Help Ensure that No One Goes Hungry on Thanksgiving

Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK)

For 30 years, DESK has partnered with Interfaith Volunteer Care Givers, Yale Hospitality, and others to deliver meals to people in need on Thanksgiving morning. This year, we’re determined to get at least 850 meals out on Thanksgiving morning. In addition, we will once again be providing plenty of Thanksgiving food — including TURKEYS! — at our weekly pantry on the Wednesday before the holiday.
Help us make Thanksgiving special for those in need in the community by donating frozen turkeys, reusable shopping bags, boxed stuffing, and any of the following canned items: green beans, yams, cranberry sauce and corn.

Frozen turkeys should be dropped off on Sunday, Nov. 13, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at 311 Temple St. All other donations can be dropped off during our regular drop-off hours, Sun.-Thurs., 1-4 p.m. through Nov. 20. Questions? Email us at donate@deskct.org or call 203-624-6426, ext. 6137.

Your financial support will ensure that DESK can serve those in need on Thanksgiving and all year round! Show your support and we’ll be able to purchase supplies to keep everyone safe and protected during these difficult times. Questions? Send us an email at donate@deskct.org or call 203-624-6426, ext. 8778.

We have a number of volunteer spots this year. If you’d like to help onsite (sorting donations, packing meals, organizing our shelves), please email Ashley at volunteer@deskct.org or call 203-624-6426, ext. 6170. If you’d like to be one of our drivers and deliver meals to homes, please sign up at ivcg.typeform.com/driveturkeys22. If you can’t volunteer for Thanksgiving, please don’t forget that we need your help 52 weeks per year!

Our mailing address is:
Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen
PO Box 1478
New Haven, CT 06506-1478

Randy Cox Sues City, Police for $100M

Thomas Breen, New Haven Independent, Sept. 27, 2022

Richard “Randy” Cox’s lawyers have filed a civil lawsuit in federal court against the city and five New Haven police officers seeking $100 million in damages for the cops’ alleged violations of the paralyzed 36-year-old New Havener’s constitutional rights.

Wallingford-based attorneys R.J. Weber III and Lou Rubano filed that long-expected federal lawsuit Tuesday morning in the U.S. District Court, District of Connecticut.

At noon, Weber and Rubano joined nationally prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, Cox’s mother Doreen Coleman and sister Latoya Boomer, state NAACP President Scot X. Esdaile and local chapter President Dori Dumas, and a host of other civil rights advocates and supporters for a press conference on the front steps of City Hall to detail the allegations of that complaint.

The 29-page lawsuit…accuses New Haven Police Officers Oscar Diaz, Ronald Pressley, Jocelyn Lavandier and Luis Rivera and Sgt. Betsy Segui of violating Cox’s 4th and 14th Amendment constitutional rights for their roles in an incident that led to Cox suffering severe injuries to his neck and spine while in police custody on June 19.

It also accuses those officers of recklessness, negligence, and excessive force. It claims that the city should be held liable for the officers’ actions, and for not ensuring Cox’s safety after his arrest.

Cox, meanwhile, remains paralyzed from the chest down and is now back in the hospital because of the injuries he sustained during that incident.

“As a direct and proximate result of the aforesaid actions of the defendants, Cox has suffered and continues to suffer great physical and emotional pain, including but not limited to mental anguish, frustration, and anxiety over the fact that he was and remains seriously injured,” one section of the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit continues: “As a direct result of the aforesaid actions of the defendants, Cox has, and will in the future, incur expenses for hospital, physicians, physical therapy, and other related expenses as a result of his injuries.”

[Read the entire article at www.newhavenindependent.org/article/cox_lawsuit]

PURA Establishes Low-Income Utility Rate

Julie Martin Banks, CT News Junkie, Oct. 19, 2022

The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority today established a two-tiered discount rate to help provide relief for low-income Connecticut residents who have trouble affording electricity. PURA Vice Chairman Jack Betkoski said the decision was a momentous one that will help ease the pain for Connecticut families who are currently facing a variety of rising costs.

“I think this is a step toward assisting those individuals that are having difficulty quite frankly putting food on the table,” Betkoski said. The final decision unanimously adopted by the three-member commission requires Eversource and United Illuminating to each implement a discount rate with an overall eligibility cap at 60% of the state median income (Tier 1), and eligibility for Tier 2 aligned with existing state benefit programs (up to 160% federal poverty guidelines).

