No Auction for Plum Island! Now for the Next Steps!

Save the Sound

Monday, Dec. 21, Congress passed a federal budget package that repeals the auction of the island. Now the path is finally open for permanent protection of this unique place and its critical habitats, endangered wildlife, and cultural history.

This wouldn’t have happened without the leadership of our partners in Congress. The entire New York and Connecticut delegations have worked tirelessly, and on this latest effort, we especially owe gratitude to Senators Schumer, Murphy, and Blumenthal, and Congressmen and -women Zeldin, DeLauro, Lowey, and Courtney.

And it also couldn’t have happened without the immense support and consistent action from all of you. If you ever emailed your senator or representative, signed a petition, supported Save the Sound’s advocates with your membership dollars, or joined a Plunge or Paddle for Plum Island, you helped make today’s victory happen.

Now the next steps—finding the right long-term owner for this special place and implementing the Envision Plum Island plan—can begin. We can’t wait to work with you to ensure Plum Island stays in the public’s hands forever.

For questions about Plum Island, contact Louise Harrison (in NY) – [email protected], and Chris Cryder (in CT) – [email protected].

The Friends of Kensington Playground – Update

Jane Comins, Friends of Kensington Playground

Our efforts to save Dwight’s Kensington Playground from development continue.  Through our lawyer, we have provided the City of New Haven with several nearby alternative building sites. HUD and the CT Housing Finance Authority have acknowledged the complaints that we submitted under federal historic preservation and environmental protection law, and have asked the State Historic Preservation Office and the City of New Haven to review them. Thanks to those who donated. We are up against a national corporation.  Please donate. To learn more and donate, visit: https://www.kensingtonplayground.org.

Grants Available for Environmental Projects

Lynne Bonnett, President, Greater New Haven Green Fund

The Greater New Haven Green Fund requests proposals for grants up to $10,000 for 2021. Community groups are encouraged to apply whether or not they have a non-profit status with the Internal Revenue Service.  Please check our website www.gnhgreenfund.org for the step-by-step guide to our online application followed by information you will need to complete it. It is due Friday, January 22, by 5 p.m.

If you have any questions or concerns after reviewing the information please contact [email protected].

‘Occupy Yale’ Caravan Demands Yale Pay Its Fair Share of Taxes to the City of New Haven

Megan Fountain, Unidad Latina en Acción

More than 100 cars and 50 marchers on foot took the streets on Dec. 10 for a rally and car caravan to “Occupy Yale.” This action was sponsored by Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), Black and Brown United in Action (BBUA), Hamden Action Now. Cars and marchers took over downtown New Haven and Yale campus to call on the university to pay its debt to the people of New Haven.  With the City facing a deficit of $13 million, Yale is closing the fiscal year with a surplus of $203 million and an endowment of $31.2 billion.

“Our people are going hungry and dying, jobs are scarce, some people are living in tents in the woods, and others are about to lose their homes” said John Lugo of Unidad Latina en Acción. “Will the City of New Haven cut jobs and slash essential services to subsidize Yale’s tax breaks?  Will renters and homeowners continue paying for the taxes that Yale doesn’t pay?”

Contact: Megan Fountain, [email protected], (203) 479-2959.

Mutual Aid in 2020

by Andy Piascek, peacenews.org, posted Dec. 18, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an increase in mutual aid activity and organizations. In Bridgeport, Connecticut where I live, a dozen or so people came together in March of 2020 to form Bridgeport Mutual Aid (BMA). A large percentage of Bridgeport’s residents are poor and many others who are not categorized as such were nonetheless struggling even before the pandemic. Their situations became more precarious when the state ordered many businesses to close, jobs were lost and people were advised not to socialize even with relatives living nearby. The elderly who are most vulnerable found themselves cut off from their usual social network of sons and daughters and grandchildren. When Bridgeport officials also suspended the city’s bus service, those without cars found it much more difficult to shop for groceries and other essentials.

BMA decided to provide food and other items like toilet paper, diapers and sanitary napkins to as many of those in need as possible. Most members had contacts of all kinds throughout the city, especially in poor and working-class neighborhoods, and drew on those contacts to spread the word about the project. Because of social distancing requirements and restrictions on travel, a decision was made to deliver the food since it was too dangerous to set up a central gathering place for people to come and pick up whatever they needed.

