LAST CALL! Use Your Creativity to Change the World (and this Newsletter)!

The Progressive Action Roundtable Planning Committee is happy to announce our first-ever contest for a bumpersticker and/or logo for our newsletter. What phrase or design would you want to see on the cars in front of you?

What logo for our newsletter would really speak to your sentiments of a better world? Depending on the number of entries, we estimate we will be able to announce a winner by June.

We are offering a $100 prize for the winning entry.

All entries must be in black and white, and be mailed to PAR, P.O. Box 995, New Haven, CT 06504.

Please include your name, address, phone number and e-mail address with your design. You do not need to be a subscriber to participate. Thanks!

Celebrate 35 Years with the Middle East Crisis Committee March 3

by Stanley Heller, chairperson, MECC

The Middle East Crisis Committee (MECC) is in its 35th year. MECC invites you to “Struggle, Resistance and Resili-ence in Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” a fund-raising party on Saturday, March 3 at 6 p.m. at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of New Haven, 608 Whitney Ave. Learn about Mazin Qumsiyeh’s efforts in building the Palestinian Natural History Museum in Bethlehem. There will be food, music, and video; auctions and door prizes are planned. $25 suggested donation.

For the past dozen years or so our biggest efforts have involved media. We have a weekly TV show on over 30 cable stations stretching from Maine to New York City. One focus of late on TheStruggle.org is Saudi Arabia (KSA) and its war against Yemen. Another focus is of efforts around the world to remember Syria. It’s called “2nd Day of Rage for Syria.” MECC stands for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and in support of Syrian civil society demands for ceasefire and honest elections.

‘Meditating in Troubled Times’ — A Talk by Dr. Paul R. Fleischman, March 5

by Aruna Pawashe, Lecturer, MBB and MCDB Dept., Yale

The Connecticut Vipassana is pleased to host the 4th Annual public talk by Dr. Paul R. Fleischman, MD entitled “Meditating in Troubled Times,” on Monday, March 5, at 4 p.m. It is free and open to the public and takes place at Yale Osborne Memorial Lab, Room 202, 165 Prospect St. For details and to register go to: bit.ly/YaleMeditationLecture.

Dr. Fleischman trained at Yale University and practiced psychiatry for over thirty years. He was appointed a teacher of Vipassana by S.N. Goenka. He has recently lectured at numerous universities in the U.S. as well as in many coun-tries around the world. This year at Yale, he will discuss troubled times on the minds of our students/audience and how meditation can retain its relevance, or even increase its relevance, when the world is so full of turmoil.

Reconstructing the Dream: March and Event Mark African American History Month 4 p.m. Feb. 25

by Joelle Fishman, CT People’s World

The 44th People’s World African American History Month Celebrations, “Reconstructing the Dream” will be keynoted by Rev. Scott Marks, director of New Haven Rising and co-founder of Connecticut Center for a New Economy. He will address the way forward for equality and justice in 2018, 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, and 150 years since W.E.B. DuBois was born. A national leader of Unite Here, Marks has organized people from all races, nationalities and genders to fight for their homes, jobs and communities. He is traveling the country to train new African American union leaders and is organizing the I AM 2018 effort to carry forward Dr. King’s legacy.

The event will be held on Sunday, Feb. 25 at 4 p.m. at Troup School, 259 Edgewood Ave, New Haven, CT 06511. Prior to the event, a march has been organized from the New Haven Peoples Center through the Dwight neighborhood to Troup School. The march, themed “Jobs for Youth, Jobs for All,” will remember neighborhood youth who have been killed, and is sponsored by Ice the Beef, New Elm City Dream/YCL and New Haven Rising.

The event will be opened with drumming by Brian Jarawa Gray. Prizes will be awarded in the Arts and Writing Competition Grades 8 through 12. Students were asked: “What lessons can we learn from Dr. King’s courageous life? What kind of collective action is needed in 2018 to carry his legacy forward? A video “Remembering Dalzenia Henry, Grace Cummings, Emma Fair” will honor the memory of three African American Communist women leaders in Connecticut. Ice the Beef will perform excerpts from King and DuBois.

A donation of $5 or what you can afford is requested. No one will be turned away

PAR Articles and Calendar Items Due Friday, Feb. 16

Dear Reader —

Others want to know:

  • What is the purpose of your organization?
  • How are you building your group?
  • What campaigns are you organizing?
  • What events are you planning?

