27th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy of Social & Environmental Justice

Join the Yale Peabody Museum and CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) for the 27th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Legacy of Social and Environmental Justice with two days of free, hybrid events open to all. Come Sunday, Jan. 15, 12:30 – 3:30 p.m. to 114 Whitney Ave. and Monday, Jan. 16, 11:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. to 260 Whitney Ave. Space is limited. Virtual and in-person registration is strongly recommended. Free parking is available in Yale Lot 22 at 260 Whitney Avenue.

On Sunday, Jan. 15, 12:30-3:30 p.m. there is Family Story-telling and Dance at the New Haven Museum, 114 Whitney Avenue. The New Haven Museum and the Peabody are teaming up for an afternoon of inspiring family programs celebrating Dr. King’s life and legacy. Storytellers Joy Donaldson, Waltrina Kirkland and Clifton Graves will share stirring fables, anecdotes, and stories that honor King’s work and testify to his impact on the justice movement.

Ms. Hanan’s Dance and Beyond will present an interactive performance of cultural dance and drumming from the African diaspora and you’ll discover kid-friendly activities throughout the Museum offered by our program partners, including the CT DEEP, the Black Caucus American Library Association, and the Amistad Committee. Peabody scientists will introduce attendees to fascinating specimens from our Paleobotany collection.

Masks are required in the New Haven Museum and space is limited. To register, please go to peabody.yale.edu/events/mlk-celebration.

Monday, Jan. 16, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. features the Z Experience Poetry Slam at the Yale Science Building, O.C. Marsh Lecture Hall, 260 Whitney Ave. Join influential poet performers Croilot and Ngoma, in-person for the first time since 2020, as they emcee an electrifying spoken word experience, honoring Poetry Slam founder Zannette Lewis, in one of the largest auditoriums on Yale’s campus. Spend the day with us or tune in live and online as our hosts kick things off with a high-energy group performance and a curated open mic. Those talented storytellers will be followed by a slate of renowned featured poets competing in the poetry slam.

Visit tables hosted by the National Council of Negro Women and New Haven African American Historical Society to hear from their members about the work they are doing in the community. And museum staff will be on hand to offer the latest information on the Peabody renovation.

This event is appropriate for adults and young adults with the discretion of a parent or guardian. For current Yale University vaccination and mask requirements and to register, please go to peabody.yale.edu/events/mlk-celebration.

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Fair Haven’s PhotoVoice Project

Xóchitl García, Save the Sound Community Leader

This past summer, Xóchitl García led a photovoice project in Fair Haven. She recruited 13 neighborhood residents to document environmental assets and hazards through photography.

Residents took over 100 photos throughout the season, but only 50 were showcased in the final exhibit. Xóchitl identified five socio-environmental themes: Green and Blue Spaces, Abandoned Buildings, Trash Travels, A Safe Place, and The Homeless. To gather more perspectives and ideas on solutions to address these issues, Xóchitl, Melissa Pappas from Save the Sound, and New Haven Neighborhood Housing Services hosted two community charrettes at the Fair Haven Public Library. They then presented community-derived solutions from these charrettes in conjunction with the results of the PhotoVoice project to leaders, policy-makers, and city representatives at the final presentation hosted at Junta for Progressive Action at the end of September 2022.

Xóchitl and project participants plan to hold organizations and local authorities accountable for implementing these solutions through creative campaigning and a mini-series of workshops to further develop the ideas into proposal-ready projects. Ideally, an organization or a partner will commit to addressing these solutions in their capacity. At the same time, Fair Haven residents continue to be the source of inspiration and can hold organizations and decision-makers accountable for those commitments. Realistically, there will be one concrete solution as a first communal step toward environmental justice in Fair Haven.

Now, Xóchitl is establishing a strategic plan for community outreach and creating a winter workshop series next year. She wants to improve resident attendance in the spaces where people will make decisions. She believes representation is more important than ever in environmental justice. BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and People of Color] cultures and non-English languages need the voice, the space, and the flexibility to communicate their matters that have been systemically disregarded.

To see the virtual exhibit of the Fair Haven PhotoVoice project, please visit: https://www.savethesound.org/urban-waters-initiative.

[On Thursday, Jan. 19, 5:30-6:30 p.m., see the PhotoVoice presentation in the Program Room of the Fair Haven Library, 182 Grand Ave.]

Do You Have a Right to Clean Air, Clean Water, a Stable Climate, and a Healthy Environment?

by Kimberly Stoner, CT Climate Crisis Mobilization

Of course you have a moral right, but, NO, you do not have a legal right to a safe and healthy environment under the Connecticut or US constitutions.

Our legal system protects some rights, but not the right to clean water and air, a stable climate, and healthy environments. Because environmental rights are not recognized, government decision-makers can disregard them in favor of other political or economic priorities.

Our current system of environmental laws accepts pollution and degradation as something to be managed rather than prevented. All communities suffer when there is pollution, environmental degradation, and an unstable climate; and communities of color, indigenous communities, and low-income communities carry a disproportionate burden.

