Preserving Kensington Playground: Why it Matters

Jane Comins, Friends of Kensington Playground

Kensington Playground will continue to be a playground! Thanks to everyone who supported this effort. Our focus now shifts to making it a great space for the children of Dwight. This summer we planted shrubs and perennials in the park with our URI [Urban Resources Initiative] intern. We are surveying community members to set the agenda for major improvements to the playground. We continue to host family-friendly events in the park, such as our upcoming Pumpkin Festival on October 28. We will also continue our campaign to make sure the City has at least one fully equipped public playground in every neighborhood, as more than half of New Haven neighborhoods are missing equipment.

Please join Friends of Kensington Playground on Thursday, Oct. 5, 2023, from 6-8 p.m., at St. Paul’s UAME Church’s Fellowship Hall, 150 Dwight Street, for a conversation about “Preserving Kensington Playground: Why It Matters.” Speakers for the event include Attorney Keith Ainsworth, Dr. Robert Dubrow of the Yale School of Public Health, and Walker Holmes of The Trust for Public Land. Look for details of our event in the calendar.

If you can, please help us retire our debt for the cost of the lawsuit. You can learn more about our efforts here:  https://www.kensingtonplayground.org.

Picket Line Report: Meriden NBT School Bus Drivers’ Strike

Eric Goodman, Socialist Revolution New Haven 

The picket line was set up before dawn on Friday, Sept. 1, 2023, by Teamsters Local 671 workers and their supporters. The atmosphere was tense as cars whizzed along Route 5 outside New Britain Transportation in the chilly air. A few scabs, drivers, and office workers hopped the curb before the picketers knew what was happening, but the line was soon extended to block all access. We marched, chanted, and drank coffee to stay warm while other Teamsters arrived from locals as far away as Boston.

Most of the school bus drivers on the line made less than $20/hour and were given fewer than 40 hours a week despite years of work. One woman described how they were given one unpaid bereavement day a year, and how if they took it they would lose an attendance bonus. Their job requires both a CDL and the patience of a saint, but they had reached their tolerance.

Ten or so police officers arrived on cue as the scab buses pulled up the driveway. Eighty-strong picketers formed a marching whirlpool to block the drivers. Some strikers broke off to variously cajole the scabs to turn off their vehicles and insult their integrity. The near-complete strike involved all but five or six drivers, who, I was informed, hardly ever showed up to work normally. How much was the betrayal of these Judases bought for?

We held them back for a good half an hour. “We’re letting two out!” yelled one of the union officials, and the police started shoving workers out of the way. “Get back! We talked to them!” A Teamster officer in a white fleece and khakis pinched my arm and pulled me back as I took my time getting away from a departing bus.

The wind went out of the strikers’ sails as first one more bus and then the rest of the buses were let through the line after perfunctory delays. Still, the strike had done its job. After one more day of striking, the triumphant drivers won a 6% wage increase and the company lost its district bussing contract. tsoc

CT Green Energy News

Number 340, Sept. 15, 2023

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). For more information, visit www.pacecleanenergy.org.

Lawmakers: What’s the hullabaloo on electric rates and what does it mean for you?

Hartford Courant. Many folks have been watching with rapt attention as a Connecticut public utility company and its surrogates tried to undermine the current electric rate case, suggesting it is “punitive,” “an overreach,” or “lacking constitutionality.”…We would argue that for decades utility companies have benefited from opacity caused by the complexity of ratemaking…Throughout the recent conversation, pundits have tried to impugn the credibility or competence of Public Utility Regulatory Authority leadership, with surrogates suggesting, without citation, that PURA is the worst-ranked regulatory authority in the nation. But – worse for whom? Certainly not the ratepayers. …As pundits, surrogates, and talking heads try to suggest that what is happening under PURA in current pending dockets will have negative effects, we’re reading something different between those lines. They are scared. Scared of lost profits. Scared of accountability. And scared of what this ruling’s success will mean not if, but when, it is replicated nationally.”

