In 2021, Hope Grew At The Grassroots

By Paul Bass, New Haven Independent

January 3, 2021

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming of disaster, despair and disagreement to bring you this bulletin: Some downright good stuff happened around here in 2021.

Some of that good stuff was years, or decades, in the making. It gave us reason to cheer.

We waited 18 years for the Dixwell Community Q House to come back to life. It rose from the concrete in 2021 shinier, roomier, and soon busier than ever.

We waited decades for the state to make good in a meaningful way on a promise to reimburse our city for the now over 50 percent of our property that it won’t allow us to tax. A brilliant organizing strategy by State Sen. Martin Looney came to fruition in 2021, and the impossible happened: Smaller towns joined bigger cities in revamping the PILOT (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) formula. New Haven suddenly has $49 million more a year to spend rather than needing to slash needed services or raise already high taxes.

Then came the federal pandemic-relief flood: More than $200 million in one-time help flowing to city government and the Board of Education. Add another $10 million in voluntary payments squeezed out of Yale, and we’re talking about real money. For the first time in over 50 years, New Haven has plenty of money. Even without the infrastructure bucks expected from D.C.

Claire Criscuolo, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, State Rep. Robyn Porter, and Gov. Ned Lamont outside Claire's Corner Copia celebrating the first day of the new family leave program, Dec. 1.

Looney and his legislative colleagues celebrated the realization of another long-term dream: paid family medical leave. Connecticut has it now.

... Local 34 leaders erupt into cheers in Westville the same night as their contract is ratified.

When strikes or other labor disputes broke out across the nation in 2021, labor peace broke out in New Haven at the city’s largest workforce: Yale’s two biggest unions ratified five-year contracts. Without a strike. That’s becoming a habit. To those of us who lived here in the previous century, that’s remarkable.

Old-fashioned citizen-to-citizen organizing and door-knocking propelled diverse “change” slates to unseat once-entrenched regimes in Hamden government …

Victorious teachers' slate members Stephen Siena, Mia Comulada Breuler, Leslie Blatteau, Kirsten Hopes-McFadden, Rachael Parrott, and campaign manager Nataliya Braginsky outside the union hall after ballots were counted Dec. 7.

Cove alder candidate and mixed-martial arts master Steve Orosco with clerk candidate Anthony Acri at official opening of GOP headquarters on Elm Street, Oct. 7.

Even New Haven’s Republican Party showed signs of a pulse, running clean, issues-focused campaigns and giving voters genuine choices in November’s general elections. Meanwhile, five independent, community-connected candidates won seats on the Board of Alders; dubbed the “Jackson 5,” they promise to inject new energy and initiative into local lawmaking.

True, the worst public-health crisis in a century continues hospitalizing and killing people and interrupting daily life. Some beloved businesses closed.

But others did open, like the hopping restaurant-nightclub Jazzy’s in the Ninth Square. Live music came back, from Cafe Nine to the State House to the Westville Music Bowl, and it was safe. Same with live theater at the Shubert and Long Wharf. In-person services returned to our houses of worship. We started getting our communal lives back, and appreciating it more than ever. Both the city’s Health Department and a grassroots group of Fair Haven neighbors worked hard to get Covid-19 vaccine shots in the arms of city residents. During this second year of the pandemic, the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven channeled millions of dollars in relief to small mutual aid organizations, held virtual convenings on pressing issues, and deepened the connection between local philanthropy and the grassroots.

And 2021 ends with some reason to hope that the Covid pandemic is becoming an endemic for the vaccinated, one we can learn to live with, with the possibility that successful variants of the coronavirus will weaken. Bring on Omega! We’ll be ready.

True, the number of shootings and murders in New Haven continued to shoot up to 1990s levels. The police failed to solve three-quarters of them. (Police have made arrests in five out of 20 2020 homicides and three out of 25 2021 homicides. They have also seized 197 guns and made 186 gun-related arrests, in comparison to 144 guns seized and 150 such arrests at this time last year. By contrast: Waterbury has closed 11 out of 13 2020 homicide cases and all 10 2021 homicide cases by arrest, according to spokesperson Lt. Ryan Bessette. Hartford reported making 17 arrests out of 25 homicides from 2020, 20 arrests so far out of 34 homicides in 2021.) Property crime did and overall violent crime did drop in 2021. And people power has stepped in to address to make a difference:

• Fair Haven neighbors “occupied” a problem bar’s parking lot with music, poetry, board games, and pizza. That same group also brought their grassroots violence interruption efforts to a block party at Ferry and Chambers Streets, as well as to the state’s Liquor Control Commission.

Marlene Miller-Pratt, Pamela Jaynez, and Celeste Fulcher prepare to welcome public to the New Haven Botanical Garden of Healing Dedicated to Victims of Gun Violence, June 8.

Three local moms who each lost their children to gun violence realized a years-long dream by opening up, with enthusiastic state and city and nonprofit support, a new Valley Street memorial

Ciera Jones’s mother Darlene Galberth, with floral gift on Truman Street, July 16: “I’m going to name it CeCe.”

• Hill stalwart and hometown hero Leslie Radcliffe helped her Truman Street block heal after the shooting death of a 22-year-old woman by bringing neighbors out to tend a community garden.

Mercutio (Catherine Wicks) and Tybalt (Brian Starbird) try shaking on it in Ice the Beef version of "Romeo & Juliet," Aug. 13.

• And youth antiviolence group Ice the Beef brought the call for nonviolent conflict resolution to neighborhood-spanning marches — as well as to Elm Shakespeare’s summer production of “Romeo & Juliet.”

Highest-ranking cops at City Hall watch the Board of Alders reject the mayor's request for a new four-year term for Acting Police Chief Renee Dominguez, Dec. 6.

True, the mayor managed to break the police department and undo 30 years of progress in just 12 months, while remaining silent about injustice after injustice after injustice perpetrated on people he supposedly represents by a military policing wing he empowered. (When injustice occurred in Minneapolis, by contrast, he issued an outraged statement.)

But again, citizens stepped in to seek justice. A reconstituted Civilian Review Board began fulfilling its promise, setting in motion — along with new appointees to the Board of Police Commissioners — a use of force policy change to dovetail with state standards. It brought to light covered-up misconduct. The Police Commission found its voice, pushing for racial inclusion in upper ranks and pushing back against favoritism and disparities in punishment.

The Board of Alders took their charter-granted legislative oversight role seriously, responding to the unheeded grassroots to stop the mayor from locking “thin blue line” police leadership into the department for four more years.

A new state police accountability law produced real-life gains, enabling a commission to ban an arrested ex-New Haven cop who allegedly raped a Fair Haven sex worker from working for any force in Connecticut. That kind of decertification didn’t happen before 2021.

True, the mayor and Board of Alders tried to funnel yet another $900,000 in corruptly constructed tax credits meant for housing to nonprofits controlled by an imprisoned sex offender hiring lawyers to try to spring him and avoid paying court-ordered millions to a victim. But the system worked: a Republican state official found the courage and resolve to say no and stop the money flow.

So yes, 2021 had its share of sad and infuriating news. Serious challenges await us in 2022. But if 2021 taught us anything, it is this: challenges can spark people-powered progress. And progress can prevail.

Tom Breen contributed to this story.

The New Haven Independent is a not-for-profit public-interest daily news site founded in 2005.