Mapping Inequality Project: EPA Environmental Justice and Systemic Racism Speaker Series

EPA is launching the Environmental Justice (EJ) and Systemic Racism Speaker Series. The first session March 4, 12 – 1 p.m., will highlight The Mapping Inequality Project, a unique collaboration on redlining and current environmental challenges that provides publicly-accessible digitized versions of redlining maps for about 200 cities. This project has generated trailblazing work in the area of EJ and systemic racism. Two of its founders discuss the genesis, philosophy, methodology, and impact of this game-changing project.

Speakers will be Dr. Robert Nelson, Director, Digital Scholarship Laboratory, University of Richmond and Dr. LaDale Winling, Associate Professor of History, Virginia Tech. Moderator is Charles Lee, Senior Policy Advisor for Environmental Justice, EPA.

Register Here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-mapping-inequality-project-tickets-136940963107

The Environmental Justice and Systemic Racism Speaker Series will illustrate how addressing systemic racism is highly relevant to EPA’s mission. This series explores how understanding and addressing systemic racism and the roots of disproportionate environmental and public health impacts is key to integrating EJ in the policies and programs of EPA and other environmental agencies to achieve environmental protection for all people.

The first five sessions will focus on redlining and current environmental challenges. Future topics will include Title VI and civil rights program, EJ research and analysis, rural inequities, and others. Suggestions are welcomed. Registration information for each session forthcoming.

For more information, please contact Charles Lee ([email protected]) or Sabrina Johnson ([email protected]).
For up-to-date information about Environmental Justice funding opportunities, events, and webinars, subscribe to EPA’s Environmental Justice listserv by sending a blank email to: [email protected].

Scholarships Available for New Haven High School Seniors

New Haven high school seniors going on to college or technical school are invited to apply for financial help through the New Haven Scholarship Fund. The Fund, which has been around more than 60 years, has begun taking applications for this year’s batch of scholarships.

To see if you qualify and to apply, go to www.newhavenscholarshipfund.org. On the Subscription Information tab, click on “How to Apply.”

Connecticut Green Energy News No. 206, Feb. 19, 2012

News and events for advocates of clean energy, energy efficiency, and climate action at the state and local levels, focusing on Connecticut. Brought to you by People’s Action for Clean Energy (PACE) and Eastern CT Green Action (ECGA). To subscribe, contact Peter Millman at [email protected].

More information is at https://www.pacecleanenergy.org

Five takeaways from Connecticut’s new residential solar program changes

Energy News Network. “After years of debate over reforming the state’s solar program, stakeholders widely praised the new rules released last week. Connecticut utility regulators have reconfigured the state’s residential solar program in an effort to ensure its growth and drive innovation.” Plus: PURA Establishes New Residential Renewable Energy Program (FAQs from PURA)

Could rolling blackouts happen in New England?

NHPR. “I think the biggest single issue is that winter is normal in New Hampshire and across the Northeast. We are used to seeing these types of intense winter storms and multiple low-degree days. The problem in Texas is, that’s not normal there. This is a once-in-fifty, one-in-one-hundred-years type of event. And given that, the overall energy infrastructure system has not been developed and constructed with this type of severe weather in mind.”

Amid unprecedented storm damage, Eversource’s 2020 profits rise to $1.21B

Hartford Business Journal. “Eversource said a lower effec-tive tax rate also benefited its fourth-quarter bottom line.”

Lamont defends environmental, transportation agenda

CT News Junkie. “Lamont dismissed as “nonsense” the idea that drivers and truckers may avoid Connecticut roadways in an effort to avoid new user fees or high gas prices. He said drivers would need to travel through states with even higher fees to avoid Connecticut. You’re paying for that the whole way up the East Coast, it’s only when you get to Connecticut that everybody gets a free ride except for the poor taxpayers of our state,” he said.” Plus: Connecticut Gov. Lamont unveils environmental priorities amid dispute over impact on gasoline prices

As Boston gets on board, community power compacts gain steam

22 News WWLP.com. “…the program is part of the city’s commitment to environmental justice and one of its goals is to make renewable energy more accessible to residents who are socially vulnerable and have likely been disproportionately impacted by climate change…With a lot of aggregation programs we’re seeing them go five percentage points, 10 percentage points, much higher beyond that standard to procure more green electricity for their consumers. And that’s, from a local level, probably one of the most if not the most impactful ways to reduce emissions if you’re trying to meet climate goals.”

