Grants Available for Environmental Projects

by 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, Jan. 22, 2021 by 5 p.m.

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

Excerpts from Sen. Chris Murphy’s COVID-19 Weekly Update, Nov. 20, 2020

PURA has extended the enrollment period for programs to prevent heat source shut-offs for both residential and non-residential customers through at least Feb. 9, 2021. Further, the Winter Protection Program, which protects eligible households during the winter months, is also in effect from Nov. 1, 2020 through May 1, 2021. If you are experiencing difficulty paying your utility bill, you can contact your utility company and ask if you are eligible to be “coded hardship” and enrolled in the Winter Protection Program. If you are ineligible for hardship status or a non-residential customer, ask to enroll in a COVID-19 Payment Plan.

For information on federal coronavirus relief, including help for small businesses, direct cash payments and more, visit murphy.senate.gov/coronavirus. This page provides answers to frequently asked questions and gives a summary of available programs and funding.

For the latest information about keeping you or your family safe go to cdc.gov/coronavirus. For resources and information about Connecticut’s response visit ct.gov/coronavirus.

Alert: Pandemic Protocol at Yale New Haven Health Restricts Life-Saving Efforts for Some Patients

The PAR newsletter has received a copy of the “Yale New Haven Health Resuscitation Protocol for the COVID-19 Pandemic,” updated and issued to all medical staff on November 12. It was accompanied by the following comments.

Couched in vague language open to wide interpretation, this memorandum’s overall point is clear: even if critical care patients and/or their representatives desire intervention such as resuscitation or intubation, or have not yet made their wishes known, they may nevertheless be assigned “Do Not Resuscitate/Do Not Intubate” status by agreement of “two or more physicians.” While patient wishes, or those of their advocates, are to be “considered” if they can be “obtained,” the system is not bound to honor them, and is unlikely to do so if they contradict practitioners’ assessments.

It is stated that one reason to limit (or prohibit) cardiopulmonary resuscitation of “critically ill patients with COVID-19” is to avoid “exposing health care workers to high risk of infectious transmission,” a laudable goal on the face of it. Health care workers have been truly heroic in doing their jobs during this pandemic under terrible conditions. But they know that theirs is not a no- or even low-risk job. And PPE including face shields and masks are more available now than they were in the earliest days. Meanwhile, people go to the emergency room and to the hospital seeking critical care, believing in good faith that they will receive it. Are they to be denied that care because providing it has become too risky? And are people now required to merely accept the judgment of doctors they may never even have met, knowing the health care system is under serious economic pressure to have fewer, less critically ill patients?

The memo states that, in addition to this “system-wide notice,” “ the YNHHS Chief Clinical Officer, in collaboration with the YNHHS Chief Executive Officer and YNHHS Senior Vice President and General Counsel…shall determine an appropriate manner of notifying the public, patients and other stakeholders.” (Emphasis added.)

Since this is an update of a memo originally circulated in April which, to our knowledge, was never made available for public comment or scrutiny, PAR decided its readers should learn about this in a timely manner. Feel free to email us for a copy of the full memo at [email protected].

Day Of The Dead Honors Murdered Women

by Thomas Breen, New Haven Independent, Nov 2, 2020

Dressed in floral crowns, face paint, and brightly patterned woven shawls, two dozen immigrant rights activists marched through the streets of Fair Haven to remember Lizzbeth Alemán-Popoca and other local missing and murdered women. (Thomas Breen, NHI)

That parade-turned-protest took place Monday night in celebration of the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead.

The event was organized by the Semilla Collective, and saw marchers bundled up in the late fall cold walk from Quinnipiac River Park on Front Street to Chapel Street, Ferry Street, Grand Avenue, and Blatchley Avenue, before winding their way in the dark back over to the parade’s riverfront starting spot.
The parade’s participants walked in the middle of the street—often taking up both lanes of traffic—behind a flat-bed pickup truck decorated with a sunflower-strewn altar to Alemán-Popoca.

A 27-year-old Mexican immigrant, young mother, and East Haven resident, Alemán-Popoca was found dead in mid-July by a dumpster outside of a Branford restaurant. A medical examiner subsequently determined that she died as a result of “‘homicidal asphyxia.”

