Volume 36 - Issue 1

PuBLISHER

Michtul &ibrl EDITOR-IN -C HIEF

Kathryn Malizia MANACINC EDITORS

]llCOb Bl«hrr. Clinton Czrro/J 0ESJCNER

Jessica Chang BusiNEss MANAGER

Michatl AtkUson PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Paigt Atlrinson

AssociATE ED ITORS

F/qra Lichtman, Paigt Austin REsEARCH DIRECTOR

Ana Munoz C I RCULATION AND SuBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER

Ana Munoz

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THE NEW jouRNAL

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Volume 36, Number 1 October 2003

FEATURES

8 New Rock City Can an aging hipster and a preacher's son revitalize New Haven's dying music scene?

by Flora Lichtman

16 The Crossing How 10 temporary workers wmt from scabs to strikers and redefined racial boundaries at Yale?

by Paige Austin

Mr. Clean

22

After running the most expensive campaign in New Haven history, Mayor john Destefano gets cheap.

by April Rabkin

STANDARDS

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5 14

Points of Departure

24 26 30

Essay: Bye Bye Blackbirds by Tom Iskr

Shots in the Dark: Under the Canopy by Paigt Atkinson

The Critical Angle: Casting Tolstoy by Matvt Hubm Endnote: How Yale Are You? by !Vzthryn Malizia

T~ N.,. Jo~,'RIW. ,. poabll<htd fhc umo douing the •cad<mic ynr by THE Nrw ,louaNAI. a< YJle, Inc., P.O. Box 3432 YJlc_Su.uon, New HJven, CT ()6s10. Office Jdclrc:s.s: 29-4S Bro.d. .y. Phon<: (203) 432 · 19)7. Enuil tnj~yaktdu. All contcn" copyright 2003 by THt N£\\ JOURNAL at Ym, Inc. All ~a Racncd. RquoductJon <other in whole or on part without wrincn permission of the publisher and tdnor in chid is prohibntd. While thL> m•p.tonc,. pubhshtd by YJlc Collcgc srudcnu, YJle Uni,tt<ity is not raporuibk for ItS contents. ~n thousand five hundrtd copies of each issue arc distributtd free to manhcn of the YJlc •nd New Haven communoty. Subswptions arc avaibblc to those ouaidc the area. Rates: One ynr, $18. Two yean, $32. Tut Nrw JouRNAL is printtd by Turley Publications, Palmer, w.; bookkccpi11J >nd billing S<f"occs arc providtd by Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. THE. NEW Jova.""- cncoura~ lcttelt to the tel nor and co~u on Yale and New Haven U.ucs. Writ< to EditorWs. 3432 YJlc Station, ~ H•vcn . CT 06S20. Alllcttclt for publtcauon must include Jddrcss and sogn•rurc. We racrve th< ngbt to edit Jlllcncn for poablocauon.

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Jolly Green Giant Groundhog Day in whlch Phil Conors (played by Bill Murray) sits like a king in a Punxsutawney diner, chewing hls way through an array of the town's most deliciously fatty offerings. In this small town haunt, an everyman can seem like an emperor-and that's just what Murray is.

Customers stare curiously at this plain-looking man over their apple pies and cheeseburgers. "I don't know how to thank you," a young man says, "You saved my life." A second later a woman cannot help but hug him and cry, "You saved my marriage!"

The only newcomer to the diner looks on, and finally blurts our, "How is it that all these people know you?"

Sitting in Willoughby's with Jake Weinstein, I feel like that newcomer. Like Phil Conor's fellow diners, everyone in this Chapel Street coffee shop seems to know Weinstein. A regular guy who prefers organic herbal Raspberry tea to Conor's selection of artery-clogging indulgences, Weinstein has a similar local celebrity and a good grasp on life.

A bespectacled man with a bicycle in tow is one of the many customers who recognizes Weinstein. Though he falls short of crediting Jake for saving his marriage, he can't help extol Weinstein's virrues: "Jake's the greatest.

He's very devoted to everything he does. He is very simply a remarkable human being."

And, not to mention, a clown. You may have seen him floating above the Chapel Street crowd on his nine-foot stilts, and if so, you may even count yourself among his legion of followers: The students who gleefully recognize him on sidewalks, the children who worship him each Saturday, or the businessmen who love to engage him in debate on local politics. " I have some regulars," Weinstein concedes humbly. "A few people make a point of coming out every Saturday.

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There are even some homeless people who really enjoy it."

Admitting even this much is a con cession for Weinstein, who is modest about everything. Stop and chat with him and he probably won't mention that he's a registered nurse, a political activist, a teacher of "circus artS," and the founder of New Haven's first recycling program. But despite his impressive resume, he is still best known for his street performances. He's been working Chapel Street for over ten years, and though he admits he got into it for the money, it has evolved into something more.

"I'm really passionate about street performing." he explains. "Ideally I'd like to be able to use laughter to bring out injustices in the world. I don't believe by any means that everything in clowning needs to be political, but we can use laughter as a tool for healing."

Weinstein is one of New Haven's most eccentric, and most overlooked, minor celebrities, a kind of local saint spreading joy wherever he goes. For the past two years, Jake has toured the city as a clown, visiting children's hospitals and performing for young patients. As the Circus Director for Roger's Barn Community C ircus, he has ample knowledge of subjectS ranging from puppet

set construction. Earlier this year, he worked with students from two New H aven schools constructing enormous puppets that were later festooned with protest banners and re~ used by the Yale strikers. Weinstein also teaches downing and street performance, and he spends his summers as the set designer for the Children's Circus of Middletown.

And, of course, he's a family man with a daughter at Boston University and a son who bikes with rum all over town.

This month, Weinstein is planning to travel down the east coast with half a dozen " Puppetistas", or political puppeteers. They will perform at various stops on the road to Georgia, where they will join thousands of protestors outside the School of the Americas. Their show is called "Uncle Sam's Little Global Circus." Weinstein explains it as a satire of globalization: "Uncle Sam has a map of the world and he tears off one continent at a time and eats it. The play concerns how he deals with his indigestion."

But Weinstein bas not always been a down. He started out as a nurse delivering babies, but quit to found New Haven's first recycling service, a non-profit called Rainbow Recycling. "At its zenith," Weinstein recalls with a chuckle, Ratnbow Recycling was "seven hippies and a truek-" In addition to recycling. the group visited local schools regularly and led workshops on environmental issues. But Weinstein's interest in education took the program a step funher. "We had a

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upe called 'Songs for the Compost Pile' which really grew, and that's actually how I got started in theater," he says. "We started making puppets for the shows and downing and I loved it."

So he started performing on the side, picking Chapel Street because of its broad sidewalks and wealthy patrons. "It has its ups and downs," he admits. "The worst that happens is some people might be intoxicated and they start dancing and singing and performing with you, but that's the life of a street performer."

Sirting in a friendly coffee shop, Weinstein may be recognized as the local renaissance man, but to the random passerby be is simply a man on the street, embarrassing himself as a glorified panhandler. "People on the street get upset about clowns sometimes," be confesses. "They'll mutter under their brath as they walk by and shake their heads.

But. you know, they think we're people who can't do anything else, because a street performer is not an elevated station in life-whkh is ironic because, of course, I'm on stilts...

-Adriane Quinlan

The Man Who Wasn't There hIS A CRAY AFTERNOON, and Ernesto Zedillo Rands at the front of a packed campus auditorium ready to speak. The former President of Mexico and current head of the Yale Center for the Study of G lobalization is slated to enlighten the audience with a rigorous diaecrion of the collapse of the September World Trade Organization (wro} conference ia Cancun. He gets straight to the point:

~2003

Free trade is good, and the Western World has abandoned the cause. With stately poise, he castigates the United States as "foolish," even "incompetent," and demands a renewed commitment ro laissa.-foire capitalism.

Zedillo's speech confirms a fact that has become glaringly obvious in recent months: The Globalization Center does not exist to study globalization so much as to exalt it.

Since ZediUo began his tenure last spring, the Center has committed itself to spreading the gospel of the free market. The question at hand for ZediUo and his colleagues is not whether globalization is good or bad, real or imagined, but how it can most quickly and effectively be realized so as to shower us all with its gifts-economic stabilization, alleviation of poverty, world peace. The Center's decidedly ideological aim is meant to go hand in hand with the expansion of the University itselÂŁ Yale founded the center primarily to attract international scholars and students and to extend Yale's relevance beyond America's borders.

In choosing a direccor it would have been hard to come up with a more controversial choice than Zedillo. His presidency in Mexico was riddled with corruption. His party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRJ), is notorious for having laid the groundwork for the effiorescence of the narcotics trade, Mexico's largest and most profitable industry. The details of Zedillo's alleged crooked dealings are hazy at Publicly, he is considered an outsider, a good man who came into power accidentally (he stepped in at the last minute to run for the presidency in 1994 when PRJ candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, whose campaign Zedillo ran, was murdered) and took a hard-line stance against drugs and government corruP'

tion, despite alleged ties berween members of h is administration and narco-traffickers.

Beneath the public veneer, however, whispers abound. Soon afrer his election , the United States' Drug Enforcement Agency (oEA) alleged that the president received $40 million from the Cali cartel for his campaign; Zedillo immediately denied the allegation (and, mysteriously, the DEA followed suit shortly thereafter). Another U.S. investigation in 1998 tipped off by drug lords uncovered a possible link berween Zedillo and a multi-billion dollar money-laundering scheme. His family, too, has been implicated.

Zedillo's former drug czar, afrer being imprisoned for corruption, told a judge in 1997 that he once investigated Zedillo's relatives for connections to the business; rumors have his brother dealing methamphetamines.

Whatever the extent of ZediJio's direct involvement in the Mexican drug trade, one thing seems clear: His government was corrupt, and it could not have functioned any other way. Mexico runs on drugs. The market infiltrates every corner of its society, making the idea of clean politics in Mexico meaningless. Journalist C harles Bowden, who has written extensively about the drug war, put it to me bluntly: "There is no yardstick for honesty down there."

Critics of Zedillo miss the point when they charge that a former backroom politician is too dishonest to lead the G lobalization Center. To the contrary, Zedillo is extremely well qualified to lead a center committed to liberalizing global trade: H e is a man who understands first-hand the workings and power of one of the world's only ttue free markets, one which has brought immense wealth imo a country that wouJd otherwise be devastated by poverty.