Trouble in the Connecticut Suburbs: Revolutionary Road

by Andy Piascik, activist, author

Connecticut’s Fairfield County has cities that, even in their bustling heydays, were places rife with poverty and despair. It is also historically a place where the well-to-do and richest of the rich live. Both have been the subject of much literature, and Richard Yates’s 1961 Revolutionary Road is one of the best novels about the latter.

Set in 1955, the novel is the story of Frank and April Wheeler. Frank commutes from Fairfield County to Manhattan where he is employed at Knox Business Machines. Though well paid, Frank feels diminished by his job and regularly makes fun of it.

Similarly, Frank and April mock their neighbors. They see something hollow at the core of the suburban dream, and it becomes important they believe they are better than their surroundings. Out of their unhappiness comes April’s idea that they move to Paris.

Their neighbors and Frank’s colleagues resent the fact that the Wheelers make clear what they all seem to know: their well-constructed lives in the Connecticut suburbs have not produced happiness. Frank is never as enthusiastic about Paris, however, and the plan soon unravels. Heated arguments and recriminations ensue followed, ultimately, by tragedy.

No Escape From Unhappiness

As is true today, the Fairfield County suburbs are depicted as the ultimate badge of success. Problems are supposed to be absent or at least easily solve-able. While it’s likely no one ever believed that, the toll unhappiness takes is greater because of the promise.

Yates also dissects the emptiness of life in the United States at what is often viewed as its apex. Fairfield County represented all that the country aspired to be in the 1950s, yet the people in Revolutionary Road find it is seriously lacking.

Because not so much has changed, Revolutionary Road is still powerful and relevant. Parts of Fairfield County are wealthier than ever, yet unhappiness, perhaps especially among the young, is an ongoing problem. While those problems are not on the scale of those in Connecticut’s poorest cities, they remain a blight on the American Dream.

What distinguishes Revolutionary Road from contemporary Fairfield County novels with similar themes like Sloan Wilson’s The Man in The Gray Flannel Suit and Laura Hobson’s Gentleman’s Agreement is that it ends in tragedy and defeat. It is perhaps for that reason that neither the novel nor the film adaptation that starred Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, no less, were well-received.

————–

Bridgeport native Andy Piascik is a long-time activist and award-winning author whose most recent book is the novel In Motion.  He can be reached at [email protected].

A version of this article was published at connecticuthistory.org

March 5, 6 and 13 NOFA 2021 Connecticut and Rhode Island Winter Conference

This year the Northeast Organic Farming Association is offering over 25 food and farming workshops (March 6 & 13), a keynote address by Karen Washington of Rise and Root Farm (March 5), the 3rd Annual Bill Duesing Organic Living on the Earth Award, a virtual silent auction with prizes including private horse riding lessons, a rustic beach getaway on Block Island – and much more!

Workshop offerings include: Intensify, Diversify, Perennialize: How to Profitably Incorporate Perennial Crops with Connor Stedman; Goat Ownership and Management 101 with Grace Toy; Domestic Seaweed Supply Chains: Opportunities and Challenges with Dawn Kotowicz and Sam Garwin; Emergency Ag Preparedness for Farmers with Joan Nichols; How to Begin Growing Organic in Urban Spaces: A Success Story with Emmanuel Marte and Josephine Joiner; Organic Disease Control with Yonghao Li; Building Soil Carbon for our Gardens/Farms, Health, and World with Julie Rawson & Jack Kittredge; Compost Production Virtual Tour: High-Quality Compost with Jayne Senecal; And many more!

https://newmilfordfarmlandpres.org/ct-nofa-2021-winter-conference-march-56-and-13

“No country has suffered the way the United States has. Americans make up less than 5% of the global population, but account for nearly one in five of the world’s 2.3 million deaths. […] If the nation is serious about learning the lessons from this pandemic, it should reconsider implementing a universal health care plan like Medicare for All.” ~ from the Medicare for All CT Facebook page

