their communities anymore.” On average, New Haven landlords lose about $3,000 during an eviction, a combination of the tenants’ unpaid rent, fees paid to the state marshal for eviction paper-
25
For Mezick, evictions are merely part of the job. He doesn’t usually ask tenants if they have another place lined up. “Everything’s going good, and I ask that question, and they’re triggered. My goal is to do this as quickly, legally, and peaceably as possible.” work, and moving costs, according to a 2007 Yale Law School student paper by Michael Gottesman. At an eviction one cold April morning on Gorham Avenue in Hamden, the landlord, a petite woman, paces anxiously on the front lawn while movers load up her tenant’s U-Haul. State Marshal Mezick tells the landlord to leave while the movers work, careful to keep her and the tenant apart. As the tenant packs up her second-floor apartment, she complains that she was just two days late with her rent when the landlord began eviction proceedings. Her young son, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his head, watches expressionlessly as his mother and older brother carry bags of possessions out of the apartment. The U-Haul is loaded up in forty-five minutes, and the evicted tenant, cigarette dangling from her mouth, asks one of the movers for a light. “I made a mistake renting to her,” the landlord says bitterly as the tenant drives off. The tenant owes her almost $2,000 in unpaid rent, and she’s paying $460 for the eviction fees, she says. “She’s had evictions, and I paid the price.” For Mezick, evictions are merely part of the job. He doesn’t usually ask tenants if they have another place lined up. “Everything’s going good, and I ask that question, and they’re triggered. My goal is to do this as quickly, legally, and peaceably as possible.” “I have on occasion served the execution and the kid comes to the door. I hate that,” he says. “If the kid comes to the door, I fold it in half and say, ‘Give this to your mother.’” HOLDING ON Grace Luysterborghs says that her unstable housing situation keeps her from living the life she most desires. She wants a bigger, cleaner apartment, with enough space for all her clothes, so she can stop wasting $200 every month on storage fees. She wants to budget her money better, maybe save up for a car. She wants to be healthier, to eat better and exercise more. But most of all, she says, she wants peace of mind. Her eviction was scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on April 12. In the weeks leading up to that date, she tried to resolve the issue with her property manager at the Housing Authority, since she’d paid the outstanding rent, but to no avail. She did not seek legal assistance until two days before her eviction, when she asked New Haven 26
Legal Assistance for help filing paperwork for a temporary injunction. On the injunction form, she marked an “x” next to a line stating, “The defendant has no other safe, adequate, and affordable place to live, and/or cannot move before the date set for eviction.” She put “x”s down next to “The defendant suffers from a disability making it difficult to find replacement housing,” “The defendant lives in subsidized housing and may lose the subsidy if evicted,” and “The defendant in fact paid all rent, use and occupancy, and/or arrearage owed.” She attached photocopies of her rent receipts for January and February, in addition to the back pay she owed, and the full $202 rent for March and April. That same day, a judge at Housing Court granted her a temporary injunction on the grounds that “irreparable harm would result to the defendant/tenant unless the requested relief is granted.” Her formal hearing was set for April 24. HOUSING SESSION The morning of her court date, Luysterborghs wakes up at 7 a.m, in pain. She skips breakfast to soak in the bathtub, hoping to relieve her aching body. Her caseworker picks her up and drives her the mile from her apartment to the New Haven County Court. Just before 9:30 a.m., she climbs the white steps of the courthouse and passes between the towering columns into the light-filled atrium. She takes the elevator up to the third floor, Courtroom D: Housing Session. She finds a seat in the row of chairs facing the judge. Across from her is a box filled with attorneys and mediators. She’s nervous, but she prayed about her case the night before: “I got to give this situation to God.” Luysterborghs’ friend Shirley Little, who lives in West Haven, arrives to provide emotional support. They settle in for a long wait. But after only ten minutes, a representative from the Housing Authority calls Luysterborghs over and brings her outside the courtroom. Attorneys and clients confer in the hallway, leaning against marble walls and leafing through documents. The representative explains that the Housing Authority recognizes its error; Grace is up to date on her rent. Luysterborghs will have to file a motion to open the judgment again, which will allow the Housing Authority to withdraw their case against her. Leaving the courthouse, Luysterborghs is excited, but worried about getting the rest of the paperwork filled out. She and Little decide to take the bus to Hamden and have lunch at St. Ann’s Soup Kitchen, two and a half miles down Dixwell Avenue. In the basement of the church, Luysterborghs and THE NEW JOUR NAL
