Remembering Tim Craine

Although Tim lived in Windsor, he was known to many New Haven-area activists as he often participated for decades in state-wide and local rallies and programs for peace and justice. He was enthusiastically optimistic in the struggle for a better world and will be greatly missed. Below is the obituary printed Oct. 3 in the New Haven Register.

Timothy V. Craine, 77, died peacefully at home in Windsor on Sept. 25 after a several-month battle with leukemia. He was born Oct. 6, 1943, to Asho Craine, nee Ingersoll, and Lyle Craine.

Tim graduated from Oberlin College in 1965. He spent two years in the Peace Corps teaching math in Ghana. He taught in public high schools in New Haven and Detroit. He earned a Ph.D. in math education from Wayne State University in 1984. That year he also received a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching. He joined the math department at Central Connecticut State University in 1993 and chaired the department from 2000 until his retirement in 2009. He was highly regarded as a teacher of high school and elementary math teachers, and continued teaching part-time through 2020. He co-authored several textbooks and numerous academic articles.

Tim was active as a member and later supporter of the Socialist Workers Party for five decades and was the party’s candidate for governor of Michigan in 1982. He was a leader of the Greater Hartford Coalition on Cuba, organizing to oppose Washington’s economic war against Cuba. He was active in the defense of framed-up Puerto Rican independence fighters and in 2000 participated in a delegation to Vieques, Puerto Rico, demanding the closure of the US bombing range there.

Tim is survived by his wife Leslie; two daughters Naomi Craine (Dean Hazlewood) and Rachel Craine (Liz Craine); brother Steve Craine (Rachel Skvirsky) and sister Ellen Craine; grandchildren Chelsea, Emily, Niko, and Maeve; dear friend Tony Proto; and many cousins, nieces, and nephews.

Donations in his honor can be made to the math department at CCSU, the Simsbury Community Band, or the Socialist Workers Party. A celebration of his life will be organized in the spring. To leave an online message of condolence for his family, please visit www.carmonfuneralhome.com.

MAKING GOOD TROUBLE: Together We Rise for a Hopeful Future

by People’s World Amistad Awards Committee

This year’s People’s World Amistad Awards will be held Saturday, Dec. 11 at 4 p.m. as a virtual program, with printed greeting book mailed to participants. The theme is MAKING GOOD TROUBLE: Together We Rise for a Hopeful Future.

Register here.

This year’s awardees are in the forefront of fighting for the rights of essential workers and all workers regardless of immigration status during the COVID pandemic, and organizing for spending priorities that address racial equity, climate change, voting rights and the common good. They represent the kind of unity, solidarity and vision needed to build the movement that can transform our country to put people, peace and planet before profits.

State Sen. Julie Kushner, Senate Chair of the Labor and Public Employees Committee, is a lifelong organizer and coalition-builder for worker rights, the first woman director of UAW Region 9-A, and an outstanding legislative champion winning paid family and medical leave, raising the minimum wage, climate and jobs legislation, COVID recall rights, and racial and gender equity.

Pastor Rodney Wade, Senior Pastor of Long Hill Bible Church in Waterbury, is a tireless and fearless leader for equity and justice, a faith leader of the state-wide Recovery for All coalition of labor, community and faith-based organizations united to eliminate systemic inequalities, and with Naugatuck Valley Project and other groups, providing hope and inspiration to the community.

Azucena Santiago is a courageous leader with 32BJ SEIU in the fight for union rights and health protections for service plaza workers. When McDonald’s reduced her hours after she began organizing her co-workers, Azucena filed a complaint with the NLRB and won back pay. She has testified before the State Legislature, led marches and rallies, and is the mother of two.

Plus we will feature a special “IN SOLIDARITY” with the contract fight of unions at Yale, and the AFT/community struggle to keep maternity services at Windham Hospital. The Awards are hosted by CT People’s World on the occasion of the 102nd anniversary of the Communist Party USA. Spanish language interpretation will be available.

For greeting book and ticket information, please call (203) 624-4254 or email [email protected]. The deadline for ad book submissions is Nov. 20.

Register here.

