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May 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

One Village Healing Moves The Mending Online Lucy Gellman, The Arts Paper www.newhavenarts.org

Kwadwo Adae sat in the center of a room, legs crossed. Three flames danced in a candelabra in front of him, bookended by plants on both sides. Pink and purple flowers, their tips exploding with pollen, bloomed on a canvas behind him.

He rolled his neck slowly and softened his shoulders.

“In your stillness I want you to feel,” he said. “If you have not already done so, just close your eyes and give yourselves a few moments to be in your body. To exist in stillness and time.”

Adae is one of the instructors at One Village Healing, which moved courses and one-on-one mentorship sessions online earlier this month. After pressing pause to evaluate community needs during COVID-19, co-founders Hanifa Washington and Thema Graves have taken the spot and its mission virtual.

“Right now, we’re really in this place of creating some sense of normalcy, and just sort of getting back into this rhythm that we were in before,” Washington said in a recent Zoom interview. “Leading by example, we took a pause to allow ourselves to charge up, to search, to discern, and then to respond from a place that is really needed and also beneficial to ourselves.”

“We’re not just giving from an empty cup,” she added. “We’re not doing that.”

In the months leading up to COVID-19,

One Village Healing was thriving.

The practice, which opened a space on Crown Street last year, was set to celebrate its first birthday in early April.

There was a fundraiser planned for the spring, as well as the intention to move into a bigger space.

In under 12 months, Washington and Graves had found that the community wasn’t just receptive to One Village— New Haveners sought out the spot, which offers everything from mindfulness meditation and yoga to healing and affinity groups.

When the city began taking precautions around COVID-19 in early March, “we were initially really hesitant to close,” Washington said. She recalled texting back and forth with Graves, as the two assured each other that they could find a way to practice safely. But as information continued to develop, they talked about how frightening the situation was.

Within days, schools closed. Restaurants, bars, and theaters closed. Gyms closed. The city and the state urged nonessential organizations and businesses to let their employees work remotely. One Village closed its doors and hit pause.

“Everything that we’re moving through right now—we have to keep remembering that we are in a state of trauma,” Washington said. “Like, deep, intense trauma. And so every action, every movement, every decision is going to be touched by that.”

Washington and Graves took time to figure out a plan that was still sustainable for the space, even if it was going to be fully digital. They met online with

instructors and group leaders, some of whom Washington said were more hesitant to go virtual than others.

Around the same time, Graves was approached by Dean Risë Nelson, head of the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale. The two had worked together with her on wellness initiatives including reiki and yoga in the past few years.

Nelson explained that the Center, through which Yale students have discovered and attended One Village Healing, was ready to offer a few months of financial support. Washington praised them effusively: it has allowed One Village to continue offering free programming and paying their staff through this time.

“The beautiful thing about it is it’s not just for them, but also seeing the need in the community,” Graves said. “It was right at the time where Hanifa said, ‘what’s going on? What are we going to do?’ It was very instrumental in helping us launch it forward and really feeling like a push.”

The space launched its virtual presence earlier this month, with guided meditation classes from artist and instructor Kwadwo Adae and a slate of weekly classes. There are also a number of oneon-one sessions and affinity groups, which Washington said are carefully marked to signal that they are intended for specific audiences.

Thursday trap yoga and meditation classes with Zen Zilla Yaga Founder Shefau Dabre, for instance, are labeled as “an intentional affinity healing space for Black womxn.”

It’s one of the ways that she and Graves are able to keep One Village’s fundamental mission—undoing systemic oppression through the creation of deliberate, safe, wellness-focused spaces— going. While this global pandemic may be a new one, COVID-19 coexists with the long-running trauma of institutional racism.

To date, U.S. landfall of the virus has killed Black and Brown people at disproportionately high rates, while also stoking new waves of anti-Asian xenophobia. Washington said that part of her practice has been acknowledging those systems of oppression, and pushing past them while doing work that breaks them down.

“I have just been in this practice of pausing and grounding,” she said. And that looks like really taking some deep breaths, feeling the earth beneath my feet, connecting with the core of the earth, feeling my connection to things bigger than me, and then feeling my body. Being like: ‘How do I feel? What’s really happening right now?’”

As they power up Zoom and hold classes from their homes, members of the One Village team are also adjusting.

Sopa! Co-founder Eric Rey, who runs the Black Obsidian Men’s Group, said he’s been trying to focus on Zoom’s advantages. While the program has drawbacks—he now struggles to read body

site to keep the half gallons of milk and liquid eggs fresh. A delivery truck was provided by New Reach to transport to food.

“God bless you. We love you,” Paul Bronson, Vertical Church elder and outreach coordinator said to each car as it drove away with a trunk of groceries.

As each car pulled up to the site, the volunteer team asked the visitor how much they needed. Most residents asked for one or two servings for their household. For special circumstances like residents making deliveries to their neighbors or families, more servings were provided.

Based on each visitor’s need the volunteers loaded the car trunk or back seats with a bag of non-perishable foods like tuna and pasta and a bag of fresh produce like potatoes, onions, and carrots. Each serving also included a half-gallon of milk and a carton of liquid eggs.

“We’re all in this together,” said New Reach CEO Kellyann Day. The emergency drop-in was requested by the city and Ward 30 Alder Honda Smith because the isolated area houses many senior households.

Eric Bethany, a father of five, picked up

two food servings after hearing about the pop-up site while on his way to the grocery store.

“It’s like I was in the right place right time. Any saving I can do is godsent,” Bethany said as he drove off. While most residents drove through the site to pick up the food, some came on foot.

An hour in, the team of about 20 volunteers served 100 households in the drivethru. As visitors slowed, Bronson predicted that about 200 households would be served on-site and began to strategize how the team would provide the community with the other 300 bags of groceries.

For the last scheduled hour, the team began making calls to friends and other contacts to pick up and deliver food throughout the city. Alder Smith also reached out to neighbors informing them of the distribution site.

Ten servings were picked up to be delivered to Life Haven Inc. Twenty were picked up to be brought to nearby senior centers.

Con’t from page 07

Isolated West Rockers Get Free Groceries

by MAYA MCFADDEN

New Haven I ndependent

“I had my doubts that we would ever get any help out here,” said Margareth, a senior resident of the Rockview housing development who walked from her apartment to a pop-up food distribution site at Katherine Brennan School on Saturday morning.

Margareth and 100 other neighbors received bags of free perishable and fresh foods from the clergy of the Vertical Church and volunteers from the nonprofit organization New Reach. The organizers collaborated with New Haven city officials to come prepared with 500 packages of groceries to help strapped families put food on the table during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Saturday pop-up is the most recent service of the Vertical Church. Since the start of the pandemic, the church has provided food to over 4,000 families throughout the city via delivery or a pop-up distribution site.

MAYA MCFADDEN PHOTO

The team had a busy start Saturday, serving about 40 households in the first 18 minutes.

The team kept a refrigerated truck on-

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - May - 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

School Buildings Staying Closed For Rest of School Year; Distance Learning To Continue

by Christine Stuart Ct. News Junkie

Gov. Ned Lamont made it official Tuesday and announced that school buildings will remain closed for the rest of the school year. He has not made a decision yet about summer school programming.

Lamont will require schools to continue to provide meals to children and teachers will continue to provide distance learning opportunities.

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“I know how important it is for so many students and teachers to finish out the school year, and I was holding out hope – particularly for high school seniors – that we’d at least be able to complete the final few weeks, but given the current circumstances and to protect everyone’s safety, it has become clear that it’s just not possible,” Gov. Ned Lamont said. “I want to thank the many educators across our state who have stepped up to provide remote learning during this time, as well as the many staff members who’ve been putting thousands of meals together for students each and every day.”

The Connecticut Education Association and the Connecticut Association of School Administrators said they support the decision to complete the school year with distance learning.

