CT Green Energy News, Dec. 19, 2025

by People’s Action for Clean Energy

Rare Win for Renewable Energy: Trump Administration Funds Geothermal Network Expansion

Inside Climate News: The U.S. Department of Energy has approved an $8.6 million grant that will allow the nation’s first utility-led geothermal heating and cooling network to double in size. Gas and electric utility Eversource Energy completed the first phase of its geothermal network in Framingham, Massachusetts, in 2024. Eversource is a co-recipient of the award along with the city of Framingham and HEET, a Boston-based nonprofit that focuses on geothermal energy and is the lead recipient of the funding. Geothermal networks are widely considered among the most energy-efficient ways to heat and cool buildings.

[This is only one of many articles from the Dec. 19 issue of CT Green Energy News. To get a free subscription of this weekly newsletter, please visit www.pacecleanenergy.org.]

People’s World Amistad Awards, Sat., Dec. 13

by CT People’s World Committee

People’s World is honored to present the Amistad Award to four wonderful allies and working-class champions. Together they represent the kind of unity, solidarity and vision needed to build a movement to defend our rights against vicious corporate assault, and transform our country to put people, peace and planet before profits.

AWARDEES:

Tabitha Sookdeo, director of Connecticut Students for a Dream, tirelessly defends immigrant youth and families across the state, organizing to end systemic oppression and dehumanization, while also building the movement for climate justice.

Wayne McCarthy, president of International Association of Machinists Local 700, stood united on strike against Pratt & Whitney to win a strong union contract that has uplifted all working people at a time of all-out assault on the labor movement.

Norma Martinez-HoSang and Constanza Segovia, Connecticut for All Director and Director of Organizing, led a multi-racial labor community coalition united to end systemic inequalities and build power for racial and economic justice in CT.

A narrated concert of multi-cultural freedom songs will highlight the event.

The event will stand “IN SOLIDARITY” with students and teachers for their leadership in the continued fight for justice for immigrants.

Hosted on the occasion of the 106th anniversary of the Communist Party USA, in the spirit of building unity against racism, red-baiting and all forms of bigotry for workers’ rights, equality, peace, democracy, and a better world. For tickets, please go to https://bit.ly/3K7jTFs.

Hosted by CT People’s World Committee and former awardees.

Oppose Attacks on Venezuela, Support Socialists There

by Stanley Heller, Administrator, Promoting Enduring Peace

By the time you read this, Trump may have launched an awful attack on the Venezuelan mainland. His Department of War is already killing scores of Venezuelans under the guise of fighting drugs, bombing boats he claims are bringing drugs to America, while making fantastic claims on the number of US lives he’s saving. The idea that you could wipe out crime just by killing “criminals” left and right was shown false long long ago (besides being morally revolting).

Of course, it’s likely part of a plan desensitizing Americans to the plan to invade and seize the assets of another fossil fuel giant (this one having the biggest oil reserves on the planet).

Promoting Enduring Peace came up with this brief statement on its views:

“We condemn the Trump Administration’s bombings of boats supposedly running drugs to the U.S. Criminal activity is not ‘war.’ Alleged criminals should not just be killed nor is this legal under US or international law. All these boats could easily have been stopped by naval authorities.

“As far as the military threats to Venezuela and Colombia, only the citizens of those countries have the right to determine who should be in power, not the US government. We stand in solidarity with Venezuelan socialist and democratic forces who organize for the rights of the Venezuelan people against dictatorship and imperialism.”

If the attack or invasion comes, we hope there will be a massive outpouring of anger all throughout Latin America led by the Left.

One problem is this disastrous idea that Venezuela is a “socialist” country and the blind support many on the Left give to the Maduro regime. He leads a country with the lowest minimum wage in Latin America, a government that enforces extreme austerity measures, and repression of all dissidents. None of the socialist parties were allowed to run in the 2024 presidential election, not even the Communist Party which had been Maduro’s ally until just a few years ago. We can support Venezuelans without supporting Maduro and discrediting ourselves.  Learn more about this from Venezuelans. See PEPeace.org.

