Category: Human Rights

Emergency Protest and March Held in Hartford

As we prepared this issue for print, there was an emergency march in Hartford on March 21 to protect Gaza, protect immigrants, and protect free speech. Demands also included ending USA aid to Israel and freeing Mahmoud Khalil (a US permanent resident taken by ICE) and other immigrants and activists who have been detained because they’re activists for Palestinian rights. People rallied outside the ICE/federal building at 450 Main St. and then marched to the Capitol.

Earlier in the week, Israel violated the 2-month-old ceasefire and killed over 500 people in Gaza. Over 200 of the dead were children. Israel shortly thereafter sent in ground troops to Gaza.

For video of this rally and others, please see thestrugglevideo.org.

IRIS To Shutter Main Office

By Laura Glesby, March 5, New Haven Independent

New Haven’s flagship refugee resettlement agency is closing its main doors at 235 Nicoll St. and shifting to remote work and satellite locations after losing millions of dollars in federal funding.

Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) has occupied the Nicoll Street office since 2006, where it has provided case management, education, job training, legal support, and health assistance to many hundreds of refugees and immigrants over decades.

In an email on Wednesday afternoon, Executive Director Maggie Mitchell Salem announced that due to funding slashes under President Donald Trump’s administration, the organization will cease operating from its East Rock home base by the end of March, with official plans to leave by April 30.

She told the Independent the organization is also “in the process of winding down our Hartford office.”

Mitchell Salem said in a phone interview that IRIS has so far laid off about half of its staff members since the start of the Trump administration. Now IRIS has a full-time staff of 45 employees.

IRIS will continue operating education programs out of the United Church on the Green’s Parish House at 323 Temple St., as well as its food pantry at 75 Hamilton St.

[To view the article in its entirety, please go to https://bit.ly/4bVJtXw]

New ICE Age Response Team: Prepare, Don’t Panic

by Paul Bass, Feb 18, New Haven Independent

[The following are excerpts. To read the entire article, please go to http://bit.ly/41dh0aA]

If an ICE (federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement) agent is indeed at the door: “I don’t wish to speak with you, answer your questions, or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United Stations Constitution … I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights … unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door …”

A coalition of 60 agencies and nonprofit groups is spreading those red cards, and that calm-but-ready message, to the heart of New Haven’s immigrant community, which is bracing for ICE mass deportation raids promised by the newly installed Trump administration. …

“Exactly what the Trump administration wants is just fear, to incite fear and panic and chaos,” Yenimar Cortes, New Haven organizer for CT Students For A Dream, said during a New ICE Age conversation Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” She was joined by fellow organizers Fatima Rojas of Semilla Collective, Junta case worker Jacqueline Gonzalez, and high school youth organizer Ambar Santiago-Rojas.

An estimated 100,000 undocumented people live in Connecticut.
You can call the rapid response hotline at 220-666-4472. Rojas said people can call her at 203-747-4309 for information on attending the coalition’s Saturday community engagement meetings. Cortes invited people to contact her group at 203-787-0191 for information on Know Your Rights workshops.

CT Legislators Horrified by Account of Incarcerated Person’s Homicide

by Mark Pazniokas, February 14, CT Mirror

The death of Carl “Robby” Talbot in a jail cell thick with the choking fumes of a potent pepper spray was described Friday as the catastrophic consequence of excessive force and medical neglect, compounded by a forged use-of-force report and an ineffectual internal investigation.

Angel Quiros, the commissioner of correction, did not protest the lawmakers’ harsh assessment. Talbot’s mother, Colleen Lord, offered one dissent: Her son’s death also is a consequence of the criminalization of the mentally ill, a failure that began outside jailhouse walls, long before her Robby died.

The first public dissection of all that went wrong at the New Haven Correctional Center on March 21, 2019, came Friday in a Judiciary Committee hearing on whether to accept a proposed $3.75 million settlement of the federal lawsuit filed by Talbot’s estate.