Little listen to a volunteer say a blessing before lining up for lunch. Today, it’s kielbasa, roast vegetables, and mashed potatoes. Luysterborghs puts her tray down at an empty table, takes a picture of her meal on her phone, and says a quick prayer. Her hair is pulled back. She looks at ease, buoyant after the morning’s events. “The potatoes are banging!” she exclaims to Little. She double-checks that the Motion to Open is still in her handbag. She’s going to file it as soon as she can, hoping the whole situation will be put to rest in a few days. “The legal system sucks,” Little says. “Why can’t they just say, ‘We made an error?’” “Yeah,” Luysterborghs says, “the woman from Housing Authority said, ‘Yes, Grace, you’re up to date,’ and everything.” “That one little paper caused all those problems,” Little says, shaking her head. Luysterborghs’ younger son, who just got out of rehab, lives in New Haven. Her eldest is also in the city, but she hasn’t seen him in a while. She didn’t tell them about the eviction proceedings, and doesn’t want to. They have their own problems, she says. “I just deal with it on my own.” It was a traumatic process just to keep an apartment that often feels like it’s closing in on her. “I really don’t want to live at Union Avenue, but right now, it’s convenient, right by the train station,” she says. Her rent will be $202 going forward. She wishes it was a little less, maybe $150. But she will have to make do. And of course, Luysterborghs is one of the lucky ones. For many renters in New Haven, a Notice to Quit Possession ends in eviction, and sometimes homelessness. As Luysterborghs and Little eat lunch at the soup kitchen, that reality seems to hover around them. Luysterborghs nearly lost her home and hard-won stability to the complex, often unforgiving forces of the New Haven Housing Authority, the court system and city bureaucracy. To her, the vast legal structure surrounding evictions seemed inescapable, all-consuming, and she was fortunate to escape unscathed. Although her court appearance ended favorably, four other tenants were likely put out on the street that same day. Desmond, for one, is optimistic that solutions to America’s eviction crisis exist. That’s partly because the housing crisis has grown so severe that it has begun to spread without precedent to other sectors of the economy, dragging large swaths of the population into its destructive wake. The problem is too big to ignore, he says. There’s no right to counsel in housing court, although studies have shown that tenants who have access to a lawyer are far less likely to be evicted. Expanding legal SEPTEMBER 2018
aid is part of the solution. And, for systemic change, Desmond has championed a universal housing voucher program, which would dramatically expand low-income people’s access to housing. “Change is hard, and big change is even harder,” Desmond reflects. “But I do think that a lot of cities and a lot of folks in Washington are waking up to the fact that you can’t fix poverty without fixing housing.” At the soup kitchen, Little motions to the dozen people eating at nearby tables. “If she didn’t show up [in court], she would have been homeless. That’s why a lot of people are homeless, a lot of people sitting here.” Little, who is fifty-six and has a Section 8 voucher, wants to buy a house by the time she’s sixty-five, but it won’t be in New Haven. It will be in North Carolina, where she has some family, close to her children in Georgia. “The South is beautiful,” she says with a smile. “All my illnesses will go away. I know the country air makes me well. I just need to get back to it. I’m done here.” After lunch, Luysterborghs and Little board a city bus that takes them back downtown. Luysterborghs sits at a window seat, Little one row behind, which is how they like it. Luysterborghs is friends with the driver, and greets nearly everyone who boards the bus by name. Little points out the street where she grew up. Luysterborghs waves at her church as they pass by. The bus accelerates down Dixwell Avenue, past corner delis, storefront churches, and blocks upon blocks of clapboard houses, some with bare lawns, some with flowers out front. Luysterborghs smiles at each passenger who passes, grateful for this warm afternoon and this bus that will deliver her home.
– Eliza Fawcett is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College.