In that sense, the Globalization Cemer may be one of the most covertly radical

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think-tanks in the country. In a recent article in YakG/.obaL Onlin~ that he wrote to accompany his talk on the wro, Zedillo does not hide the grandiose plans that lie at the back of his mind. "The international communiry," he w rites, "should set itself a goal that the world should be free of aJI barriers to trade in goods and services by no later than 2025." These staid words may sound innocuous in the stuffy pages of a universiry magazine, but we should not underestimate the political will that lies behind them.

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communiry service organization Present Fathers plans to take a trip to the Bridgeport Zoo-but not just to admire the aardvarks or wave to the walruses. Present Fathers is an offshoot of the Male Involvement Nerwork (MIN), a New Haven-based initiative which operates a social service nerwork for fathers in New Haven . MIN's mission is to reconnect divorced fathers with their estranged children and to improve family life by providing dads with healthier life options. A trip to the zoo may not erase the pain of growing up without a father, or help a lonely man who cannot support himself, but it may be enough to start building a f.unily. At least, that is what Germano Kimbro is hoping for.

Kimbro, born and bred in New Haven, embraces the challenge of providing help for families in MIN, and in the present economic slump, with high demand for social services and little money, it is quite a challenge. As project coordinator of

MJN, Kimbro is fully responsible for expanding MIN's influence and taking the program in new directions. Perhaps his impact is best evidenced in the less than idealistic approach MIN has taken to irs services. The program does not promise a social soma to eliminate poverry, but aims to encourage fathers to set an example for their families through healthy decision-making. MIN's goal is not to augment a pauilineal hierarchy by reestablishing the man as the leader of the family; instead, MIN's aim is to enable men to define their roles in relation to women and children and to recognize that what they can give, whether it be money or just their free time, can help their kids. "We are interested in strengthening the family through father involvement by connecting them to housing, education, employment and health opportunities," Mr. Kimbro explained.

The program takes a holistic approach to emphasizing physical well-being and emotional stabiliry. The project coordinators and staff urge men co make an "emotional commitment" to their program, which is intended to be an "aggressive outreach before the point of crisis." The center provides an eight week seminar class covering topics like nutrition, pre-natal care, and the responsibiliry of a father to his children. MIN builds a safery net so that participantS in the program do not revert back to old habits. Kimbro stressed the need to stop perpetuating the cycle of abandonment by not exposing children to the same risks - their parents were exposed co. He urges the men in the program to realize a connection berween the physical, mental, and spiritual forces of their lives--a somewhat organic approach to social service.

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MIN also offers legal advice to fathers trying to rejoin their families. Herein lies the greatest challenge for MIN. The definition of family in the state of Connecticut has essentially "reduced fathers to a paycheck," claims Mr. Kimbro. His network challenges the courtroom perception of estranged fathers as "deadbeats," by fighting for the rights of those who are not aware of their obligations as claimed paten. "Some of these men need to be reprogrammed as to what their role as men is," Kimbro said.

At first, Kimbro took his fight to the streets. He would sit in his parked car outside one of the most "notorious housing developments in New Haven," and try to recruit men who looked in need of help. That was six years ago. Today, as MIN's project coordinator, Kimbro deals with administrative issues, and works cowards improving the delivery of social services as a whole. In the last quarter, 115 men were enrolled in MIN, and in the last month and a half, MIN has gained another 40 clients. Mr. Kimbro stressed the mental aspect of the development program, arguing that for decades African Americans have had a cultural aversion to accessing mental health and clinical services, explaining. "With poverty, comes unhealthy and dysfunctional behavior," he told me.

The lessons caught in MIN may seem ridiculously basic, reminiscent of an awkward middle school health class. And, indeed, these fathers are nurtured as if they were children.

But it is all a part of Kimbro's plan, a sort of cyclical approach where he treats f.uhers as they ought to treat their own children. A trip to the zoo, or that first breakthrough that OCcurs between a child and his father, validates MIN's mission. The simple lessons are what linger and resonate in people's lives and communities. â&#x20AC;˘ -Romy Druckn-

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Chef

Jacques Pepin VVednesday,October15 Poet and Critic

-Wayne Koestenbaum Thursday, October 23 Novelist

-Edna O'Brien Monday, October 27 Teas begin at 4:00 pm Berkeley College Master's House 125 High Street 7

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here is something shaking New Haven. It is big enough to swallow up faith, politics, and maybe even the universe. Two local guys claim to understand ir. They are harnessing the power of music co pur New Haven on the culniral ma~ne by exponing local talent and the ocher by bringing national talent in. An artistic revolution may be just around the corner-or so they say.

One of these venues is The Space, leased and operated by Steve Rodgers, rhe man set on releasing local talent to the nation. Rodgers has jet black hair, tattoos, spits when he smokes, and looks just weathered enough co be credible. Bur his appearance is deceiving: Hipster he may be, bur he is first and foremost rhe son of Peter Rodgers, former preacher at St. John's Episcopal C hurch on Humphrey Street, and a recendy born-again Christian. He works as the music director for a church and is active with a Christian mission group. After troubles with alcohol, Steve said he cleaned up and found what he needed just around rhe corner, literally. The Space is only a few minutes from where he lives and just blocks from where his father praised God rwice a week for 35 years. Ir is his salvation and a natural extension of his father's good work-Steve, like his dad, is interested in building a community.

Bur unlike Reverend Rogers, Steve ministers to a congregation that worships music. As one Space patron pur it, "Some people go co church, bur my church is right here on Tuesday nights."

New Haven's other burgeoning music mecca, BAR, located on Crown Street, could not be mistaken for a church, and Rick Omante, its new promoter, is unlikely to be mistaken for a rock star. But he was one: H is old band Spring Heeled Jack usA played the Warped Tour, toured internationally and cur rwo full length records. Despite his whirlwind past, the former hipster has a young face and an irreverent attitude. "I'm convinced my pact with the devil keeps me looking young," he jokes. After his band broke up, he came to New Haven and starred booking Sunday night shows for BAR. In his shore tenure, rhe club has gone from hosting open mics co attracting national aces-a formidable accomplishment. But still more work must be done if Rick plans co resurrect New Haven as a musically important ciry, lee alone have it surpass what it once was.

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cw Haven's claim to national p rominence has nor always been so tenuous. Forry years ago, The Schubert was a testing ground for Broadway shows. Thirry years ago, Toad's d rew the likes of Bob Dylan, BB King, and the Rolling Stones. Until recendy, rhe Tune Inn, a club located on Center Street near the newly redeveloped Ninth Square, was the epitome of h ip. W ith room for 500, Tune Inn lines often coiled around the block. Owner Fernando Pinke brought in everyth ing from industry giants like Nirvana to indie darlings like the Dismemberment Plan. "It was a dum p, and it was awesome," remembers Omanre. "It was just what you'd expect-bath rooms didn't work, stickers everywhere, weirdo people working the door." Sadly, the Tune Inn, in all its glory, was a doomed venture. O ur of sync with the aims of the Nimh Square developers, fi re marshals and cops began turning up at concerts with measuring tape and concerns about capaciry. In 2001, the last holdout from New Haven's once great music scene closed its doors.

Memories of these good old days still inspire some, though, and the Tune Inn's furn iture, at least, is being put to good use. The Space acquired the old bar from the Tune In n, which spores a "Fernando's Liquor" sign in the far corner. But there is no boozing at The Space.

Nor is there smoking, misbeh aving, or talking. The Space is different"Nighr and day from the Tune Inn," says Rick. "Like if J dropped an M&M on the floor ofThe Space, I would probably pick it up and eat it.

O r at lease I wouldn't have a problem picking ir up off the ground. At the Tune Inn, you know, it h ie the ground and you left it for dead. Even if your friend fell over, you wouldn't pick anybody up once they hit the ground."

Bur cleanliness isn't the only characteristic that separates the rwo venues. The music scene Steve envisions for New H aven will be order¡ ly in a way that the Tune Inn never was. Steve describes The Space as "a classroom with velvet lights." Like in any classroom, there are lots of rules, the most notable of which are printed on pocket-sized fl iers sitting on a card table that serves as the ticker booth: "No drugs or alcohol allowed; No smoking inside; Dispose of gum in the crash (not on rhe floor); No fighting (even verbally); No rough playing."

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The Space sits in an industrial park on the border of H amden and New Haven. It shares the asphalt and concrete terrain with five inner city churches and a handful of shops. In its previous life, The Space was the sixth church in this no man's land. A week before the church closed, Steve Rodgers was evicted from the wa.rehouse where he had I i v e d a n d entertained, hosting underground (and illegal) open mics for nine years. The timing was serendipitous.

H e signed the lease would for what become T he Space just days after he lost his home.

open mic. The shows start at 8:00 sharp and every performer gets just two songs. Before each session, Steve reminds everyone that this is a "listening space" and that there is no talking during performances. Although Steve goes out of his way to nurture local musicians, there is an unspoken rule â&#x20AC;˘ that open miclS ers should play original music.

Cove r s are frowned upon.

This, combined with the classroom fee l , makes The Space a place for music lovers of the purest kind.

Even so, the acts run the gamut from d ud to "duuudef" Ron Anthony, for one, can bring a crowd to tears. "Country blues or a pretty rune?" he asks. The audience calls for blues and so he plays, crooning from behind a thick grey mustache and oversized glasses. He starts to pick a simple blues progression. After a few bars, his Southern-edged, steady voice fills the room and nobody moves a muscle. You can't download Anthony's music on the internet and he's never cut a record. The only place you can count on him playing from one week

The Space a place for music lovers of the purest kind¡ Even so, the acts run the gamut from dud to uduuude!"

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rom the outside, The Space doesn't look like a church, a club, or much of anything for that matter. But a peek inside reveals an explosion of idiosyncratic life. The venue is in a basement, and every inch is covered.

Baby carriages, a miniature Winnebago, Christmas lights, old records, a mannequin, and a beau ty salon chair crowd every nook.

There is something happening at The Space nearly every day. But the venue is perhaps most legendary for its Tuesday night

to the next is in the basement of this squat building on a little road off of Dixwell Avenue on edge of New Haven.