In Solidarity,
People’s World Amistad Awards Committee

October 30–End Environmental Racism: A Climate Emergency Rally & March

by C3M Steering Committee

On Saturday, October 30 at 2 p.m. on the north steps of the State Capitol in Hartford, climate justice advocates will gather for a rally and march to send a clear message to state leaders to stop the fossil fuel expansion and end environmental racism immediately. The gathering will include speakers, guerrilla theater, mural art-making, and more. Ajali, an Afro-Caribbean and West African drumming group, will lead our march around the Capitol.

The climate crisis is happening now. Levels of the two most important anthropogenic greenhouse gases continued their unrelenting rise in 2020, NOAA announced in April 2021. Despite pandemic shutdowns, carbon dioxide and me-thane surged in 2020 and carbon dioxide levels are now higher than at any time in the past 3.6 million years. Climate impacts recently caused loss of life in our region; people drowned in their homes in the Eastern United States, and the majority who suffer from climate disruption are people of color and from low-income communities.

Recently, scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change leaked  a preliminary draft of the Sixth Assessment Report, because “there’s no time for continued in-action – the people deserve to know NOW what our corporate-owned politicians have done to them.” These scientists, calling themselves Scientist Rebellion, also stated “We plead with people to go into serious nonviolent resistance, to join us in the streets to apply unbearable pressure on this genocidal system – to take it down before it takes us all down with it.”

Globally and in Connecticut, leaders are failing to take serious action on the climate, although we know that we have precious little time. Greenhouse gas emissions in Connecticut are on the rise from various sectors, and so far, our state has taken no significant action to reduce carbon dioxide or methane. In fact, the actions taken by our state are increasing carbon dioxide and methane emissions now, when we are well overdue to make a real plan to reduce global heating gases. Join us in raising our voices to demand action on climate from Connecticut leadership.

A number of groups are organizing together to build an anti-racist climate movement, that attempts to form alliances with new allies across ethnic, class, gender-conforming, age, and other traditional barriers. Rally organizers include NAACP Windham/Willimantic Branch, CT Women’s March, Sunrise CT, BLM 860, CT Climate Crisis Mobilization (C3M), 350 CT, and Sierra Club Connecticut.

For whose humanity

by Davarian Baldwin, Yale Daily News OpEd, Oct. 11, 2021

Just [a month] ago, Yale launched what’s been called its “most ambitious” fundraising campaign ever. The $7 billion wish list does include requisite line items like faculty and student support, public health and of course racial justice. But the bulk of the price tag orbits around the lucrative research areas of data and computer science, biotechnology and engineering. The campaign is called “For Humanity.”

From a purely educational perspective, the claim of fund-raising for humanity makes total sense. An influx of cash would support classrooms and laboratories that train the next generation of leaders while also producing lifesaving discoveries for the future. But Yale’s “For Humanity” title is not actually indicative of higher education’s goodwill. Instead, it is a branding strategy, one part of an elaborate business model in which schools champion their public good status to shelter millions of corporate dollars and extract public funds from their host cities.

As Yale seeks to add $7 billion dollars to its already bulging coffers, students in New Haven attend classes without enough seats and use bathrooms with no soap. Such disparities are not by coincidence but point to the various ways that higher education prosperity is driven by the impoverishment of its host cities and towns. And therefore, when assessing this latest fundraising effort, we must ask: for whose humanity? […]

Under the cover of “educational purposes,” Yale’s graduate researchers work at stipend rates below their private market peers to churn out for-profit research in tax-exempt campus buildings for millions in royalties that feed the school’s tax-exempt $31 billion endowment. And this wealth regime is covered by a private Yale police department with public jurisdiction over the entire city but directed by the University’s interests. Some people call the area “Yale Haven.”

These financial arrangements bolster Yale and its corporate partners while New Haven schools and other public works remain hungry for property tax dollars. Yale will point out that it provides the city with a  $13 million Payment in Lieu of Taxes, which is the biggest of its kind in the country. But it has testified to another way of seeing the world, and I think we can lift that up and celebrate that.”

[The article can be read in its entirety at www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/peace_cairn]

Good Start, Ben & Jerry’s: Now Finish the Job! — Take Action

Shelly Altman, Jewish Voice for Peace NH

UPDATE: The international Work Group of the Central CT Democratic Socialists of America is holding a “Eat an Ice Cream for Palestine” on Sat. Oct 9 at 1 p.m. starting at the Ben and Jerrys store in New Haven. The store is at 159 Temple St., New Haven. It’s near the New Haven Green. We’ll take photos of ourselves eating or holding B&J ice creams followed by a walk to the New Haven Green and an informal discussion about Palestine. – Stanley Heller, DSA Int Work Group member.