27
THE PRICE O Cash bail keeps low income people locked up. In New Haven and Hew York, two organizations are fighting against it, with different consequences for their communities. Reporting for this piece was supported by the Ed Bennett III Memorial Fund. By Isaac Scobey-Thal
 28
THE NEW JOUR NAL
OF FREEDOM illustrations by merritt barnwell
T
he first thing one notices when walking up to the entrance of the Vernon C. Bain Center (VBC) in New York City is the fetid smell coming from the Fulton Fish Market next door. The road leading up to VBC has no sidewalks—just barbed wire fences. Queens shimmers across the East River. Some of the inmates at VBC—known as The Boat, since it’s anchored six feet from shore—are serving short-term sentences, from thirty days to a few months, for low-level misdemeanors. The vast majority of its 800 male inmates, however, have landed there because they have yet to pay their bail. One of these men is a young relative of Jermaine Davis. A stout, middle-aged Bronx resident, Davis looks both exhausted and relieved, like he’s just finished a long hike. He has been crisscrossing the city trying to post bail for his relative. “We’ve been back and forth for a few days, trying to get him out,” he tells me. Davis has been derailed again and again by bureaucratic hurdles. First, the Bronx County Hall of Justice turned him away because he didn’t have a state-issued ID or a pay stub. By the time he returned, his family member had already been transferred to The Boat; Davis was told he could only pay there. When I met him at VBC’s bail window, his relative had been in jail for four days. In the United States, people charged with crimes are often held in pretrial detention unless they can post bail, which is set by a judge. In theory, bail is an incentive to appear in court. The fee is returned when the trial is concluded, and forfeited if the person charged doesn’t show up. But your experience with bail largely depends on whether you’re rich or poor. When film mogul Harvey Weinstein appeared in
SEPTEMBER 2018
“Bail keeps 450,000 Americans locked up every day simply because they’re too poor to pay.”
court this spring to face charges of rape and criminal sex acts, he paid his $1 million bail with a cashier’s check, and was out of the courtroom within ten minutes. In 2010, when sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder was charged with stealing a backpack in the Bronx, he couldn’t post his $3,000 bail and spent the next three years in jail before his charges were dismissed. Two years later, he committed suicide. Bail keeps 450,000 Americans locked up every day simply because they’re too poor to pay. Even when bail is set as low as $250, it’s often enough to entangle low-income people in the criminal justice system for months or years. Cash bail is particularly insidious. Some forms of bail allow defendants to pay only a portion of the total, put up valuable possessions as collateral, or cut a deal with a bail bondsman to front the bond for them. This is not the case with cash bail. When a judge sets cash bail, the defendant must pay the full amount out of pocket to be set free. In courtrooms across America, cash bail is frequently set for minor misdemeanor crimes and even traffic violations. Typically, prosecutors push for cash bail, the defense pushes against it, and it’s up to the judge to decide. Each time cash bail is set too high for the accused to pay, someone who is still innocent in the
29
eyes of the law is placed in jail. Even a brief stint behind bars causes significant collateral damage. People like Davis’ relative lose access to family and employment, and often experience emotional and physical trauma. “The whole process is insane,” Davis said. “It creates a huge strain on the family.” Being Black or Latino increases the odds of being one of those 450,000 people. According to the Pretrial Justice Institute, courts saddle Black men with thirty-five percent higher bail amounts than white counterparts charged with the same crime and with similar criminal histories. For Hispanic men, that figure is nineteen percent. And serving time in jail pretrial drastically increases a person’s conviction rate. It makes it three to four times more likely that one will serve a prison or jail sentence after trial, and such sentences are, on average, two to three times longer, according to the Pretrial Justice Institute. Often, defendants choose to take a guilty plea; they are able to leave jail that day but are forced to carry a criminal record for the rest of their lives, making it considerably more challenging to get a job or earn a degree. Jermaine Davis’ close-knit family can pick up the slack when one of them is incarcerated. And he has a job, at an employment training and addiction recovery center, which allows him to take time off to resolve his relative’s case. Most importantly, he has the money to do so. Most of the 450,000 don’t have people like Davis on their side. In recent years, the cash bail epidemic has triggered a national movement. Nonprofit bail funds, financed almost entirely by private donations, have opened up from Tulsa to St. Louis, and Detroit to New York, posting bail for those who can’t afford it themselves. Their clients include people like Davis’ relative, awaiting freedom in the belly of the Boat. Two years ago, New Haven joined the map with the Connecticut Bail Fund—an organization taking a radical, intimate approach to bail reform. During the summer of 2017, I worked at the Bronx Freedom Fund, a non-profit bail fund serving the South Bronx. The team at BFF also founded The Bail Project, an umbrella organization that plans to open 40 bail funds across the nation and bail out over 160,000 people by 2022. This summer, I traveled back to the Freedom Fund to understand the genesis of this national movement, and then to Connecticut Bail Fund’s offices in New Haven, where, 30
I soon learned, organizers are viewing bail in an entirely new light, with very different stakes for the community.