Yaneth Alemán, 24, who lives in New Haven and who immigrated to the United States with her older sister Lizzbeth over a decade ago, said that she turned out to Monday’s parade to keep the public’s eye focused on Alemán-Popoca’s still-unsolved murder.

“After four months, she still hasn’t received justice,” Alemán said. “To have someone so close .. it’s not easy to deal with.”

She said that the Day of the Dead is traditionally a time to remember, mourn, and celebrate the lives of those who have recently passed away. Though only three years her junior, Alemán said that she looked up to her older sister as if she was her mother.

“She took care of me,” she said.

Ben Haldeman, who joined Alemán in carrying a cloth banner decorated with sunflowers and a picture of Alemán-Popoca, said he showed up to Monday’s parade because “people do not treat violence against women with the gravity it deserves, particularly when those affected are not white.”
Semilla Collective organizer Vanesa Suarez, who led the march, said that that theme—of taking seriously the lives and deaths of women who have been disappeared, murdered, and then forgotten—was the driving force behind the Day of the Dead event.

“We’re going to honor our sisters because while the rest of the world is very quick to forget them and erase them, we will not.”

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

Energy Efficiency Program for Branford Residents

In collaboration with People’s Action for Clean Energy, Branford’s Clean Energy Committee is offering a home improvement package with the goals of saving money for homeowners and improving the environment. The first step is a Home Energy Solutions (HES) audit to evaluate energy efficiency and recommend improvements to save energy. The audit is free until the end of 2020. Branford’s preferred HES providers are CMC [(203) 294-9677, CMCenergy.com] and NECS [(877) 389-7077, neconserves.com].

Job Openings at Save the Sound

For information about these jobs, visit the website savethesound.org, go to the “About Us” tab, and click on “Jobs & RFPs.”

Clean Water Advocate (full-time, NY)
Ecological Communications Specialist (part-time, CT)
Lands Communications Specialist (part-time, CT)

We’re also currently reviewing applications received for the Climate Advocate, NY Ecological Restoration Program Manager, and Peter B. Cooper Legal Fellow. If you’ve been planning to apply for one of those openings, please get your materials in soon!

Gandhi Peace Award presented to two via Zoom

Dr. Zaher Sahloul, co-winner of the Gandhi Peace Award with White Helmet Mayson Almisri, holding his medallion made from “peace bronze,” metal recycled from nuclear weapons facilities. The award was given Nov. 21, 2020 via a Zoom program and was recorded. A link to the event is at the Promoting Enduring Peace website pepeace.org.

From Sahloul’s Twitter page:

I will be dedicating the #Gandhi peace award to the doctors and nurses who were killed in #Syria while on duty including Dr. Hasan Alaaraj, Dr. Majed Bari Dr. Wasim Moaz and 930 other healthcare workers @PEPeace #Gandhiaward @P4HR @hrw @MedGlobalOrg @UNOCHA

Stanley Heller talks about the Gandhi Peace Award ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 21 which this year was given jointly to Syrian-American Dr. Zaher Sahloul of Chicago and Mayson Almisri of the Syria Civil Defense, honoring the brave work of Syrian medical and rescue workers. The public worldwide could view the ceremony on Zoom without charge. The link to register is at the website PEPeace.org.

Source: 2020 Gandhi Peace Award Honors Syrian Humanitarian Aid Workers – BTL

Is There Any Hope for the USA?

by Mazin Qumsiyeh, former New Haven human rights activist, currently teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities

When I lived in the US, I occasionally was shocked listening to right-wing talk shows like those of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity or the vulgar non-sense of Howard Stern & Jerry Springer. Hollywood movies glorified violence and vilified Arabs and Muslims. Owners of the corporations that ran these media had two agendas: making money and helping Zionism. Now Fox News owned by Zionist Murdoch is even outflanked on the right by Newsmax and One America News (essentially fascist in orientation)! It is very sad. Palestinian and other Arab Americans who were/are visible or tried to do something were targeted. I was one of those. If you want to read a little about this, see http://qumsiyeh.org/thecaseisclosed/ and the below [see popular-resistance.blogspot.com 7/30/03] from fellow academic Thomas Nagy who decided to leave the (perhaps hopeless) USA to live abroad in 2003. I left the US in 2008 not because of pressure but because I thought I could serve humanity better in Zionist-occupied Palestine than in Zionist-occupied USA. In retrospect, that was the best decision of my life. But I still care about the US where I have family and thousands of friends and followers.