“We understand the emotion and sadness regarding closing schools and missing certain milestones and celebrations, but at this time, everyone’s top priority

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L to R: Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona, COO Josh Geballe, and Gov. Ned Lamont, and Connecticut first lady Annie Lamont, outside the governor’s residence in March

must be to protect the health of students and staff, and to prevent the spread of the coronavirus,” CEA President Jeff Leake said.

While there is no substitute for in-person teaching, educators will continue to provide distance learning and do all they can to keep students engaged and learning during the next several weeks, as they have been doing since mid-March.

“The reality is that no student can learn successfully in an unsafe environment, and re-opening schools before the coronavirus has been contained would only put students, teachers and administrators at risk,” Anthony Ditrio, chair of CASA, said. “The most important thing we can

all do now is work together to ensure a safe and successful reopening in the fall and hope that public health considerations will allow it to happen.”

Lamont is expected to detail the plans at 4 p.m. with Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona and Beth Bye from the Office of Early Childhood.

It’s unclear what accommodations will be made for special education students who need more one-on-one attention from teachers.

It’s also unclear what it means for Connecticut’s economic recovery since many working parents will struggle to get back to work without school or childcare.

Racial Profiling Declining In Traffic Stops, Report Shows

by Lisa Backus

New Haven I ndependent

An annual report examining the potential for racial profiling in traffic enforcement flagged fewer police departments for having statistical disparities in traffic stops, but authors say more work needs to be done to continue the trend.

The report completed by the Central Connecticut State University Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy examined more than 500,000 traffic stops made in Connecticut by municipal and state police in 2018. As part of its methodology, it compares the number of minority drivers who were stopped in daylight hours compared to the number stopped in twilight hours when officers could not easily see the driver.

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The results showed two departments required further scrutiny: Bridgeport and State Police Troop K. Both departments will undergo additional study to determine what is driving the disparities, author Ken Barone, IMRP project manager, said.

Barone and the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project have looked at traffic stops throughout the state since 2012 to determine if more minority

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drivers are being targeted by police for enforcement action compared to nonminority drivers. In its earliest findings, the group highlighted about a dozen police departments as requiring more study based on the traffic data. In the report issued Tuesday, authors noted that for the second year in a row, fewer departments were flagged for statistical disparities in traffic stops and other traffic enforcement.

“We are making progress,” said Middlesex State’s Attorney Michael Gaylor who represents the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney on the advisory board. “It’s important to point out that progress could not be made without everyone working together.”

This year, the Bridgeport Police Department was identified as stopping minority drivers at a rate 1.2 times higher in daylight, than under the “veil of darkness” when it’s harder to tell the race of a motorist, the report concluded. However, that city’s data was found to be inconsistently reported as a result of a change in its record management system. The department will undergo a second review and be subject to a supplemental report after its 2019 data is studied.

Bridgeport police did not respond to a request for comment.

Troop K, which patrols the Colchester area, was flagged as stopping Hispanic drivers at a rate of 1.7 higher during the daylight when the race or ethnicity of the driver can be seen, according to the report.

The figures were based on data gathered before state Department of Emergency and Public Protection Commissioner James Rovella took over the agency which includes the state police. His office said the organization is taking the findings seriously.

“We are always looking for ways to improve our service and trust between the community and our state troopers,” said Brian Foley, assistant to Rovella. “The bottom line is if our community and our citizens feel there’s an issue, then certainly we have to recognize that. Our many state police troops are vastly different, and serve many populations throughout the state. We look forward to continued evaluation and conversation.”

Two other police departments, New Haven and Waterbury, were highlighted due to the rate in which they conduct searches during traffic stops. Minority drivers were the subject of searches more often, but police found contraband more frequently during searches of Caucasian drivers, the Con’t from page 07

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May 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

Fearing Covid-19, Inmates Seek Release

by THOMAS BREEN

New Haven I ndependent

Fair Havener Thaddeus Lowery has asthma, a bullet wedged in his lung, stomach woes from a prior gunshot wound, and state permission to move from prison to a halfway house for time served on his nonviolent offense.

But the 34-year-old city native remains locked up —not because of bad behavior, but because the Covid-19 pandemic has paralyzed the state judicial and prison systems.

Lowery is currently incarcerated at the Willard-Cybulski Correctional Institution, a state-run prison two dozen miles north of Hartford near the Massachusetts border.

He and his lawyer are currently petitioning for his freedom by making arguments similar to those made by dozens of other Connecticut inmates and lawyers in two ongoing federal class action lawsuits and one recently dismissed state class action lawsuit.

All of those legal actions allege that Connecticut’s prisons have become dangerous breeding grounds for the novel coronavirus and that the state must expedite the release of inmates, particularly those with pre-existing medical conditions.

Incarcerated New Haveners like Lowery, Chaz Gulley, and Robert Miller (see

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Thaddeus and Veronica Lowery with their child.

below) have all started speaking up publicly about their experiences behind bars during this pandemic — sometimes indirectly through their lawyers and family members, sometimes directly through first-person affidavits filed in state and federal court.

“For the same reasons that we can’t just put people in prison cells with cobras and let them fend for themselves, we can’t put people in prison cells with Covid and let them fend for themselves,” Lowery’s attorney, local civil rights lawyer Alex Taubes, told the Independent Wednesday.

Lowery’s wife Veronica told the Independent “it’s been really hard, stressful, overwhelming” to know that her husband is still locked up, even as the pandemic has spread throughout Connecticut’s prison system at higher rates than among the general public over the past month.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “You don’t. It’s really frightening, and it’s been hard.”

State Department of Correction Director of External Affairs Karen Martucci declined to comment on the active litigation. In past court filings in the state and federal suits, state lawyers and the state Attorney General have argued that the various plaintiffs lawyers do not have legal standing to pursue the various class action suits filed on behalf of Connecticut inmates.

The state Department of Correction has also pointed to its release of hundreds of inmates over the past month as well as its relocation of all Covid-19 prisoners to the state maximum security prison, Northern Correctional Institution.

As of this week, according to the a motion for a temporary restraining order filed by Connecticut ACLU on Tuesday in its federal class action suit, 382 prisoners in Connecticut have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, as have 310 staff members, and three prisoners have died from the virus.

Officer Crosby Comes Home

by ALLAN APPEL

New Haven I ndependent

“I’m so happy to be back,” said Natalie Crosby, who left the NHPD in 2019 after a distinguished three and a half years here as a patrol officer, for a better contract and for financial reasons.

Crosby missed being with her “New Haven police family” as well as her family in Morris Cove.

In a true story of how money doesn’t buy you love, Crosby was formally reinstated into the NHPD on Wednesday night.

Crosby, along with another former New Haven officer, Alex Rivera, were formally reinstated Wednesday by unanimous vote at a special meeting of the Board of Police Commissioners.

About 30 people were in attendance via the Zoom teleconferencing app in a meeting hosted by the board Chairman Anthony Dawson.

The formal proceedings — the interviewing of Crosby by the police commissioners on Chief Otoniel Reyes’s recommendation to reinstate — were conducted out of the view of the public and press in executive session.

Then the commissioners reconvened into

the public Zoom session to cast the unanimous votes.

Crosby’s departure was part of a “blue exodus” of officers, many young and promising such as Crosby, who had left in large part because New Haven cops had gone without a contract for three years. Then, after lengthy negotiations, issues were resolved and a new contract was inked in the fall of 2019. Crosby had left earlier in 2019 to work for the Stamford police department.

Her return reflects how the department has stabilized since the contract, observed Chief Otoniel Reyes.

“These officers had an opportunity to experience this department. Having left, they gained an appreciation for not just the camaraderie here for the officers but the relationships they built with the community,” Reyes said. “To hear these officers articulate that and talk about missing that and being excited to get back to that kind of policing is both heartwarming and a validation of the work we do in New Haven.”

Friday morning, Crosby reflected in a telephone interview how good the decision felt.

“I left to seek better financial opportuni-

PAUL BASS PHOTO

Officer Natalie Crosby.

ties” and in part because of the uncertainty over the contract, she said.

She realized soon after that “it wasn’t about money and better contract.”