Undisputed is that Talbot, 30, who had a history of mental illness and misdemeanor arrests, had become agitated after being jailed on a probation violation, and that a jailhouse supervisor, Lt. Carlos Padro, responded with four long point-blank bursts of pepper spray, twice in a shower room and again in an elevator and a cell.

Read the whole story here: https://ctmirror.org/2025/02/14/ct-inmate-death-hearing

 

 

As Temps Drop, Tiny Shelter Residents Double Up

Jabez Choi, Dec. 6, 2024, New Haven Independent

A group of unhoused neighbors have taken to sleeping two or even three to a room inside unheated pre-fabricated tiny shelters that are still standing in a Rosette Street backyard.

“When we do bundle up, it’s tolerable being in there,” said Robert Harris, as he pointed at a row of white Pallet shelters. “But sometimes it’s colder in these because it can be like an ice box.”

There are currently 14 people living in six different under-100-square-foot shelters that have stood for over a year in the backyard of the Amistad Catholic Worker House at 203 Rosette St. in the Hill.

Harris, who has been residing in that Rosette Street backyard since May, said that all the residents have numerous blankets and sleeping bags to keep warm throughout the night. Currently, he sleeps outside in what is called the “hut.” If the cold becomes unbearable, he sleeps inside the Amistad house, on a chair.

A group of homelessness activists — led by Amistad’s Mark and Luz Colville and their neighbors and supporters — first erected these six single-room shelters last fall to provide a roof for people displaced from cleared homeless encampments and who otherwise had nowhere else to go.

In July, the city called on UI to turn off the power in these shelters, following the expiration of a 180-day state permit allowing electricity to the backyard, thereby rendering those shelters “illegal dwelling units.” (The shelters do not have individual kitchens and bathrooms. As part of a suite of zoning relief granted by the Board of Zoning Appeals in March, the Amistad Catholic Worker House has to make available the main home’s bathroom and kitchen to the backyard residents.)

In the intervening five months, people have continued to sleep inside these six tiny shelters — which have only become more crowded with the onset of winter weather…

read the entire article at https://tinyurl.com/yck8s6yv

The Elm City’s Commitment to LGBTQ+ Equality

City of New Haven Press Release Nov. 22, 2024

Mayor Justin Elicker celebrated the City of New Haven receiving a score of 100 on the 2024 Municipal Equality Index (MEI), a comprehensive assessment of LGBTQ+ equality in the areas of municipal policies, law, and services, which is conducted annually by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation is a 501(c)3 organization and the educational arm of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization. As part of its work, the HRC Foundation conducts the MEI, which was released nationally on Thursday. The MEI “examines how inclusive municipal laws, policies, and services are of LGBTQ+ people who live and work there” and “cities are rated based on non-discrimination laws, the municipality as an employer, municipal services, law enforcement and leadership on LGBTQ+ equality.”

New Haven received a score of 100 on the 2024 [MEI], the highest score that can be received by a municipality. This marks the first year that the City of New Haven has achieved this distinction, and New Haven is one of only two cities in Connecticut to receive an MEI score of 100, with the other being Stamford.

The index evaluated and recognized New Haven’s commitment to LGBTQ+ equality across several key areas, including: non-discrimination laws, the municipality as an employer, municipal services, law enforcement policies, and leadership on LGBTQ+ equality.

One item of note is the city’s support of and partnership with the New Haven Pride Center, which provides a variety of critical services, free resources, and meaningful programming for LGBTQ+ residents of all ages. This includes monthly community dinners and social events, affinity social spaces, professional and personal development, a community food and toiletries pantry, a clothing closet, a lending library featuring LGBTQ+ books, among other services.

The score is also reflective of the city’s efforts to ensure LGBTQ+ residents are included and able to access city services and programs. Residents can connect with the city’s LGBTQ+ Liaison, Killian Gruber, at kgruber@newhavenct.gov or 203-946-4984, or the New Haven Youth and Recreation Department’s LGBTQ+ Liaison, Ernest Cloman, at ecloman@newhavenct.gov or 203-946-4939.