The mass movements like Black Lives Matter remind us of the movements in the 1960s that did change the US (after much turmoil). But the establishment gurus learned from these things and are certainly far more entrenched today than say at the time of Nixon and Kissinger. Obama’s first appointment as president-elect was for Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a bigoted Zionist who put Israeli interests ahead of US interests. That is why in eight years, the Obama administration bombed many countries in the Arab world…

What is needed in the US is a system change so that politics respects the will of the people. The 350 million US citizens should not be forced by a rigged system to chose “the lesser of two evils”! The majority of citizens would not want the US to remain the “biggest purveyor of violence in the world” (words of Martin Luther King Jr.). They do not want billions of their tax money going to Israel.

[See popular-resistance.blogspot.com on Nov. 19, 2020 for the entire post reprinted here with permission from the author.]

CT Green Energy News — (11/20/20-Issue 193)

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).

New Study Shows Methane Leaks Prevalent In Connecticut Cities
WNPR. “We drill wells. We hydraulically fracture the wells. We pull the gas up. We process the gas. We store it. We then put it in high- transmission pipelines,” Howarth said. “We finally get toward cities and suburbs, where we put it into lower-pressure transmission pipelines, and the fact is, that methane is emitted at each and every one of those steps.”

Connecticut’s first dairy biogas project almost complete
Bioenergy Insight. “The new facility at Fort Hill Farms in Thompson will recycle food waste and manure into renewable energy and soil products. Once complete, the digester is expected to produce 550 kW of electricity and reduce 25,000 tons of organic waste annually.”

State approves 75-acre solar energy facility in Waterford
The Day. “The [Siting] council ruled that the project would not have a “substantial adverse environmental effect” and would not create unreasonable pollution or impair natural resources…[Save the River, Save the Hills] disagreed, citing the possible negative effects to local trout from clear-cutting the land. ‘We feel that the final stormwater mitigation plan is still inadequate to capture the runoff from 75 acres of clear-cut land.'”

Hotels Lag in Energy Sustainability. One Project May Change That.
New York Times. “The hotel industry has fallen behind other real estate sectors in adopting energy-efficiency measures, but a Connecticut developer hopes to change that by converting a [New Haven] office building into what could be the most energy-efficient hotel in the country.”

Please send us links to Connecticut clean energy stories and share the newsletter with others! E-mail [email protected] to be on our mailing list.

New Haven Peace Council Webinar on Syria from Damascus Friday Nov. 20

Please join the Peace Council’s upcoming webinar that updates the war on Syria and the vast propaganda campaign that promotes that war.

Join the free Webinar with independent journalist Vanessa Beeley from Damascus on Friday November 20, 4:00 PM Eastern for an update on the shooting, propaganda and economic war on Syria.

There are many advocates for US Imperialist aggression against the sovereignty of the Syrian people. They perpetuate the lies of the State Department and align themselves with the ultimate goal of overthrowing and replacing the Syrian government with a US puppet.

Yet a wealth of information exposes the details and personnel behind the policies that continue to bring such suffering to the Syrian people. This at a time when the Syrian people are successfully regaining their sovereignty and destiny.

Donald Trump’s and the United States’ credentials as humanitarian are pretty thin as the devastated peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, among others, would affirm. In its war to overthrow the Syrian government and replace it with a puppet regime, the US helped create and fund the White Helmets whose “links to extremist Salafi-jihadist groups, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, have been thoroughly documented. What’s more, the group has participated in recent Turkish onslaughts in northern Syria where Kurds and other minority groups faced ethnic cleansing.”

“Between 2013 and 2016, USAID donated at least $23 million to the group. The governments of Britain, France, Canada, the Netherlands, and Japan added tens of millions more to this substantial ‘humanitarian’ regime-change slush fund.”
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/28/trump-million-syria-jihadist-white-helmets

Join the free Webinar with independent journalist Vanessa Beeley from Damascus on Friday November 20, 4:00 PM Eastern for an update on the shooting, propaganda and economic war on Syria.

Attached is a flier with registration for the Webinar on Syria Friday, Nov. 20 at 4:00 PM Eastern.

Peace /\ Justice

Henry Lowendorf
Greater New Haven Peace Council
With the Hands Off Syria Coalition

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