The Freedom Fund’s office, a collection of cubicles on the sixth floor of the Bronx County Hall of Justice, sports a panoramic view of the South Bronx through floor-to-ceiling windows. The organization’s vision is equally expansive: It’s trying to liberate the borough. When the organization began in 2016, it had a single employee quietly operating in a corner of the office of the Bronx Defenders, just down the street from the Hall. With the Defenders’ fundraising connections and large community of legal advocates to support them, the Freedom Fund has rapidly expanded in the last two years. They’ve hired nine more employees, opened a branch in Queens, and posted bail for 2,020 Bronx residents.
“The Freedom Fund’s office, a collection of cubicles on the sixth floor of the Bronx County Hall of Justice, sports a panoramic view of the South Bronx through floor-to-ceiling windows. The organization’s vision is equally expansive: It’s trying to liberate the borough.” Donations to the BFF are pouring in. When I last visited, their director was giving a tour to the niece of a donor who’d just written a $100 thousand check. They now can take on almost every client who qualifies. Outside the offices of the Freedom Fund, the marble hallways of the Hall of Justice echo with the anxious murmurs of those whose day in court has come. Lawyers confer with clients in hushed corners; defendants fidget, waiting to be called; through the heavy doors, a judge presides over a cherry-paneled courtroom. Each day, the organization receives several referrals from public defenders representing clients who can’t afford bail. Usually, a referral comes after a client has been arraigned, but before they are transferred to jail. When a client is approved for payment, a Freedom THE NEW JOUR NAL
Fund employee goes down to their holding cell and offers to post bail. Most clients assume the BFF expects a refund. But in reality, they’ll never have to pay the money back. For all the legal entanglements and cross-city scrambles that precede it, the act of setting someone free is anticlimactic: the person posting bail presents a cashier’s check to a clerical worker behind a glass window. Paying for someone’s freedom looks more like a trip to the DMV than a singular act of justice. A few days later, at the initial court date, employees of the Freedom Fund wade through the hallway commotion. One by one, they read out the names of their clients for the day, calling them loudly in the hallways and shout-whispering them in courtrooms. Each client receives a version of the same speech: an introduction to the employee, the organization, and a reminder that the only thing the Freedom Fund needs is their continued attendance at court. Every meeting between a Freedom Fund representative and a client in pretrial detention ends with a simple question: “Do you need our help with anything outside of bail?” Some clients are in search of a job, some need help finding housing, some are looking for affordable health care, and some just need a prepaid phone. These people are pointed towards a client advocate like Yonah Zeitz, a full-time case manager and bail payer. The fund’s client advocacy branch exists because paying someone’s bail doesn’t solve all their problems. “If they’re not able to get stability once they’re out,” Zeitz asks, “then what’s the point of paying their bail?” In the immediate aftermath of pretrial detention, clients typically need help with material needs: finding a job, a place to live, or someone to look after their kids. The Fund tries to connect them to the resources they need to get back on their feet post-detention. Through The Bail Project, the Freedom Fund is expanding its model to other cities where cash bail is a pervasive problem. But New Haven’s bail fund isn’t part of this growing network; it stands alone. The organization demonstrates a radical approach that could fundamentally change how people in New Haven fight for justice.