Honoring Ali El-Issa: A Legacy of Justice, Peace, and Sovereignty.” 6-8 p.m. Friday Sept. 29, 2023, SCSU

After our September newsletter was printed, we received notice from the Women’s and Gender Studies Department of SCSU of this event honoring Ali El-Issa. We want to make sure you know about this.
Best wishes, the PAR Planning Committee

Please save the date and join us for a special event “Honoring Ali El-Issa: A Legacy of Justice, Peace, and Sovereignty.” 6-8 p.m. Friday Sept. 29, 2023 in ASC Rm 301.

RSVP here: bit.ly/RSVPHonoringAli   or scan QR code on flyer.

Co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace – New Haven, Middle East Crisis Committee, Peace Development Fund, and the Women’s & Gender Studies Department at Southern Connecticut State University.

Title: Honoring Ali El-Issa: A Legacy of Justice, Peace, and Sovereignty
Date: Friday, 9/29/2023
Time: 6-8 p.m.
Location: Adanti Student Center, 3rd Floor, Rm 301. Southern Connecticut State University, 501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515

The Women’s & Gender Studies (WGS) Department at Southern Connecticut State University invites you to join us as we celebrate and honor our long-time friend, Ali Saleh El-Issa (1952-2022), who passed to the spirit world early on the morning of September 27th, 2022, at home after a brief illness.

Leaders and Elders from a multitude of Indigenous communities will be in attendance, as well as family, with speakers from American Indian Community House, Jewish Voice for Peace – New Haven, Middle East Crisis Committee, the Palestinian community, Peace Development Fund, and members of the WGS community.

A proud son of Palestine, born in exile and educated in Lebanon, East Germany, and Cuba, Ali was active in the Palestinian liberation movement locally and internationally, as well as all struggles for liberation and sovereignty in Indigenous communities around the world. Many, including WGS members, consider Ali a member of their communities working towards justice and peace. Following the death of his wife Ingrid in 1999, Ali founded and became the President and C.E.O. of the Flying Eagle Woman Fund for Peace, Justice, and Sovereignty, to honor Ingrid’s life and carry on her work on behalf of the Indigenous Peoples of the world as well as her home community, the Menominee Nation, in the state of Wisconsin. WGS established a student service award in Ingrid’s name in 2004. Ali never failed to show up and support our student recipients of the Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa Service Award.

Upon his first anniversary, WGS shares the resolve as articulated in the tribute published after his death to do our best to carry on with and honor his legacy of peace and justice: ‘The world mourns the tremendous loss of a fierce and fiercely loving leader/brother/mentor in Ali, now a warrior ancestor. His global community will miss him profoundly, and we will do our best to carry on with his legacy and his work, and to hold his and Ingrid’s memories in the light. They were always in service of the people, from all walks of life, in grief and in hope.’

We hope you can join us for this special event honoring Ali’s life and legacy.

Contact WGS Dept. with any questions via email at wgs@southernct.edu or call our office at 203-392-6133.

The Freedom to Read, Speak and Dissent Is Essential to Our Democracy. Take action 4-5:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 29

If you’re concerned about censorship and the curtailment of the free flow of ideas in the United States, please join this action:

Friday Sept. 29, 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Yale’s Sterling Library, The New Haven Free Public Library and Yale’s Beinecke Plaza

Current threats to libraries and librarians are a sign of democracy in peril. This project is a participatory expression of the Freedom to Read statement originally written by and for librarians and publishers in 1953 and updated in 2023. This project is a rally presenting selected fragments from this timely manifesto.

The event will begin in the vicinity of Yale’s main Sterling Memorial Library, continue to the New Haven Free Public Library and culminate at the Beinecke Library, to coincide with a reception for the exhibition Art, Protest, and the Archives, a collection of artifacts documenting myriad voices of dissent throughout the past century.

4 p.m. Participants congregate at the Women’s Table fountain near the entrance to Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library (120 High St.), pick up signs, each containing a word from selected fragments of the Freedom to Read statement. These words combine to make short statements about censorship, free expression and Democracy.

Participants display their signs in a march — led by local drummers — from Sterling Library to the New Haven Free Public Library (133 Elm Street) and finally to Beinecke Plaza (119 Wall Street).

At the Public Library and then at Beinecke Plaza, participants compose their choice of phrases using the texts provided.

5 p.m. With a drum roll, the participants use supplied prompts to compose the actual phrases from the Freedom to Read statement. The event ends with participants silently encircling Beinecke Library, then placing the signs as readable texts against the Noguchi wall.