The Progressive Action Roundtable want to publicize the work groups have done and what their future plans. We want to spread the word to others who will be inspired to join you, support your activism and build the struggles.

Send us your articles (even a paragraph or two) about what your group wants to do and any ideas for organizing!

The deadline for the March Progressive Action Roundtable Newsletter is Friday, Feb. 16. Please send to [email protected] articles about your group’s recent and current activities and upcoming actions and events.

Please limit your article to 350 words and include an enticing headline for your article so our readers will focus on your work right away. Be sure to indicate your name and organization as they should appear in your byline.

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IMPORTANT: Please include your organization’s contact information such as phone number, e-mail address or website, so our readers can get more information about what your group is doing.

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Please indicate whether your event location is wheelchair accessible.

You can also send us SAVE THE DATE items about future events, even if you do not yet have all the details in place.

The Newsletter will come out approximately Wednesday, Feb. 28. Please consider this when submitting calendar items.

Here are other suggestions about submitting copy to the PAR Newsletter:

1. If you ask or encourage new groups to submit articles or calendar items to PAR, please give them a copy of these tips.

2. Submit copy by e-mail, either as regular text or as an MS Word or attachment (.doc or .docx).

3. If you are a first-time author for the PAR Newsletter, thank you! We hope you will subscribe and encourage others in your organization to do so.

4. If you know of someone who wants to write an article but does not use e-mail, send an e-mail to us with that person’s name and phone number or call Paula at (203) 562-2798.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT INSERTS:

We prefer to carry articles and calendar listings rather than inserts. But if you have an insert to include in the Newsletter, we ask you to send the information contained in the flyer to this e-mail address as well so that it can be easily added to the PAR calendar.

Your organization must make and pay for the inserts. We will be able to handle only those inserts that are a full sheet (8.5 x 11) or half-sheet (8.5 x 5.5) of paper. We cannot accept postcards or cardstock flyers. There is a fee of $7 for inserts.

Please call Paula at (203) 562-2798 if you want an insert in the next newsletter.

E-mail us if you’d to join our monthly planning meetings or help with the mailings. We always welcome more helpers and new ideas!

Many thanks! We’re looking forward to your articles!

Thank you for your help in creating this community newsletter

— PAR Planning Committee

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PAR, P.O. Box 995, New Haven, CT 06504

Thousands March Against Trump and Demand Equality

by LouAnn Villani, JVPNH and MECC

By a very rough count 10,000 women and male allies and their daughters marched and rallied in Hartford’s Capitol at the “Women’s March CT, Rise and Resist 2018.” I stood with members of Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven, the Middle East Crisis Committee and the Tree of Life Educational Foundation holding banners about imprisoned Palestinian women and watched people pass by us for 50 minutes.

There were lots of signs and banners with a funny and vulgar mix that mocked Donald Trump. There was a drawing of a uterus with the words “This Machine Kills Fascists.” Another very colorful sign said, “Elect a Clown, You Get a Circus.” A good number worked off his notorious “sh**hole” remark. One had a picture of Trump being flushed down a toilet.

A lot of signs were pro-immigrants and #BlackLivesMatter, including one large banner. Other signs were about elections, “Grab Them by the Midterms” and “I’m a Nasty Woman and I Vote.” Throughout the march, there were supporters of Planned Parenthood and women’s right to choose.

One sign I liked said “I March Because Silence Is Not an Option. I Will Not Be Complicit.” Several had the words ‘I Stand With Her” next to a photo of the Statue of Liberty. Many had the words “I Will Not Go Quietly Back to 1950s #Resist.”

For chants, a Latino contingent was loudest and most enthusiastic. And like last year people yelled, “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Donald Trump Has Got to Go,” “We Need a Leader, Not a Creepy Tweeter,” “Dump Trump” and “This is What Democracy Looks Like.”

Our banners had drawings and a photo of Ahed Tamimi, the 16-year-old Palestinian girl whom the Israelis arrested a month ago and are threatening to put in jail for years for slapping a heavily-armed Israeli soldier. Perhaps 100 people commented in support and took photos of us. We also gave out 1,000 half-page flyers which were snapped up in less than 30 minutes.

The march was fantastic, and we sent word of what we did to the Tamimi family in Palestine.