The First Amendment and Me: A Love Story

by Katherine Hinds, Visibility Brigade

When I woke up on Valentine’s Day this year, I had no expectation I’d be meeting the man who would arrest me a few months later, handcuff me, and drive me down I-95 to CT State Trooper headquarters to process me for criminal behavior. It’s been that kind of year. My “crimes”? Using my First Amendment rights to speak out about the corrupt actions of the current administration. As it turns out, exercising my right to freedom of expression is my love language.

The letters were backwards but folks still honked!

Soon after the inauguration in January, two friends and I created one large banner and started protesting on bridges over I-95 around New Haven, pointing out the egregious actions of our current administration. On Feb. 14, we walked out onto a cold, snowy bridge, on a public sidewalk, and revealed a sign to drivers heading into New Haven: “DEPORT MUSK.” We were there for an hour, waving and hearing honks of approval from hundreds of drivers. These were the early days of the nation-wide movement known now as Visibility Brigades—small teams of folks who are fed up and need to share our outrage with others. This is a sign of social force where people try to influence others with an action. This public action is informational and educational and reaches a wide audience. Why was being on a bridge better than joining a No Kings Rally (we’ve done that too) or other off-bridge, in-person protests? Because we were literally communicating to both sides of the divide in this country—right and left lanes.

Before going out on that first bridge, we had cleared our actions with town police, but we had not anticipated that the CT State Troopers would be an issue. After an hour of waving next to our banner, we were stopped by one trooper who told us to take down our signs. Why? Unclear. At first, he told us we could not attach our signs to the fencing protecting the sides of the bridge. “Would it be okay if we held them?” The trooper said yes, and when we asked what regulation we were violating, he told us to check with the Department of Transportation ourselves.

We had learned from Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: “DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE,” so we determined we would continue protesting while we did our due diligence around the legality of our actions. We checked with the DOT, our state reps, the ACLU, billboard law experts, and we could find no specific rule or law that we were violating. Many regulations and laws are vague—open to interpretation, and we understand that police require a degree of autonomy to enforce laws. The troopers visited us repeatedly, telling us we were a distraction (not illegal), that we needed a permit (not true), we were trespassing (public property? I don’t think so) and we were taking them away from the real business of patrolling the highways (So go away!).

On the fourth visit, the troopers arrested me for criminal trespassing, criminal breach of peace, and “unlawful display of a sign near a highway.” While that arraignment was working its way through the system, the “Valentine’s Day trooper” came to my house at 6 a.m. and arrested me again based on photos he had found while scrolling through my social media. He handcuffed me, put me in his cruiser, and drove me 30 miles to Bridgeport.

Three months later, the State has dropped both sets of charges in court. My team and I are back on the bridges exercising our First Amendment rights weekly. Do we anticipate being stopped again by troopers? Yes. Although we may feel anxious about that, we are not afraid. We are privileged and we have strong support—and each other. As Heather Cox Richardson says, “What are we waiting for, folks?” Wake up and DO SOMETHING. You’re not alone. And you may fall in love with your rights.

Katherine Hinds is a writer, activist, and baker living in Hamden.

Public Forum – Trump’s Attacks on Gaza and Venezuela: A Socialist Response to US Imperialist Wars and Aggression

 

Workers’ Voice will host a forum on Trump’s attacks on Gaza and Venezuela on Wednesday, Dec. 3 at Whitneyville Cultural Commons, 1247 Whitney Ave. in Hamden. At 5:30 p.m. we’ll have social time and food, and the program will start at  6 p.m. For more information, please email workersvoicect@protonmail.com. Cash donations are welcome.

At the same time, the Trump regime has launched multiple deadly strikes on vessels off the coast of Venezuela accusing the Maduro government of being a “narco-terror cartel,” they have also brokered a shaky rotten deal between Hamas and the Israeli government. Today Israel continues attacks on Gaza and has used the “ceasefire” as a pretext to launch attacks on Lebanon.

What is the role of US imperialism in the world and what does it have to gain from these attacks? In Gaza, what does the continued US support of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians mean for international efforts to build solidarity? What is the role of Hamas and what is the way forward? In Venezuela does US imperialism see another opportunity to transfer power to Machado’s opposition party? Is Venezuela a “narco-terror cartel”? What happened to the movement started by Hugo Chávez and is this the logical outcome of Chavismo? What way forward for the people of Venezuela?