We need a Green Amendment to the Connecticut state constitution — and ultimately to the US Constitution.

Green Amendments require government officials to put environmental protection first at the start of planning, decision-making, and legislating, and regulate industry, development, and the transition to renewable energy. Green Amendments require government officials to avoid/prevent environmental harm, not simply to manage it after the fact.

Green Amendments in Pennsylvania and Montana have been used to overturn state laws expanding fracking and to stop a destructive gold mine at the headwaters of a major river. A new Green Amendment in New York passed in a referendum with 70% of the vote! For more information on Green Amendments, see www.forthegenerations.org.

The Connecticut Climate Crisis Mobilization (C3M) has made this work a major priority. Join us in putting a Green Amendment into the Bill of Rights of the Connecticut Constitution! For more information, visit the website ctclimatecrisismobilization.org.

Mass Extinction: Art, Ritual, Story, and the Sacred

Yale Institute of Sacred Music

In January and February, the Institute of Sacred Music is hosting a series of four webinars that explore topics relating to Mass Extinction: Art, Ritual, Story, and the Sacred. The talks are all offered via Zoom from 12-1 p.m. Anyone is welcome to join, though registration is required. Please register for each webinar event separately. For more information on each webinar and for the links to register, please go to ism.yale.edu/news/mass-extinction-art-ritual-story-and-sacred

Webinars at a glance

  • January 27: Sacred Lands, Sacred Ecologies: Poetic and Photographic Engagements with Craig Santos Perez and Subhankar Banerjee
  • February 3: Narrating Extinction in History and Myth with Sadiah Qureshi and Nancy Menning
  • February 17: Aesthetics of Extinction with Sugata Ray and Stefan Skrimshire
  • February 24: Remembering Lost Species: Rituals for the Anthropocene with Persephone Pearl, Emily Laurens, and Rachel Porter

Native Plants from Seed: On-Site Workshops

Hamden Public Library

Growing native plants from seed makes it easy to provide important habitat for pollinators while adding color and variety to your garden and landscape.

In January, Hamden Public Library will be offering on-site workshops at all three library locations where we will demonstrate an easy and effective way to propagate many types of native plants, most of which come from seeds that need a period of cold “stratification” in order to germinate. During the workshop you will learn about the importance of native plants to our region, and can start a pollinator haven of your own by sowing seeds in a do-it-yourself mini-greenhouse.

Please register below for one of the workshops. Because attendance is limited, please sign up for only one session. Most materials are provided, including seeds, but please bring a clear gallon milk jug if you have one.

Hamden Public Library’s seed library offers a variety of native and other seeds on request during the winter months. Seeds suitable for winter sowing will be available for pick-up at the library branches in January and February. A list of available seeds (including several CT Ecotypes) and how to request them will be available in early January.

From February through June, we will put out a selection of garden seeds for you to browse and use. Do plan early, as we may well run out of seeds before June’s end. This year the bins were empty before mid-June. We ask that you limit your selections to five types of seed, and only take what you need (plus a little bit more).

We want to thank Diane Dynia, an intern through UConn’s Master Gardener program, who produced an informative brochure of pleasing design to give the seed library more reach in the community. Look at the Seed Library page here: hamdenlibrary.org/seed-library/

Info: [email protected], 203-287-2680.

Celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s Anti-War Legacy

by Henry Lowendorf, Greater New Haven Peace Council

In January we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King with a national holiday focused on King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. Why that speech? In the five remaining years of his life, King began to understand more deeply the forces governing the direction of our country. Perhaps his later speeches are not celebrated because they counter what we are told daily by officials and the press. King grew to realize that not only did the Black and Brown communities deserve civil rights, but they had to be released from extreme poverty.

King’s lens expanded beyond civil rights and inequality. By 1967 he also recognized that the U.S. war on Vietnam was disastrous for the country. Young Black men were pushing against the nonviolent resistance to segregation and discrimination that King led. He told “the desperate, rejected, and angry young men… that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems… that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, ‘What about Vietnam?’ [W]asn’t [the U.S.] using massive doses of violence to solve its problems…?”

Humbled, a wiser King responded on April 4, 1967 at New York’s Riverside Church. In his speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” he analyzed and eloquently specified the “three evils” of inequality, poverty and militarism. To bring about a humane society these three evils had to be jointly defeated.

“Beyond Vietnam” is even more trenchant today than 55 years ago. The President and Congress, including the full CT delegation, just promoted a record 2023 war budget of $858 billion, more than half of federal discretionary spending. This is greater than the military spending of the next 10 countries combined, most of whom are U.S. allies.

This budget produces violence not only overseas but in the schools, supermarkets, and streets of our country. It starves spending on human needs like transportation, housing, education, clean air and water among others. Meanwhile our government finds tens of billions to prolong the insufferable war in Ukraine. The only thing this budget defends is the massive profits of death merchants: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, etc.

In “Beyond Vietnam” Martin Luther King enunciated one of his most memorable sentences: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” For spiritual uplift, you are invited to join in reading Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” at New Haven City Hall, 2nd Floor, 165 Church Street, Friday, Jan. 13, noon. Contact the Greater New Haven Peace Council: [email protected].