Black History Month Events at the Wilson Library

by Marian Huggins, New Haven Free Public Library

This year’s Black History Month theme for the library fea-tures two prominent writers: James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. Along with partners from Project Longevity, we will show the film I Am Not Your Negro, a work adapted from an unfinished James Baldwin manuscript. The screening will be held at the Wilson Branch, 303 Washington Ave., New Haven, on Saturday, Feb. 3 at 2 p.m.

James Baldwin, described as an “American Novelist and Social Critic,” unearths the hard truths about racism in America while describing his responses to the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X.

Langston Hughes, whose birthday by the way is Feb. 1, was a prolific poet and social activist as well. His writing could be biting, but was usually cloaked either in humor (as in the Jesse B. Semple Stories) or softened by the hopefulness of a future when all would be accepted, like in the poem “I, Too”:

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series will feature a biography of Langston Hughes for our February meeting, Feb. 24 at noon. New readers are welcome and readers can choose whatever biography (or autobiography) written for teens and adults they’d like to read for the discussion. The Langston Hughes biography is in conjunction with our Black History Month celebration and it fits in with the cultural and social justice theme of the discussion group. The book discussion will be followed by the film Hughes’ Dream Harlem at 1:30 p.m.  Wilson Branch, New Haven Free Public Library, 303 Washington Ave., (203) 946-2228.

My Homeless Diary I, II and III

by Wendy Hamilton, advocate for the homeless

I

It’s Saturday morning, and I’m sitting on my couch reading EVICTED by Matthew Desmond. An hour ago I had bought DD coffee at the train station and watched at least a dozen homeless men and women trying to sleep upright on the benches. They are not allowed to recline or unfold. I recognize some of them. The scene is heartbreaking.

Yesterday a skinny homeless teenager wearing only a cotton shirt and a dirty blanket walked through the station. I offered him money, but he refused.

Every day I meet new faces on the street and greet old ones. I pass out small amounts of money to a few knowing that at best it will buy some time in a warm place. I fantasize organizing a small group of these folks to sit with me every day in the mayor’s office (large waiting room) to shame the city into doing something. There are large empty buildings with heat including City Hall right in the center of New Haven.

The “shelters” are inadequate and awful, away from the city center. Yale Corporation and the city and the city hospital exclude the homeless and even though there are charities and outlets for food and clothing, the most important tool for survival, housing, is denied. We all lose our humanity as a result.

II

New Year’s Day — temp is 14F — I walk to the train station for coffee at 8 a.m. Amongst the homeless trying to rest is an elderly white man, scabs on his face, babbling and grimacing, wearing only a thin jacket and PAPER pants, no hat. I ask one of the station police to call an ambulance telling him I am a nurse, and he tells me one just dropped this man off. “He was discharged.” We looked at each other.

I then walked the mile to YNHH ER off York St. It was 9 a.m. and holiday-quiet. Two nurses stood by the reception desk, and I asked for the name of the head doctor of the ER. One of these women wore a vest that said Jessica, Emergency. She started to write down the useless number for “patient relations.” I said I wanted a name so I could write a letter of complaint. She refused and called the two hospital guards (private police) who grabbed me under the armpits and threw me out the front door. Two women patients near the entrance saw this. Luckily I landed on my feet. One cop, C. Larson, told me to get off hospital property.

Later that day I wrote a letter to Dr. Gail D’Onofrio, head medical doctor for the ER at YNHH. No reply so far.

I also found out via the internet that a Baltimore psycho-therapist named Imamu Baraka had a similar experience in his city. Homeless people are denied medical care and hospital admission. I am a witness.

III

Bad news: In January, at a community board meeting, I learned “MC,” Mark Cochran, had died before the holidays. You can read his story in the New Haven Independent at http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/lead_march_cochran. He was 55, a beer drinker and a chain smoker, small of stature, friendly, and a lifelong local. He succumbed to 20 years of homelessness, slogging through heat and cold until it killed him along with his habits.

Yale New Haven Hospital refused to admit him for more than two days. YNHH might have given him more time literally and figuratively. I told them he needed a long stay on a locked down detox ward before he could get housing of any kind. I did mention a heart problem and possible skin disease. I was shown the door. Two days later he was back on Chapel Street.