Read the entire article at https://www.newhavenct.gov/Home/Components/News/News/509/144

Pride Center Convenes Community To Heal

by Grayce Howe, Nov. 14, Arts Paper

Art acted as a form of resistance and relief last week, as dozens of community members gathered at the New Haven Pride Center for a night of post-election healing and artmaking. Often, they found themselves leaning on each other for support and encouragement, even as they searched for an answer to some of the grief and despair… The evening was co-hosted by the Greater New Haven Arts Council. In the interest of full transparency, the Arts Paper lives within, but is editorially independent from, the Arts Council.

Throughout the evening, the gathering aimed to combat feelings of unease that followed the election of Donald Trump… As president, he instituted legislative measures that included a ban on Muslim immigrants and refugees, multiple appointments to a now-conservative, anti-choice Supreme Court, significant environmental rollbacks, and direct calls meant to invigorate and activate millions of followers who were fueled by anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-woman ideals of a white nationalist America. During his 2024 campaign, he expanded that rhetoric, from calling into question whether Vice President Kamala Harris was and is in fact Black… to pushing for harsher immigration policies to insulting Haitians, Puerto Ricans, and all childless women within weeks of the election. In New Haven—a sanctuary city that has for years championed LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights—Tuesday’s result came as a crushing blow to many.

Thursday, it seemed that only compassionate community filled the room. In addition to a workshop from [Pride Center Executive Director Juancarlos] Soto—who, in addition to leading the Center, is a visual artist and fierce activist—the night included offerings from movement facilitator Vee Warden, holistic healer Thema Graves, drag queen Xiomarie LaBeija and poet, organizer and spoken word artist Sun Queen.

Throughout the evening, comments also came from Soto, Mayor Justin Elicker, and ACGNH Program Director Rebekah Moore and Executive Director Hope Chávez. The evening also included catering from the Ninth Square business Blue Orchid.

By the end of the night, participants’ moods were visibly lighter. Faces held smiles and laughed with new-made friends, inspired and hopeful for the future while empowerment overtook the previously overruling stress. That continued this week, as staff at the Pride Center set up a new corner of their space dedicated entirely to self-care.

[To read the original article visit https://www.newhavenarts.org/arts-paper/articles/pridecenter-convenes-community-to-heal

Open Letter from American Medical Professionals Who Served in Gaza

October 2, 2024

Dear President Biden and Vice President Harris,

We are 99 American physicians, surgeons, nurse practitioners, nurses, and midwives who have volunteered in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. Combined, we spent 254 weeks volunteering in Gaza’s hospitals and clinics. We worked with various nongovernmental organizations and the World Health Organization in hospitals and clinics throughout the Strip. In addition to our medical and surgical expertise, many of us have a public health background, as well as experience working in humanitarian and conflict zones, including Ukraine during the brutal Russian invasion. Some of us are veterans and reservists. We are a multifaith and multiethnic group. None of us support the horrors committed on October 7 by Palestinian armed groups and individuals in Israel. …

…[T]he human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population.

Our government must act immediately to prevent an even worse catastrophe than what has already befallen the people of Gaza and Israel. A ceasefire must be imposed on the warring parties by withholding military support for Israel and supporting an international arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. We believe our government is obligated to do this, both under American law and International Humanitarian Law. We also believe it is the right thing to do.

Read the letter in its entirety here: https://www.gazahealthcareletters.org/usa-letter-oct-2-2024

‘Emma Jones Justice for Malik Corner’ OK’d

by Laura Glesby, Oct. 8, New Haven Independent

The corner where East Haven police officers chased, shot, and killed 21-year-old Malik Jones in 1997 will not be called “Malik Jones Corner” after all.

Instead, the Board of Alders decided to name that inter-section after Jones’s mother, Emma, and the campaign for police accountability she has carried forth after his death…. On Monday, Oct. 7, the full Board of Alders unanimously voted to amend the proposed corner name to “Emma Jones Justice For Malik Corner,” an edit proposed by Fair Haven Alder Frank Redente.