Over the next few days, the public can re-order and alter the placards in whatever manner they choose, thereby creating new messages from new voices; an exercise in free speech.

5:30 p.m. Event ends; Beinecke reception continues until 7 p.m.

Conceived by Class Action Collective

Pamela Hovland pamela@pamelahovlanddesign.com
David Comberg dpcomberg@gmail.com
Tom Starr t.starr@neu.edu
Jackie Thaw thaw@thawstudio.com

New York City Climate March September 17

by Emma Willer, 350 CT

On Sunday, Sept. 17, thousands of climate activists will take to the streets of New York City to demand an end to fossil fuels. This action is strategically planned to take place three days before the UN Climate Ambition Summit, also happening in NYC. The march aims to amplify the urgent call for action against climate change and a transition to renewable energy.

A coalition of environmental organizations, Indigenous, youth, elderly, and social justice groups has organized the march. The demonstration will represent a powerful collection of voices demanding a sustainable future for all. Climate change is no longer a distant enemy, looming in the future. It is here and now. Wildfires and smoke in the air, flooding, extreme heat and cold no longer affect remote communities. Everyone, everywhere, has experienced and will continue to experience these environmental changes.

A Connecticut coalition is organizing folks into buses and trains to transport them to the march. We have planning meetings every Sunday evening now until the march, and we need volunteers to help hand out flyers and put up posters. If you’d like to join the effort in CT, go to 350ct.org or email ctmarchtoendfossilfuels@gmail.com. The national group will be announcing the march route and details soon. Keep an eye out at endfossilfuels.us.

We have an opportunity to build this mass action into a movement. The major social changes that have occurred in this country have come out of mass movements: antiwar, civil rights, gay liberation, etc.

People taking to the streets and demanding what they want is personally empowering and creates real change.

Download the poster here.

Oppenheimer Offers Opportunity

by Henry Lowendorf, GNH Peace Council

Oppenheimer, the film, is a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the scientific team researching, developing, and producing the first atomic bombs, with U.S. B29s dropping two on Japanese cities 78 years ago. The movie reveals two time bombs that started ticking in 1945. One scores 90 seconds to midnight on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock. The second exploded as the Cold War, right after the U.S. and its Soviet ally victoriously ended World War II, and, like cluster bombs, repeatedly bursts forth to maim its victims.

The film explores the morality of waging war not just on civilians but on civilization itself. But Oppenheimer, the physicist, realized that he had no moral authority over, or physical control of, his nuclear offspring once they were turned over to the generals and the commander in chief.

Expressing his anguish was not politic. Second thoughts about creating the existential monster of monsters that incinerated noncombatant men, women, and children in 1945, and possibly billions more, landed him in the clutches of Congressional thought-minders. The McCarthy era tore Oppenheimer’s life apart, ruining his reputation and removing his security clearance and his ability to conduct research.
McCarthyism, a product of the 1950s, continues now. The U.S. administration censors dissenting voices by members of Congress who call for diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine. The corporate media, led by the New York Times, slander activists in the peace movement who demand the same.

Beyond watching the riveting drama, what actions can viewers of Oppenheimer take? The Greater New Haven Peace Council has been handing audience members entering and leaving the theater a flier with a QR code on side one to sign a petition offered by CodePink calling for the U.S. to sign on to the UN Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and lead the other eight nuclear-weapons states to follow suit. The petition is here: https://www.codepink.org/nonukes. Side two spells out the ongoing manmade disaster called the military budget.

To download your own file of the flyer to use: https://nhpeacecouncil.org/oppenheimer-flier-handout

Cox Case Settled For $45M

by Thomas Breen and Laura Glesby, NH Independent, June 9, 2023

The City of New Haven has agreed to pay $45 million to Richard ​“Randy” Cox to end a lawsuit stemming from paralyzing injuries the 36-year-old Black New Havener suffered while in police custody — marking the largest municipal settlement in a police misconduct case in this country’s history.

The settlement ends a $100 million civil lawsuit that Cox and his family brought in federal court in September. That lawsuit against the city, the police department, and city police officers Betsy Segui, Oscar Diaz, Jocelyn Lavandier, Luis Rivera, and Ronald Pressley sought damages for the officers’ alleged violations of Cox’s civil rights following his arrest on June 19, 2022.