Obviously not every act is as sweet as Ron Anthony. Casper, Big Dog, and D-Money, for example, couldn't be more different. "Give these s.1ys a hand," Steve tells the crowd as he motions the band of 12-yearolds up to the stage. Casper's dad had dropped them off and was probably still waiting in the parking lot. "Yo, yo ya yo, check it, yo ya yo yo, yo," makes up the bulk of the rap but there are also several near-rhymes about Big Dog's braces and about how Casper is going to get stuffed in a trash can. When they finish, Steve thanks them and asks for two more rounds of applause. One 45-year-old guy gives a standing ovation. This is not special treatment, though-he awards every act this respect.

When the middle schoolers stomp off the stage, a middle-aged woman with messy blond hair scoots on. "Who would I be?

What would I do? If you wanted me too?" As she sings, she crinkles her face in a way any agent would be quick to correct if her objective were fame. "I think with local music there is an obvious struggle to it," Steve said later. "There is a young guy or girl or group that wakes up everyday and goes to a crappy, crappy job, or wakes up and goes to classes that they couldn't care less about and the thing that's pushing them in life is music." As

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the blond woman walks off, catharsis complete, the crowd cheers. Afterwards, the audience members congrarulate her by name and ask where she has been for the last few weeks.

Steve Rodger's community is small enough that people a.re missed when they don't show up.

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AR is much more hip and self-aware.

Here, designer jeans are paired with low top Converse All-Stars in traditional black.

The drink of choice is a glass of red wine or pale ale, depending on the show. Sunday night shows at BAR are advertised as starting at 9:00, but most begin at least an hour late.

This tardiness is not an oversight; these shows are financed by bar proceeds, so Rick likes to give people time to drink. This system allows Rick to roU over profits from show to show, and gives him more flexibility in choosing what to book. If he books a profitable show, next week's show can be more experimental, and the bar can take a hit if the cut from preshow drinking is not enough to cover the band's costs. Standard fare is a couple hundred bucks per show.

At BAR, like at The Space, musicianship is taken seriously. "I book four shows a month- 1 want every one to count. I want people to have their ass kicked, their lives changed." Ass kicking, however, doesn't necessarily translate into dancing. During one of BAR's concerts, the lead singer of Soviet, the

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main act for that night, remarked, "All across the countty, this is the only place we've played where not a single person was dancing," at which point he rushed the floor and spun around in circles while stomping his feet up and down and clapping enthusiasticaUy. The crowd just watched from their seats.

During concerts Rick perches on a platform that looks like a tree house, hardly visible as he adjusts knobs and presses buttons.

He is the sound guy and he likes it loud. As the synth pop of Soviet crescendoed and everyone in the room bounced in place, you could forget you were one of only 60 people in a room designed for dance parties in a pizza place in New Haven. You could feel like you were at a show.

For many in the New Haven community, Connecticut is, as Rick puts it, "the gas station between New York and Boston." And although this reputation may not sound like much, promoters can use it to their advantage. Sometimes Rick can even get national touring acts to play at BAR on Sunday nights, because it's an off night when bands are on the road between gigs. Until New Haven cre. ates its own identity for itself, it must be satisfied to feed off the vibrancy of New York and Boston.

But then, an identity is precisely what Rick is trying to create: "New Haven wiU never be New York part cwo and I wouldn't want it to be. There are a miiJion reasons why

New Haven is slarnmin' and it just has to step it up. You look at how many things are going on in New York. Boston's got it. Providence has got it. And I've played those rooms.

They're not aU real fancy."

The question remains, though, why choose to take on this batde in New Haven?

"Because I know this town is amazing," says Rick. "I've traveled to aU but five states in the United States numerous times. Florida, California, Texas, New Mexico. New Haven rocks!"

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ost national bands, not surprisingly, don't think of New Haven as a rocking town, making it incredibly difficult, if not downright impossible, to get them to come here. Rick knows this better than anyone. In his quest to make New Haven a musical hotbed, he has been repeatedly shot down.

Getting bands to come to New Haven is hard enough, but getting them to come to BAR--one of the city's lesser known music venues-is particularly chaUenging. Most recently, Kristin Hersh and Alice Donut declined to play a show there. "A lot of it is just having the rep.utation," says Rick. "I have nothing right now." He relays a dialogue that by now is aU too farniliar-'"Where, what is it called again?' 'BAR' 'Okay, but what's the name of the place?' 'BAR."' Rick shakes his head. " I just have to remember to keep myself grounded."

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The ways Rick could move BAR up the musical ladder are pretty straightforward.

Booking an artist with a high proftle record label is currency in this business. The more high prof.Ue labels that are represented at a venue, the easier it is to convince an agent that his band should ;>lay there too. Working with an agent from one firm gives a promoter an in with a different agent from the same firm. Agents, record labels, and name recognition are the medals of honor. "You know like the Kristin Hersh, Alice Donut thing was super over ambitious," Rick admits.

"Especially Kristin Hersh-getting into it I knew her agent was going to say no. He said probably not and I pushed him. He said no and I asked him to compromise and tell me why. He told me why and I'm still pushing.

Even my last email to him was like I know you can't do it, but let me know if something changes and please consider me next time around."

As if his dream of putting New Haven on the map doesn't &ce enough obstacles, even locals are skeptical. "'Nothing ever happens in New Haven,"' Rick whines in imitation. "Students show up--'Nothing is going on in New Haven, I can't wait to go back home.' It's like you know what? This is my response to everybody who has that to say," he said dragging out the 'everybOdy.'"Fuck It. That's my response. Anybody who said there's nobody good playing rock, anybody who said there is nothing for me--that's bullshit. I'm positive I will have one of every kind of band play in that room at some point."

THE NEW JoURNAL

Turley~

Publications,Inc

It's clear that money is not what's driving either of these two hopeful revolutionaries. In addition to BAR, Rick works three jobs at the School of Architecture to support this "labor oflove." Steve is putting in 60, 70, and sometimes 80 hour weeks at The Space, but he too also holds several other jobs to support himself and his wife. "I was never in it for the money; if I were I would have quit in 1992," Steve says.

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erhaps the pay off is merely pushing this city to the cusp and watching what happens. Both promoters decided long ago that music is a force that can be controlled, manipulated, and used to power change.

Steve may bring notoriety to this rown by building a music community, currendy a tiny but devoted group that takes a chance on local artists every week. "I've always wanted to see people get together for a positive thing.

People rally against stuff all the time, but you never see people coming together for something or just to be with people." He has channded music to build a community, but ultimately it is relationships, not mwic, that hold it together.

Rick has something else in mind. He sees music as a means of changing people. For Rick, the more lives changed, the more "slammin'" this town will be. "The fLrst time Dead Meadow played at BAR a lot of people had never heard of them, it was probably the most crowded I've ever had that room. I'm positive it changed people's lives. Jaws were on the ground. Eyes were tearing and you know pco-

pie were just floored People were just amazed that like these three skinny young dudes could just belt out this sonic wall. That is the juice into the vein," he said gripping his forearm, "That is what I'm booking shows for. " But sweeping revolution has yet to engulf New Haven. Rick and Steve have not overthrown the cultural pecking order of New England. And New Haven's music scene still cannot hold a candle to New York's. But the belief that music has the power to transform lives might just be revolutionary enough to light the fire.

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2003

13

n the small kitchen attached to the community room of a massive apartment complex, Jorge's wife stood stirring a big pot of boiling broth filled with pasulu, a combinacion, she explained, of vegetables, potatoes and chunks of tender meat, all rolled into ucca leaves and wrapped in paper tied with tring. "Don't worry, though" she said with a Lmile. "We mke the paper off." The ocher ~ishes were already laid out on rhe table: t:ouscous, chicken, rice and beans, and, the fastt.'St to di53ppear, a tender blend of pork ~nd onions.

Across the room, Jorge and Gilberto in continual revolutions around the table, Jorge still trying to explain to Eric is own special mles for calling rhe eight-ball; .uis and Alberto manned,a small round table ovc:-rcd with dominoes; and outside, occaionally tapping their cigarette ends into a lastic cup drainc:-d of its un·na, the others t talking. their words drifting ofT into the varm air of a Saturday night in Fair Haven.

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In houses across the city, there was much cause for celebration the weekend of September 20: After three and a half long weeks on strike, members of YaJe locals 34 and 35 would be back at work by Monday, flush with the triumph of a new contract that promised higher wages and better pensions.

But no one in the crowd at 50 Grand Avenue was a union member. In fact, as of Monday morning, none of them would even be employed.

The road that mns between this predominantly Hispanic immigrant neighborhood and Yale is not an easy path to trod: Though Hispanics make up more than a fifth of the city's population, they bold only three percent of University jobs. And even those who do succeed in penetrating the ranks of YaJe employees are ultimately shortchanged in the benefits they receive. Although the University offers some employees assistance through its much vaunced Homebuyer's Program, the program does not cover any houses bought in Fair Haven. Thus chances seemed pretty slim that any of the ten Puerto Rican, Mexican and Peruvian-Asnericans

enjoying the party that day would ever benefit from the unions' triumph. The absence of anyone at the gathering from the local unions, much less the University administration, did not improve matter:<~.

But the pasuks and stewed pork told a different story, and the people enjoying ,. them-Jorge Rivera, Angie Aponte, Luis Loyola, Nberco Mendieta, Gilberto Cintrone, Luis Velazquez, Marta Ramos, Pablo Soto, Anibal Garcia, and Laura Hernandez-saw a different future at Yale.

They knew firsthand what a place on the University's dining hall or custodial staff would look like. For several weeks, they had each held a temporary job through a subcontracting firm called Sanitation Management, cleaning residential colleges and dining halls at Yale in place of striking members of LocaJ 35. These were highly coveted positions, even though . as ~ub·contrac- • tors, the workers did not enjoy union pay or benefits, and they accepted the job knowing that when the strike ended, they would be forced to give it up. With this in mind, a week before their party, the ten workers made a surprising career move ft>r people on their rung of the employment ladder: They went on strike.

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nsread of mopping srairwells or cleaning bathrooms, the ten joined union members on the picket lines to protest the injustices of an employer for whom, technically, rhey had never worked. It seemed an unlikely way to ger a foot in the door at Yale. But then, after years of fruitless efforts on the part of New Haven's Hispanic community to forge closer relations with the city's largest employer, extreme measures seemed necessary.