Crosby said she left Stamford on very good terms, but the main draw was the

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importance of being able to return to what she described “as my [police] family.”

Crosby grew up in East Haven with family who have been, and still are, on Concord Street on the East Shore. She had lucked out in being able after the academy to patrol that very neighborhood.

“They have a lot of benefits” in Stamford, she said, “and I left in good standing because I missed New Haven.”

Also a significant factor in her return is the experience New Haven offers its officers.

“You could become a detective in four years in New Haven. It’s not like that in many places. Even after three and a half years I was there, I gained a ton of experience. Investigations and people skills.

Any officer that leaves New Haven and goes to another town, they bring with a ton of experience.”

Crosby said she hasn’t yet received her new assignment. “I haven’t been told details yet.”

Would she like to return to the East Shore?

“I would love to, but it’s not my decision.

They’ll put me where I’m needed.”

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - May - 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

May 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

Below Political Radar, U.S. & China Connect

by MAYA MCFADDEN New Haven I ndependent

At a time when the Chinese and United States governments are at odds, personto-person pandemic cooperation was on display Monday on Temple Street.

There, the Yale-China Association received 2,150 N95 respirator masks and 12 boxes of surgical gowns from China partners who are showing their support for New Haven health workers.

The shipment of personal protective equipment (PPE) was the second round sent to Yale New Haven and other hospitals by a group of seven Chinese nonprofit organizations known as the “COVID-19 Life Preservation Initiative.”

The New Haven shipment is a part of the

group’s larger initiative to provide about one million pieces of PPE nationally.

Yale-China Association Executive Director David Youtz said the China-based initiative reached out to him in March offering to donate to the Yale New Haven Hospital in an effort to support the city.

“This is a great demonstration that shows the effective collaboration between American and Chinese people,” Youtz said. We work well together” despite a decline in international relations at the federal government level between the U.S and China.

Two weeks ago the Yale-China Association received more than 150,000 N95 respirator masks, face shields, and surgi-

cal gowns for the frontline at Yale New Haven Hospital caring for patients during the pandemic to use.

The international initiative is made up of former Yale students, friends of Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale Medical School, and alumni working in China.

After hearing about the peak of Covid-19 cases in New Haven, people in Changhsa, a New Haven sister city in China, began collecting the PPE to show their support and send their wishes for recovery.

The initiative plans to send more shipments. The next is to come from a hospital in Hunan that was also founded by members of Yale in 1906.

MAYA MCFADDEN PHOTO Members of the Yale-China Association receive the donation.

1,500th Covid Patient Released; Peak Passed

by THOMAS BREEN

New Haven I ndependent

Charles Moore Wednesday afternoon became the 1,500th Covid-19 patient discharged from Yale New Haven Hospital, as officials reported that Connecticut may now be eight days past the pandemic’s hospitalization peak.

Nurses, doctors, and aides streamed out of the building as Moore left the hospital’s 20 York St. doors to reunite with his sister, who was unable to visit him during his hospital stay.

The crowd of well-wishers swelled to over 100, filling the drive-through area and cheering and holding up signs.

Hours earlier, Yale New Haven Health officials and clinicians discussed the panedmic’s peak. They noted that intensive care is as stretched as before, and the public needs to keep social distancing and hand hygiene as the near and distant future remains so uncertain.

The update came midday during the regional health care system’s latest coronavirus-related virtual town hall, held online via the Zoom teleconferencing app and on Facebook Live.

Even if the state is past its peak, officials said, the sustained severity of illness for current patients, the inevitability of more new cases throughout the summer and fall, and the likelihood that a reliable vaccine is still at least a year away are significant causes for concern.

The digital press conference was the fifth such question-and-answer session that the hospital system has conducted since the novel coronavirus outreabk made landfall in Connecticut in mid-March.

YNHH Chief Clinical Officer Thomas Balcezak (pictured) said Wednesday that the state has likely hit its peak in terms of coronavirus-positive patients in hospital beds at any given point in time.

He said that Connecticut hospitals had

SAMUEL GURWITT PHOTO

roughly 1,970 Covid-19 patients in hospital beds throughout the state on April 21. As of Wednesday, that number is down to roughly 1,600.

“We’re seeing this curve fall a little bit,” he said.

“We had been preparing for this since the end of February. We had been modelling what the number of cases would be, and we were very well prepared,” he said. “Our peak did not look anything like what it could have looked like had there not been social distancing and other measures put in place.”

With that said, Balcezak continued, the state, its residents, and its health care providers must continue to move cautiously in the weeks, and months, ahead.

That means not immediately “opening up” the state’s economy and social life to pre-pandemic levels, and keeping in mind that the virus will continue to be a threat throughout the summer and the fall .. and really until there is a reliable vaccine.

“If we loosen those [social distancing mandates] up at this moment, we will then see our cases continue to climb,” he said.

“A vaccine, by anyone’s guess, is at least a year away,” he said. Guessing when exactly there will be an effective vaccine “is only speculation at this point.”

YNHH President and CEO Marna Borgstrom said that she visited a Co-

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vid-19 intensive care unit (ICU) in Smilow Cancer Hospital on on Monday.

“Every bed is full, and the staff are still fighting the battle,” she said.

“The way it feels on these patient care units right now is the way it felt last week and the week before,” even though the state may technically be past its hospitalization peak.

The Covid-19 patients in hospital beds are still “really, really sick right now”; staff are still stretched to near capacity providing the best care they can. She said walking through that unit reminded her why the public can’t let up on protective behaviors like wearing masks, staying home when possible, washing one’s hands frequently with soap and water,

and keeping a six-foot social distance from others when out in public.

“This has been a very challenging illness to treat.”

Borgstrom and Balcezak both said that the hospital is currently trying to model what a second round of coronavirus infections, hospitalizations, and deaths might look like this fall. “We’re trying to figure out what that number is,” Borgstrom said. “We believe that we have got to prepare for that.

“This is going to be a new normal that will include taking care of patients with this virus” even during the summer, when community spread might be relatively low because more people are outside and in less dense gatherings.

Balcezak said people often ask him when hospitals like YNHH will resume normal operations. “I think there is no ‘normal operations,’” he said. “We are entering a new world and a new phase and a new way of doing business. I think this will forever change us.”

• The regional health care system has conducted upwards of 30,000 coronavirus tests since the start of the pandemic in Connecticut in mid-March, said Borgstrom and Balcezak. Borgstrom said that a little over 8,000 of those tests have come back positive.

Balcezak said that the state needs to get to a place where it is conducting roughly 30,000 coronavirus tests a day in order to most effectively identify where the virus is in the community, who needs medical care, who needs to quarantine, and who needs to isolate.

Borgstrom said that she has been in conversations with Yale University partners about ramping up testing in the New Haven region to roughly 10,000 a day.

• Borgstrom also said there are currently over 700 coronavirus-positive inpatients Con’t from page 13

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - May - 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

May 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

CDC’s Prescription: Individual Housing for People Experiencing

Homelessness During COVID-19 and Beyond

Washington, DC –The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated their official guidance on COVID-19 to include sheltered homeless populations, stating, “Depending on resources and staff availability, non-group housing options (such as hotels/motels) that have individual rooms should be considered for the overflow, quarantine, and protective housing sites.” The CDC’s guidance for unsheltered populations already emphasizes that “Unless individual housing units are available, do not clear encampments during community spread of COVID-19.” The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (the Law Center) is grateful for the CDC’s guidance, and hopes governments will use it as a baseline to build upon.

This new guidance comes as new stories of widespread asymptomatic spread at congregate homeless shelters in San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles and other cities are emerging. The Law Center has pushed the effort to house people experiencing homelessness in hotels, motels, and/or RVs for the duration of the crisis, and to make sure they never have to return to the streets after the crisis is over.

