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Homeless to Boldness Career and Fashion Event

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by Christian Community Action

Christian Community Action invites you to an evening of dinner, a Future Career Fashion Showcase, and powerful stories.

Launched in 2024, Homeless to Boldness has quickly become CCA’s signature annual event, bringing together more than 140 community members, business leaders, supporters, volunteers, and families to celebrate resilience and the progress of families experiencing homelessness.

Homeless to Boldness will be hosted this year at the Dixwell Community “Q” House, 197 Dixwell Ave., on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026, from 4-7 p.m., to share stories of resilience, inspire hope, and foster community. Join us to support families in their pursuit of careers and be inspired. Suggested attire: business casual.

The program includes employer networking, speakers, fashion showcase, music, and dinner catered by Icaru Peruvian Restaurant. RSVP at https://bit.ly/4zdHNmP. Tickets are $0 to $50.

PAR production team seeks designer

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The Progressive Action Roundtable production team is looking for someone to join us with newsletter design experience in Microsoft Word and familiarity with Facebook and Instagram. A stipend is available.

Expect the printed newsletter to continue through December 2026. In January we may be online only at par-newhaven.org. For our readers who do not have internet access, we will, upon request, mail out a printed newsletter that has a less-demanding layout. Our email address is parnewhaven@hotmail.com, Call or text to 203-887-4778. PAR, 608 Whitney Ave., New Haven, CT 06511

Stop Solitary in Connecticut

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From the website stopsolitaryct.org

Stop Solitary CT came together to end the use of solitary confinement and abuse against incarcerated children, women and men, across Connecticut. The group works to improve conditions incarcerated people face and transform those spaces into ones that center on humanity and rehabilitation.

Two of the most prominent successes have been: shutting down Northern CI, Connecticut’s supermax, a facility cited by the International community for its torture of incarcerated men, which ended in 2021 with its closing; and secondly, in 2021 the PROTECT Act (Promoting Responsible Oversight, Treatment, and Ensuring Correctional Transparency) was passed with bipartisan support, yet Gov. Ned Lamont vetoed it. It was successfully signed into law May 2022. Part of the legislation included establishing independent oversight over the Connecticut Department of Corrections. An enormous win for Stop Solitary CT and incarcerated people.

The group continues to demand enforcement of the PROTECT Act and encourage families and supporters of their work to join alongside them as allies to amplify everyone’s voices. The most important way to support the group is showing up to their public events.

Come to our next monthly meeting on Saturday, Oct. 3, 6 – 8 p.m. at Whitneyville Cultural Commons, 1253 Whitney Ave., Hamden. There will be snacks, film, and discussion. Stay at 8 p.m. for the birthday celebration for our director, Barbara Fair. There will be music, karaoke, food and fun.

Visit stopsolitaryct.org and follow Stop Solitary CT on Instagram for more information.

Gardening as Resistance

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by Rebekah Fraser, Friends of the West River Peace Garden

These days, with anger and hate filling our airwaves, it’s easy to forget that simple choices can be acts of peaceful resistance.

Each week, from May to November, a small, dedicated group of volunteers stewards the West River Peace Garden. As an official United Nations Peace Messenger City, New Haven has a special mission to model and uphold peace wherever possible. By cultivating beauty on a small patch of land between MLK Boulevard and Legion at the corner of Ella Grasso Blvd., New Haven Peace Gardeners resist and subvert the forces that promote fear and injustice.
Earlier this summer, flooding caused a sinkhole in one corner of the garden, necessitating a major rebuild of drainage infrastructure that has been underway for several months. Still, the Peace Gardeners persist on their Friday workdays. To join us, visit Community Greenspace Volunteer Workdays at https://bit.ly/3TeNr8M.

More information about the Peace Garden is at https://westriverpeacegarden.org.

The Business of Medical Assisted Suicide

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by Lisa Blumberg, Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide

When New York was considering passage of a medical assisted suicide bill, Attorney Kaitlin Puccio wrote in the New York Law Journal that “New York’s financial incentive to keep its residents from using out-of-state services when they could be provided in-state may be enough to spark a sense of urgency to pass the…bill.”

In stressing the economic opportunities related to legalizing medical assisted suicide, Puccio was going off script. The usual line of organizations promoting its legalization is that the sole reason for such laws is to prevent “end of life” suffering. It will be an option regretfully offered and rarely used.