Redente … elaborated after the meeting that he heard passionate feedback from constituents about the corner-naming proposal in recent weeks.

Some opponents of the proposed corner name took issue with Malik’s criminal record… the input that primarily spurred his amendment Monday night was “more that Emma was being left out.” Emma Jones’s activism around the memory of her son led to the creation of New Haven’s Civilian Review Board to review complaints of police misconduct, a board on which Redente now serves…

As he introduced the amendment during Monday’s meeting at City Hall, Redente explained that the name “Emma Jones Justice for Malik Corner” would “shift away from the personal connection and toward justice.”

…[All] the alders present voted in favor of this name change.

The activists who had first submitted the corner name shuffled out of the room after the vote. [Norman] Clement immediately called Jones to update her…

“I think it’s important to have Malik’s name there because of what happened to him, and I never want people to forget,” Jones said. She praised how the new version puts her own name alongside Malik’s and “gives it a greater meaning.”

“It’s a great honor,” she said. “I didn’t expect to be honored. But I’m delighted that people thought enough of me to remember all of the work that I did do.”

She hopes it will speak to the terror that so many mothers of Black sons have felt and still feel — “your son goes out to the store to get a loaf of bread, and you’re terrified because you don’t know whether he’s coming back.”

“I will never forget what that officer did to my son,” she said. Now, neither will the street.

Article can be read in its entirety at https://tinyurl.com/kp997bb7.

Can Connecticut at Least Divest the Drone Company?

by Stanley Heller, Executive Director, Middle East Crisis Committee

Responding to a resident’s request, the State Treasurer’s office revealed that investments of state money in Israel have ballooned to over $113 million. This is a big increase since 2021 when it was $85 million.

The Israeli government, which is widely recognized as guilty of the international crime of apartheid, is committing the crime of genocide in Gaza, and since October of 2023 has killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. For a decade, groups and individuals have been calling on various treasurers and CT governors to divest from Israel. They’ve argued that it’s a shame to make profit from financing oppression. However, these calls have been ignored. To make some headway an effort is underway to get rid of just one Israeli stock.

The Treasury has now over a million dollars invested in Elbit, Israel’s biggest weapons company, which has made drones that are implicated in several massacres. In 2014 its Hermes drone was involved in a notorious incident at a Gaza beach where the drone gunned down four cousins playing soccer. The oldest was 11. Elbit produces cluster munitions, weaponized white phosphorus, and flechette projectiles. The use of these weapons is prohibited under a 2008 international treaty signed by 111 countries.

A petition campaign has been started calling on the state of Connecticut to divest its Elbit stock. This is the link to the Change.org petition: https://tinyurl.com/divest-elbit. The campaign should be of special interest to public worker unions. The overwhelming majority of money in the state treasury is money to be used for pensions for Connecticut teachers, state employees and city employees. Much of it has been deducted from those workers’ salaries. Other money comes from general taxes. None of that money should be used to finance Israeli wars, prisons and walls.

Often one hears the argument that we’re wasting our time with divestment efforts because nothing can be done and that the companies are just too powerful. Yet just recently it was announced that Elbit is permanently closing down its offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after months of picketing.

As Israel Expands Its Lebanon Attacks…

The need to divest from Israel grows as Israel becomes more aggressive in its bombings in Lebanon, which has faced acts of war from the Zionist government for many decades. In September, many memorialized the Sabra and Shatila massacres of mid-September 1982 when over 1400 Palestinians and Lebanese were killed during Israel’s invasion. Since the genocide in Gaza began there’s been limited attacks from Hezbollah forces in Lebanon in solidarity with Palestinians. Israel has responded with jets dropping bombs. Some include white phosphorus, whose use against civilians is regarded as a war crime. There’s been a steady drumbeat by rightist forces in Israel for a full-scale attack on Lebanon. The mass explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies that killed scores and maimed thousands may be the start of that attack.

Connecticut should divest from Israel if only for its constant aggression against Lebanon.
For questions or more information: mail@thestruggle.org.

