News from CT Roundtable on Climate and Jobs

by John Humphries, Organizer, CT Roundtable

We had a successful first round of Governor’s Council on Climate Change (GC3) stakeholder events and we are now preparing for our spring Roundtable gathering.

GC3 Stakeholder Events – Round 1

On May 5, more than 175 people participated in simultaneous stakeholder events organized by the Governor’s Council on Climate Change at seven locations across the state. You can access the handouts, presentation slides, a video of the event, and some great photos on our website, http://www.ctclimateandjobs.org.

The second round will happen in late July and will provide an opportunity to evaluate some preliminary scenarios for achieving the state’s climate goals.  More details coming soon!

June 7 – Roundtable Gathering

Join us for our statewide gathering on June 7 when we will explore the intersection between the GC3 climate action planning and the state’s Comprehensive Energy Strategy  (being updated this year). We seek to develop points of agreement and shared strategies for influencing these two state processes to ensure an aggressive approach to climate protection that creates local jobs and addresses the needs for climate justice.

A Just Climate Strategy for CT: Creating Jobs and Increasing Equity – Tuesday, June 7, 7 p.m.
North Haven Congregational Church, 28 Church St., North Haven. (food available at 6:30 p.m.) Information: http://www.ctclimateandjobs.org.

Get on the Bus to March for a Clean Energy Revolution Sunday, July 24, in Philly

by 350CT.org

  • Ban Fracking Now!
  • Stop Dirty Energy!
  • Justly Transition to 100% Renewable Energy!

https://www.facebook.com/events/1567763956854719

New Haven Departure: 8:15 a.m. – 6 p.m. Ikea Parking Lot, 450 Sargent Dr.
Hartford Departure:  7:30 a.m – 6 p.m. 1 Union Place, Hartford.
Contacts: Chris (860) 967-9836, [email protected] or
Diane (203) 922-2151, [email protected].

Clean-energy-revolution-CERLogo_FINAL-resizedThe nation’s spotlight will shine on Philadelphia during the Democratic National Convention in July 2016. We have a valuable opportunity to use that spotlight to open a broader discussion on fracking and climate change. Over the past decade, Pennsylvania and many states including Connecticut have suffered negative impacts from fracking, pipelines, and power plants. Many residents especially those in the poorest and most oppressed communities have been sickened; water, air and land have been polluted and poisoned.

Climate change presents the United States and the world with an unprecedented challenge and poses a threat to future of life on this planet. Get on the bus with 350CT and other climate activists as we head to Philadelphia to demand a just transition to 100% renewable energy.

We need your participation and voice in the movement for climate justice. Can you help build the July 24 march in Connecticut? Contact us today!

To learn more about 350 CT email [email protected], or call (203) 350-3508.

We continue to work toward our 4 demands:

  • 100% Renewable Energy,
  • Stop Fracked Gas Expansion,
  • Green Jobs for Fossil Fuel Workers,
  • An End to Environmental Racism.

If you can help us out with outreach supply costs, please DONATE.

350 Connecticut is a community of people working to move Connecticut beyond fossil fuels through grassroots organizing. Our meetings are open to the public, and we operate using consensus-based decision-making.  We do our work in working groups, and meet all together once a month in a public meeting. We are an organization committed to anti-oppression in all our work and relationships.

Daniel Berrigan, Poet

by Stephen Vincent Kobasa

Poetry was in everything that Daniel Berrigan did, and not only in his writing. He knew from the Old Testament prophets– Isaiah, of course, but also the less familiar, fierce voices of Daniel, Hosea, Micah, none of them “minor” in their demands or their fidelity – that metaphors were another way to change the world, and that even voices of condemnation needed music to make the conscience turn and listen.

The Catonsville 9 Statement, with its chill irony of apology for “the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house,” was written to take the place of an original draft that Berrigan found wanting. It was not enough to do the action, it was essential to make the words fit the doing.

He was in one respect a selfish man, as the Golden Rule is selfish, using the treatment we expect for ourselves as the measure of how others are treated. And, like Thoreau, he broke the law, first of all, to disassociate himself from murder in the name of the state. He would have called this, as required by his Catholic faith, acting to save his soul.