On July 19, 2021, Ben & Jerry’s (B&J) announced that it is inconsistent with their values to sell their ice cream in the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). They will not renew their license agreement with their Israeli licensee when it expires at the end of 2022.

We at Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven and the New Haven Mending Minyan Havurah join with so many Vermonters in lauding this long-overdue decision by B&J’s, in particular because it was taken as part of B&J’s long-time advocacy for human rights and economic and social justice. But it does not go far enough. The very principles that drove B&J’s decision demand that the company withdraw from selling their products in both the OPT settlements as well as in the state of Israel itself. Furthermore, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, Unilever, must commit itself to ending ties with Israel for any action to be meaningful.

Here’s why:

  • Earlier this year, both the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued detailed reports which document Israel’s control over all the territory it administers as an apartheid regime. B’Tselem notes that “one organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.” HRW notes that “deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” Both reports document apartheid conditions in both the OPT and in the state of Israel itself.
  • B&J ice cream is manufactured in Israel in Be’er Tuvia (adjacent to the town of Kiryat Malachi). Kiryat Malachi is one of four Israeli localities located on the lands of the former Palestinian village of Qastina, destroyed and emptied by Israeli troops in 1948. Be’er Tuvia is in southern Naqab about 20 miles from the Erez crossing into Gaza. B&J products are transported to the illegal OPT settlements on Jewish-only roads. The factory draws water from the Jordan River system and the Mountain Aquifer in the occupied West Bank, the two highest-quality water sources in the region. At the same time, Israel severely controls and restricts West Bank Palestinian residents’ access to water from those same sources, reducing it to a level which neither meets their domestic and agricultural needs nor constitutes a fair distribution of shared water resources. The apartheid regime practiced by Israel in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River requires that to be consistent with its social justice values, B&J terminate sales in all of that land. Israel considers its illegal settlements to be part of its state. We celebrate this first step, but it is not enough. Unilever must work to finish the job that the independent board of Ben & Jerry’s started and cut the flow of money to this apartheid state.

News Flash: Our Third District Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has just introduced a standalone bill whose sole purpose is to gift Israel with yet another $1 billion so that it can continue to “defend” itself while it mercilessly besieges Gaza and conducts one devastating bombing after the next. This is on top of the $3.8 billion per year of our tax dollars that are already going for the same purpose.

This bill is being fast-tracked by the “Democratic” leadership and will almost certainly pass with “bipartisan” support, but we need to let Rosa know how outraged we are at this. Express it as soon as possible at (202) 225-3661.

It’s No Coincidence that Power Plants Are in Poor Neighborhoods

Stanley Heller, Promoting Enduring Peace

A climate rally in Hartford on Sept. 18 blasted the usual practice of putting power plants and waste processing facilities in minority and poor areas, calling it environmental racism. Speakers, almost all of whom were people of color, spoke from the park’s bandshell, in front of signs that read “Fossil fuels make us sick,” and “End environmental racism.”

They called on Gov. Ned Lamont, who talks “green” but makes no objection to pipelines and fossil fuel power plants, to change his tune.  In particular, speakers mentioned Killingly in the poorer eastern part of the state that will be saddled with another methane-burning power plant if industry and Lamont have their way. It will also pump out massive amounts of global warming gases. About 100 watched from grassy areas not in the surprisingly blistering September sun.

A number of groups had tables or booths at the rally. Promoting Enduring Peace had a booth draped with banners about our bold ideas on climate. Rather than appeal to the fossil fuel companies like Exxon and Shell to go “green,” PEP called for the popular takeover of the whole fossil fuel industry and its gradual abolition. We called for carbon capture by preserving mature trees (like the ones in Remington Woods in Bridgeport) and re-wilding land. We also asked for rationing the use of burned fuels (not only fossil fuels, but so-called “bioenergy”) as long as it’s absolutely necessary to use them.

Earlier in September, a Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection report revealed that Connecticut is not even on track to meet targets set by the CT Legislature for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. The latest figures were from 2018 and showed that emissions actually rose from 2017 to 2018. The elite may think environmental racism keeps them safe, but we are losing the battle for a livable climate and that will be disastrous for all.