Weeks later, the most surprising parr of rhe decision is nor that ten people, mosr of whom had never met, banded together ro walk away from a job with better wages than any of them had earned in months, or that they all left all in the hope of blazing a trail into the unions whose picker lines they had just been breaking. Rather, the most remarkable rwisr in this story is that it just might have worked.

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o hear union leaders tell it, Yale has a deeply institutionalized bias against hiring Hispanic workers. Even the paltry three or four percent Hispanic workforce that the University boasts of employing includes, according to one union member, Mevery half-Spanish professor or part-timer they could find. " So for the last two years, rhe unions, through their political arm, The Connecticut Center for a New Economy, have lobbied as part of the "Social Contract wirh Yale" earnOCTOBER

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paign ro extend employment ro more Hispanic workers. Leading the effort is Dan Smolder To'OO, whose fresh face and brightly colored yarmulke are a frequent sight ar churches and commJlllity meetings throughour Fair Haven. w-hen Smolder first began organizing in Fair Haven rwo years ago, he was shocked to find that in a city where one in four workers is employed by the University, almost none came from rhe Hispanic community. Things have come a long way since then. This summer, for example, a group of Hispanic clergymen whom Smokier had organized mer with Yale President Rick Levin to discuss hiring and promotional opportunities for Hispanic workers. The results of these efforts are difficult ro tabulate. According to the Office of New Haven and Stare Affairs, the number of Hispanic employees ar the University has increased 39 percent in the last five years, while the roral workforce has grown by only 9 percent. Five of eight trainees in the current class ar the New Haven Residents' Training Program are Hispanic. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that this hiring binge might have been concentrated within the last six months, as a mounting press campaign left the University scrambling ro mask its historic paucity of Hispanic workers.

Still, to most observers, efforts ro integrate the workforce have remained the same for decades, as evidenced by the workforce's racial stratification. Black workers clean the floors, white managers oversee them, and Hispanic faces are nowhere to be found.

All of chat changed, though, on August 27, when Yale's unions began their ninth labor action in 35 years. Soon afterwards, busloads of predominantly Puerto Rican and Mexican workers began arnvmg in unmarked vans each day ro rake up the mops and trash bags the strikers had left behind. The sub-contractors offered Yale an unmistakable advantage: They accepted lower wages, no benefits, and no guarantee as ro the duration of their employment.

Union leaders, of course, were outraged. To rhem, it was obvious that Yale was taking advantage of the Hispanic workers not only because they were immigrants, a historically vulnerable group, but also because they were not a group traditionally employed at Yale and thus nor likely to identify with the strikers. Some of the union workers, it turned our, did not identify with the sub-contracted workers either. One rooming during the strike, for example, students reponed hearing striking union members shouting, "Go back to Mexico!" as the sub-con tracred workers stepped off the rooming bus.

Ar a press conference during the second week of the strike, the unions convened 40 Hispanic and African-American clergy and representatives of the National Hispanic Caucus to denounce the University's alleged effort to exploit racial tensions. One clergyman told the New HaVOJ &gistn- that the Hispanic strike-breakers were, "by ignorance, being given scraps."

Yale officials begged to differ. They insisted that the University was only trying to fulfill its educational mission, without

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any reference to the racial composition of its sub-contractor's employees.

This press blitz, though, may have helped pave the way for change. By the time the srrike was resolved two weeks later, negotiations had yielded a surprising benefit: The creation of a new community training commission whose aim, according to one union organizer, is "desegregating the workforce."

Irs members would be drawn in equal parts from the unions, the University, and the community. Then, last Friday, the University passed yet another historic landmark, organizing a meeting with a combined group of 26 representatives from over half a dozen social services agencies in the Hispanic community. The group discussed the mechanics of University hiring and what prospective workers could do to better their chances of landing a job.

While the press may have gorren things rolling, Smokier and others believe it was the lnÂŤlgistas who were responsible for these latest triumphs. As part of the union's attempt to encourage workers co walk off the job, they promisedby way of Smokier and the other activists who made contact with individual temp workers-co help the lnÂŤ/gistas secure permanent positions when the strike ended. If successfUl, it would be an unprecedented breaking of the barriers, said union organizer Mark Wilson, the man responsible for fielding phone calls from the hu~/gistas and for finding them work as casuals. "In the past, H ispanic workers have always come in one or two at a time every five or ten years. So we're on the brink of something very important here: We have between seven and thirteen workers who are all going to start," said Wilson. "To be part of Yale opening its doors co more Latino and Hispanic workers is an awesome thing. And we'll look back years from now and remember this as a historic event."

Jorge Rivera, one of the group's ringleaders, along with Gilberto Cintrone, always thought the walk-ours had broader significance. He walked out, he recalled later, "For all the Latinos who've been passed over, who've been stepped on." He had considered applying to work at Yale several years ago, but

was discouraged by the complexity of the hiring process. Besides, with so few Hispanic workers on board already, the possibility of working at Yale seemed remote. Now, h e says, recalling the three or four percent figure that helped convince him ro support the unions, "I'll be happy if we see that number go up-if we get 10 or 15 percent. I don't know what the ten of us will do to that [number] but we'll see."

Two of the h~/gistas, Pablo Sato and Anibal Garcia, were actually fired by their Yale supervisor before they decided to join

staked out the sub-contractors while they waited for their bus home from High Street Gate. He tried to convince the skeptical workers that the generous wages they were receiving wouldn't last long, and that the University was using them as pawns in its twisted race game. The workers kept their distance. When the bus pulled up, they boarded quickly and asked Smokier not to follow them.

But the next day the union organizers changed tactics. Instead of waiting for the workers' bus ro arrive at Yale, they drove to a West Haven parking lor where rhcy attempted to board the bus. Sanitatio n managers responded by calling the police. Refusing to be deterred, Smokier and Francesci tailed the bus in their cars and followed it to an abandoned lot in Fair Haven. T hey looked on as workers were transferred into unmarked Yale vans which would carry them past strikers and safely to the campus.

When the workers finally arrived that morning, they were more than an hour late.

Later that day, taking a break from work in Davenport, Angie Aponte, Luis Loyola, and Martha Rames enjoyed a good laugh at the organizers' expense. Who did they think they were, interfering with people who were just trying to make a living?

"It's not obvious to the workers why they should support the people in the unions ... Why should the people working inside care?"

OCTOBER

2003

the strike. According to Sato and Garcia, their supervisor approached them during a break and let loose a barrage of personal and racial insults before firing them on the spot. The incident left them little reason not to come on board with Rivera and Cintrone.

Yet weeks later, the memory of the manager's racist slurs still stung. "You can tell in the way they treat you," he said, sitting in the living room of his first-floor apartment in the Hill neighborhood. "They're one way with gringos, then with Spanish people they change." Anibal's experience during his rwo years in New Haven has had a similarly discouraging effect. If things don't pan out with work at Yale in the next month, he is considering returning to Puerto Rico.

For the sub-contractors assigned elsewhere, though, the decisiof! to strike carne less easily. The first day that Smokier and a well-known union activist in the Hispanic community, Norma Francesci as well as several Hispanic clergy met the arriving workers at the High Street Gate, a few of the furure lnÂŤ/gistas were more annoyed than inspired.

Happy to have been chosen for one of Sanitation Management's 60 jobs from an applicant pool of over 180, they preferred to be left alone. That afternoon, Smokier again

ut what really bothered the three of them was the N~w Havm &gistn- article describing the union leaders' press conference the day before, at which union representatives had denounced the University for playing the race card.

Loyola, who at 24 is more than five years older than both Ramos and Aponte, was indignant: "See why arc they making this a race thing? That offends me."

Ramos seized on the quote from one of the pastors who said that the workers were acting "by ignorance."

"Are they saying we're ignorant?" she asked indignandy. "We're not the ones chasing the union people in our cars. Who's the ignorant one?" Aponte and Loyola laughed in agreement.

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But less than two days later, all three of the former Davenport cusLos mormos is a term used among the characteristically blunt Hispanic community to refer to union members. It means, more or todial workers were on the Green, accepting hugs and congratulations from union members and activists who said their decision not to go to less, the "black people." For Alberto Mendieta, another huelgista, the work that day had been a watershed in race relations at Yale. Aponte significance of the union's racial compostion is unavoidable. "There are and Ramos had both brought their babies, and in the warmth of a black and white people on the inside," he explained with a shrug. "and sunny Friday morning. their news created an especially celebratory they want to help bring in their people." atmosphere: Black union members took up chants of solidarity in Spanish, and everyone professed their firm intention never to be dividf course, neither of Yale's unions is entirely devoid of Hispanics. ed by race again.

Hispanic members of Local 35 have been doing their job more When the television cameras began rolling. Aponte took the or less unconcerned by the race issue for years. The obstacles to Hispanic employment, rather, seem to crop up earlier in the process. microphone and spoke on behalf of the huelgistas. They were tired of being abused as Yale's pawns, she said: "We want to be treated like other According to Ramirez, Yale is too stringent about demanding Englishlanguage fluency and verifying the authenticity of immigtation papers, people."

The next week, afrer the press contwo tendencies that bespeak more racial bias than ference, some of the once reluctant hu~l­ they do quality control. "Why do they do that?" he gistas even helped try to convince other asked quizzically. "You don't need to speak English Sanitation workers to walk out. Most to sweep." were too afraid to talk to them, but the In fact, the employment test required for applihuelgistas knew flfSthand that even the cants seeking a position in Yale's custodial or dining most seemingly deaf ears can be open to hall workforce requires only a basic level of English new ideas. profeciency. Although it features mainly basic arithAs Rivera recalled afrer the strike: metic questions, its instructions are in English. A "When people talk, you listen. At the score of 70 percent is required to pass. Mike Morand, Associate Vice President ofYale's Office of beginning they said they were going to New Haven and State AffiUrs, points out that the get us this and it sounded sketchy. You don't want to jump into something you University's minimum threshold of language compedon't know." For him, the leap of faith tency is no higher than that held by the city or most other universities and companies across the nation. had been largely personal. ''I've known It is certainly higher, however, than the StAtnda.rds Norma {Francesci] from around the held by Sanitation Management, Inc., among whose neighborhood for a long time; she wasn't going to try to play us around."