Darkness was familiar to him; he made no secret of this. And he lived in a time, as we do, that hope is not easy. But that never kept him from doing what was required.

We exchanged poems from time to time and he was always more generous in praise of mine than they deserved. But to be told that there were words he found in them that mattered was the kind of wild grace he granted to everyone he touched through all his days.

And he wrote his own best elegy, as one would expect:

The poem called death
is unwritten yet. Some day will show
the violent last line,
the shadow rise,
a bird of omen
snatch me for its ghost.
And a hand somewhere, purposeful as God’s
close like two eyes, this book.

Love, Daniel: In Remembrance of “Father Dan,” 1921–2016

by Joan Cavanagh (one of the NH Sunday Vigilers at Broadway, Park and Elm Streets)

“Eternity is a rose, Dante says/ We will wear/ give/ Yes, have time for.” Daniel Berrigan

daniel-berrigan-democracy-nowIn May 1968, in Catonsville, Maryland, 20 miles from my home town, nine people napalmed draft records of young men headed for Vietnam. Father Daniel Berrigan, one of the nine, named it “the burning of paper instead of children.” Dan was in North Vietnam earlier in 1968, and had held a Vietnamese child in a shelter while American pilots dropped bombs overhead.

Those non-electronic records could not be reconstructed. Hundreds of Americans were presumably exempted from going to war.

This incendiary act of nonviolent civil disobedience forced us all to witness what napalm did to paper and to imagine what it did to flesh and blood in our names as United States citizens. My 14-year-old view of the war as a nightmare that might one day claim the lives of some of my older class-mates evolved into a deeper awareness that it had already made a nightmare of other young lives: the unnamed and unseen Vietnamese.

In August 1973, eight months after the Paris Peace Accords, the U.S. war on Indochina continued. 100 people were arrested at the White House. The day of our first Federal Court appearance, the elevator stalled between floors. Dan flashed his signature elfish grin, then glanced heavenward with outstretched hands, palms up.

Draft board raids eventually gave way to raids on other offices prosecuting the war more covertly. I turned 21 in April 1975 while serving a 52-day sentence in the Women’s Detention Center in Washington D.C. Dan, veteran of a much longer, much more serious prison stay, sent poetry and a letter: “Dear Joan, I don’t know if they let poems into Caesar’s Harem. I hope so. Sometimes it helps…When you get out, springtime will be upon us all. That will be worth waiting for. We’ll all have a bash! Love, Daniel.”

Dan visited Jonah House and Advaita House in Baltimore several times while I lived there. His lightness of being often defused community conflicts and restored clarity of purpose sometimes abandoned in favor of argumentation and self-righteousness. His pecan pies were a sinfully rich delicacy which sweetened continued discord.

Sometimes I walked with him to the Baltimore train station for his return trip to NYC. Dan carried very little baggage.

I did not see him or talk with him for nearly four decades. We disagreed on his approach to abortion in the 1980s. I wish I had known him again in his later years, our beloved old “radical priest” caring for AIDS and cancer patients, joining the occupiers at Zuccotti Park, continuing to resist endless war – still living out the kindness and clarity of his poetry in action. Now his absence has come to stay: a sadly welcomed eternal presence.

Labor History: Looking Back, Moving Forward – Annual Conference June 5

by Joan Cavanagh, GNHLHA director/archivist

Members and friends of the Greater New Haven Labor History Association are invited to its annual conference and meeting on Sunday, June 5, from 1:30-4:30 p.m. at 267 Chapel St., New Haven. The conference, “Labor History: Looking Back, Moving Forward,” will honor the organization’s late President, Nicholas Aiello, showcase its 28-year history and discuss plans for the future.

Author Anthony Riccio, who interviewed Nick for his books, The Italian American Experience in New Haven and Farms, Factories and Families will present “Sisters and Sweatshops: The Life of Nick Aiello,” and will give this year’s Augusta Lewis Troup Award to Louise Fortin, Nick’s sister and a retired garment worker.