Join Workers’ Voice/La Voz de Los Trabajadores for this forum as we discuss these important questions that are deeply impacting working people across the globe.

Nine Arrested After CT Climate Activists Stage Sit-In at Governor’s Office

by Karla Ciaglo Nov. 18, 2025, CT News Junkie

HARTFORD, CT — A coalition of climate and community groups staged a sit-in outside Gov. Ned Lamont’s office Monday [Nov. 17], urging the administration to halt a series of natural gas projects they say contradict the state’s newly adopted climate mandates and place additional burdens on communities already grappling with high energy costs and environmental stress.

Calling themselves Don’t Destroy Our Future, the group included members of Sunrise Movement Connecticut, Third Act, the Interreligious Eco-Justice Network and other advocates who said the action reflected the linked challenges of climate, affordability, public health and community safety. [Read entire article at https://bit.ly/44kXmM8].

City of New Haven Peace Commission Projects

by Paul Bloom, Peace Commission member

The City of New Haven Peace Commission is a city commission initiated by the United Nations 32 years ago. We were one of the first cities designated by the UN for their Peace Messenger Cities project, and only one of four cities in the United States of the more than 100 member cities worldwide.

The Peace Commission has numerous small projects in which we engage, and which are always changing, but there are several projects and events that are ongoing. Each year we plant a peace tree at a school or other New Haven site, we commemorate the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an event on the Green, and we commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King with an event at City Hall (see peacecommission.org). Our other significant ongoing project is the West River Peace Garden located at the intersection of Ella T Grasso Boulevard and MLK Jr. Boulevard. The Peace Garden was also established by the United Nations and is a small site that promotes quiet, peace and introspection. Please consider stopping by anytime  (but most especially when winter has passed) to visit and to meet with friends (see westriverpeacegarden.org).

There is also a new project which we are just starting to engage in, and which we want to invite you to consider joining. That is: working with other organizations and individuals in New Haven and the surrounding region in order to develop a regional strategy which effectively rejects the promotion of nuclear war and the development of nuclear weapons. We are just starting to make connections with other organizations that would like to engage with us on this issue, and we look forward to having other individual area residents join us in this mission.

If you would like to contact us, please note the following:

For general Peace Commission information: Roberto Irizarry, Chairman, Peace Commission, rocolino@yahoo.com.

For information about the Peace Garden: Aaron Goode, lead person of the Peace Garden project, aaron.goode@gmail.com.

For anti-nuclear information: Paul Bloom, Peace Commission member, paul.bloom.arc.70@aya.yale.edu.

One to One: John and Yoko – A Collage of the Times

by Frank Panzarella, PAR reader and musician

For the last 60 years, the conservative corporate elite have used every tool to defame and compromise the legacy of the rebellions of the 1960s.  Two major pillars of that fear were embedded in the coming together of the Civil Rights movement and the social and cultural revolutions that were fueled by the war in Vietnam.

The rising tide of Black liberation inspired a generation to challenge the power of Jim Crow, and question all aspects of capitalist society in the United States and its tentacles of international involvement throughout the world.  The war in Vietnam became a funnel for many of these challenges of power.

Even on a social level these often contradictory and painful explorations challenged the norms of patriarchy and sexual relations and self-definition often embodied in the art and music of those times and the growing fight for a new kind of liberating culture.

A new quasi-documentary about John Lennon and Yoko Ono called One to One: John and Yoko is a fascinating, if somewhat limited, collage of that social revolutionary time.  It provides a small but rich glimpse into the maelstrom of events and the ferment of ideas of a generation seeking a new ideology and even somewhat challenging its own biases.

In today’s environment, where the reactionary forces of racist and fascist politics are attempting to reverse the modest gains since those times, this HBO feature is a welcome small window that reminds us of the complexity and dynamic energy that changed social relations in our country in those times that still reverberate today despite some of the chaotic flaws of those years.  It is those many advances that scare the most conservative in our society that the dreams of democracy, equality, and justice for all might actually happen, threatening the remnants of white privilege and corporate control of most of the wealth in our world and the health of our planet.