Three Medicare For All CT Zoom calls

Today at 7 PM EST – 9 PM EST
Price: Free · Duration: 2 hr
Public Anyone on or off Facebook
Join us, for the February 9 Medicare for All CT virtual meeting:
The town of Windham, CT, passed a Medicare for All resolution! The CT single payer bill to guarantee healthcare to all nutmeggers has been introduced!
Join us, as we discuss these recent successes, and learn more about next steps for federal Medicare for All, state-level single payer, as well as municipal resolutions – RSVP here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/…/tZIqf-Chpz4vEtUlK0mTQcPAZ0a…
Guest speakers:
– Dr. Bill Honigman, California state coordinator Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), will share updates about federal Medicare for All as well as California state-level single payer
– Councilwoman Wildaliz Bermudez, member Hartford city council, amongst other things speaking about why Medicare for All is crucial to low income communities and communities of color
– CT state legislators, will share updates about the legislation and how CT residents can get involved, to help pass guaranteed healthcare for all
Bring your ideas! Bring your questions! The format of this meeting will be a virtual via Zoom. Join us by calling in with your phone, or via the free Zoom video conferencing software. Everyone is invited to join us from the comfort of their home!
Please register on Zoom, to receive the call-in info or the Zoom link respectively, via email.
Let’s come together virtually for the Medicare for All CT meeting, to continue our fight for guaranteed healthcare for all!
_________________________________________________________
Online: yale.zoom.us
Tomorrow at 8 PM EST
Price: Free
Public Anyone on or off Facebook
Discuss next steps to pass a resolution endorsing Medicare for All in Hamden.
ZOOM INFO:
You are invited to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Zoom is Yale’s audio and visual conferencing platform.
Topic: Hamden M4A resolution meeting
Time: Feb 10, 2021 08:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://yale.zoom.us/j/96039250943
Or Telephone:203-432-9666 (2-ZOOM if on-campus) or 646 568 7788
Meeting ID: 960 3925 0943
International numbers available: https://yale.zoom.us/u/abhVa4nAcH
For H.323 and SIP information for video conferencing units please click here: https://yale.service-now.com/it?id=support_article…
_________________________________________________________
Online: yale.zoom.us
Thursday at 6 PM EST
Price: Free
PublicAnyone on or off Facebook
Dear Greater New Haven,
You support Medicare for All, because you, and yours, need health insurance with:
No premiums
No copays;
No deductibles;
Yes, dental and vision
That’s why we need your help organizing support for a single-payer Medicare for All system.
We are going to ask our Board of Alders to pass a resolution in support of Medicare for All.
We are going to ask Representative Delauro and Senator Murphy to have the courage to confront the health insurance industry and join our majority for Medicare for All.
Our first organizing meeting will be Thursday, February 11th at 6:00 PM. Please join us Here:
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://yale.zoom.us/j/4354566642
Or Telephone:203-432-9666 (2-ZOOM if on-campus) or 646 568 7788
Meeting ID: 435 456 6642
International numbers available: https://yale.zoom.us/u/adrpU2XHdh
__________________________________________________________

January, 2021: The War Comes to the Capitol

by New Haven Sunday Vigil, Jan. 10, 2021

As terrifying as it was, the attempted coup d’etat that occurred in our Capitol on Jan. 6 (possibly a dress rehearsal for a more organized repeat performance) shouldn’t have surprised us. Led by the recently unelected President of the United States himself, members of the current administration and many of its Congressional allies have been fomenting this for months, if not the past four years. They (and those who follow them) will continue to organize for an alt-right, white supremacist-based government takeover unless and until they are removed from office and, hopefully, tried and convicted as traitors.

But how likely is such an outcome? What we have seen since 2016, writ large last Wednesday, are dramatic representations of evils that have been entangled in our nation’s history from its inception: racism, militarism, empire-building, and permanent conditions of economic injustice and war-making.

A Formidable History (AND Present) That Must Be Overcome

In the process of forming this nation, non-white people already living here were displaced, murdered, and, finally, driven into concentration camps in the name of “manifest destiny.” Another group of non-white people was kidnapped, enslaved, and stripped of all human rights to serve as unpaid laborers. After slavery ended, laws were enacted that kept them separate, disenfranchised, and impoverished. They also faced lynch mobs of their fellow citizens that reinforced this system.

Meanwhile, deliberately unequal distribution of resources — land, education, jobs, and income — gave an ever-shrinking number of the population wildly disproportionate access to power and money, a status quo they have maintained and increased over the centuries by pitting the rest of us against each other based on skin color and other characteristics. Simply put, racism and white supremacy have continued to serve the interests of empire-building and wealth consolidation so efficiently that, last Wednesday, an angry white mob was once again led to act on the belief that they have more in common with a corrupt billionaire than with their fellow citizens.