The mayor [Justin Elicker] said the city looked at other cases ​“where people were unable to walk, paraplegic cases” — as opposed to other police misconduct cases — when trying to understand ​“the long-term cost it will take to care for Randy and ensure he has the resources he needs.”

Read the whole article here: https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/cox_case_settles_for_45_million

News from Palestine from Dr. Qumsiyeh

by Stanley Heller, Director, Middle East Crisis Committee

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, Director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, spoke twice in Connecticut in August, once at the Palestine Museum US in Woodbridge and the next day in Hartford at the Unitarian Society. He brought us up to date on the impressive activities of his institute and the Palestine Museum of Natural History, which is one of its projects.

Qumsiyeh lived in Connecticut at the start of the 2000s as he headed the Cytogenetics Department at the Yale Medical School. He was very active in Palestinian human rights work and co-founded the Palestine Right to Return Campaign. He returned to Palestine a decade ago. In his talks, he maintained that despite what is usually said, Palestine was a peaceful area for most of its thousands of years history. He dated recent problems to the Zionist movement and its settler colonial project.

As a bit of activism at the events we passed out copies of a picture of a two-year-old boy named Mohammed Tamimi, who was shot to death by an Israeli sniper on June 1. The ultra-right Israeli government almost immediately excused the sniper from all responsibility and expressed “regret.” We briefly chanted “Justice for Mohammed Tamimi.”

The one bit of good news discussed was the open letter called the “Elephant in the Room,” which was signed at the time of the meetings by over 700 academics and public figures decrying Israeli apartheid and telling Jewish leaders in the U.S. that democracy in Israel could only be maintained if it included equal treatment for Palestinians. The number of signers, overwhelmingly Jewish, has since swelled to more than 1,800. The wall of Jewish support for the Israeli government has a deep fissure.

Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide Launches New Website

by Joan Cavanagh, Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide

Thanks to co-hosting and considerable technical assistance from the Patients Rights Action Fund (PRAF), Progressives Against Medical Assisted Suicide (PAMAS) now has its own website, pamasprogressives.org. It’s an ongoing endeavor (and the three of us managing it have a steep technical learning curve) but we’re on our way! We will be adding updates, news, and information as things develop.

As PAR readers know, PAMAS formed in 2021 to open a path for leftist and progressive opposition to legislation enabling physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to terminate their patients’ lives. We believe that those who are committed, as we are, to universal, comprehensive, fully accessible, unrestricted, high-quality health and palliative care must stand equally strongly against MAS, which will contribute further to the already existing deadly discrimination against the most vulnerable among us.

PAMAS members disagree with those who favor these laws but we agree on many other issues. We support and advocate for reproductive rights, disability justice, labor rights, the rights of LGBTQIA people, and for prison and police reform. Many of us are lifelong war resisters and several of us worked to help repeal the death penalty in our state. We see MAS as a serious threat to the lives of the most vulnerable among us and to our vision of a just society. The website provides links to testimonies, as well as articles by others and several links to outside sources. More will follow. We hope that you’ll visit.

With allies in the disability justice movement, we helped to defeat the most recent MAS bills proposed in Connecticut. Each year, the well-funded proponents bring up more legislation, and we are sure they’ll be ready to go in 2024. We plan to be ready, too.

One further appeal: we need a progressive, experienced videographer who agrees with us on this issue to help us produce a video as soon as possible. We’ll try to raise some funds, although this would need to be a labor of love as well. If you’re interested, please contact me at joan.cavanagh@gmail.com or the group at progressivesagainstmas@hotmail.com.

Out of the Darkness Walk New Haven County/ Hamden at 11 a.m. October 1 

Many people’s introduction to American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) comes through the Out of the Darkness Walks, taking place in cities nationwide. In our community, campus, and overnight walks, those affected by suicide – and those who support them – raise awareness and much-needed funds, strongly sending the message that suicide can be preventable, and that no one is alone.

Suicide claims more lives than war, murder, and natural disasters combined.