He was also failed by the local housing system which insists on rules, regulations, and endless delays before subsidized housing is granted or made available. It is slow torture. Even Kafka would be shocked by its cruel complexity.

Good news: I met a young homeless man who is going to Gateway Nursing School, and I offered to help. And Bea C. who is head of SWAN (Sex Workers Allies Network) has been traveling to other cities, networking, and has expanded that group, I found out. Most New Haven sex workers are homeless people.

Teach-In Feb 24: Explore the Toughest Questions Facing the Climate Movement

by 350CT and Sierra Club

On Saturday, February 24, noon to 6 p.m. at the Ernest O. St. Jacques Auditorium, Elmwood Community Center, 1106 New Britain Ave., West Hartford (entrance via South Quaker Lane and then to Burgoyne Street) come to a Teach-In: For a Livable World! Climate Justice Now! Hear experts and activists exploring some of the toughest questions facing the climate movement. Speakers include:
Jacqueline Patterson, Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United since 2007. She is also a researcher and program manager, working on women‘s rights, violence against women, HIV&AIDS, racial and economic justice.
Anne L. Hendrixson, Director of Population and Development Programs at Hampshire College. She has examined the gendered and racialized ways that environmental thinkers have framed population in relation to resource scarcity, food insecurity, conflict and violence, environmental degradation and climate change.

Sean Sweeney, Director of the International Program on Labor, Climate & Environment at the Murphy Institute, City University of New York and coordinator of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, a global network of 42 unions from 16 countries.

Martha Klein, Chapter Chair of the Sierra Club of Connecticut, and a leader in the fight to stop the use and transport by pipeline of climate-wrecking fracked gas in our state.

Alexis Rodriquez, Fairfield representative of the Connecticut Puerto Rican Agenda and an advocate of decolonization. He has been involved with hurricane relief efforts and the campaign against coal ash dumping in Penuelas.

Cynthia Jennings, environmental and civil rights attorney and a councilwoman in Hartford. She has brought the issue of environmental justice in Hartford to national attention.

Workshops include: Become a Citizen Lobbyist for the Spring 2018 Legislative Session; What Would an Independent Mass Action Strategy Look Like?; The Fight for a Green, De-Colonized Puerto Rico; Fight for Green Affordable Mass Transit; Nuclear Power is NOT Renewable!; Get Your Town to Commit to 100% Renewable This Year!

For more information: 350CT at (203) 350-3508 or email [email protected].

Sierra Club of CT 860-542-5225 or [email protected].

By Our Presence, We Grieve Those Who Have Been Killed

By Allie Perry, Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice

If you happened to walk by New Haven’s 1905 Civil War memorial at the Broadway triangle New Year’s Day 2018 at 6 p.m., you might have wondered why, in freezing cold temperatures, a group of eleven was gathered around a cairn of field stones. They were there giving witness and calling attention to the on-going violence of the U.S. wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, by adding yet another stone to the cairn. Each stone is a memorial, inscribed with the number of U.S. service people who died in the previous month in Iraq and Afghanistan and with the approximate number of Iraqi and Afghan civilians killed. Each month the cairn gets higher and heavier, as the cumulative death tolls go up.

This monthly observance began in December 2007. Stephen Kobasa proposed the memorial and secured the New Haven Board of Park Commissioners’ permission to construct it. Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice provided the leadership, inviting local faith communities to lead the monthly rituals. Over the decade since, members of many New Haven area congregations have participated, including: St. Thomas More, First Presbyterian, Amistad Catholic Worker, Center Church, the University Church, Unitarian Society of New Haven, the Zen Center, Shalom UCC, Church of the Redeemer, Congregation Mishkan Israel, United Church on the Green, First Unitarian Universalist Society of New Haven, St. Paul and St. James, Ascension Catholic Church in Hamden, St. Thomas Episcopal.

At that first gathering, stones were placed, retroactively, documenting every month since the March 2003 start of the U.S. war against Iraq. Initially the inscribed numbers included deaths only in Iraq. As the hostilities in Afghanistan escalated, we started inscribing the stones with data for Afghanistan as well.

The permission granted in 2007 was for a temporary installation, to be dismantled when the wars end. Ten years later the violence continues, the wars persist, and, on every first Monday of the month, a group still gathers. By our presence, we grieve those who have been killed, we denounce the violence, and we renew our commitment to work fervently for the end of war and for justice and peace. Join us.

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