Frank Annunziato, outgoing Executive Director of the American Association of University Professors, University of Rhode Island Chapter, who co-founded LHA with Aiello in 1988, will discuss the organization’s mission and its early years, inviting contributions from others who were among its first members. The Director, Joan Cavanagh, and current Executive Board members, including Bill Berndtson, President, and Steve Kass, Vice President, will talk about LHA’s accomplishments during the first 16 years of the 21st century, including its work to produce a labor history curriculum for Connecticut’s public schools.

As always, there will be time for refreshments and socializing. The organization’s troubadour, noted musician Frank Panzarella, will provide labor songs.

If you want to learn more about LHA’s history, have ideas about how to move forward in the 21st century, and/or simply want to learn more about LHA, please join us on June 5th to look back at what has been accomplished and to imagine and plan the future. For more information, please call (203) 668-9082 or contact [email protected].

PAR Articles and Calendar Items Due Thursday, May 19

Dear PAR Contributors –

Readers 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 deadline for the June Progressive Action Roundtable Newsletter is Thursday, May 19. Please send in to this e-mail address – [email protected] – articles about your group’s recent and current activities and upcoming actions and events.

PAR does not print an issue for July or August. If you have calendar items or articles for the summer months, please send them in to be included in the June issue.

We are asking everyone to limit her/his article to 350 words. Be sure to indicate your name and organization as they should appear in your byline.

Please keep in mind that as layout space permits, we will include photos.

IMPORTANT: Don’t neglect to add 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.

If you haven’t written recent articles for PAR, please include information about your group’s purpose. Do not use different fonts or sizes in your article.

About calendar items:
If you mention an event in an article, please also send a SEPARATE calendar announcement.
Please give street addresses for any events or meetings, even for “well-known” public buildings.
VERY IMPORTANT: 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 Saturday, May 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

May Day on the New Haven Green Sunday, May 1, from noon to 5 p.m.

by May Day Celebration Committee

Come celebrate May Day, International Workers’ Day, Sunday, May 1st from 12 noon until 5 p.m. on the New Haven Green. Raindate: Sunday May 8.

may-day-2015This is the 30th consecutive year of May Day on the Green. May Day is a multi-cultural festival featuring live music, poetry, dance, children’s activities, speak-out time, a May Pole Dance and displays and information tables from local labor, peace, social service and social justice groups. May Day is a participatory event that is free and everyone is invited.

At a time when labor unions are being harassed around the country, we celebrate labor unions as being a worker’s best hope. At a time when immigrants are still struggling for their rights, we celebrate our immigrant heritage and culture.

Our featured performers on the New Haven Green include “Coalition Hip Hop” and “N-Finity Muzik.”

For more information visit us at #newhavenmayday or call (203) 843-3069.

Schedule May Day 2016

  • Noon Opening Remarks “May Day and New Haven’s demand for immigrant rights”
  • 12:15 Steph Serenita (Singer/Songwriter)
  • 12:45 Bread Is Rising (Poetry Collective)
  • 1 p.m. Open Mic
  • 1:15 Phil Dunlop (Clean water activist, Singer/Songwriter)
  • 1:30 Luke Rodney (Caribbean, World)
  • 2 p.m. Not Here (Jam Music)
  • 2:30 Open Mic
  • 2:45 Chris Garaffa (ANSWER Coalition –Act Now to Stop War And End Racism)
  • 3 p.m. Coalition (Hip Hop)
  • 3:30 May Pole Dance led by Bill Fischer with Out On a Whim–Mickey Koth and Kendall Alderman
  • 4 p.m. N-Finity Muzik (Hip Hop)
  • 4:45 Speak Out Time and Closing Remarks

Also: Fun activities throughout the day–Flint Ladder Circus Arts, New Haven Radical Cheerleaders, Snappy the Peas/ce Pod, Face Painting, Bubbles, Free Vegetarian Food, Graffiti Wall participatory art project, Information Tables

Admission: Free

International Workers’ Day: Fighting for Our Future, May 1

by Joelle Fishman, CT People’s World

The People’s World in Connecticut is hosting its annual celebration of International Workers’ Day on Sunday, May 1 at 4 p.m. at the King-Davis Labor Center, 77 Huyshope Ave., Hartford. The lives of workers and the 99% are on the line here and around the world and people are in motion. On May Day 2016 we are “Fighting for Our Future.”