Yale-based workers were dozens who spoke no But the unions' low number of English at all. Hispanic workers already in the door Hispanic members meant that there at Yale offer a mixed assessment of their employers' track record on race. Though he has never felt tarweren't many neighborhood people huelgistas could turn to for advice congeted by racial prejudice, Dolores Cadilla, a Puerto cerning the walkout. Instead, the hu~l­ Rican immigrant who has been working at Yale since gistas made new friends with other 1958, knows many from the Hispanic community union members on the picket line. who have sought work at Yale but to whom, he says, Ramos and Aponte continued to bring ~~~~ Yale has not had the courtesy to respond. Ca.dilla their kids most mornings, and everyone believes access for Hispanics is h.ampered by a lack of Jorge Rivera and his wife join enjoyed the complimentary coffee and strikers on the picket line.

Spanish-language recruitment and advertising. breakfast food set out for all the strikers Another Puerto Rican member of Local 35 who has in the basement of First and Summerfield Church. worked at Yale since 1964 agrees. He estimates that he knows ZOO pec>Afrer the walkout, union organizers kept an eye on the group, ple in the Hispanic community who would love to work at Yale, but who either don't know how to apply, or when they do drop off an applimeeting with them each morning beneath the strike tent or outside the union office on Chapel Street. They repeated their promise that when cation at the Human Resources (HR) office, hit a stone wall. They are the strike was over, the huelgistas would be well positioned to get persimply never called back. manent jobs at Yale. Nery Ramirez, an immigrant from Guatemala and a Boston-based organizer understood the difficulty in getting Hispanic ast week's ~storic meeting between_ Yale ~d His . panic ~resenta­ workers to leave a well-paying job in support of predominandy black tives was mtended to address precisely this lack of clarity about union members: • It's not obvious to the workers why they should supYale's hiring practices. University officials say that opening comport the people in the unions. Wal.king out would help los 71UJ1'mOS get munication channels and improving job access for Hispanics has been a goal since long before this fall's strike. The biggest hindrance to bringa contract faster but why should the people working inside care?•

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ing in more Hispanic workers, Morand explained, is simply the lack of job turnove.r in Yale's unions. The average tenure of a Local 35 worker, for instance, is about 15 years, and the union only has 1100-odd members.

According to Smokler, though, combined job openings for Locals 34 and 35 are still around 800 per year. But like all jobs at Yale, these positions are in high demand. The University's Human Resources Office estimates that it receives 100 resumes per day for positions across the university. Morand adds that in the past when the HR office has done "open resting" for union positions, the line could have stretched past his offic~almost a half-mile from HR. Instead, the horde of over 1,000 applicants snaked around the HR building.

The discrepancy between worker supply and university demand makes securing a job here difficult for anyone--white, black, or Hispanic. And according to the 2000 census, although H ispanics make up a quarter of the city, they are only 13 percent of its high school graduates. Bur, as Morand points our, that hasn't stopped rhe staff at Human Resources from doing the same presentations on Yale employment opportunities in Fair Haven as it does at public libraries around the city.

Recently, members of the Hispanic community have noticed a spike in the number of Spanish-language advertisements routing Yale'y commitment to diversity and bumas relaciones with the Hispanic com; munity. One full-page ad that appeared on page two of La \.0z Hispana last week read, "Yale University is dedicated to having diversity in its employee community and to looking for qualified candidates from the community for regular employment." The advertisement, though, did not specify whether Yale was currently hiring and only referred readers to HR's website for more information. On an afrernoon last week, when La \.0z was distributed free of charge in a Fair Haven deli, none of the customers thought the ad was sufficient.

Deli owner and activist Francesci put the question to several of her customers from behind the counter of her Main Street shop: "Have you ever seen an advertisement in a Spanish-language newspap er or anywhere dse for hiring at Yale?" The chorus of responses was in agreement~ Not one. On her own, Francesci has assured her friends among the huelgistas that they will be taken care of and placed as casuals within the next few weeks, the first step to procuring a union job permanently. But then again, she sees little in the history of interaction between Yale and the Hispanic community to give her complete confidence. The huelgistaswill have ro wait and see. fter the dishes were cleared at the Grand Avenue parry, Cintrone announced that he wasn't going to do his waiting quietly. The day before, the group had received the home phone number of Local 35 manager Mark Sullivan with instructions to call him on Monday about job placement. By Saturday afternoon, though, Cintrone had already called Sullivan once, and he knew what time on Monday be was going to call again. He told the others to do the same. ¡rm calling that guy everyday. I'll call him a hundred times a day if I have to, everyday for a month, until pretty soon he's going to get sick of me calling and be's going to give me a job," he said confidently.

Seated on the patio outside with a cigarette in his hand, Aponte said

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that was her plan as well. She promised to pass along whatever information she got co Loyola and the others who didn't speak English .

Though Mark seemed eager to help, he does not know Spanish. f Rivera's dream of a stronger Hispanic workforce at Yale pans out, rhe lack of Spanish-speakers in union management shouldn't last long. As it is, when Loyola stopped by the office one day last week to speak with Sullivan about the status of the h~lgi.stas' forthcoming employment, Smokler had to translate. Still, his advice to Loyola was promising: Give it another two to three weeks, Sullivan said, and you should all be taken care of.

In the meantime, the huelgi.stas have become a tight-knit bunch, often congregating at one another's homes or meeting ar the union office to check in with Sullivan. Rivera is eager to throw another gettogether like the one che day after the strike ended, when his wife cooked past~ks. But for now his plans are on hold, as the couple awaits the birth of their second child, a girl due in mid-Oetober. Besides, the real cause to celebrate will only come once the whole group has steady jobs at Yale, and then again when they have accumulated 380 hours and can graduate from casual status ro full-fledged union membership, with benefits and a fixed schedule.

Smokier is confident they will receive a warm reception. Members of both Locals 34 and 35, he says, understand their struggle wich Yale: "They know that if rhey don't grow and expand they can't win."

For Yale's parr, the necessity to welcome Hispanic workers into the fold certainly appears ro have become more pressing. But according to Morand, the only change of late is that the University has more time for city outreach now that months of tense labor negotiations are at last ar an end. Bur fundamentally, he says, che U niversity has nor changed its course.

Not surprisingly, the reading from the union office is a bit differem. Wilson, rhe hu~lgistas' point p erson, sees the University's new acceptance of diversity as a capitulation: "The cry for assistance from the Hispanic community has finally gotten loud enough char Yale has to listen."

To the huelgistas, though, the motive for change hardly matters.

Standing outside the union office after a meeting with Sullivan two weeks after che strike, Aponte, Velazquez and Rivera conferred.

"He says a couple weeks," Rivera reported.

Aponte replied with a touch of regret, "But we won't all be togetber.

"I don't care; I told him any shift, anytime, graveyard, whatever," said Rivera. "Even part-time. Any job here and I'll be set." Many of his frieAds in Fair Haven are sure to agree.

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Paig~ Austin,

a sophomo" in Davenport Co/kg~. is Associate Editor forTNJ. 21

By April Rabkin

n the 2001 New Haven mayoral primaries, incumbent John DeStefano, Jr., and Connecticut State Senator Martin Looney competed for the Democratic Party nomination like two siblings in a Monopoly game. Having served four consecutive terms as mayor, DeStefano already owned all the prime real estate and was raking in rental fees with every role of the dice. Checks made out to "DeStefano for Mayor" poured in from school administrators, police unions, city employees, and local contractors--a testament to DeStefano's welloiled fundraising machine. In the primaries alone, he managed to raise over $550,000 in contributions. Without DeStefano's incumbent edge, Looney was sitting on a considerably lighter campaign coffer, but still had enough political clout to give DeStefano a run for his money. A New Haven native, Looney had represented the Elm City in the Connecticut General Assembly from 1980-1992 before going on to become a five-term state senator.

In his most recent senatorial campaign, he had spent over $40,000.

For the mayoral primary, he raised ¡ five times that amount.

With stakes this high, and with money in hand, what began as friendly compennon soon devolved into nasty squabbling. When Looney staged a fundraiser at the home of former State Democratic Chairman Edward Marcus, DeStefano lost no time pointing out that Marcus' law firm represented a housing development corporation under investigation by the FBI for misallocation of federal funds. In retaliation, Looney attacked DeStefano for his own campaign tactics. Calling for campaign finance reform, he accused DeStef.uto of squeezing contributions from people through intimidation. He alluded to one particular fundraising invitation DeStefano had sent out to city employees and contractors, denouncing its language as "coercive." In addition, Looney claimed that DeStefano's citywide network of supponers sent the message that "the city is for sale and continues to be for sale." DeStef.uto quickly reacted by emphatically pointing out how he had rejected $1.750 from Sal Brancati, a former director of New Haven's Office of Business Development who had been accused of accepting $65,500 in bribes from the owner of a financial planning firm in achange for sending him business.

Ultimately, neither candidate was actually able to find anything illegal about the other's fundraising strategies in this high stakes game.

Emotions nevertheless ran high and the campaign morphed into an

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all-out war: Fundraising on both sides surged to levels never before seen in any city in Connecticut. By September ll, the day New York's financial center collapsed, the New Haven mayoral primary had amassed more than $800,000 in campaign contributions. After DeStefano beat Looney by a margin of24 percent, new partisan opponents brought even more money to the race. One month after the Democratic primary, the candidates' total campaign contributions amounted to more than $1,000,000-making this by far the most apensive election in New Haven's history. In a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 13 to 1, no one was panicularly surprised when DeStefano won. It was his spending that was so unnerving. Even more shocking was the fact that only 18 percent, or 27 of DeStefano's 149 contributors, lived within the New Haven city limits. Rumors of unfairness began to circulate.

It was in this contat, in the days following his inauguration, that DeStefano suddenly changed course. Claiming that he was fed up with raising money, he adopted the platform of his former opponent Looney: Campaign finance reform. If he succeeds, within a year New Haven may become the first city in Connecticut, and the founeenth in the country, to publicly finance municipal elections. A group comprised of the Mayor and a handful of aldermen is currendy pushing to bring into law a "Clean Elections Bill." The hope is that the bill will prevent the acessive spending that characterized the 2001 election from happening again and encourage those without adequate resources or political clout to participate in what has traditionally been a closed political process. In other words, this is a bill that could revolutionize New Haven politics.