“We call on hotel owners—and especially those who have been helped with our public dollars through the federal relief package—to act in the public good and make it easy for communities to follow the CDC guidance to quickly place people experiencing homelessness into

their vacant rooms for the duration of the pandemic,” stated Maria Foscarinis, Executive Director at the Law Center. “We also urge elected officials to use vacant federal, state, and local properties for emergency housing and as a space to help transition people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing after COVID-19.”

The CDC also emphasizes that communities should “plan for how to connect clients to housing opportunities after they have completed their stay in these temporary sites.” Elevating conversations on housing services post-COVID-19 allows us to step back and think about the long-

term solutions we need to end homelessness.

“Given what we now know about the aerosolization of COVID-19 and asymptomatic spread, it is inexcusable for communities not to be moving people into individual housing units as quickly as safely possible,” said Eric Tars, legal director at the Law Center. “And to prevent the next wave of COVID-19, we need to make sure we are building the capacity so that once people are off the streets or out of shelters, there are permanent places for them to stay, and no one ever returns to the streets. Housing is healthcare, and both are human rights that need to be guaranteed to all, for all of our good.”

The CDC Guidance is available here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019ncov/community/homeless-shelters/ plan-prepare-respond.html The Law Center’s recommendations and other best practices from across the country are available here: https://nlchp. org/coronavirus/.

The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (the Law Center) is the only national organization dedicated solely to using the power of the law to prevent and end homelessness. With the support of a large network of pro bono lawyers, we address the immediate and long-term needs of people who are homeless or at risk through outreach and training, advocacy, impact litigation, and public education.

Covid-19 Test Center Opening In Dwight

by PAUL BASS

New Haven I ndependent

A new testing site is slated to open Wednesday on a basketball court in one of New Haven’s Covid-19 “hot spots,” in the Dwight neighborhood.

That news was announced Monday afternoon during the Elicker administration’s daily Covid-19 Zoom press briefing.

The practice of Steven Murphy, a Greenwich doctor who was born in New Haven, will operate the site, which city officials had originally hoped would be located in the Stop & Shop Plaza parking lot.

Murphy, who participated in the press briefing, said the testing site at 1319 Chapel St. — on the hoops court in the park behind Amistad Middle School — will be open on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

People need to make an appointment online here in advance. (Those who lack internet service can call the health department at 203-946-4949 to reserve a spot.)

Registration requires filling out several forms, including information on health insurance. Medicaid will be accepted.

People without any insurance will still be able to be tested, at no charge, according

to Murphy. No car is needed for the tests, but advance registration is required.

Other highlights of Monday’s briefing: Four more New Haveners have died of Covid-19 since Saturday, bringing the total to 53. City Health Director Maritza Bond said all four were elderly. To date, the ages of New Haveners who have died have ranged from 26 to 99. The number of confirmed cases to date is 1,457.

• The city released updated charts on the breakdowns of the cases.

• The administration has been discussing how to prepare for when the city will begin to reopen, once that time arrives.

Mayor Justin Elicker said several principles have guided the emerging strategy: Reopening will happen gradually. There may be steps back as well as forward if outbreaks reoccur. The city will play a role in helping individual businesses learn about and put in safety measures like plexiglass and takeout windows. It will also help businesses with efforts to be deemed “essential” by the state. It is important for cities and towns throughout the regional to coordinate their gradual reopenings, he added.

City government will also gradually

reopen functions that have closed, as officials learn more about how to keep employees safe. For instance, the city now feels it can protect parking ticketers, who will begin issuing warnings this week and fines the next. The public works department, which has focused on refuse collection in the first weeks of the pandemic, will soon restart its street crews.

“The strategy is slowly inching into this and making sure every step of the way we’re cautious so we have public confidence and we’re keeping everybody safe,” Elicker said.

• Elicker issued a plea to officials at all level of government to de-politicize the decision-making process.

“There’s going to e a lot of pressure understandably to reopen,” he noted. “It’s also a little bit too political in my mind.

Generally more Republican-leaning individuals are pushing for faster reopening than Democrats. That concerns me. We should be deferring to epidemiologists and medical experts on the best strtagey to do this rather than on political pressures. I hope that leaders around Connecticut will have a steady hand when we make these sorts of decisions.”

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The View From Inside The ER

by KAREN JUBANYIK, M.D.

My friends and family check in with me to ask what the Yale New Haven Hospital Emergency Department (ED), where I work as a physician, is like these days. I think they are expecting to hear gory details, as if a train wrecked right in the middle of the place.

Occasionally, we get a flurry of activity all at once, but as adrenaline junkies, we have trained for this. One of the reasons I chose emergency medicine is the teamwork involved, so even when it gets chaotic, it is a controlled chaos with everyone using their skills and working together to help the patients who arrive scared, sick, or both.

But mostly these days, the ED is a wee bit eerie. Before the pandemic, our ED was almost always crowded, with patients packed end to end on stretchers in the hallways, with friends and family scrunched in. Now visitors are banned and overall volume is down.

I wonder about all of the patients who usually roll into the ED all day and night. In addition to the usual abdominal pain, headache, back pain, and chest pain, where are the patients with psychic pain? Where are the family violence survivors, and where are the patients seeking treatment for heroin or alcohol use disorder? We miss you!

People are afraid of getting exposed to Covid-19, and are avoiding us, even though, paradoxically, we now often have more open beds and space to see patients than usual. One of the Yale neurologists noticed that we are even seeing 80-90 percent fewer patients coming in with strokes. YIKES! My friends and family also check in frequently to make sure that I am OK. They probably had more to worry about when, as a pregnant woman with small children at home and a novice practitioner of medicine, I performed invasive procedures in patients with AIDS before post-exposure prophylaxis and effective treatments were available. These days, I am fortunate to work at a place where we have adequate PPE and my access to testing and healthcare is better than so many others who are also on the frontlines in New Haven. Those other essential workers, many from vulnerable communities, who work in the police, EMS, and fire departments, hospice, nursing and group homes, corrections, and retail/food/delivery, all do their work in less visible ways and with fewer PPE resources.

Many of the patients brought to the ED have been really sick. We are seeing a flood of elderly people from nursing

homes, and I suspect it is only the tip of the iceberg.

Last shift, in the middle of the night, I called three families in an hour to tell them that their loved one was ill from Covid-19 and not likely to survive. It is tragic that many nursing home residents are seeing their roommates “get moved to a different room” (ie, die), and many of them will spend their last few weeks on earth without visitors, even if they do not get covid themselves, so that fewer of their fellow residents might die. That is true sacrifice for both the patients and their families.

As I was leaving a recent shift in the ED, I saw firsthand what distinguishes someone as a truly exceptional nurse.

I make a point to learn about these patients’ lives when I speak to family members; I hope it is helpful for them to get to tell us a bit about their Nana.

Although it was well after her shift had ended, I found one of our new nurses sitting by the side of a patient who had been brought to the ED in a condition beyond salvation; she was holding his hand and speaking softly to him.

Although he had not graduated high school, he was now her professor. I knew that as much as she was giving, she was also getting the privilege of being present with him as he inched along on his final journey.

Karen Jubanyik is an emergency medicine physician at Yale New Haven Hospital and a faculty member at the Yale School of Medicine. Do you have a story to tell about what life is like for you during the Covid-19 pandemic?

Send it to us here.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - May - 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

Con’t from page 02

One Village Healing

language, for instance—he’s been excited to use new tools like screen sharing.

“I’ve started to think about ways to maximize the potential of being online in ways that can’t be done in the real world,” he said. “Like, I can pull up a clip of John Coltrane and have the brothers see like, Coltrane sweating over his sax.”

Monday night, Adae filled the virtual space with his meditation, talking attendees through the need to focus on their breath. On a handful of screens, people logged on, muted themselves and turned off their cameras. Adae instructed them to roll their necks, relax their shoulders, let their heads hang. Muscles slackened across New Haven. He took in a big breath and exhaled.

“Breathe out everything that does not serve you,” he said. There was a beat.

“Let the breath purify the mind and nourish the body and cleanse the spirit.”