1814 (when British troops set fire to the Capitol building) was the last time such large-scale violence has been visited upon the halls of the U.S. Congress. But throughout the 20th century and during the first two decades of the 21st, our government has organized similar insurrections (some successful, some not) in nations throughout the world whose leaders, for whatever motives, refuse to dance to America’s tune. To quote U.S. Labor Against Racism and War: “With bipartisan Congressional backing, the U.S. has supported violent coup attempts in Bolivia, Venezuela, China, Ukraine, Libya, Nicaragua, Brazil, Syria, and other countries where U.S. oil companies and weapons contractors salivate for profits and regime change.” (https://www.laboragainstracismandwar.org/post/attack-on-congress-shows-we-need-a-strong-labor-movement?)

In the service of these same interests, our nation has been in a permanent state of war since the middle of the 20th century, with “Congressional Authorizations for the Use of Military Force” from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. Along with U.S. serial bombings and military occupations throughout the world, these undeclared but very real wars continue with no end in sight.

War fuels the U.S. economy and helps make the billionaire class ever wealthier and more powerful. In 2020, while the pandemic killed over 360,000 people in the United States alone, weapons contractors took in record profits. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 provided for a military budget of $740 billion and was unchallenged by either party. Meanwhile, we are dealing with massive unemployment, evictions, and an overwhelmed medical system threatening to withhold treatment for the most vulnerable among us.

All of this is what we mean by “endless war” — singular not plural — the war that came to the U.S. Capitol last week.

Reclaiming Our Power As Historical Actors

This war that we face on all fronts transcends partisan politics, and the work to resist it continues with more urgency than ever. We must reclaim our power. For all the injustices woven into its founding, our nation was also constructed around the principle of deeply engaged citizens, able and willing to think and act rationally for the common good. Recently, we have seen the examples of Black Lives Matter, the Climate Change Movement, and the successful effort to unseat two wealthy incumbent Senators in Georgia. We have witnessed labor, human rights and anti-war movements bring about change throughout our history. It is time for us to reclaim that legacy of positive action to finally build a just and equitable society.

RESIST THIS ENDLESS WAR (Vigil every Sunday, 12-1 p.m., Broadway, Park and Elm streets, New Haven, CT) http://newhavensundayvigil.wordpress.com

The Friends of Kensington Playground – Update

by Jane Comins, Friends of Kensington Playground

Our efforts to save Kensington Playground from development continue. As you will recall, the City has voted to sell the parkland to The Community Builders for $1 so that a 15-unit apartment building and parking lot can be built on the greenspace. We have posted citizen’s guides to the National Environment Policy Act (NEPA) and Section 106 review (National Historic Preservation Act) on our website, along with our legal complaint and the alternative building sites that we have proposed. Dwight needs our largest park and only public playground. Take a look and join us in our fight.

Thanks to those who donated. We are up against a national corporation.

Please donate. To learn more, get involved, and donate, visit: KensingtonPlayground.org

Community Sustainability/ Free Organic Vegetable Gardening Virtual Workshops

by Tebben Lopez, Neighborhood Housing Services

Considering the circumstances we are in and the exacerbated concerns around food security, we are offering this year’s classes free of charge for everyone. The series will be virtual to ensure everyone’s safety.

Are you or a loved one a gardener who can’t wait for the ground to thaw? Prepare for Spring with our 6-class organic vegetable gardening series taught by Advanced Certified Master Gardener Rachel Ziesk! All classes are virtual and take place on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

February 6: Soils and Composting – The most important component for a successful garden is soil health. Learn how to make your own compost and everything else you need to keep your soil healthy for the most productive garden.

February 13: Garden Planning & Season Extenders – Ensure a long and productive growing year with row covers, organic mulch, cold frames and more! Get the most out of even a small garden space.

February 20: Cool Weather Crops – Start your garden as soon as the soil thaws, even in mid-March! This class covers how and when to plant cool weather crops and manage their pests and diseases.

February 27: Warm Weather Crops – Learn how to make the best of our growing season including which warm-weather crops are best started indoors, which can be direct-seeded, what conditions and fertilizers each crop prefers, and how to fight their pests and diseases organically.

March 6: Seed Starting – Start your own seedlings! Learn about when to start indoor seedlings, watering, using lights, and dealing with common problems. We will also review which crops can be planted directly outdoors and when.

March 13: Weeds: the Good, the Bad, and the Tasty – Some “weeds” are actually native wildflowers benefitting your vegetable garden’s pollinators. Some are invasive horrors with plans to take over your garden. And some are edible, delicious little morsels that can be harvested and enjoyed.
For more information, please contact Kathy Fay, (203) 562-0598 ext. 225, [email protected].

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