Journey in Place: An Expanding Oasis of Our Progressive Community

by Ben Ross, PAR subscriber

I got to watch the creation of this show in our home in Hamden among all the celestial, social and physical events leading up to the Solstice. Stories, colors and forms have kept me going, truly the fruit of the creative process. To share it with us you need to travel to The Buttonwood Tree, 605 Main St. in Middletown, CT.

Journey in Place: an exhibition of recent works by Shula Weinstein has its opening reception on Saturday, Jan. 7 from 4-6 p.m. The exhibit ends Saturday, Jan. 28 with a gala closing 4-6 p.m. with the artist, followed by music at 7 p.m. with Shula Weinstein, Ben Ross, Craig Edwards and Joe Flood. See buttonwood.networkforgood.com/events/50609-admission-to-shula-weinstein-joe-flood-ben-ross-craig-edwards.

Cooped up for who knows for how long… too long? This is an invitation to a down-home relaxed musical sharing. We gave this song circle format a run at Volume Two – Never Ending Books a few months back and had so much fun… join us. Saturday, Jan. 28, 7 p.m. A modest donation of $15 is suggested.

In addition to the receptions, Journey in Place can be viewed from Jan. 4-28. Check with The Buttonwood Tree for more info. Phone 860-347-4957, or web https://www.buttonwood.org.

Thanks!

Anti-Fascism Yesterday and Today

by Frank Panzarella, New Haven activist

On Nov. 28, 2022, about 90 people, mostly on Zoom, participated in a program at SCSU that addressed the part of World War II history largely ignored. The event was sponsored by Promoting Enduring Peace, The Women’s and Gender Studies Program at SCSU and Jewish Voice for Peace. Speaking from London, authors Merilyn Moos and Steve Cushion spoke of anti-Nazi Germans and other partisan resistance rarely given credit in mainstream accounts of the war. These experiences are documented in their book Anti-Nazi Germans, about the hidden history of working-class resistance to Nazism. Many were young people who courageously fought the rise of fascism and were communists, socialists, anarchists (survivors of the destruction of the Spanish Republic), social democrats and Jewish activists.

The two-hour program explored the complex relations of political parties and conditions that led to the rise of Nazism. This included divisions that pitted social democrats against communists at a time when unity against Nazism was critical.

The book contains many individual stories of people brutally murdered who dared spread literature, post flyers, organize factory resistance (even within concentration camps), sabotage war industries, and engage in street battles against Nazi thugs. Another part of the book details resist-ance to collaboration governments, including thousands of prisoners of war forced to work in German factories in France, Germans who left Germany and joined the Under-ground and veterans of the Spanish Civil War who fled into southern France, as well as Jewish partisans who fled Germany continuing to fight in France.

The discussion included how to recognize the dangerous signs of extreme nationalism today. Many countries grappling with economic chaos, climate change, mass migrations and multiple wars are collapsing back to extreme ideologies that blame immigrants and rival nations. Participants mentioned Orbán in Hungary, Le Pen in France, the AFD (Alternative for Germany), Meloni in Italy and Donald Trump. Democrats and Republicans continue supporting authoritarian regimes and their floundering global capitalist empire. Discussion included Russia’s new imperial dreams under the fascist Putin regime, his invasion of Ukraine and China’s global capitalist ambitions.

Copies of this book are available for $15. Please call 203-562-2798.

New Ordinance Updates Language in New Haven Laws Concerning People with Disabilities

by Maggie Grether, Yale Daily News, Dec. 9, 2022

When Gretchen Knauff moved to New Haven and became the city’s Director of Disability Services last year, she began to examine the city’s laws concerning people with disabilities. She quickly noticed that many of these laws featured outdated terminology. Now, thanks to an ordinance submitted to the Board of Alders by Knauff, that language will be updated. The ordinance calls on the city to use “person-first language,” which emphasizes an individual’s personhood before their disability, according to Knauff. For instance, under person-first language, “handicapped person” changes to “person with a disability.”

“Language is important. How we talk about people is important; the way we portray them is important,” Knauff said. “I see this as something that’s truly basic that needs to be done to show that individuals are valued members of the New Haven community.”

Knauff submitted the ordinance to the Board of Alders July 5, and the Board passed it on Sept.19. Mayor Justin Elicker signed the ordinance into law Nov. 3. The ordinance only updates terminology and does not affect the intent of any laws.

“Updating and modernizing the terminology used in our ordinances to be more respectful and honoring of people with disabilities was the right thing to do and, frankly, long overdue,” Elicker stated in a press release.

For Carmen Correa-Rios, executive director of the CT Center for Disability Rights, the change brings New Haven law up-to-date with the language many disability rights advocates have been using for decades.

Correa-Rios said that seeing a change in the legal terminology was personally meaningful to her, both as a disability rights advocate and as a person with a disability.

Read the article in its entirety at https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2022/12/09/new-ordinance-
updates-language-in-new-haven-laws-concerning-people-with-disabilities

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