While Adae focuses on “how sacred breath is” during his hour-long meditation—a message that feels particularly poignant in the midst of a virus that takes that life force away—other offerings allow movement and gathering.

Each Sunday, Dabre leads free yoga meant for beginners and families. There are half day retreats and one-on one coaching offerings that people can sign up for online. Graves and Washington close out the weekend with a “Sunday Circle” that brings together arts and culture with healing practices.

Graves said she’s been taking that approach to her personal life as well. At home—she lives by herself but joked that she’s in an “animal kingdom” thanks to several pets—she’s tried to focus on what it means to rest and pause more often.

When she is not on the clock for One Village, she’s been taking walks in Edgewood Park and connecting with friends and family at a safe, usually virtual, distance. She praised the number of virtual classes that have popped up from community partners in the past five to six weeks, and said that she’s glad One Village has been able to contribute to those.

“There’s like this sea of offerings that’s really amazing, and it feels really good to be a part of that,” she said. “To witness that. These people that have kind of been storing up, and now there’s an acceleration. It’s like a banquet to choose from.”

“Yes, there are hard times,” she added.

“Yes, it’s confusing. It’s weird. It’s all of these things. And we get to connect with each other still. So that has also been healing too.”

To find out more about One Village Healing, visit their website www.onevillagehealing.org/ Thema Graves and Hanifa Washington in April of last year, at an opening celebration of One Village Healing. Lucy Gellman File Photo.

Bike Share Bids Indefinite Good-Bye

by THOMAS BREEN

New Haven I ndependent

New Haven’s fledgling bike-sharing operation has left town.

The operation, Bike New Haven, pulled all 300 of its rentable bicycles from city streets four months ago because of planned software and hardware upgrades.

Now the company has announced that the bicycles won’t be returning to New Haven any time soon—not because of tech problems, but because of Covid-19.

The bike share company delivered that news via a mass email sent out Tuesday morning with the subject line: “Refund Notice.”

“Riders, as you know, we temporarily suspended bike share services to upgrade the system to a new operating system,” the email reads. “Our intention was to improve service and provide frequently requested features. We were working diligently to prepare the system to be relaunched, and we were looking forward to introducing the final product.

Unfortunately, given the current instability created by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the delay has been prolonged indefinitely.

“Taking into consideration the financial impact and strain that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about, Bike New Haven will be refunding users with an existing and active subscription to the Bike New Haven platform. User accounts will be refunded and deactivated to prevent any further recurring charges.

If you need any further assistance, please contact bikenewhaven@p3gm.com.”

Ads, no bikes: Lawrence Street station.

The email goes on to link to public safety information regarding Covid-19 as provided by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.

While the short-term rental bikes themselves are gone—and have been gone since Jan. 1—the eight-by-four-foot ad panels installed at nearly all of the 30 bike share stations citywide remain.

The bike share system is privately run, by a New York City-based company called P3 Global Management (P3GM).

It formally launched in New Haven in February 2018, and allowed cyclists to rent available bikes for up to 45 minutes at a time.

The five-year contract that P3GM signed

with the city in 2017 allows the company to sustain operations in New Haven through revenue raised from subscribers, sponsors, and advertisers. The city does not subsidize the program taxpayerfunded dollars.

Since the novel coronavirus outbreak in mid-March, P3GM has worked with the city transportation department to post public safety tips from the CDC on some of the extant ad panels.

Some, like the one at the top of this article near the corner of Lawrence Street and State Street, currently displays an advertisement for the snack McCain Dip’n Wedges.

“The public health response requested all available ad panels from the bike

share system for support of the public health messaging. To date 35 panels have been used at no cost (other than printing),” city transit chief Doug Hausladen told the Independent by email Tuesday.

When asked about the future of bike share in New Haven, Hausladen wrote, “The Bike New Haven program is, among hundreds of other city programs, being monitored as the City’s response to COVID continues. As this is a nocost program to the City of New Haven, it is our hope that the Bike New Haven program will be able to return should the public health emergency allow safe operations of the contracted service to resume.”

Representatives from Bike New Haven did not respond to multiple email requests for comment by the publication time of this article.

Bike New Haven pulled all 300 of its bikes from city streets on Jan. 1 with the intention of transitioning from the Noa technology platform to a new one called TapBike.

“The intention of the transition is to upgrade service and improve return accuracy,” a Dec. 20, 2019 email about the proposed change read. “Users will now be able to reserve bikes at stations in advance and rent multiple bikes at a time.

The bike share program will remain station based with a total of 300 bicycles in the fleet.”

On Jan. 31, with still no bikes on city streets, the company sent out another email stating that the new bike share system should “be relaunched in the coming weeks.”

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

May 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

Mass Mask Giveaway Spreads Safety

by THOMAS BREEN

New Haven I ndependent

Dozens of volunteers filled the median and sidewalks of Winchester Avenue in Science Park to give out tens of thousands of free masks to eager recipients who honked and cheered as they laid their hands on the hardto-find protective face coverings.

That mask giveaway took place Tuesday morning and early afternoon outside of the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology’s (ConnCAT) headquarters at 4 Science Park.

Wearing bright yellow reflective safety vests, latex gloves, and a mix of reusable cloth coverings and disposable surgical masks, volunteers worked from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. handing out zip-lock plastic baggies containing five masks each.

The event was organized by Masks for CT and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, Varick AME Memorial Zion Church, ConnCAT, and the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven, among other partners.

Jewish Federation CEO Judy Alperin and Mask for CT’s Amy Stefanowski said that the groups planned to hand out 50,000 free Level 1 FDA-approved surgical masks on Tuesday, which marked the group’s first New Haven giveaway.

“Things are going like clockwork,” Alperin said, praising the city police and fire departments for helping with traffic management.

Stefanowski said that her group initially sought to raise money to buy masks for

THOMAS BREEN PHOTOS

Free mask giveaway on Winchester Avenue in Science Park.

hospitals, nursing homes, and first responders throughout the state. When she saw the need for masks even beyond those working on the front lines of this crisis, she broadened her group’s outreach to include giving out masks en masse to anyone who needs them.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended since early April that members of the general public wear cloth face coverings and nonmedical grade masks when out in public to reduce the likelihood of community spread

of the novel coronavirus. While most masks do not protect one from contracting the virus, they can be effective in keeping asymptomatic carriers from accidentally spreading the virus by sneezing or coughing on others.

“This is a powerful show of unity,” said ConnCAT President and CEO Erik Clemons. “I think it’s a very powerful gesture for people to come together to distribute equipment to folks to help fight this virus.”

Clemons added that, in addition to the 4 Science Park distribution, ConnCAT

pick up supplies shipped from Africa.

Loyal customers drive from all over the state to pick up supplies they can only find there.

Harris, who is from Togo originally, carries products from all over Africa.

Idrissou said he knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur from a young age after he saw both his mother and grandmother run their own stores. Before Motherland Market came into being, Harris’s mother ran a similar store in Lomé, Togo.

Idrissou said he’s mostly interested in the craft of business. He doesn’t have a strong desire to go into any particular line of the profession. The pandemic, however, has changed his calculation.

“With this whole pandemic, it’s showing me that within entrepreneurship you got to really choose wisely,” he said.

“Helping anybody’s essential need is the best business.”

Now, he said, he realizes that people like his mother who run grocery stores are essential for society to work.

“We tend to neglect our essential workers every day,” he said. “We glorify whatever destroys us.”

All Stocked, Except For Bitter Kola

While the pandemic has forced tens of millions of Americans out of their jobs, others have suddenly found themselves risking their lives at jobs that used to be under-appreciated but that are now deemed essential. For instance, grocery store workers in Connecticut are seeking to become designated as first responders by the state. Other states have already made those designations.

At Motherland Market, business continues, but with a little extra help. This week, both of Harris’s sons, Chiekh and Sidy Idrissou, have been there stocking shelves and checking out customers’ groceries. The shelves were fully stocked, and customers wandered in every few minutes.

The store looks mostly the same as it did before the pandemic, save for a few subtle changes. Two white hand sanitizer dispensers are now mounted by the door.