We are honored to welcome keynote speaker John Wojcik, editor of People’s World and vice president of the International Labor Communications Association who lives in Chicago.

A panel including representatives of state workers and immigrants and those struggling for jobs in Connecticut will highlight key demands of the moment.

The program includes a presentation of May Day Around the World, music and home made buffet. Donation is $5 or what you can afford. A fund appeal for the annual People’s World will be made. For more information, call (203) 624-4254.

Victories on Earth Day

by Terry Eichel, Inter-Religious Eco-Justice Network (IREJN)

April 22 was Earth Day and the celebrations for our planet will be going on all week!

*Kinder Morgan announced on Wednesday that it was abandoning plans to build a natural gas pipeline that would have cut through Western Massachusetts, Southern New Hampshire, and Merrimack Valley. A day later, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation denied a permit to Kinder Morgan to bring natural gas through New York. As a result, Kinder Morgan has cancelled the Northeast Energy Direct Pipeline from New York to Connecticut!

*SB422 won in the Senate on April 19 – now it needs to win in the House! This legislation will protect us from corporate raids on our water. It creates state oversight for the acquisition of large amount of water for bottling plants, protects us in a drought, and adds the issue of large volume discounts to the state water plan. Please urge your representative today to support the bill.

70 People Rally for Environmental Justice in Bridgeport

Dan Fischer, Capitalism vs. the Climate and Gabriella Rodriguez, Moral Monday CT

On Sunday, April 3, about 70 people attended a rally at Bridgeport’s McLevy Green to raise awareness about environmental justice. The rally was hosted by Healthy CT Alliance, a Bridgeport-based health advocacy group, Capitalism vs. the Climate, a statewide climate justice group, and Moral Monday CT, a faith-based affiliate of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

bridgeport-pseg-harbor-coalSpeakers included Bishop John Selders, founder of Moral Monday CT, and Reverend Sekou, an author and theologian active in the #BlackLivesMatter movement. They declared it unjust that low income communities and communities of color are consistently exposed to higher levels of pollution.

Selders said, “Environmental racism is bound up with Connecticut’s industrial past and continues to feed health disparities and economic injustice. Natural resources and marginalized peoples have been relegated as dumping grounds in our urban areas – five cities are home to 71% of Connecticut’s people of color and at least 20% of pollution sources. Yet, large majorities of people of color support environmental justice. That’s why Moral Monday CT supports clean power – to the people! Green is for all of us. Black loves Green!”

Toxic facilities in Bridgeport include wastewater treatment facilities, a trash incinerator, a coal-fired power plant, and a fracked-gas plant. PSEG plans to begin building a new fracked-gas plant next year, locking in decades more of pollution in the South End. Forbes Magazine has ranked Bridgeport the country’s fourth dirtiest city. Meanwhile, Spectra Energy’s fracked-gas pipeline construction near New York’s Indian Point nuclear power plant endangers Bridgeport residents and others in the New York metropolitan area, since there is a small but real chance that a pipeline rupture could trigger a meltdown at Indian Point. A recent headline in The Nation warned, “A High-Pressure Pipeline Next to a Nuclear Power Plant… What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” For photos and videos from the rally, visit http://capitalismvsclimate.org.

Unidad Latina en Acción and Rosa DeLauro Push to Stop Wage Theft

Brothers Axel and Henry Tubac worked for a company installing kitchens. For the first two years they were paid without fail. Then, for six and seven weeks, respectively, their employer stopped paying them.

When they met with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro at New Haven Legal Assistance headquarters Tuesday afternoon, the brothers still hadn’t been paid.  They have filed suit against their former employer for wage theft.

“It was just a nightmare what happened to me,” Axel Tubac recalled. “I did not have food. I talked to my boss many, many times. He just seemed like he don’t care. He owes me about $4,000; $500 in overtime that he did not pay.”