Besides putting a handsome feather in his cap, instituting clean elections could prove immeasurably useful for someone with larger aspirations.

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o realize his vision of "clean elections," DeStefano appointed his aecutive assistant Julio Gonzalez, cc '99 to draft a bill and amass the necessary suppon to get it passed. In his Yale days, Gonzalez had served as New Haven's Ward 1 alderman. After graduation, he joined forces with DeStefano, working as his campaign manager in 2001 and as his primary political advisor after the election.

Throughout the campaign Gonzalez's press-saviness had distinguished him from the other advisors. When reponers confronted¡ DeStefano about contentious issues, more often than not the mayor passed the questions to Gonzalez. According to Gonzalez, the mayor took up the

THE NEW joURNAL

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clean elections cause at least pardy in response to concerns expressed by alderman Vincent Mauro about his fundraising methods in the fall 2001 campaign. "The mayor felt strongly that we needed to change the system," Gonzalez said. "We started asking, what is a meaningful reform that will solve these problems and allow free speech?"

Gonzalez enlisted the aid of Ward 29 Alderman Carl Goldfield, another one of DeStefano's political advisors, to help draft the Clean Elections Bill. Together, they assembled a diverse wk force of civicminded citizens, including Joe Jolly, a Fair Haven resident and employee of the Peabody Museum; Elizabeth Adonizio, a Yale political science graduate student and member of the League of Women Voters, and Ray Weber and Lee Cruz, both of the New Haven Environmental Justice Nerwork. In the ensuing months, the team devised a bill that outlined the establishment of what they called the "New Haven Democracy Fund." The city's annual budget would allocate at least $100,000 to the fund, costing taxpayers roughly 80 cents per yea~ making it one of the smallest line items in the New Haven budget.

The process would be fairly straightforward: Candidates seeking public funding would first be required to raise 200 donations of between $25 and $300 each, at which point they would qualify for a $15,000 block grant. They would then receive funds matching those they had already raised rwo to one, up to $200,000. Every additional dollar they raised would be matched up to $200,000. If a privately funded candidate's spending exceeded $200,000, publicly funded candidates would have the choice of either receiving an additional $25,000 grant from the Democracy Fund or raising funds independently.

Despite the apparent temptation for candidates with political clout and independent resources to bypass public fmancing, other cities with similar systems have shown that even well-connected candidates usually find it in their best interest to take advantage of public funds. In addition to saving a candidate money, public financing gives the appearance of democratic fair play. Because the u.s. Consitution protects campaign contributions as free speech, there will always be individuals like New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who can afford both to outspend public funds and to suffer the bad publicity that goes along with it. But at least at the local level, the Bloombergs are more often the exception than the rule.

Gonzalez admits that the Clean Elections Bill will be difficult lo implement. The major obstacle to public fmancing is that political incumbents are often reluctant to advocate a system that would undermine their existing nerwork of financial supporters. Out of$53,379 that DeStefano raised during the third quarter of 2003, at least $26,985 carne from executives at contracting firms, including companies working on the city's $1.5 billion construction program. School developers,

OCTOBER

2003

Long Wharf Mall consultants, and demolishers paid thousands of dollars for a piece of the mayoral pie. Gonzalez and the wk force are nevertheless pushing the idea publicly. According to Gonzalez. "[We are] organizing public hearings and neighborhood meetings with the hope of convincing people that clean elections are good for everyone." ohn DeStefano's motivation to undetake a project like the Clean Elections Bill is, to say the least, unclear. It is hard to believe that DeStefano would bite the hands that have funded him for so long. But besides putting a handsome feather in his cap, instituting clean elections as the five-term mayor of a small city could prove immeasurably useful for someone with larger aspirations.

Whatever DeStefano's ultimate agenda, the bill faces a more immediate obstacle: The state has effectively vetoed it. Once DeStefano's team fmished drafting the bill in late 2002, they petitioned the Connecticut legislature for "enabling legislation," without which the bill would be vulnerable to lawsuits challenging its constitutionality. Withour pull at the state level, the odds of passing enabling legis~ lation were formidable. But the bill faced more than mere lack of influence. After losing the 2001 primaries, Martin Looney had returned ro his post as State senator in Hartford and become House Majority Leader. Formerly a firm supporter of public finance reform, Looney did not openly oppose DeStefano's bill, but when the request for enabling legislation came before the Senate, he did not lift a finger to support it. In January 2003, the bill was referred to the Joint Committee on Government Administration and Elections, where it may remain indefinitely.

DeStefano is in his fifth two-year term and campaigning for a sixth. After stay-ing in the saddle during some of New Haven's rockiest rimes, he may be confident that he can stay there as long as he wants.

But according to Gonzales, "He's closer to the end than the beginning.

So clean elections will affect the transition between DeStefano and the next mayor. The reason we engage it is because we like having the fights, we like the competition," claims Gonzalez. "We want to have a system that is healthy and works well." A more skeptical analysis of his motives would cast DeStefano as a successful self-promoter. If he is aimiilg for higher office, having enacted the first Clean Elections system in Connecticut would be an invaluable asset.

April Rabkin is a sn~ior in Davmport Colkge.

23

H

eading into the bottom of the sixth inning on the evening of September 10, the New Haven Ravens trailed the Akron Aeros by a score of9-0. The emerging story line seemed all too familiar: Things forever getting drearier. This was the second game of the Double-A Eastern League Championship Series, the last baseball game the Ravens would ever play in New Haven. In January, a group of Massachusetts businessmen purchased the Ravens, a minor league afftliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, and announced that they would move the franchise to Manchester, NH, at the end of the year.

Attendance, which had been dwindling since 1995, plummeted to record lows. To cut costs, the team cancelled its radio broadcasts for the season, opting to broadcast games only via the internet. A month into the season, however, they cut the internet broadcasts as well. With almost mocking irony, the Ravens went on to clinch its first division title in its 10-year history, and General Manager Adam Schierholz convinced rwo local businesses to sponsor the team's postseason, making all playoff tickets free to the public. The parting gift appeared to be a fmal act of kindness for Ravens' fans-or at least a foolproof way to fill the seats. But as Schierholz surveyed the crowd at Yale Field that night, his team weU on its way to dropping its second game of the championship, it appeared that his generous promotion had failed. Only 5,235 fans had attended the game, and, by the middle of the sixth inning. a third had already left, believing they'd finally gotten their money's worth.

I was among those who stayed. Growing up, I had always rooted against the Ravens, a team founded in 1993 as part of the farm system for the Colorado Rockies, a Major League expansion dub. The same year, a new Eastern League team moved into my hometown of Portland, ME-The Sea Dogs, the Double-A affiliate of the Florida Marlins. So I grew up a Sea Dogs fan, and always hated seeing the Ravens come to town, because, most of the time, they beat my beloved home team. Those dastardly Ravens and their winning ways became an inside joke among my friends. But although I had always prayed for the Ravens to fail on the field, I never wished them ill will as a franchise. Partly co pay my last respects to a worthy enemy, partly out a love of the game, and partly out of my nagging curiosity, I went to Yale Field that night to see how a baseball team died, and to see how the community, notorious for its indifference, would react.

Schierholz stood in the press box, watching disaster unfold on the field, his eyes panning empty rows of grandstand seats. "We're disappointed," he told me quietly. "We're giving away free rickets and still the stadium's only half fUll." Half-full stadiums-or worse--were the norm this year for the Ravens. The team drew only 140,000 fans the entire season, while the New Britain Rock Cats, a rival Eastern League team in Connecticut, broke its own single-season attendance record 24

for the fourth consecutive year, topping 268,000. There were a million reasons why the Ravens were a diseased franchise in N ew Haven, Schierholz said. The most common excuses floating around the stadium and the sports pages were that Yale Field was an outdated facility; the tearn"¡tacked significant political or corporate support from the town; New York and Boston were more attractive venues to see baseball; the team lacked a coherent identity, bearing New Haven's name but playing on a West Haven field owned by Yale. Secretly, I wondered if perhaps New Haven thought itself too sophisticated to support a working man's game. But whatever the root cause, an overwhelming apathy had settled around the Ravens. I asked Schierholz If he had tried to keep the team in New Haven, since he would lose his job when the Ravens headed north. He replied without a trace of discernible sadness: "No attempts." Schierholz seemed impatient for the end, ready perhaps to forget his personal responsibility for a team that was now down by nine runs. It seemed to me that the team had long been dead to New Haven. The words, "Thank you fans, 1994-2003," chalked into foul territory along the base paths looked particularly morbid.

But at that moment, the floundering black birds rallied their strength for one final Sap toward victory. The Ravens picked up rwo runs in the bottom of the sixth and five more in an exhilarating bottom of the eighth, bringing the score to 9-7, and the paltry crowd finally came alive. When the Ravens ¡ brought the potential eying run to the plate in the bottom of the ninth with rwo outs, the fans reached a rare state of euphoria.

One man removed his shoe and started "whapping it against the aluminum benches, while others shouted, stomped, and chanted. Some even prayed. The crowd's desire for the Ravens to end on a soaring, improbable high note was almost tangible. But on a 2-2 pitch, in front of a crowd on its feet, mighty Tyrell Goodwin struck out.

Yet instead of dejected fans shuffiing from the stadium, an unexpected celebration ensued. Schierholz and the Ravens staff invited everyone down to the field for "one final fun run" around the bases, an activity usually reserved fo_r kids after home games. But that night everyone funneled onto the field, as if unconsciously filling die void left by that last strikeout. A strange infectious force began to rise out of the fans as they approached the infield. Everyone circled the bases, some jogging, some walking. some scoring the winning run in the seventh game of their imaginary World Series. Schierholz stood a few feer up the third base line, slapping high fives to fans that used to root for a baseball team here. A few people required more¡ than a high five, embracing Schierholz with tear-streaked cheeks. One woman larehed on for a long hug, confiding. "My husband's heart is being ripped out."