Lines of green tape are spaced six feet apart in front of the cash register to make sure customers keep their distance as much as possible in the cramped aisle.

Harris and her sons now let no more than five customers in at a time.

They are strict about making sure every

staffers canvassed the Newhallville and Dixwell neighborhoods Tuesday morning, knocking on doors and handing out masks to those unable to make it down to the main distribution site on Winchester Avenue.

A line of cars inched down Division Street from Prospect Hill before turning south on Winchester, where volunteers greeted them with the baggies filled with masks.

They delivered the masks by handing the plastic baggies directly to the driver through a car’s open front window, or by tossing the baggies into a car’s back seat for those drivers who rolled down their cars’ back windows.

The volunteers, smiling and waving, asked the drivers to repay the favor by honking and cheering in support. A chorus of honks erupted from nearly every car that passed through.

“People are really appreciative,” said Newhallville/Prospect Hill Alder Kim Edwards.

The mask giveaway wasn’t just for drivers.

Bikers and pedestrians also made their way up and down Winchester Avenue to get in on the mask handouts.

Nita Sukmono said she works at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Hamden, and that her employer has been able to provide only a limited supply of personal protective equipment (PPE).

“I’m nervous all the time,” she said, even with the plexiglass screen that now separates her from customers at the convenience store’s checkout.

She and Indriyo, who is an Indonesian language instructor at Yale, said they tried ordering masks online, but that the soonest any company could deliver to their apartment at Winchester Lofts was July.

“It’s really good,” Nita said about the mask give away. “We really needed them.”

Tariq Sharif, a 23-year-old Newhallville resident, also praised the volunteer group for giving out free masks in the community. “It feels really good” to now have a mask, he said.

Sharif said he’s currently on unemployment and is also taking online courses at Gateway Community College. He said he found out about the mask giveaway from his grandma.

Patricia Jenkins-Simmons came to Winchester Avenue Tusday not to pick up masks, but to help hand them out.

She said she turned out to volunteer along with several friends who are all part of the Ms. Millionaire Mindset Sisterhood.

Jenkins-Simmons said she works in mental health care, and has seen firsthand the toll that the pandemic has had on the mental and physical health of many of her friends, family, and patients.

“We want to see these numbers go down,” she said about infection, hospitalization, and death rates, particularly in workingclass black and brown communities like Newhallville and Dixwell.

“If we don’t take care of our New Haven,” she asked, “who will?”

Grocer Presses On, Inspires Next Gen

by SAM GURWITT

New Haven I ndependent

Watching his mother operate a grocery store in a pandemic, budding entreprenuer Chiekh Idrissou has learned that the best businesses fit the term “essential.”

Idrissou wouldn’t normally spend so much time helping his mother Loubabtou Harris run her Dixwell Avenue African grocery store. In normal times, he works as an assistant manager in the shoe section of Eb Lens in Milford, and he runs his own photography and videography operation on the side. He is now laid off.

And a wedding he was supposed to photograph was canceled. So, he is helping his mother run Motherland Market.

She needs the help:the store, located at 897 Dixwell Ave. in Hamden, has seen more business since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Idrissou said he thinks it’s because people are home and have less to do than they normally would. “I feel like food kind of soothes people,” he said.

Motherland Market carries imports from all over Africa that are hard to come by anywhere else. Harris, who goes by the nickname Aida, drives to New York or New Jersey multiple times a week to

10

SAM GURWITT PHOTOS Chiekh Idrissou helping out mom at Motherland.

customer wears a mask. As Chiekh Idrissou stood outside the store, an unmasked customer approached. Idrissou greeted him in French, and told him he needed a mask. The customer walked back to his car and came back with a mask he had sewn himself from beige cloth.

The man, who declined to give his name, said he had to sew one himself because he couldn’t find one to buy. He is a nurse’s assistant at Yale New Haven Hospital. At work, he said, he sometimes has to reuse his N95 respirators.

Motherland Market relies entirely on imports from Africa. With workers staying home all over the world, food supply chains that would normally keep goods flowing across the Atlantic have slowed, said Idrissou.

But the store is in good shape. Harris said she has enough wares in reserve, both in Hamden and at storage units in New York, to last another five months.

And trade has not stopped; it has simply slowed. She said she is not worried that she won’t be able to continue stocking the store.

The store does not carry paper towels or toilet paper that would now leave a few shelves empty. Motherland Market has seen a run on only one good: bitter kola. Bitter kola is a nut from central and western Africa prized for its medicinal properties, including for respiratory ailments like bronchitis. “I tell you, we sold out fast,” Idrissou said.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - May - 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

May 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

Chicken & Rice Warms Up YNHH Shift

by EMILY HAYS

New Haven I ndependent

Efrain Nieves parked a food truck by the Yale New Haven Hospital Monday evening and prepared to dispense Spanish rice, chicken, roast pork, chicken soup and a hearty stew, sancocho for hungry hospital workers.

Nieves’ Wallingford-based Puerto Rican restaurant, Tata’s, has fared relatively well during the Covid-19 public health crisis. Nieves was thinking about ways to help others impacted by Covid when a friend ordered a large delivery for YNHH staffers.

Nieves decided to donate the food rather than accept the purchase.

“I would love to do something for the first responders, because they’re doing a great job out there,” Nieves said. “This is traditional Spanish comfort food - like from grandma’s recipes. I want it to feel like a family member’s cooking.”

Argenis Rodriguez is the nurse at YNHH who first prompted the donation.

His coworkers’ families have been cooking and donating for his department, so the healthcare workers have less to worry about at the end of their long shifts.

Rodriguez noticed that none of the food was Puerto Rican and asked his mother whether she would help him provide his comfort food.

His mother, Lysie Rodriguez, agreed.

Then learned that her son’s department meant 100 to 150 people.

“I don’t know how to cook for that many people!” Lysie Rodriguez told the Independent.

Rodriguez decided to order from Tata’s, through a mutual friend. She was surprised to learn that the order would be free and served from a food truck.

Nieves decided to bring a food truck to keep the food as hot as possible. The rain on Monday further convinced him to keep the menu warm and hearty.

“When you get the food, it’s nice and hot and ready to make you feel good,” Nieves said.

Nieves has a 45 year-long career in cooking. He went to the New York Food and Hotel Management Program and began Tata’s in 2006.

Nieves said that he worried about what would happen to his business when Covid-19 hit Connecticut. He decided to stay open for a week and figure out what to do afterwards.

“The first week was OK. The second week was better, and so on,” Nieves said.

He said that he is committed to paying all of his staff, even if that means going through his savings. He has received a federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) forgivable loan in case business begins to suffer.

Nieves has worked with the same staff

for years and wants to keep working with them after the pandemic subsides, he explained.

In an interview on Monday, Nieves repeatedly thanked God and Wallingford for their generosity. Along with patronizing his restaurant, a few New Haven area neighbors have padded their bills with dollars for the less fortunate.

“I have people that have dropped money off three or four times to feed people who don’t have it,” he said.

The pandemic has taught Nieves to treasure what he has, he said. He constantly tells his children that he loves them.

“Now I appreciate life more. We’re in quarantine and we can’t even hug the people that we love. I’m going to tell

them every day, ‘I love you. I love you. I love you,’” he said.

The YNHH donation kicks off what Nieves is planning to be a weekly event at different hospitals around Connecticut. If other hospitals agree, Nieves plans to bring the food truck to Meriden next Monday and to Hartford the week after that.

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THE INNER-CITY NEWS - May - 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

Rep. Jim Clyburn Will Lead House Oversight Committee on Coronavirus

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-South Carolina) will chair a newly established oversight panel with broad authority to oversee the federal response to the coronavirus.