PURA has determined that those who qualify for Tier 1 will receive a 10% discount applied to their monthly bill, while those who fall into Tier 2 will receive a 50% discount to their total monthly bill, according to the decision.

Those who qualify will be able to participate in existing energy assistance, arrearage forgiveness, renewable energy, and energy efficiency programs, the decision states.

The companies will start accepting applications by August 2023 and will be required to create a communications plan to notify and educate eligible residential customers. PURA will re-evaluate the discounted rates every two years as part of its annual energy affordability review process. The first review of the discounted rates will be conducted in 2025.

PURA Chairwoman Marissa P. Gillett […] said the decision is a reflection of PURA digging into the topic of affordability and its recognition of the societal impacts of losing electricity.

It’s also a move to reduce uncollectibles – collecting outstanding amounts from delinquent accounts. “The goal of minimizing uncollectibles is one that helps us all,” she said.

[Read the entire article at ctnewsjunkie.com/2022/10/19/pura-decision-establishes-low-income-rate]

Fair Rent Commission Okays New Tenants’ Union Rules

Laura Glesby, New Haven Independent, Oct. 19, 2022

Local tenants’ unions now have an official path forward for being recognized by the city in order to participate in housing-related investigations, thanks to the Fair Rent Commission’s adoption of a new set of union-related rules.

The commissioners unanimously approved those rules and regulations Tuesday night during their latest regular online monthly meeting.

The now-adopted rules pertaining to tenants’ unions flesh out a renter-power law recently approved by the Board of Alders. Thanks to the alder-approved law and the Fair Rent Commission-approved regulations, tenants’ unions are now able to:

  • officially register with the city;
  • designate a representative (who may or may not be a fellow tenant of the complex);
  • launch a public investigation from the Fair Rent Commission office into housing conditions at the apartment complex in question; and
  • have a representative assist union members in filing an individual fair rent complaint.

The regulations stop short of allowing tenants’ unions to collectively appear before the Fair Rent Commission with a complaint about rent or living conditions within individual units. They also require tenants’ unions to have their registration forms notarized before submitting them to the city.

[Read the entire article at www.newhavenindependent.org/article/fair_rent_recognizes_tenant_unions]

Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide

Based in Connecticut, we oppose medical assisted suicide from the perspective of disability justice and human rights. Medical assisted suicide is a threat to the poor, disabled, people of color and the elderly. These are the people who now are marginalized and devalued in the system of healthcare as we know it today. They stand the greatest danger of being further victimized by medical assisted suicide.

Currently, one’s finances and insurance coverage determine the help that one receives, whether for medical treatments, mental health support, assistive equipment, personal care attendants, a secure living situation, improved palliative care, pain management, enhanced hospice care, etc. Members of Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide have seen firsthand the insistence with which some in the medical community deem people not worthy of treatment because there would “only be another hospital admission down the road,” or “they have no quality of life” because they are disabled or elderly. We have heard medical people try to inflict guilt on patients for staying alive, implying, or stating directly, that they should “think of how much they’re making their families suffer” by continuing treatments and “dragging out the inevitable.”

Supporters of medical assisted suicide often claim that their only opposition comes from the ultraconservative “religious fringe.” This is simply wrong. As progressives, we recognize that this is a human justice issue that lies at the heart of what kind of society we want to live in.

Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide supports LGBTQIA people’s rights and women’s reproductive rights. If you also believe in fighting for the human, civil and economic rights of LGBTQIA people and for reproductive justice, organize with us in ending euthanasia and medical assisted suicide where they exist, and in preventing their legalization elsewhere.

Let us share information and build a progressive, disability justice and human rights-based movement to end medical assisted suicide and euthanasia. Email us at: progressivesagainstmas@hotmail.com.

Memorial Event Set For George Edwards

Read the full story here in the New Haven Independent

New Haveners will have a chance to share their memories of the late Black Panther and social justice advocate George Edwards at an event set for Saturday, Oct. 29.

Edwards, possibly the most spied-on and messed-with activist in town and an omnipresence at public events, died Sept. 16 at the age of 85. (Read a full story about his life here.)

The memorial event in his honor will take place at the Dixwell Q House on Dixwell Avenue. It is scheduled to run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

His daughter Elizabeth Dickerson asks anyone wishing to speak at the event to contact her in advance at liz_dickerson@sbcglobal.net.