The Connecticut Bail Fund (CBF) occupies a SEPTEMBER 2018
single, street-level room on Grand Avenue in Fair Haven. The space inside is as modest as the unassuming brick façade. A small waiting area, with wooden floors and simple chairs, takes up most of the room; the desks of its two employees are shoved towards the back. Compared to the Hall of Justice, it feels much more inviting. On Wednesday nights, CBF’s office hosts a support group for people the organization has bailed out and their loved ones. The visitors pile into the modest space, hoping either to strategize about their legal cases or simply vent about their troubles. They share stories of aggressive correctional officers, insensitive lawyers, and bullheaded judges. This past April, Sharon* was arrested for assault and disorderly conduct (she wished to remain anonymous; Sharon is a pseudonym). She couldn’t afford her $2,500 bail. After a week in jail, she received a visit from Ana María Rivera-Forastieri, the co-director of CBF. Rivera-Forastieri explained that the bail fund was an organization dedicated to helping people like Sharon, and told her that if she accepted their offer to pay bail on her behalf, she would be free the next day. She eagerly accepted. Sharon feels she has been given a precious opportunity—one that she doesn’t want to waste. “I’m in women’s wellness, relapse prevention, anger management, those types of things, so that my time outside of jail is actually being put to use,” she said. Programs like these are often mandated by a judge. Sharon attends each of them voluntarily. Sharon is part of CBF’s support group. Giving support at these meetings means as much to her as receiving it. “I think that it’s also important for a lot of these people getting out of jail to see that there’s someone who’s been formerly homeless, and who’s been in a lot of those crappy conditions, and is still fighting a case, and can still find a way to stay sober,” she said. “I just want to encourage others that it is possible.” CBF has bailed out 140 people since its founding in 2017. Their organization is smaller than the Bronx Freedom Fund, and eschews The Bail Project’s sweeping approach. That’s intentional: CBF’s work hinges on intimate, prolonged collaboration with formerly incarcerated New Haveners, whether through support groups, rallies, or a performing arts group that started meeting biweekly this summer. “They’ve been learning about how to use the story of self,” Rivera-Forastieri said. “At every meeting, 31
they talk about what they’ve experienced in the community, living on the streets or having lived on the streets.” After bail is posted, the organization pushes to provide its smaller, tight-knit group of clients with opportunities for activist engagement and self-expression, placing them at the forefront of their community. The strength of the Freedom Fund lies in its individual case management, in connecting individual clients with the material resources they are seeking as they exit the criminal justice system. CBF’s strength, in contrast, lies in the comfort that Sharon finds in attending the CBF’s weekly meetings—a comfort that is rooted in the emotional support fostered by a close-knit community.
The different approaches of CBF and BFF mean that the two organizations have necessarily diverging end goals. BFF and The Bail focus on quantity. “Our mission, first and foremost, is we want to bail out as many people as humanly possible,” said Camilo Ramirez, The Bail Project’s communications director. “And we want to do that because the human cost of waiting is too great.” They want to galvanize a national movement, rather than focusing solely on a single community. To their staff, the practice of cash bail causes the systematic destruction of communities, and deconstructing it presents the swiftest path to empowerment. “Community building cannot occur at all while community members are incarcerated,” said Alex Anthony, former director of BFF’s Queens Branch. As a result, a key part of The Bail Project’s work involves legislative reform. “We feel very optimistic that bail reform is the one battle that we might win in the criminal justice system,” Ramirez said. Since 2012, almost every state legislature has addressed pretrial injustice. Illinois now requires a rehearing within seven days for anyone held on cash bail, and judges in New Jersey are required to employ a risk assessment tool to discern whether or not a defendant should be released pretrial. The Bail Project is working to back more legislation like this with an even more radical end goal: to end cash bail. Connecticut, too, has enacted bold reform. Legis 32