Then people spread into the outfield and foul territory, searching for the perfect spot to internalize the moment and contribute in a person-

THE NEw JouRNAL

al way to the touching display of human affection. The surreal ceremony was a necessary affirmation that the team had existed and meaningful memories hacf been formed here. I had been wrong to assun;te that no one cared deeply about this team.

One elderly man with a wild beard, dressed in a Ravens' uniform and clutching a large bag filled with last-minute Ravens souvenirs, caught my eye as he approached the pit'c!ter's mound. He iULu"uu~I awaited his turn, and when it arrived, mounted the rubber in for the sign. He rocked back into his windup, motion. A flashbulb popped, and he released an · triumphantly: A perfect strike. He stepped peaied into the kaleidoscope of festivity. Later faced, one of the last fans to leave the park.

I approached Schierbolz, who, for the moment, the third base line, visibly moved by the ceremony. the effort made this year," Schierholz finally said of his on his sunglasses--presumably to cover his ey~ rather them from the full moon. "It makes you feel good. It would easy to pack it in this year."

After the last fans had made their peace and headed the night, the Ravens staff gathered on the mound for Schierbolz's celJ phone rang. He separated himself from the. ..._.._,.... wiped his cheek, raised the phone to his ear, .and quietly disappeared into the home dugout.

T

wo nights later, th the Ravens to new manlljgernertt erasing alJ evidence that weekend, the staff held Ravens had owned that owned the shell of the was the insides of the Ra block.

I pulled up to Yale Fieldi!ntmd front of a smalJ sign that rea.dl~ese:rvc:d the night before, so alJ the course. There were cash sion stand equipment, penders, oversized checks ities, dirty uniforms, hats and I browsed through the souvenir shop and ultimately purchased a squishy baseball with the Ravens logo on it for one dollar. The cashier said I could take two balJs for the price of one, but I had little use for the one already in my hand.

• · This miscellaneous pile of junk seemed a lot like the list of teams that have played in New Haven. The Nutmegs of the Atlantic Association were the first i~ 1889. Then came the Texas Steers, the OCTOBER

2003

there were the West Haven the Ravens. They had alJ ient way for the people junk. I thought back the items as that old of Ravens' history-a announcer used of that final Ravens

needed any help. His Manager of the Manchester to do with alJ of the stuff that didactttlliM~>lirs. "We'll put it right in front of the stadium -..who comes by," be said, welcoming looters. "At any be closer to the dumpster that will come tomorrow morning." paused and surveyed the remnants of the Ravens' past. "There are ten years of neglect in this faciliry. We're just trying to make it a little

,

added afrer a moment's pause, loosenis another man's treasure. Yesterday, there the week in big turquoise letters. People away with a sign that said 'THURS' is that guy going to do with that?'" I asked if Jdill~~~~!flf interest in the jumbo checks. "Some," he said. "I

...

I did know why, but before I could explain to us for a price check on an aU-purpose plastic gave the cah an indifferent once-over. "Five

Tom Iskr is a smior in Branford 01/kg~.

25

CastinB 'T'ofstoy (-"7J long time ago, when the city was new

classics in the afternoon, ,as fmgers silently :.J""'\!"d hemmed in by swamp, the voices spun cobacco and minds wandered out from of authors dead but still revered arose the walls of the warehouse into elastic worlds defined by stories. in the cigar factories of Ybor City, Florida.

The stories usually came in the afternoon, as It is in this city of cockfights and shaded the sun fell through the windows. By that parks, where the clouds look as though they have "soaked up the time, most of the cigar rollers would whole sea," that have already finished Nilo Cruz sets his Pulitzer-Prize winfive hundred or so ning play, Anna in cigars and the f.lctories, then empty of tht Tropics. Next machines, would be month, this city of quiet, save for the cigars will be reconsounds of the stories. structed in a New The cigar rollers, York theatre, and some of them illiteractors who are curate, all of them rently learning their skilled and many roles will give breath new ly-emigrated to the story of a from Cuba, would sit family whose lives and roll to the ~ere changed by a rhythm of povel read tO them Shakespeare's sonin a warehouse. And nets, Cervantes's on that November poetry, and Leo pight, Leo Tolstoy, a Tolstoy's prose, as the writer long dead, a words read aloud man who was not 11-MW~/v changed the reality in one for the stage their hands. and cared less for The cigar rollers the city, will find in Ybor were not the himself in a leading first to hire a lector. role in Broadway.

Across the gulf and many years before the city was founded, a group of artisans in Havana (ln his complex and captivating play, decided to find someone to read to them Cruz, who teaches playwriting at the Yale while they worked. The artisans pooled their School of Drama and, in April of this wages and hired a deep-voiced lector who year, became the first Latino co receive a arrived each morning with a newspaper and a Pulitzer Prize, explores the ways in which litbook in hand. He sar on a platform in the erature can become a provacatrice, affecting middle of the room and read in his booming not only the way one perceives the world, but voice. The workers were pleased, and the traalso the decisions one makes in the most intidition of the lector stayed alive with those mate of settings. C ruz relays the sobering and who left to work in what was then the cigar sometimes magical turn of events that result capital of the world. On a summer day before after Ofelia, a middle-aged woman with a the depression, strolling down the brick pragmatic streak and a penchant for stories, streets of Ybor, you might have overheard a hires 38-year-old lector Juan Julian to read to lector from Cuba reading aloud from a the workers in the cigar factory owned by her Spanish newspaper in the morning and the gambler husband, Santiago. Juan Julian has

NILO CRUZ

¡J.

26

chosen as his first book, Tolsroy's novel of lust, betrayal, and forgiveness, Anna Karmina. The novel quickly becomes both a window through which the cigar rollers can escape the grueling monotony of factory life, and more importantly, a mirror in which they can glimpse reflected truths about themselves.

Marela, Ofelia's twenty-two year old daughter, a dreamer and a romantic, becomes enchanted with the images of Anna waltzing in St. Petersburg's ballrooms, while her older married sister, Conchira, lives out Anna's affair on a factory table, and her parents relearn what it means to forgive.

The beauty of the play's dialogue, which some critics have called "stage poetry," is undeniable. As Marela tells Conchita, "Everything in life dreams. A bicycle dreams of becoming a boy, an umbrella dreams of becoming the rain, a pear dreams of becoming a woman, and a chair dreams of becoming a gazelle back to the forest." It is in part this dreamy playfulness of language that convinced judges who had never seen a staged performance of the text to award the play a Pulitzer.

When Anna in tht Tropics makes its Broadway debut, the task will fall to actors who have been carefully cast to bring this well-crafted stage poetry to life. And yet the one figure upon whom much of the story depends, Tolstoy himself. will have undergone no formal audition process. Tolstoy makes eight appearances in the play, in the form of the excerpts from his novel that are spoken by other characters. Cruz, who has noted that if his play had a main character it would be Tolstoy's novel, said that he chose Anna Karmina in part because it Is a love srory. And a Russian love story at that, which would have been of immense appeal to many socialist cigar-wo rkers in the 1920s.

The reader might wonder: If another master writer of romances or one of socialist leanings had been chosen for ~e part, say Emily Bronte or Fyodor Dosteovesky, would the play have so successfully portrayed the power of literature to effect change? Indeed, as Juan Julian tells the audience. "I could pick

13y ~eve ?-fer6ert another book. I've brought many." A comparison ofTolstoy's world view as expressed in Anna Karmina, and embodied in Anna in th~ Tropics, suggests that if the criterion is thematic compatibility, Tolstoy uniquely fits the bill.

For a start, Tolstoy's world view is consistent with some of the play's most important ideas. One can imagine, by comparing these overlapping themes, that Cruz and Tolstoy would have had much to chat about.

Tolstoy, like Cruz, was interested in the potential that art has to offer us a glimpse of something beyond ourselves. Throughout Anna Karmina, Tolstoy frames reading, as well as other art forms, as an act that can inspire transcendence. For example, in a scene from Anna Karmina that is excerpted in the play, Anna reads on a train shuttling through snowy Russia. The experience invokes a desire to act like the characters, to escape the present reality: Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was unpleasant for her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She wanted too much to live herself. When she read about the heroine of the novel taking care of a sick man, she wanted to walk with inaudible steps round the sick man's room; when she read about a Member of Parliament making a speech, she wanted to make that speech; when she read about how Lady Mary rode to hounds, teasing her sister-in-law and surprising everyone with her courage, she wanted to do it herself. But there was nothing to do, and so, fingering the smooth knife with her small hands, she forced herself to read.

('l

A irroring

these words, Cruz the young Mariela's response to hearing Anna Karenina being read aloud:

J, V

Ldescribes

Ocroa£R 2003

9lnna in tfie '11-'!Pics 6y 'J./ifo Cruz ('Theatre Communications §rouy, 2003) J'J'·112 I let myself be taken. When Juan Julian statts reading, the story enters my body and I become the second skin of the characters.

Yet despite this reflection on literature, the idea of a text as a means of communicating ideas troubled Tolstoy. For every scene in his novel in which art offers Anna a glimpse of something greater than herself-a landscape that inspires awe, a book that inspires her to chase hounds-there is a scene to counter it. Tolstoy believed that the act of reading is an imperfect means of communication. First, the reality of the present cannot be escaped by merely picking up a good book.

When Anna reads on the train, she is unable to escape a burning sense of shame, even as the heroine in the book in her hands approaches happiness. Secondly, as at least one eminent scholar has pointed out, Tolstoy emphasizes that a single text can give rise to a multitude of interpretations. In this way, the author's message cah be convoluted. A lover's note is misunderstood by the wife of the adulterous husband who fmds it, while a book that a socialist spends a lifetime creating is lost on all who read it.

In both these respects, insofar as is evident in Anna in the Tropics, Cruz seems to agree with Tolstoy. Just as Anna cannot escape from her shame, the cigar workers cannot escape the material world of factory life. As Ofelia warns her daughter Mariela: "But my child, people like us ... We have to remember to keep our feet on the ground and stay living inside our shoes and not have lofty illusions."

And just as none of Tolstoyls characters are able to understand books and plays and paintings in the same way, so too are his fellow-stage characters in Anna in the Tropia stymied by the problem of interpretation. As Conchita tells her husband Palomo during a marital dispute, "I pay attention to what he reads. I just don't take everything to hean the way you do ... for some reason I never hear the story the same way you do."