Attendees are also encouraged to bring gently used clothing to the event to be distributed to the needy.

This GoFundMe drive has been established to help pay for funeral costs. Some money will also go toward placing Edwards’ name on a brick at the Q House

Groups March and Rally for Palestine

by Stanley Heller, Middle East Crisis Committee

On Sept. 19, the groups that organized the protest for Palestine last month were joined by students from Wesleyan’s Students for Justice in Palestine.

Again we stood on a corner in the center of Middletown with signs and banners, chanting led by activists with bull horns. We featured signs about the recent Israeli report whitewashing their killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and again talked about the massacre of people in early August in Gaza. We also had signs calling for the shaming of both Connecticut Senators and our five members of Congress for their blind support of Israeli apartheid. Two signs had photos of two children who died because Israel would not let them leave Gaza for medical treatment. Judging by the number of honks from passersby our reception was even more friendly than in August.

Photo: Stanley Heller

About 70 of us marched on the sidewalks down to the City Green, displaying the signs and banners and being urged on by chanting led by some very young members of the Omar Islamic Center.

On the Green we had 7 or 8 speakers including Marwan Hameed, a former Iraqi diplomat, and Laura Schliefer of Promoting Enduring Peace. We opened up two banners created ten years ago to commemorate the mass murder of at least 1300 Palestinians and Lebanese in the Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon in September 1982. They had been ordered into the camps by Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, supposedly to look for “terrorists.”

Ms. Schliefer was later interviewed on WPKN’s “Mic Check” for a half-hour. The interviewer was Mike Merli. We need more protests for Palestine like this all around Connecticut.

To see video and photos of the protest, go to thestrugglevideo.org. For more info on how to be involved, email mail@thestruggle.org or call 203-444-3578.

NO New Tridents: The Campaign Against the Columbia Ballistic Missile Submarine

by Stephen Kobasa, NO New Tridents Campaign

Seventy-seven years after the horrors visited upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the first use of nuclear weapons, the United States continues to construct new threats to all creation.

Machines age, and grow useless. The Trident ballistic missile submarines are no exception. First put into service in 1981, they are approaching the end of their expected operational life. But instead of allowing them to simply pass into obsolescence and remove the threat which they pose to all creation, our government is undertaking to replace them with a new weapon to assure that the threat continues without intermission.

The Columbia class of submarines has been described as the Navy’s top priority program, which will be funded even if that comes at the expense of other Navy programs. Each sub will carry sixteen missile tubes, eight fewer than the current Ohio-class Tridents, but will also have updated propulsion and stealth capabilities which will magnify their threat. They will initially carry the existing Trident II D-5 missile, but designs for both a new missile and warhead are now underway.

Plans are for the production of twelve boats at a projected cost that is presently estimated at $103 to $109 billion. Initial construction has already begun at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, with final assembly to take place at Electric Boat in Groton, CT, beginning this year, ahead of schedule. A new facility for that exclusive purpose is now being built in the Groton shipyard.

At a time when the consequences of global warming and pandemic are being experienced in the lives of all humanity on a daily basis, we condemn the reckless and immoral commitment of human creativity and treasure to these weapons which threaten to erase all creation, and by their mere existence deny fundamental rights to human freedom and community. It is obviously clear that they would constitute a crime against both humanity and the environment.

The NO New Tridents campaign proposes to undertake programs of public education, lobbying and nonviolent civil disobedience calling for the immediate abandonment of the Columbia submarine, and the diversion of funds set aside for its construction to policies that will realize the rights of all the world’s people to healthcare, housing, education, income equity and racial justice.

The Norfolk Catholic Worker will be the primary organizer around the Newport News Shipyard, while the Hartford Catholic Worker will coordinate the witness at Electric Boat.

Contacts: Jackie Allen-Doucot, purplehousecw@gmail.com, Stephen Kobasa, stephen.kobasa@gmail.com.

Cuban UN Ambassadors Visit to Connecticut

by Henry Lowendorf, Greater NH Peace Council and Millie Grenough, City of NH Peace Commission

Perhaps the highest level Cuban diplomatic delegation just visited Connecticut since Fidel Castro stopped at New Haven’s Union Station on his way to Boston in 1959. On September 9 and 10, Cuban United Nations Ambassadors Pedro Luis Pedroso and Yuri A. Gala made the extraordinary trip to Connecticut to celebrate the passage of two resolutions by two major city councils that call on the United States to end its illegal 62-year blockade of Cuba.