Puccio was prescient, though. Since the New York law became effective, there has been significant promotion of the availability of assisted suicide on social media. It’s a marketing campaign. A recent New York Times article [Sept. 3, 2026, https://bit.ly/4ykQM5p] describes a “start-up” that opened on the day assisted suicide became legal in New York. The tone of the article is casual, business oriented and chilling.

The enterprise is a “one-stop shop, … where people can get help meeting every legal and medical requirement for a death on their own terms. Patients get two medical evaluations and a mental health screening, as well as a prescription for the combination of drugs — sedatives, morphine, lethal doses of cardiac medication — that will kill them.”

As the article reports, the start-up is dealing with logistical issues other start-ups confront. How to obtain supplies, i.e. the lethal drugs? Can a client move up the scheduled date (for the ingestion)? What’s the price point? The owners decide on $12K for the whole package.

As with other businesses, there is chafing at modest regulation. The requirement that a request to die be videotaped is “silly.” They have “tremendous sympathy” for those who are ineligible under the law – like people with disabilities. Screening to rule out depression is “counterintuitive.”

One of the owners is confident that heaven is on the other side. Businesses like to have a feel-good image.

This is capitalism meeting medical assisted suicide, an inevitable and dangerous match. Let’s not let it happen in Connecticut.

Commemorations of the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

by Manuel Camacho, Chairman of the City of New Haven Peace Commission

The City of New Haven Peace Commission, in conjunction with the Greater New Haven U.S. Peace Council, organized the 81st Commemorations of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 respectively. Attendees and speakers, including State Representative Pat Dillon, former Mayor Toni Harp, and Alder Amanda Martinelli among others, gathered on the New Haven Green to commemorate Hiroshima, and in front of the Amistad Memorial next to New Haven City Hall, to commemorate Nagasaki.

On Aug. 6, Manuel Camacho, Chairman of the City of New Haven Peace Commission, read two statements to participants gathered on the New Haven Green. One statement was from Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, a former mayor of Hiroshima, Japan. Akiba wanted Manuel to read his Peace Declaration from 1999, which Akiba says is still the closest statement to his heart he has ever delivered. Read the statement here: bit.ly/4zqMvhK.

The second statement came from the Secretary-General of the International Association of Peace Messenger Cities and was read on both days. New Haven is a member city of the IAPMC and is one of only seven in the entire United States. The Secretary-General, Mayor Tilen Klugler of Slovenj Gradec, sent his remarks to be read at the commemorations.

Below is an excerpt from the letter:

The International Association of Peace Messenger Cities remains deeply grateful to the City of New Haven and to the New Haven Peace Commission for the vision, commitment, and leadership you have shown over the years. Your support during those formative years helped lay the foundations of our Association, and your continued dedication to promoting peace, dialogue, and international understanding has kept those founding ideals alive. It is through the commitment of communities like yours that the Peace Messenger Cities movement continues to grow and inspire cities around the world.

 

On behalf of our member cities across the world, the IAPMC expresses its sincere appreciation to the people of New Haven for carrying forward this important tradition of remembrance and peace. May your commemoration serve as a source of inspiration for all who believe that peace is not only an aspiration, but a shared responsibility. Together, through the efforts of communities around the world, we can continue to build a future shaped by dialogue, cooperation, and hope.

The Nuclear Arms Race Has to Stop!

by Ann Froines, Back from the Brink

August 6 and August 9 were the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States Army Air Forces just days before the end of World War II. Our national and local media gave little attention to this anniversary, even as the Hibakusha—Japanese survivors of these bombings—still tell their stories in their international campaign for nuclear disarmament and world peace. NHK World – Japan, the international public television station of Japan, carried the film, The Pursuit of Peace, which describes the decades of worldwide peacemaking by the Hibakusha. Their goal is to make the Nagasaki bombing the last atomic explosion humankind will ever face.

Back from the Brink-CT Hub offers readers this update on media resources in the campaigns to prevent nuclear testing, for nuclear diplomacy (treaties) and the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.