During an exclusive live broadcast, Clyburn told National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided to impanel a committee after she recalled a similar body selected by President Harry S. Truman after World War II. “Speaker Pelosi called me several weeks ago, and we got into this discussion about what we need to do and how we needed to make sure that this is done in such a way that it will meet with our vision of making sure that the greatness of this country is accessible and affordCon’t from page 06

Traffic Stops

in beds throughout the regional health care system’s seven hospital campuses in Connecticut and Rhode Island. She said that number is down from a peak of roughly 850 last week.

YNHH Senior Vice President Vin Petrini told the Independent that Yale New Haven Hospital’s two local hospital campuses on York Street and Chapel Street currently have 424 Covid-positive inpatients, which is down by 18 from Tuesday.

One hundred five local patients are currently on ventilators. There have been a total of 136 local coronavirus-related fatalities at Yale New Haven Hospital.

The regional health care system has discharged roughly 1,500 patients who have recovered well enough to return home or to a step-down rehabilitation facility.

• Borgstrom, Balcezak, Petrini, and Lawrence + Memorial and Westerly Hospitals President and CEO Patrick Green all urged residents who are experiencing symptoms associated with heart attacks and stroke to seek out treatment and not avoid the emergency department out of a fear of contracting Covid-19.

“If you have symptoms, if you need care, reach out to your providers. Our emergency departments are open. Our folks are seeing patients,” Balcezak said.

• Borgstrom also reiterated how much of a financial hit YNHH in particular and hospitals across the country more broadly are taking during this pandemic because of the postponement of elective procedures in order to make staff and beds and other resources available for Covid-19 patients.

“The losses that are being experienced in hospital-based healthcare are staggering,” she said. “Ours is no exception.”

able for all,” Clyburn told Chavis.

“This pandemic has opened up some fault lines in this great country, and primary among them is healthcare. Healthcare is not accessible and affordable to all, and this pandemic has shown that to be the case.”

Clyburn continued:

“America’s greatness has always been because it’s been able to repair its faults.

Speaker Pelosi said she’d given a lot of thought to what happened as this country was moving toward World War II and Truman told the Senate about the 116 committees who after World War 1 looked at all of the profiteering, the price gauging, and the kind of fraud that these fly-by-night groups had done.”

Clyburn noted that healthcare and other fraud has run rampant during the current novel coronavirus pandemic and, more than ever, African Americans are being victimized.

“This pandemic is vising family after family after family. We know from all of the data that it is being visited more harshly and more prevalent among African American communities, and some

Latino communities all over the country,” Clyburn stated.

The new panel is expected to enjoy farreaching power to investigate how the trillions of dollars already approved by Congress for coronavirus relief are being used, Clyburn added.

It will be able to issue subpoenas, review America’s preparedness for the crisis, and examine decisions about the crisis within the administration.

The panel will probe the “efficiency, effectiveness, equity and transparency” of taxpayer funds used to respond to the crisis and will investigate reports of waste, fraud, and abuse of funds being spent, according to the establishing resolution.

It will also be able to study the economic impact and disparate impacts of the crisis on different communities.

“This is about transparency and accountability,” stated Clyburn during the live stream titled, “Black America and COVID-19: Saving and Empowering Black Lives.”

Clyburn also talked with Chavis about the NNPA’s Coronavirus Task Force and Resource Center, the first media-related entity in the United States to declare a “State of Emergency for Black America”

as the fatalities among Black Americans have continued to rise alarmingly across the nation.

Using social media to increase public awareness about COVID-19, the NNPA continues to encourage the use of the hashtags: #SaveBlackLives, and #NNPACoronavirusTaskForce.

Clyburn, a 14-term U.S. Congressman and the dean of the South Carolina congressional delegation has spent his career working to improve and empower the lives of African Americans. Former

President Barack Obama once noted that Clyburn is “one of a handful of people who, when they speak, the entire Congress listens.”

As Assistant Democratic Leader in the 112th Congress, the number three ranking Democrat in the House, Clyburn is the leadership liaison to the Appropriations Committee and one of the Democratic Caucus’ primary liaisons to the White House.

He plays a prominent role in messaging and outreach.

Valeisha Butterfield Jones Named as Recording Academy’s First Diversity & Inclusion Officer clusion, belonging and representation for underrepresented communities and creators,” according to the news release.

The daughter of U.S. Congressman G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) and North Carolina State Legislator Jean Farmer Butterfield, Valeisha Butterfield Jones most recently served as the Global Head of Women and Black Community Engagement for Google.

She’s also served in the Obama Administration as the Deputy Director of Public Affairs for the International Trade Administration, and Butterfield Jones also held the post of Executive Vice President of Rush Communications and as the National Director of Diversity and Inclusion for the Alzheimer’s Association.

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent

Valeisha Butterfield Jones, a leader, a global influencer, and culture shifter who co-founded the Women in Entertainment Empowerment Network (WENN) and served as the National Youth Vote Director for President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, has been named the Recording Academy’s first Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer.

The Los Angeles-based Recording Academy consists of musicians, producers, recording engineers, and other musical professionals, and it’s most famous for the Grammy Awards, which recognize achievements in the music industry.

Butterfield confirmed the appointment on Instagram.

“The mission continues, and I’m deeply honored to join you on this journey,” Butterfield wrote.

“We are thrilled to welcome Valeisha Butterfield Jones into the Recording Academy family,” said Academy Chair and Interim President and CEO Harvey Mason in a statement. “Valeisha has been a force in driving systemic change and enhancing equal opportunities for underrepresented groups across entertainment, technology, and politics.”

He continued: “I’m excited to work with her to continue evolving the Recording Academy as an organization that represents our music

Valeisha Butterfield Jones community and a place where all voices are welcomed, supported, and nurtured.

We are so fortunate to have Valeisha’s leadership in this crucial area.”

Variety reported that Butterfield Jones would report directly to Mason beginning on May 11. According to the announcement, she will join the executive leadership team responsible for advancing the Recording Academy’s mission and ensuring that diversity and inclusion are core to business values and standards, and demonstrated throughout the organization.

Butterfield Jones will “design, build and implement world-class programs and industry standards focused on in-

13

She maintains a seat on the National Board of Directors of ColorComm, MC Lyte’s Hip Hop Sisters Network, and iVote.

“The Recording Academy has an opportunity and responsibility to ensure that diversity and inclusion are embedded in its core values,” Butterfield Jones stated.

“I’m deeply honored to join the Academy as we enter a new chapter of transformational growth, leadership, and change.

During this unprecedented time in world history, together, we will double-down on our focus to drive systemic change and equitable outcomes for underrepresented communities and creators.”

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

May 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

Innovative Leadership Program for Black Boys Formerly Held at Princeton University Is Now an Online Summer Program

New York, NY — Now more than ever, the strength and well-being of the African- American community is dependent upon its leadership. Rev. Toby Sanders is spearheading an #AllInTogether movement among young minority men.

In an effort to forge more Black male leaders in business, the arts, social justice, and the sciences with the values and innovative insight to address vital global issues, Sanders is introducing The Fire Online Distance Learning Program (TFO). It is a program of At the Well Conferences, Inc. (ATW), a non-profit organization created by CEO Jacqueline Glass-Campbell.

FTO The Fire Online will expand the reach and impact of From The Fire Leadership Academy that was housed at Princeton University the last two years. It was the country’s most innovating summer enrichment experience for young men of color.

In accordance with the COVID-19 social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines set forth by Phil Murphy, governor of New Jersey, along with organization’s concern for the well-being of students and families, Sanders and Glass-Campbell cancelled the original program formerly held at Princeton University. Now, students from across the country have the opportunity to receive the same prestigious and life-changing curriculum and mentoring experiences online. FTO will be the gateway experience for all of the programs offered by the leadership acad-

emy going forward. Its impact will be transformative.

TFO is a two-week online summer program held July 19-24, 2020 and July 2731, 2020, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The program is currently offering a discounted rate of $599 for the first 50 applicants.

Applications are currently available online at AtTheWellConferences.org. There is no application fee.

Rev. Sanders is the academy’s founder and director of curriculum. He is an adult education specialist, adjunct professor and social activist for educational and economic justice.