One might wonder, then, whether Tolstoy, a writer who in his time decried writ-

ing as an imperfect means of communication, still makes a good choice for a play about the power of literature to effect change. A further look into both texts suggests this is not as problematic as it seems. Both Tolstoy and Cruz seem to believe that the limitations of a text can be overcome by the non-verbal communication within it. Symbols such as a stolen glance, a song, the touch of a hand, can convey meaning in places the fallible written word cannot. In Anna Karmina, these moments of understanding occur most ofren when characters communicate through their eyes. When Anna meets her lover Vronsky at the train station, they exchange glances and Vronsky is able to decipher Anna's story: "In that brief glance Vronsky had time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved her red lips." Or when Stepan Arkadyich awakes to the memory that his wife has discovered his affair, his guilt and past is understood: "From their eyes, which met in the mirror, one could see how well they understood each other."

This type of non-verbal communication is embodied i~ several moments throughout the play, when Cruz's characters understand each other not through spoken means, but through symbols. At the end of the first act Conchita tells Juan Julian that she used to cut her hair every second day of February. For Conchita, her hair tells a story. Juan Julian asks, "And how does one read the story of your hair," to which Conchita responds, "The same way one reads a face or a book."

Tolstoy's views on betrayal and forgiveness offer another reason to cast him as principle actor in Cruz's play. Tolstoy, who wavered in his religious beliefs, opens his novel with an epitaph from Romans 12:19, SL Paul, in which St. Paul announces the existence of a divine law. Tolstoy, in his truncation of the phrase, implies that it is not our place to enact judgment or take revenge upon those who have harmed us, for God says: "Vengeance is mine. I will repay."

27

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lfTolstoy were alive today one can speculate that he would be more than pleased to see the ways in which this epitaph manifests itself in the lives of his fellow characters on stage. One of the more touching moments of forgiveness takes place between Santiago and Ofelia. After Santiago has gambled away much of the f.unily's money, he asks Ofelia, "Have I lost you?" to which she responds, " If you had lost me, I wouldn't be here. If you had lost me, I wouldn't be by your side. How can you say that you've lost me?" Tolstoy's epitaph, it seems, has followed him onto the stage.

Add to this Tolstoy's interest in games as literary devices, and it is even more apparent why he is well cast. Readers of Anna Karmina will remember the many colorful scenes of horse-gambling, croquet-playing, card-cajoling, and chess-maneuvering. It is appropriate then that the play in which Tolstoy appears commences with a cock-fight-a contest whose outcome is determined by forces outside of the individuals' control-and revolves partly around a character with a penchant for gambling.

Finally, and perhaps less overdy, Tolstoy's opinions on mechanization and its corrupting influence neady parallel those embodied in Anna in th~ Tropics. In Anna Karmina, Tolstoy creates a near-utopian realm in the Russian countryside, which for his character, Levin, is "the place of life, that is, of joy, suffering, labor." It is here that Levin, who "despises and hates the city and citydwellers," experiences utter happiness while mowing the fields: The longer Levin mowed, the ltlore often he felt those moments of oblivion during which it was no longer his arms that swung the scythe, but the scythe itself that lent motion to his whole body, full of life and conscious of itself, and, as if by magic, without a thought of it, the work got riglidy and neady done on its own.

28

THE NEW joURNAL

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J_l Tolstoy is thus well-placed in a play that also examines the two contrasting realms of modern technology and nature, and ultimately falls on the side of nature. These realms are less well-defined in Anna in tht Tropics, decipherable only through the characters allusions to a park in the middle of a city where time slows and the pace of life is at its best, free of the threat of machines. Tolstoy would likely find himself in good company with Juan Julian, who admits: I don't really like cities. In the country one has freedom ... as my father used to say, living in a city is like living inside the mouth of a crocodile, buildings all around you like teeth.

The teeth of culture, the mouth and tongue of civi.liz.ation. Every time I go to a park, I'm reminded of how we always go back tO nature.

({Jill

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Thus, when Cheche, Santiago's brother, calls for "Modernity, Progress, Advancement," Juan Julian, speaking almost as if channeling Tolstoy's own Levin, responds, "The ttuth is that machines, cars, are keeping us from taking walks and sitting on park benches, smoking a cigar slowly and calmly." Tolstoy, it seems, would approve.

Next month, when the lights go up, the curtains go down, and the actors march on stage for the opening act of Anna in tht Tropics, audiences will see for themselves how Tolstoy rues as a character. Those seated in the darkness will find themselves in a rare moment in which the voices of two literary masters will carry them up outside the walls of the present and into worlds that reflect their own.

wJournal

about Yale and New Haven for Savvy Writers, Cutting-Edge Designers, Photographers, Business Tycoons, and Web WJZal'ds.

New Journal Office

M4eVt Htrbnt, a smior in Davmport Colkgt, is on tht staffofTNJ.

OcroaER 2003

WINES LIOlJOR.S

~~~~

(located above J.Crew in the new student organization space; entrance is along the walkway in front of Morse and Stiles)

29

How YALE ARE You?

By Kathryn Malizia

Yale University Health Services welcomes you to our mental health screening system. This anonymous and confidential screening is available to aJI Yale students free of charge. You are the only person who will know the results; it is provided to help you determine if a consultation is necessary.

1. How long have you attended Yale? a) One year b) Two years c) Long enough to forget puking in a uashcan at-Naples. d) We've been in Davenport since Do)ly Madison fled the White House.

2. When someon e back home ash where you go to college, you are most likely to responcL a) "A small, anonymous school in the northeast," as yo\.1 scare at your feet. b) "It's not so much a college as a symbol of the coruervative ditisrp and corporate greed that I've dedicated my"lik to fighting," u you raise your fist in indignation. c) "Why, the family alma mater, of course," as you ra,ise your cocktail glass in self-satisfaction. d) "Harvard Sucks!" as you point to your XL Game t-shirt from fresh man year.

3. On a sunny day in New H aven, you are most likdy to be: a) Sitting in your residential college courtyard sipping iodized water from a Nalgene as your girlfriend strokes your dreads. b) Bursting into song as you etch your singing group's name into wet cement. c) Running to your next meeting as you make a list of things you've already done. d) New Haven has sunny days?

4. On a typical weekend in New Ha'ftll, you are most likely to be& a) In another state or, if possible, another country. b) Scoping the hooey cam at Toad's. c) Waging war on "The Man." d) In the library, imagining what you'll look like in..tcn yean on,_ the cover of Th~ Nnv l'Ork Ttmes M"fl'Zine. e) Sipping jug wine out of a paper cup as you dedicate every-waking moment to producing a somewhat obscure, scrappy undergtaduate magazine that circulates as many copies per issue as the Yak DaiLy Nnvs does, well, daily.

5 . Right n ow you are: a) pregnant b) drinking heavily

6. How often d o you speak in discussion section ? a) Never. I intimidate others with my silent superiority. b) Often. I feel that what I lack in relevance can be made up for in repetitio n. c) My TA is hot. d) Incessantly. The sound of my own voice sends me into rapturous ecstasies. e) I agree with b), and would also like to point out that what I lack in relevance can be made up for in repetition.

7. Do you ha,ft a significant other? a) Yes. Her ,name is Slinky, she's my pet ferret. b) Yes. S/he moved in to my already cramped double two years ago. You probably wouldn't understand. c) No. But I would bang Jonathan Spence if he'd have me. d) I don't understand the question.

8 . How would you characterize your frien dships? a) Deep and meaningful. b1 Determined solely by politcal affiliation. c) !love you, weed! d) Fuck you. e) H ave you heard of Friendster?

9. How would you desCribe your involvemen t in the New Haven community? a) Imaginative: I get rip-roaring drunk and pretend it's New York. b) DelusionaJ: I believe tutoring New Haven middle-schoolers for an hour every Friday actually makes a difference. c) Deep: I'm on a first name basis with the Flower Lady. d) Exploitative: I'm organizing a "fight blight" group to guarantee my spot ar Yale Law.

10. IfYalc were an animal, you'd say it was a: a) Dolphin, the sea's peaceful sage caught in the inescapable Ret of leftist profasors and selfish unions. b) Rat, feeding off the sweet sweet cheese of rax exemptions and the slow annihilation of local businesses. c) Rabid dog, pursuing me night and day, its cruel fangs just inches from my heels. d) Unicorn, beautiful but irrelevant in the real world.*

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Yale University: C:ontributing to a Strong New H ave1 ) ;tit · l · n i \·t • r~ i tl · '

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Yale University StNnJthens Neighborhoods Yale ha1 contributed to 1.c't00 uniu o( afronbb~ hou•· ina and holM o~A·nenhip in New Ha,~n neighborhoods

thRMAth the Y.Jc JJomcbU)~ prostam ~nd •hroush tuppon (or communhy d~~lopment ccuporadons.

Yale Unh'C'llity provid~ mo~ than u,ooo sooc1 ;obi in New Hawn with .trans job .security. soOd ~· UMt ~mt btndiu indudina (~ rMdial care. the homcbu)"W propam, ooll~ Jeholanhips for cmplo)u <hild.ttn. and up to paid days otr for \'acatton, holid.a)-,. lick )(a~, and pcnonal ti.mC'.

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Yale Unlv rJity Enrich s Publfc School Education Mos-c than 10.000 New H3\~n 1-ouns. pcopk participate in Yale-~nso~ acodm1ic and ath~tic propams on thC' Yale campu5 C'\~~ ~r.

Yale University Supports ,G ovemment and Promotes Economic Development Sina 1990. Y.tC' bu paid mo~ than no million in '11'01· untar)' contributionJ diR"CCI)• to the Oty pnnr-Mnt. FuD property taxes paid on its community inwstmenu makt Y.tc Univ«sity th<- cit)•'.s sinsJe bi'JC'$( rc.tl estate tup:syu.

Vale Unlwrslty SUpports Downtown V.le La a rmjor •ponJOr ol the JntcomationaJ FmivaJ of Art• and ldtaa. Sbubtrt Thtattr. Market N.ew Ha\~n. ucl'lbwn Gftel\ Spcdal Sfrvka Di.crict.

vw. stud•"" hwt t"t«fd ~ tha" soo ~h1

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Yale University: Contributing to a Strong Ne\v Haven