lation passed last year made it illegal for judges to set bail on misdemeanor cases unless the defendant has a long history of missing court dates. That same bill prohibited judges from setting cash-only bail, meaning people in New Haven will never have to pay the entire bail amount up front, out of pocket: they can either pay a portion of their bail amount (usually around ten percent), or enlist a bail bondsman to help them pay. As Senator Bob Godfrey explained on the floor of the State Assembly, “If you’re a millionaire, [a $2,000 bail] is half a day’s pay, and if you’re making minimum wage, is 25 days’ pay. I don’t think that’s justice for anyone, let alone for all.” Just over 3,300 people in Connecticut were in pretrial detention as of December 2016, according to a 2017 study by the Connecticut Sentencing Commission. In New York City, meanwhile, an average of 7,100 people were held in pretrial detention on any given day in 2017, according to data released by the city’s Department of Corrections this March. Last year’s changes could propel Connecticut forward. Even though the recent reforms may help their clients, CBF doesn’t focus on lobbying. According to Rivera-Forastieri, when the voices of formerly incarcerated people aren’t prioritized, “bullsh*t reform gets passed in the legislature that has little to no effect on the ground. Our objective is to build power in communities. If that’s what people want, they should be leading that conversation.” For example, CBF’s clients haven’t shown a strong interest in pushing for the total elimination of bail, so the organization hasn’t thrown its weight behind that kind of proposal. “To try to organize people around bail abolition, specifically, I think would feel coercive and not really meeting people where they’re at,” co-founder Brett Davidson explained. This mantra—meeting people where they’re at— traces back to CBF’s founding. All four of CBF’s founders were Yale students. When they received the seed money from Yale necessary to jumpstart the organization, their first order of business was conducting listening sessions throughout New Haven. They wanted to hear from formerly incarcerated people about their ideal bail fund, an approach that would guide their game plan. To ensure the organization would be truly led by New Haveners, they hired Rivera-Forastieri, a bilingual community organizer with a law degree who had worked with Junta for Progressive Action, a local nonprofit that advocates for New Haven’s Latinx community. In sharp contrast to The Bail Project, CBF isn’t fixTHE NEW JOUR NAL
“When Tiheba Bain was released in 2007, she remembered, ““I came home with the clothes on my back and maybe $100 in my pocket. Maybe.” But she also had a head full of ideas of how the criminal justice system needed to change.” ated on bailing out as many people as possible. The way to effectively serve New Haven, according to the Connecticut Bail Fund, is to give its clients a sense of ownership over the organization. “We could be bailing out many more people a week if that was our sole focus, but that’s not our sole focus,” said Rivera-Forastieri. “Organizing and building power is our number one focus.” To CBF, a bailout is a crucial transition point at which the organization can help start a process of transformation, placing criminalized people in control. “We form relationships with people in crisis moments and build trust that way,” explains Davidson. Those relationships allow their clients to leverage CBF’s resources towards social justice causes across the board. In 2017, the CBF mobilized local activists to protest the lack of housing resources in New Haven; this past July, they helped organize a rally to abolish ICE. Later that month, CBF helped bring together an event that exemplified its philosophy.
zations and nonprofits, including a local immigrants’ rights organization, Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA); Planned Parenthood of Southeast New England; and the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. The CBF gave her a space (First and Summerfield United Methodist Church on the New Haven Green), secured funding, and connected her with community members interested in attending the town hall. In mid-July, thirty community members gathered with representatives from these groups to discuss Bain’s biggest ambition: “‘How can we end mass incarceration for women and girls? How do we get there?’” While The Bail Project wants to mobilize communities across the country in order to eliminate cash bail, the Connecticut Bail Fund wants to pay bail in order to mobilize the community. The cash bail system keeps low-income people locked up until trial, often for months or years. Through CBF’s model, people like Sharon and Tiheba Bain are taking charge. Supporting those community members matters more to Davidson and Rivera-Forastieri than the number of people they bail out. “We want to focus our resources on building up a lot of leaders in our community who can develop the work that we do and who can speak about their experiences,” Davidson said. “That’s the main vision for the future: to create a sustained community organizing force.” – Isaac Scobey-Thal is a senior in Hopper College.
Tiheba Bain has never applied for a job online. Classified ads were still the norm when she entered federal prison in 1997. When she was released in 2007, she remembered, “I came home with the clothes on my back and maybe one hundred dollars in my pocket. Maybe.” But she also had a head full of ideas of how the criminal justice system needed to change—especially for women. For four years, Bain commuted from Bridgeport to Manhattan in order to work and receive her degree in Psychology and Women in Criminal Justice from the City University of New York. This summer, Bain organized an event with the support of a sprawling network of community organiSEPTEMBER 2018
33
illustration by meher hans
 34
THE NEW JOUR NAL
ENDNOTE
PSYCH AND THE DORM LIFE Trouble getting along with your roommate? It’s all in your head.