In 2020 (latest available data), there were 45,979 reported suicide deaths in the U.S.
Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for those between the ages of 10 and 19 in the U.S.
Currently, suicide is the 12th leading cause of death in the U.S.

Now, more than ever, it’s important to be there for one another and take steps to safeguard our mental health and prevent suicide.

There will be numerous on-site activities on the day of the walk. Check-in time is 10 a.m., and the walk starts at 11. Meet at Town Center Park (2761 Dixwell Ave), Hamden.

Register today and be part of the movement to walk #OutOftheDarkness.

Walk Chair: Caleb Warner, 203-980-7869, cewarner87@gmail.com.

To register: https://supporting.afsp.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=register.start&eventID=9362.
If you or someone you know is in a crisis, dial 988 or text TALK to 741-741.

Latest Legislative News from CT Green Energy News

Legislative Republicans Seek to Hit the Brakes on Implementing California EV Regulations

CT News Junkie. ​”Legislative Republicans called Wednesday for the reversal of proposed regulations that would require all new vehicles to be electric by 2035 as a result of a state law tying Connecticut’s emissions standards to those of California…they argued that electric vehicles were too expensive for many consumers and voiced concerns that Connecticut lacked the infrastructure and energy to support a mandated transition to electric vehicles.

Massive Turbines Arrive at New London State Pier, and About 3 Dozen Assembly Jobs

CT Examiner. “Twelve 318-foot blades are waiting to be unloaded from a cargo ship in the Thames River. They will soon arrive at State Pier, where they’ll be assembled into turbines and shipped out to sea to the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in the country…The 12 blades – more than twice as tall as the Gold Star Bridge – will outfit four of the 12 turbines that will make up South Fork Wind. Two more shipments of blades will follow in the fall to build all 12 turbines. As Connecticut Aims to Phase Out Gas-Powered Cars, Service Station Owners Face an Uncertain Future

CT Insider. ​​”While the service station industry has survived many challenges in its century-long history, none looms as large as the emergence of electric vehicles…Last month, Gov. Ned Lamont formally announced the development of new regulations that will phase out the sale of new internal-combustion engine vehicles by 2035, in line with about a dozen other states that have made a similar pledge toward cutting carbon emissions.

Park Saved; New Housing Plan Dropped

Thomas Breen, NH Independent, June 15, 2023

A Boston-based affordable housing developer (TCB) has dropped its plans to buy the Kensington Street public park between Chapel Street and Edgewood Avenue in the Dwight neighborhood to construct 15 new apartments in its stead — prompting the Elicker administration to move to end a related years-long lawsuit on the grounds that the contested public greenspace will remain public and green.

On Thursday afternoon, city spokesperson Lenny Speiller announced via an email press release that The Community Builders (TCB) no longer plans to build 15 new income-restricted apartments atop the Kensington Playground site.

Kishaun Jenkins celebrating “the coolest spot to be.” (Thomas Breen photo)

The upshot: After nearly three years of political and legal debates on the matter, Kensington Playground will remain a public park. TCB will not be building any new apartments atop the site. And the city will not be selling the park to any other developer.

Patricia Wallace, a long-time Dwight neighbor and the lead plaintiff in the state lawsuit, welcomed the news of TCB dropping its park-to-housing development plans and of the city moving to end the court case.”Housing can be built on other City-owned land in neighborhoods with ample green space.”

Wallace’s group, https://www.kensingtonplayground.org, is still raising money to cover the legal costs of pursuing the lawsuit, and also plans to fundraise for a new playscape to be built at the park.

Local attorney Keith Ainsworth, who has represented the friends group in its years-long legal challenge to the city’s sale of the park to TCB, also heralded this latest turn in the case as ending up with the right result.

Read the article in its entirety: https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/park_saved_new_housing_plan_dropped

Why Hiroshima/Nagasaki Vigils Again This Year? 

by Henry Lowendorf, Greater New Haven Peace Council

Why is it important to commemorate the sudden slaughter of 200,000 mostly civilians in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, actions taken 78 years ago? Why do the U.S. government and corporate media generally ignore or downplay the consequences of decisions made three-quarters of a century ago?

Today, a brutal war is devastating Ukraine in central and eastern Europe, where four participating states, the U.S., Britain, France, and Russia, hold nuclear weapons arsenals on high alert, ready to throw into the fray.