To see the video of the rally go to PEPeace.org.

New Haven Sunday Vigil continues, Oct. 19, 2021

Twenty years have passed since the U.S. kicked off its Global War on Terror.

An entire generation has grown up in an America where an endless war is being waged against an ill-defined enemy, and the whole world has become our military playground.

The House of Representatives only recently voted to end the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), first passed in 2001, by which the Congress abdicated its duty to evaluate evidence that might constitute a cause for war as well as its responsibility and accountability for making the momentous decision to kill, maim and destroy in foreign lands. The AUMF delegated war-making power to the President alone, and war has become a mere political talking point. Waging war is now a casual bureaucratic exercise instead of a painful decision. Formerly reviled practices such as “preventive” war, indefinite detention, and torture are accepted as normal. Our leaders have felt free to tell us lies to trick citizens into supporting wars, and when those lies were discovered, most people were OK with that.

The US left Afghanistan because it LOST THE WAR. Its national reputation has suffered because of its reckless disregard for others and because it abandoned its allies – notably women and girls, minority groups, and the social progressives – to their enemies. It abandoned the Afghans who relied upon the US and believed it had their backs. Notably, the US also lightly abandoned the Kurds not long ago, just as it abandoned the South Vietnamese almost half a century ago.

After a half-baked military misadventure in Lebanon during the Reagan administration and with the country still struggling with memories of the Vietnam War, then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger formulated the following doctrine:

  • The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests of the United States or its allies are involved.
  • US troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning. Otherwise, troops should not be committed.
  • US combat troops should be committed only with clearly defined political and military objectives and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives.
  • The relationship between the objectives and the size and composition of the forces committed should be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.
  • US troops should not be committed to battle without a reasonable assurance of the support of US public opinion and Congress.
  • The commitment of US troops should be considered only as a last resort.

The Weinberger Doctrine is not perfect, but if it had been applied to our decision-making over the past 20 years, it would have gone a long way toward preventing our latest iteration of endless war.
America needs to change. We have to make the care and development of our own country a priority. We need to ensure every person’s rights are respected. We need to end racism. We need to be better educated. We need to continue to develop new, clean technology. We need to set national financial priorities to support the general welfare instead of coddling the ultra-rich. We need to rein in our desire to use our military to roam the world punishing others for being “bad guys.”
We need to support the Afghan refugees.

We need to support the members of our military who were so misused over the last 20 years. Since 9/11, military suicides are four times higher than deaths in war operations.

Finally, we need to end this country’s addiction to war.

The New Haven Sunday Vigil is every Sunday from noon to 1 p.m. at the intersection of Broadway, Park, and Elm since 1999.  newhavensundayvigil.wordpress.com

CT Green Energy News from the Sept. 10 issue

One day after CT announces failure to meet emissions targets, Energy Efficiency Board approves plan to continue fossil fuel subsidies. From the Sierra Club CT:

The Energy Efficiency Board’s approval of plans to use ratepayer money to subsidize using more gas will only fuel more pollution and make it even harder for Connecticut to meet its climate pollution targets…  Department of Energy & Environmental Protection Commissioner Dykes should reject any plan from the EEB that subsidizes dirty fossil fuels; and tell them to try again and produce a plan that promotes energy efficiency savings, while ending subsidies for climate-destroying fossil fuels…  Continuing to subsidize polluting fossil fuels defies logic.

CT Green Energy online newsletter is a great resource for environmental activists and clean energy advocates. To subscribe, send an e-mail to [email protected].

What is Yale For?

Ian Skoggard, New Haven Rising

On Oct. 2, Yale University is publicly launching a fundraising campaign with a goal of raising $6 billion. An email to alumni announcing the campaign asks, “What are you for?” and says, “Together we can have a positive impact on the world!” The Yale Fair Share Coalition is asking the question, “What is Yale for?”

While Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital received a $157 million tax break from our city this past year, Yale University, one year past its deadline, still has not honored its hiring commitment to our city’s low-income neighborhoods.

At 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 2, the New Haven community will gather at Grove and Prospect streets to call on Yale to do more and increase its voluntary payment to the city and honor its commitments. Please join us! It is time for Yale to understand that its mission to improve the world must begin in its own backyard!

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