Unforgotten: Connecticut’s Hidden History of Slavery

CT Public Radio www.npr.org/podcasts/organizations/s546

It’s a history lesson many of us didn’t get in school: Slavery has deep roots in Connecticut and across New England. Enslaved people helped build the foundation of much of this state. Get to know some of these men and women and the lives they lived. Hear from descendants who reflect on their loved ones. And learn from historians and experts going on a journey of discovery to recover this hidden history. In this five-part episode podcast from Connecticut Public, Reporter/Producer Diane Orson and Editorial Consultant and Curator Frank Mitchell discuss some of the issues in and around these stories.

Visit www.ctpublic.org/unforgotten to learn more, including additional videos, photos and digital stories.

Yale Apologizes for Ties to Slavery in New Report, Pledges List of Actions

Benjamin Hernandez, Yale Daily News, Feb. 19, 2024

University President Peter Salovey and Joshua Bekenstein ’80, senior trustee of the Yale Corporation, [have] issued a formal apology and a set of actions in response to Yale’s ties to slavery.

The announcement came alongside the release of a book titled Yale and Slavery: A History, which is the culmination of the findings made by the Yale and Slavery Working Group. …The book was released in its entirety online:

https://yaleandslavery.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2024-02/

Yale and Slavery A History Feb2024 David Blight with the Yale and Slavery Research Project.pdf.

In their announcement, Salovey and Bekenstein not only framed the project as a recognition of the University’s role in and association with the institution of slavery, but it also formally apologized for the ways that Yale’s leaders participated in slavery, adding that the findings from the group have “propelled” the University toward actions to address the continued effects of enslavement today. …

A new app will offer self-guided tours with 19 points of interest to help visitors explore the University’s ties to slavery. [You can download the app here: yaleandslavery.yale.edu/special-topic-tour-history-slavery.]…

(Read the full article here: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2024/02/19/yale-releases-history-on-ties-to-slavery-apologizes-and-pledges-list-of-actions/

Ceasefire Now

by Joan Cavanagh, NH Sunday Vigil for Peace and Justice

November 26, 2023: The actions of the terrorist organization HAMAS on Oct. 7, 2023, were an atrocity, a war crime against innocent civilians, with a death toll of 1,200 people, accompanied by rape and other forms of torture, as well as the taking of hostages. We condemn these actions with horror and without equivocation.

The actions of the Netanyahu government in response, murdering more than 14,000 people, reducing Gaza to rubble, destroying any means by which survivors can treat their wounded and sick, and cutting off their food, water, and access to the outside world, have only amplified that villainy.

Whatever you know, believe, or have been told about the current U.S. funded and supplied Israeli government war on Gaza, or indeed about the history of Israel and Palestine, please recognize that there is no moral, political, ethical, or legal justification for genocide—the deliberate elimination of an entire group of people.

Shamefully, most of our elected officials from the executive branch on down refuse to call this siege what it is and are doing nothing to end it. Indeed, they are voting to continue it by sending money and armaments to further fuel it, even while asking for brief “humanitarian pauses” out of the other sides of their mouths. And, as usual, the arms merchants are making a handsome profit each day the war continues. They are the only beneficiaries of this all-out assault on a population with nowhere to go to escape. This war must end, and it must end now.

The good news is that from all the corners of Earth, there comes a concerted human outcry against this inhumanity. Resistance actions, led by Jewish Voice for Peace and other organizations, are happening all over this country and throughout the world. There have been nonviolent shut-downs, blockades, and takeovers of congressional office buildings, headquarters of war-profiteering companies (including Colt, in Hartford), the Statue of Liberty, the United Nations, and many more, involving in total millions of people.

Please find a way to join that outcry. Speak out, write, march, demand accountability from our own government. Here in Connecticut, contact directly—and repeatedly—all of your federal representatives to demand that they act to stop this war. Ignore their perfunctory form letter replies. Keep up the demand, no matter what justifications or evasions that they give. RESIST THIS ENDLESS WAR

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