….

Lugo was arrested on Nov. 22 for disturbing the peace during a protest outside of Goodfellas. He argued that the police are more interested in harassing him for protesting rather than going after restaurant owners that are allegedly committing the far more serious crime of stealing from their employees and thumbing their noses at the law.

To read the entire article with all the photos, visit: DeLauro Targets Wage Theft | New Haven Independent

 

New Haven Stood Up for Planned Parenthood

WORD (Women Organized to Resist & Defend) New Haven

New Haven stood strong with Planned Parenthood April 23 in a beautiful action of support and defense against hate! Over 80 people came out to stand up for healthcare and equality. We vastly outnumbered and drove away the anti-choice bigots who were threatening mass action against Planned Parenthood.

WORD and the people of CT say: we will not stand by while reproductive rights are under attack! As long as patients and workers are being attacked in the streets and legislature, we will be in the streets standing up to the bigotry.

planned-parenthood-protest

Ultimate Net Zero Energy House Tour May 21

by Judi Friedman, People’s Action for Clean Energy

The ultimate net zero energy house will be open to the public on Saturday, May 21. With a rating of -23, this South Glastonbury, Connecticut, home is the most energy-efficient house in North America. It was the 2014 CT Zero Energy Challenge winner; the RESNET 2015 Cross Border Challenge winner; and the 2015 Housing Innovations Award winner.

Tours and seminars will be held at noon and 2:30 p.m. The 2,755 square-foot house has a geothermal heating and cooling system; a rotating photovoltaic steel pole array that powers all appliances, LED lights and the hot water heater. The PV is connected to the grid but is able to get power when the grid goes down.

Other energy saving features in this home for four people include a centrally heated foundation; aluminum roofing shingles with a 70-year lifespan; an energy recovery ventilator; triple glazed windows and Energy Star appliances. The tour is sponsored by Peoples Action for Clean Energy (PACE), the only all-volunteer nonprofit public health organization in Connecticut devoted solely to clean energy education.

Reservations are accepted in order of receipt for the tour, which will be held rain or shine. The non-refundable tickets are $15.00 per person. To order tickets, go online to http://www.pace-cleanenergy.org and click on Events, indicating the choice of time for the tours and seminar. Tickets may also be ordered by sending $15.00 per person to PACE c/o Donna Grant, 128 Melrose Road, Broad Brook, CT 06016. Include the ticket holder’s name, phone number, address, email address and choice of time. For ticket information, call Judi Friedman, (860) 623-5487. For tour information, call (860) 693-4813.

Governor’s Council on Climate Change (GC3) Stakeholder Events in New Haven May 5

During 2016, the Governor’s Council on Climate Change (GC3) will be gathering input from stakeholders across the state, as part of its charge to develop a strategy/plan to meet the state’s mandated goal of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions below 2001 levels by the year 2050.

The current plan involves three rounds of stakeholder events (May, July and October) to engage stakeholders at different points in the process. For the first round — scheduled for 5:30-7:30 the evening of May 5 — the primary/central location will be in Hartford, with six satellite locations around the state. Participants at the satellite locations will view the presentation(s) via video link and then engage in facilitated dialogue at the local level.

The May 5 gatherings will provide stakeholders the opportunity to learn about and provide feedback on the technologies and measures that will be modeled in the Long range Energy Alternatives Planning System (LEAP). This widely-used software tool for energy policy analysis and climate change mitigation assessment will help us understand the GHG reduction potential of various measures and technologies (and combinations thereof).

The CT Roundtable on Climate and Jobs is helping to coordinate logistics for these gatherings.

Register for May 5! Please register at http://bit.ly/GC3_May5 in order to receive updated info and background materials prior to the gatherings.

May 5 Site—Yale University, Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St., New Haven. Refreshments available at 5 p.m.; program begins at 5:30 p.m. (Other sites are available; see http://bit.ly/1UC3pUb) Registration is not necessary, but it allows us to send you preparatory materials and help us ensure adequate food and proper room set-up.

Info: John Humphries, [email protected], 860-216-7972.

1 … 76 77 78 79 80 … 94