Their leaders have the ability to incinerate every city around the planet and wave civilization goodbye.

At 90 seconds to midnight, the probability of nuclear cataclysm represented by the Atomic Clock is now set at its closest since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. This threat is not what the U.S. government or its corporate media megaphones want to advertise.

Consequences of the current war in Europe, in addition to wanton death and destruction, include seismic changes in the supply of energy and food, which will have an impact on much of the world.

Citizens of poor and wealthy countries impacted by someone else’s war are unable to afford fuel and food. Giant economies are in recession as industries shut down.

The only winners in this war are the Merchants of Death—Lockheed and Raytheon, among others—and the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

We have been told that only one state caused this war. The vigils on August 6 and 9 remind us, however, that ultimately we must engineer its end, not through a Pyrrhic victory, but by demanding diplomacy and negotiations as all wars end.

The anniversary vigils on August 6 and 9 offered a variety of short presentations–history, the political moment, poetry, peace songs. New Haven Mayor Elicker spoke against the giant nuclear budget. Atomic soldier Hank Bolden, on whom the U.S. military tested the effects of nuclear radiation, told us that he was sworn to secrecy until the 1990s, unable to explain even to his family his many cancers and other illnesses associated with radiation poisoning.

Channel 8 WTNH ran a story on the Hiroshima vigil that you can find here: https://tinyurl.com/HiroshimaNewHaven23. More photos and video here: https://www.facebook.com/NewHavenPeaceCommission

City Housing Plight Brought to the ‘Burbs

by Lisa Reisman, May 15, 2023, New Haven Independent

It might seem incongruous for a wealthy shoreline suburban community to pull out all the stops for a radical Catholic homelessness rights activist from the Hill.

Not at all, said Mark Colville, leader of the Amistad Catholic Worker House, as roughly 100 attendees enjoyed vegetable terrine … at a ​“Breaking Bread” fundraiser in the basement of Guilford First Congregational Church.

“Homelessness is a result of a lot of things, a lot of break-down of relationships in families, and that’s not specific to any one group or social class,” Colville said at Saturday’s event. …

Mark Coville addressing the audience. photo: Lisa Reisman

The occasion, Colville said, marked ​“the first in a series of planned public events organized by a coalition of people and organizations in the New Haven area trying to do something substantive to decriminalize homelessness in the city of New Haven and the state of Connecticut.”  …

He said Saturday’s fundraiser was part of an ongoing campaign that started in 2013 when he read a United Nations report on which U.S. cities comply with the 1948 United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 2013 report detailed municipal laws across the country, he said, ​“making it a criminal act to take refuge on public land when the state fails to provide you with public housing, and those include New Haven.”

That means, he said, ​“if you’re homeless in New Haven tonight, and you’re not able to access a shelter bed — and, as far as I know, there are literally hundreds who can’t — then anywhere you take refuge, you’re subject to either arrest or some kind of sanction.”

The report was an eye-opener. ​“We came to realize that no matter how many people that we took in, the people outside the door were still considered criminals.” …

Then, in early 2020, came the pandemic, shelters being closed by the city, and an Amistad House worker talking with people who had taken to sleeping in the side stairwells around City Hall.

“From those conversations, we convinced about six of those people to take a chance on a plan we had to offer hospitality on public lands, to set up a tent city, and to do it in a public way,” Colville said.

The larger problem is a shelter system that ​“mimics the criminal justice system,” he said. ​“When you walk into a shelter after you get patted down, you have to give up your privacy, your agency, autonomy, your property, all the things you give up when you go to jail.”

He compared the human right to shelter to health care. ​“If you don’t have health care, you’re going to go outside the system, whether it’s a faith healer, herbal medicine, or a drug not approved by the FDA,” he said.

Criminalizing homelessness is tantamount to ​“making it a crime to make herbal tea to cure yourself,” he said.

The new strategy, to set up tiny houses on the property as Rosette Neighborhood Village, ​“a model tent city in our own backyard,” has as its ultimate goal ​“to change the policy away from criminalization so that people can have legal status as neighbors and not criminals.”

Read the complete article at https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/guilford_congregational_church_helps_amistad_house_say_yes_in_my_backyard.

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