Photo: Paul Bloom

Their appearance was also the occasion to encourage further such resolutions and various collaborations between Connecticut and Cuba.

“Extraordinary” because the US blockade extends its economic and political war on Cuba to limiting the movement of Cuban diplomats at the UN to a small radius of Manhattan, violating the agreement by the US to honor the right of UN representatives to travel freely. Permission to travel to CT was based on a formal invitation by the CT state legislature, led by Representative Edwin Vargas of Hartford.

The two anti-blockade resolutions were passed respectively by the Court of Common Council of Hartford in 2021 and the New Haven Board of Alders in 2022.

Overall, the Cuban delegation to Connecticut was organized by Wallingford resident, Cuban-American José Oro, a leader of No Embargo Cuba, along with a large coalition of Cuba solidarity and peace activists from around the state. Oro described one glaring effect of the blockade as preventing Cuba from obtaining ventilators from Switzerland to provide life-giving oxygen to seriously ill Covid-19 patients because a small percentage of ventilator parts are manufactured in the US. Despite the blockade, Cuba was able to develop three successful vaccines. The global solidarity movement was called on to provide syringes, another item blocked from Cuba.

The first stop for the delegation was a working breakfast at Quinnipiac University where President Judy Olian welcomed the Ambassadors, who spoke on the priority that Cuba has given to education, the cost of which is fully covered from elementary school through college.

Quinnipiac Professors Mohammad Elahee, Matthew O’Connor and Osman Kilic explored the possibilities for faculty and student exchanges, micro-lending, small-business and sustainable development, and medicine and health.

Following Quinnipiac University the delegation met state and Hartford city legislative leaders and Cuba solidarity activists in the State Capitol, City Hall and the union office of Local 1199.

On Sept. 10 the delegation arrived in Willimantic to meet with state Rep. Susan Johnson, City Council member Emmanuel Pérez, Professor Ricardo Pérez of Eastern CT State University, Black Lives Matter leader James Flores, and leaders of the Willimantic Rainbow Connection, Power UP-Coventry and Veterans for Peace. Subsequent actions are planned to develop a sister city relationship and to pass a no-blockade resolution by the Willimantic City Council. Middletown and Hamden are exploring similar resolutions.

On Saturday afternoon the New Haven Free Public Library welcomed the Ambassadors who spoke and answered questions from a large audience. José Oro [aforementioned organizer and Wallingford resident] announced a new effort to reverse the cruel and false US listing of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.

At a farewell gathering, Joelle Fishman, Acting Chair of the City of New Haven Peace Commission, presented gifts from New Haven to the Ambassadors. Al Marder and Henry Lowendorf from the Peace Council, and John Lugo from Unidad Latina en Acción expressed gratitude to the Ambassadors for strengthening the human connection with New Haven and Connecticut. Jesus Puerto, owner of Soul de Cuba Café provided delicious Cuban dishes to nurture the relationship.

 

George Edwards, Black Panther and Lifelong Revolutionary July 31, 1937-Sept. 16, 2022

Our deepest condolences to the family and friends of George Edwards, an extraordinary and compassionate activist. Many, if not most, of PAR’s readers, worked with him on justice and community issues in New Haven. In almost six decades, we have no doubt he touched the lives of tens of thousands of New Haven residents, activists and Yale students. “The students are here for only four years and then they go all over the world. I’m going to train them to be activists while I have this chance.” He was a mentor to many and held steadfast to the principles of the original Black Panthers. In addition to his work in the Black Panther Party, he played a core role in New Haven’s struggle against apartheid in South Africa, organized many annual May Day celebrations on the New Haven Green, spoke out and organized against police brutality, was a supporter of Palestinian rights, demonstrated against the various wars, bombings and invasions the U.S. carried out — Panama, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, etc., demanded the release of Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal and all other U.S. political prisoners, had a weekly show on CTV where he introduced viewers to activism, history and the current events of the day and taught them how to analyze, protested against nuclear power, was an AIDS-prevention activist and worked at the New Haven Needle Exchange Project, and when the pandemic began, he gave out masks, condoms, water bottles and gloves to people from his front porch. This is a brief description of the work he did and the causes he took on.

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