Noah Macey
M
ost first-years walk into their dorms knowing little more about their suitemates than their names, who’s bringing the microwave, and the Facebook likes from middle school that still haunt each person’s profile. (A highlight from my freshman suite: “Bring back the word ‘wizard’ as an adjective.”) The residential college deans are the ones who do the heavy lifting for roommate selection, with the aid of that (very) cursory survey the prefrosh fill out. All I remember from that survey is marking “no country, no metal” under “what music would bother me,” only to wake up on the second day of college with Kenny Chesney’s crooning wafting up into the top bunk. At least it wasn’t Megadeth. Sometimes it seems like the residential college deans approach putting together suites like piecing together a complicated jigsaw puzzle, and sometimes it’s like they’re playing Dr. Frankenstein. Either way, they do have students’ best interests at heart. It’s just hard to see how people will react to living in close quarters, the same way it’s hard to predict what your roommate will do if you tell them they need new, better deodorant. Margaret Clark, head of Trumbull College, makes it clear that she doesn’t use Trumbull students in her study of close relationships at the Yale Psychology department, but she can tell you some things about what makes relationships succeed. (She focuses less on what makes relationships fail—for more on that, consult the monograph I’m coauthoring with my former suitemates: The Case of the Missing Oreo-Cheesecake Bars: A Model of Interpersonal Discord vis-à-vis the Macronutrients of a Scarce Resource (Goode, Zevallos, Vernick, and Macey, In Press). In her previous position at Carnegie Mellon University, Clark worked on a study of the university’s randomly paired freshmen, analyzing the factors that made for a happy dorm. “What we found,” Clark said, “was that people with different academic interests were much more likely to stick with each other the next year.” It turns out that an engineer and an actor won’t compare themselves to each other as much as the suite of kids in Directed Studies who’ll worry all year about who understands Hegel the best. (Spoiler: none of them.) In another study, punderfully titled “The Positives of Negative Emotions,” Clark and others looked at incoming students’ willingness to express fear, anxiety, and sadness before arriving at college. At the end of the year, the researchers used a questionnaire to determine how many friends each participant had made. Students who were more willing to express their negative emotions made more friends. As Clark explained, you can’t be supportive if your suitemate never tells you that something is wrong. Because of the complete lack of pressure to put up a façade of success and well being at Yale, I am sure no student here could learn from this study, and we can move along.
illustrations by merritt barnwell
My own residential college dean explained to my freshman suite that we’d been placed together because three out of our four had mentioned something vaguely outdoorsy in the incoming survey. Our pursuits—backpacking, flyfishing, and beekeeping—actually have little in common, but they do literally take place out-of-doors, so points there. (You might be wondering about how our fourth suitemate came to be grouped with us; we are too.) Clark confirmed that, in theory, my suite had been well-matched since having a similar interest in outdoor activities gave us something to do together without much room for unhealthy comparison. We never once did anything outdoors together, though, and our only regular group activity was tearing apart the suite looking for ID when he lost it. But that’s also an activity without much room for unhealthy comparison, so it worked out. Ultimately, there is only one year of semi-random pairing at Yale. Upperclassman housing affords you more choice, so the odds of living with someone who drunkenly wets the bed and sleeps on a bare mattress rather than laundering the sheets are much lower. As are the odds of your roommate taking a bottle of Febreze Hawaiian Aloha to your guest’s eyes with intent to blind. They probably won’t pee in jars, or put every item you own in condoms while you’re visiting home one weekend (all documented suitemate behavior). A lot of the reduction in roommate craziness happens because you’ll have the chance to cohabitate with someone a bit more compatible. As Clark puts it, “similarity cuts both ways.” Difference decreases comparison, but too much difference can make for interpersonal discord. I asked Clark what her advice to incoming first-years would be. She said they shouldn’t compare themselves to their suitemates, or to anyone else, for that matter. And if you want to know why your roommate is up into the wee hours doing jumping jacks in the common room, or what they think of the merits of “wizard” as an adjective, or whether you can have one of the Oreo-cheesecake bars stacked bottom to top in the fridge, or how on earth they could enjoy Kenny Chesney—just ask them.
– Noah Macey is a senior in Timothy Dwight College.
WINDHAM CAMPBELL PRIZES F ES T I VA L 2018
The writer’s prize. The reader’s festival. F E AT U R I N G ELIZABETH ALEXANDER SARAH BAKEWELL LORNA GOODISON L U C A S H N AT H C AT H Y PA R K H O N G JOHN KEENE OLIVIA LAING JENNIFER NANSUBUGA MAKUMBI S UZ A N - LO R I PA R KS
36
YA L E U N I V E R S I T Y S E P T E M B E R 12 –14 FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC WINDHAMCAMPBELL.ORG
THE NEW JOUR NAL