Anyone who requests aid gets it. New people have joined the effort and stores and retailers contribute food and other goods. Supporters contribute money that is used to buy any items that aren’t contributed and BMA also secured a small grant. People work whenever they can, whether it’s four times a week every week or once every four weeks. BMA members belong to the Bridgeport chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and other organizations and participate in the work those and other groups in the area are doing.

One prime example of organizational overlap occurred in June when activists working to end police brutality established an encampment in front of police headquarters for ten days and nights. BMA folks have also been involved in the organizing against police brutality so it was only natural that BMA participated in both the encampment and in making sure the 50 or so people who were camping out every night had sufficient food. BMA members also helped to ensure that the encampment included portable bathrooms, a first aid tent, a library and entry points where face masks were given to anyone not wearing one.

The above is an excerpt. Read the entire article at http://peacenews.org/2020/12/18/mutualaidin2020andypiascik

Call Goes Out to Families of Victims as Homicide Memorial Opening Nears

by Rabhya Mehrotra, New Haven Independent, Nov 11, 2020

Marlene Miller-Pratt (at podium in photo) is asking New Haveners for help in finding the families of victims of fatal gun violence.

Rabhya Mehrotra photo

Standing in the shadow of West Rock on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, Miller-Pratt spoke at a press conference with Mayor Justin Elicker, announcing the near completion of the New Haven Botanical Garden of Healing she created and led to construction.

“Our goal is to get out the word to moms,” she said.

Along with a core group of fellow mothers of homicide victims, Miller-Pratt led the creation of the garden in West Hills. The garden honors homicide victims and provides a peaceful place for their loved ones to remember them…

Now construction is almost done: Urban Resources Initiative (URI) director Colleen Murphy-Dunning estimates that it will hopefully end before the start of 2021, although COVID may cause further delays.
Before the garden opens to the public, Miller-Pratt wants to extend an invitation for families affected by gun violence to come for a private viewing. They’ll be scheduled in advance for COVID safety, and last for 30 minutes. She’s especially focused on finding the families of victims whose names are on the Magnitude Walkway, which has a brick for each homicide victim from 1976-2000.

Over the last two weeks, Miller-Pratt has been going around the city with a poster, filled with the names of the victims. She has focused on Newhallville, while Celeste Robinson-Fulcher [whose daughter Ericka was killed in a nightclub shooting], and Pamela Jaynez (another member of the core group) have been going around Fair Haven.

When she stopped at corners, “I was ignored sometimes,” she said. But people spoke up “after they saw what that poster represented and saw how many names were on them.” One person, she said, turned straight around. He came back with four parents whose children were on that list. Another person saw the list and then lifted his arm to show his tattoo, which had his murdered cousin’s name. Yet others looked at the list and saw old friends.

Miller-Pratt gave out her phone number: (910) 975-2054. Any and every person who would like to schedule an early visit can contact her.

[Read the whole article at https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/visit_homicide_memorial_soon]

People’s World Amistad Awards on Saturday, Dec. 12

by Joelle Fishman, Connecticut People’s World

This year’s People’s World Amistad Awards will take place on Saturday, Dec. 12, 2020 at 4 p.m. as a virtual concert program, with printed greeting book mailed out to participants. The theme is United for the World We Want: Celebrating Resilience, Solidarity and Vision.

This year’s awardees are:

  • Barbara Vereen, staff director Unite Here Local 34 and Unite Here Black Leadership Group;
  • Rob Baril, president SEIU District 1199 New England;
  • Jan Hochadel, president AFT Connecticut; and
  • Councilwoman Wildaliz Bermudez, Working Families Party, Hartford.

We pay tribute in the fight for the rights of essential workers and all workers irregardless of immigration status during the COVID pandemic, the rise of the movement for Black lives, and the fight of our lives in the 2020 elections.

For information about logging on to the virtual concert or tickets, please email [email protected] or call (203) 624-4254.

War Resisters League Commends Kings Bay Plowshares

by War Resisters League

WRL thanks and honors the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, three of whom (Carmen Trotta, Martha Hennessy, and Clare Grady) were sentenced last week for their bold Trident disarmament action at the Kings Bay nuclear submarine base in south Georgia. Several of the Kings Bay Plowshares are WRL members and have participated in WRL organized nonviolent actions. All are war tax resisters.