1. Back from the Brink website (preventnuclearwar.org) now has a series of podcasts from experts and activists discussing nuclear abolition. One podcast features Tina Cordova, a co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium (trinitydownwinders.com) which advocates for those affected by radiation as a result of the first atomic explosion at the Trinity Nuclear Weapon Testing Ground in New Mexico, other tests in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in the Pacific.

After a 20-year campaign directed at the U. S. Congress, $8 billion was appropriated for compensation to the victims who suffered from radiation poisoning, many cancer deaths, and increased infant mortality. See the website for information about the 2023 documentary film, First We Bombed New Mexico.

2. An Ordinary Insanity is a 30-minute film of Daniel Ellsberg’s final plea for nuclear disarmament, made freely available to all by the Ellsberg family as his final legacy before his death. Ellsberg, well before the Pentagon Papers reveal and controversy, started his career at the Rand Corporation developing nuclear weapon strategy. His plea argues that “national security” cannot be obtained by nuclear weapon superiority or an arms race, but instead guarantees just the opposite: the end of civilization in a nuclear Armageddon. Search for “anordinaryinsanity’ to find the film available on YouTube.

Readers, please join this campaign by writing to U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy urging him to support Senate Resolution 323, an act urging the United States to pursue a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. These unstable times show the urgency of taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.

Back from the Brink-CT preventnuclearwar.org
ann.froines@gmail.com

Authors at the New Haven Library in September

by New Haven Free Public Library

Jill Snyder, author and historian, will be at the Ives Library on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2-4 p.m. Her presentation will be Black Women in the American Revolution of 1776. Since retiring from a corporate career, Jill has devoted her time to researching Black history. When it was suggested that she research the experiences of Black women in the Revolutionary War era, she readily said, “Yes!” Through scouring journal articles and books, Jill has discovered stories of daring Black women who, despite the chaos of war, were able to carve out a unique place in history. For more info about Jill: https://www.jillmariesnyder.com.

On Thursday, Sept. 24, 6–7:30 p.m., author Hélène Landemore will talk on the intriguing topic What Would Politics Look Like … Without Politicians? Hélène is an acclaimed political theorist and author of the groundbreaking new book Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule. Hélène will discuss her book, the Connecticut Citizens’ Assemblies taking place this summer (as well as the international movement), and will welcome questions and conversation around the idea that, although politics may have failed us, we can create other, better ways of practicing democracy.

Both events are at the Ives Main Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven. The library is wheelchair accessible.

Watch ‘American Doctor’

by LouAnn Villani, Middle East Crisis Committee

American Doctor is a non-fiction film following three American physicians – Palestinian, Jewish and Zoroastrian, Dr. Thaer Ahmad, Dr. Mark Perlmutter and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa. They recount horrors and barbarities they witnessed while volunteering in Gaza during Israel’s ongoing genocide. It’s professionally made by director Poh Si Teng but won’t be coming to a screen near you (unless you campaign for it). Search for it and travel to see it.

Clips were featured on Democracy Now! on Aug. 14 (see democracynow.org for the video and full transcript).

DR. THAER AHMAD: “I want to just take you through what it looks like when a hospital gets targeted and attacked, because this has become a pattern when it comes to the Israeli military. This has become a behavior that they started in October of 2023 when they struck Al-Mamadani Ahli Baptist Hospital. And when that happened and that there was no accountability, we saw that this became a series of events that attacked every hospital.”

DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: “As a Jewish physician, I knew nothing about Gaza. Like most Americans, I thought everybody out here were nothing but terrorists, because that’s what I was told.”

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: “I’m not Israeli. I’m not Palestinian. I’m not Christian. I’m not Muslim. I’m not Jewish. And I don’t really have any connection to it. But as an American, I just don’t want my government involved in crimes.”

At the end of their segment the doctors talk briefly in tribute to Dr. Abu Safiya [pictured below], who has been imprisoned and tortured by Israel since Dec. 2024. As this was written, August 18, Dr. Abu Safiya was still alive. That’s quite an achievement. In the last visit he had from his lawyer the doctor said, “They brought me here to kill me. I don’t see myself surviving.” His attorney Nasser Odeh said he was in critical condition. The doctor had been beaten by guards with hammers. He’s in an underground cell in a prison in Israel – no charge, no trial. There’s a Congressional letter calling for the doctor’s release and all five members of the CT delegation have signed it. See more at FreeDrAbuSafiya.org.

 

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