This is a worthwhile film.

View the trailer : https://youtu.be/oxagfYjeMV4

Community Dinner at Volume Two

by Volume Two/Never Ending Books

Folks will be hosting a Community Dinner every second Thursday from 6-8 p.m. at Volume Two (V2), A Never Ending Books Collective, at 810 State St., New Haven. Bring what you can and take what you need! Sign up to bring a dish here: https://tinyurl.com/2ndthurscommunitydinner and subscribe to the V2 newsletter at https://neverendingbooks.net.

V2 offers free books and a free space for your gig, group, or gathering. LGBTQIA and BIPOC events encouraged and celebrated! For all booking and other inquiries, contact NEBCollective@gmail.com.

Call for Proposals for the 25th SCSU Women’s & Gender Studies Conference

by Women’s & Gender Studies Department, SCSU

(Re)making the World: A “How-To” Conference on Feminist, Crip, and Decolonial Worldmaking, April 17–18, 2026, at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven

In As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance (2017), Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes:

Resurgence is not a metaphor. It is the flight out of settler colonialism, towards something we have been taught is impossible.

This conference takes Simpson’s call for radical resurgence seriously — positioning “how-to” as a feminist practice, politic, and theorizing.

The 2026 Southern Connecticut State University Women’s & Gender Studies Conference invites communities to gather for a feminist, crip, and decolonial practice of refusal, survival, and worldmaking.

In an era of rising authoritarianism, climate catastrophe, and technological dispossession, we ask

How do we refuse extractive systems of labor, knowledge, and identity?

How do we create alternative economies of care, access, justice, and decolonial business?

How do we unlearn oppressive epistemologies and forge liberatory practices?

How do we crip, queer, Indigenize, and decolonize institutions not built for us?

How do we resist algorithmic bias, surveillance capitalism, and technocratic ableism?

How do we (re)imagine feminist futures?

The 2026 conference offers a space to explore the pedagogies, practices, and possibilities embedded in the question of “how to?” across disciplines, communities, and movements. We seek proposals that move beyond critique to praxis — embracing failure as pedagogy, interdependence as resistance, and joy as a radical act.

Submission Guidelines: Individual papers, workshops, roundtables, performances, exhibitions, teach-ins, skill-shares, activist toolkits, and other creative or non-traditional formats are welcomed.

We encourage proposals from caregivers, community organizers, entrepreneurs, artist-activists, and others whose work centers lived experiences, collaborative strategies, and collective visions for justice and inclusion.

The deadline is Jan. 5, 2026 (earlier submissions encouraged). Notifications will be sent by Jan. 30.

Send proposals to wgs@southernct.edu with the subject “2026 SCSU WGS Conference Submission” and include the name of the proposer, email, phone number, affiliation (if any), and any accessibility needs. The proposal should be approximately 150-250 words and should include a 50-word bio for each presenter and a separate section with a description of the proposed format of the session.

Registration details will be available shortly. Please email or phone the Women’s & Gender Studies Department at wgs@southernct.edu or 203-392-6133.

Sierra Club Demands No Pipeline Expansion!

by Sena Wazer, Sierra Club CT

The Trump Administration has stated their intention to drive methane gas pipeline expansion in the Northeast. These expansions harm our communities, drive climate change, and raise our electricity prices.

Yet instead of standing up, governors across the Northeast—including in Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts—are allowing for these expansions to move forward.

So we’re fighting back. But to be effective, we need to build people power across our states, and to do that, we need your help!

The No Pipeline Expansion (NOPE) Northeast Coalition is hosting an in-person and interactive workshop on Dec. 6, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Middletown. The workshop will include an opportunity to learn about gas pipeline expansions in Connecticut and the Northeast, build power, strategize next steps, and take action.

Whether you are a new or experienced activist, have engaged with the NOPE Northeast Coalition before or are brand new, we want you to join us. To find more information about the workshop and RSVP, please go to bit.ly/nopepipelineworkshop.

Please email sena.wazer@sierraclub.org with any questions and check out the coalition’s past work at nopenortheast.org.

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