50 years to the day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 2018, over two and a half years ago, the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 cut a lock and entered the base where nuclear-armed US submarines are home-ported, in a plowshares action which included pouring blood, posting an indictment which charged the US government for crimes against peace, posting crime scene tape and hanging banners, one of which said, “The Ultimate Logic of Trident is Omnicide,” and damaging Trident D5 monuments. Plowshares actions seek to enact the prophecy in the Biblical book of Isaiah that nations will beat swords into plowshares and study war no more. [see their website at https://kingsbayplowshares7.org]

[This entire article can be read at www.warresisters.org. In October, all were convicted on three felonies and one misdemeanor. Six have been sentenced. Mark Colville of the Amistad Catholic Worker House in New Haven is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 18. More information is at the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 website at https://kingsbayplowshares7.org]

Another Case of “Good Rebels vs. Bad President”

by Henry Lowendorf, Greater New Haven Peace Council

In a live webinar from Damascus, Syria, Nov. 20, journalist Vanessa Beeley unravels the corporate and State Department narrative regarding the war on that country.

That narrative asserts the government of Syria under Bashir al Assad hates the Syrian people and kills them with little regard while the various rebel groups, supported by the United States and its allies, have been trying to liberate Syria for about 10 years. Evidence for such hatred comes from alleged indiscriminate bombing of and chemical weapons attacks on civilians.

In describing the disintegration of this narrative, Beeley points to accumulating evidence that the OPCW, the UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, censored its own technical experts who had challenged an alleged chemical attack, in order to draw conclusions and make a report that retroactively justified open U.S. and NATO bombing of Syria in 2018. That bombing led liberal U.S. media finally to call Donald Trump “presidential.”

In addition, recent leaks from the UK Foreign Office, detailed by Ben Norton https://tinyurl.com/NortonSyriaLeaks demonstrate since at least 2011, UK and U.S intelligence agencies have been feeding false news to all western major media organizations, which have dutifully rehashed it. The UK Foreign Office verified the documents.

Vanessa reported that she had teamed up with another journalist, Rafiq Lutf, to produce a documentary, “The Veto,” which reveals numerous CNN manipulations and falsifications of the aggressions against Syria.

Beeley has deeply researched a key element of the hybrid war on Syria, the White Helmets. This outfit operates only where terrorist groups rule. Unlike the real secular, diverse Syrian Civil Defense, members of any group of White Helmets belong to the same al Qaeda affiliate. The White Helmets was created by UK spy agencies and pipelined into the corporate media by an NGO based in Dubai.

Beeley further describes how the Turkey and Qatar-funded Muslim Brotherhood, once on the State Department’s terrorist list, has hugely influenced the public perception of the war in this country.

Watch the webinar on youtube: https://tinyurl.com/BeeleyWeb20.

Kensington Playground: The Fight Is Not Over! Donations Needed to Support Legal Fight to Keep Playground from Being Sold

by Jane Comins, Friends of Kensington Playground

Friends of Kensington Playground is seeking donations to support our legal fight against the construction of housing and a parking lot on our largest public parkland.

The group is fighting the sale of Dwight’s Kensington Playground to The Community Builders for $1, which was approved by the New Haven Board of Alders in October so that 15 units of affordable rental housing and a surface parking lot can be built on the parkland.

The Friends group filed a complaint against the City of New Haven in Connecticut State Court. The complaint was based on the Connecticut Environmental Protection Act and Conn. Gen. Stat. §7-131n, known as the Park Replacement Statute, which requires that when a municipality takes park or open space land for other purposes, it must be replaced with parkland of equal size and value. §7-131n also requires a dedicated public hearing on the subject.

In addition, The Friends are also pursuing historic preservation and environmental issues under federal law because the playground is in the heart of the Dwight Street National Historic District and federal monies are being used by The Community Builders in the construction of the apartment building. The Friends asked the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) to review the proposed sale. The Hartford HUD Office has directed the City of New Haven Office of Management and Budget to consider the matter.

While the Friends understand that there is a need for affordable housing, we believe there is no reason to take our parkland for it. Loss of the mature trees in the Playground will hurt our air quality. Adults as well as children enjoy this outdoor space. The non-profit developer receiving the gift of this land has had a poor track record for decades.

The group is appealing to the community for donations to our GoFundMe Campaign to Save Kensington Playground to help with legal costs, and if they win, with a playscape. GoFundMe campaign link is: https://gf.me/u/y89852 or search for “Save Kensington Playground” on GoFundMe.com.

See www.KensingtonPlayground.org for additional details, and to sign our petition.

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