Minority students in the tenth and eleventh grades from diverse socio-economic backgrounds who seek academic enrichment, professional inspiration and are committed to uplift underserved communities are encouraged to apply to the program. It will be a transformative experience they will never forget.

Students will participate in a rigorous curriculum focused on social justice and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics). The courses include college-level reading comprehension, critical writing, leadership development, team building, social problem researching and presentation skills.

Teachers range from Princeton University scholars, as well as, exemplary professional thought leaders and emergent intellectuals in history, education and the social sciences.

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent

the challenge and with a recognition that race-neutral policies are not a sufficient response to race-based disparities.”

This year, actor and director Delroy Lindo (Malcolm X, Lackawanna Blues, This Christmas, Da Five Bloods) is the Program Chair. He received a Tony nomination for August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and a NAACP Image Award for Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. He can be seen on CBS’ The Good Fight.

Oscar-nominated Actor, Producer and Humanitarian Danny Glover will be the keynote speaker. He is an international

civil rights, human rights and political activist. Glover also co-founded Louverture Films, which is committed to developing film projects with artistic integrity and historical relevance.

To apply for The Fire Online Distance Learning Program, please visit: www.atthewellconferences.org.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the board of At the Well Conferences, Inc. has made the difficult decision to cancel From the Fire 8th and 9th Grade Weekend Intensive

at Princeton University. The weekend program is now available as part of The Fire Online Distance Learning Program, and will be held July 31 – August 2, 2020.

The first 50 applicants will receive a discounted rate of $199.

For more information about The Fire Online Distance Learning Program and the 8th & 9th Grade Online Distance Learning Program, please contact Rev. Toby Sanders at: 609-213-0545 or tobysand@gmail.com.

African Americans are dying from COVID-19 at a higher rate than whites,” the campaign noted.

“Long-standing systemic inequalities are contributing to this disparity – including the fact that African Americans are more likely to be uninsured and to live in communities where they are exposed to high levels of air pollution.”

Biden said he plans to hold financial institutions accountable for discriminatory practices in the housing market, and he will restore the federal government’s power to enforce settlements against discriminatory lenders.

Additionally, the plan calls for Biden to strengthen and expand the Community Reinvestment Act to ensure that the nation’s bank and non-bank financial services institutions are serving all communities.

Biden plans to eliminate local and state housing regulations that perpetuate discrimination and establish a $100 billion Affordable Housing Fund to construct and upgrade affordable housing Providing tax incentives for the construction of more affordable housing in communities that need it most.

Biden also plans to create a White House “Strike Force” to partner with rural communities to help them access federal funds.

“Today, we need a comprehensive agenda for African Americans with an ambition that matches the scale of the challenge and with a recognition that race-neutral policies are not a sufficient response to racebased disparities,” Biden stated.

To view Joe Biden’s full plan for Black America go to: https://joebiden.com/ blackamerica/

Joe Biden’s Plan for Empowering Black America When former Vice President Joe Biden sat for an exclusive live stream interview with National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) President and CEO, Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. in February, the now presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said it was crucial to secure the Black vote if he is to unseat President Donald Trump in November 2020.

Now, the two-time former second-incommand to President Barack Obama has laid out a comprehensive plan for African Americans.

Biden said the plan reflects many months of work and feedback from local elected officials, activists, organizations, practitioners, policy experts, strategists, and young people.

His campaign called the plan “a living document.”

It said the Biden team looks forward to hearing from everyone as they continue to develop the Democrat’s vision for all of America.

In a news release, the campaign noted that Biden “knows we need a comprehensive agenda for African Americans with an ambition that matches the scale of

They said the Biden Plan for Black America would: Advance the economic mobility of African Americans and close the racial wealth and income gaps.

Expand access to high-quality education and tackle racial inequity in our education system.

Make far-reaching investments in ending health disparities by race.

Strengthen America’s commitment to justice.

Make the right to vote and the right to equal protection real for African Americans.

Address environmental justice.

“Joe Biden knows that African Americans can never have a fair shot at the American Dream so long as entrenched disparities are allowed to chip away at opportunity quietly,” his campaign’s statement noted.

“He is running for President to rebuild our economy in a way that finally brings everyone along – and that starts by rooting out systemic racism from our laws, our policies, our institutions, and our hearts.”

With the novel coronavirus hitting African Americans the hardest, Biden’s plan

Vice President Joe Biden recognizes the disparities long faced by the Black community.

In April, he called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to collect more data regarding how COVID-19 is affecting communities, including breaking down its impacts by race.

“The data we’ve seen so far suggests that

14

Biden’s campaign continued: “African Americans also represent an especially high percentage of the frontline workers putting themselves at greater risk to sustain the economy and keep the rest of the country safe and fed – and are less likely to have a job they can do from home, forcing them to make the difficult choice between their health and a paycheck.

“While there’s a lot we don’t yet know about COVID-19, we do know that equitable distribution of resources, like testing and medical equipment, can make a difference in fighting the virus. Biden believes this should be a priority, and action must be taken now.”

Other highlights of the plan include rolling back Trump Administration policies that gutted fair lending and fair housing protections for homeowners and giving local elected officials the tools and resources they need to combat gentrification.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - May - 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

Restaurants in America Hard Hit by COVID-19 Face Uphill Battle to Return to Normal

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Contributor

“There’s a lot of fear, will tourists come back, will people come out? Are the employees going to want to come back to work? How are we going to convince everybody it’s safe and healthy to eat in a restaurant again?”

This is what Melissa Fleischut, president of the New York State Restaurant Association, told a reporter last month.

The devastating economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been particularly divesting to the restaurant and service industry. One estimate proclaimed that 40 percent of restaurants in New York are unlikely to reopen after the pandemic is over. But even after it ends, there is fear that business won’t be the same until some months after cities officially re-open.

Over 660,000 people employed in restaurants in New York state alone have been furloughed. They are part of the over 30 million people in the U.S. who

Hard Hit

by COVID-19 have likely filed for unemployment since the middle of March.

According to reservation app OpenTable, reservations in Seattle were down 31 percent by March 3 right as the coronavirus was reported to have caused a

fatality in the city. San Francisco saw a 24 percent decline. Soon after the drop was close to 50 percent.

Social distancing rules are a huge challenge to the restaurant industry in a way that is likely to impact revenue for some

time to come. Though Georgia Governor Brian Kemp re-opened much of the state last week, over 120 restaurants in Atlanta are refusing to open their dining rooms until they believe it’s safe.

Prominent Georgia chefs have formed

the “#GAHospitalityTogether” initiative. The group includes award-winning chefs Ford Fry, Anne Quatrano, Hugh Acheson and Mashama Bailey.

Late on May 1st it was learned that 1,165 Georgians have died due to the outbreak.

In the past 24 hours (as of this writing), the Georgia Department of Public Health has recorded 33 COVID-19 deaths for a total of 26,000 infected.

For African American businesses that are cash strapped the challenge is even tougher. A majority of Black-owned businesses have only one employee and many are contractors. Many elected officials and civil rights groups are focused on Black owned businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent journalist for NNPA and the host of the podcast BURKEFILE. She is also a political strategist as Principal of Win Digital Media LLC. She may be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke

Food Assistance Programs Critical for Low-Income Children and Families

respond (and report all children, including newborns, living in your home) to According to the Census Bureau, of the 2020 Census.

Knowing how many children are in an the 13.8 million households that receive SNAP, 6.7 million have children under area helps federal, state and local officials the age of 18 and 6.4 million have some- evaluate funding for nutrition programs.

SNAP and the National School Lunch one living with a disability.

Of all the homes with children under Program are just two nutrition programs 18, some 18% receive assistance from that use census results to inform planSNAP, according to the Census Bu- ning. Other programs include the Nationreau’s 2018 American Community Sur- al School Breakfast Program (NSBP), vey. lunch programs for people age 65 years Students who qualify for SNAP also get and older and meal delivery to disabled and homebound individuals. free or reduced-cost school lunches.

Federal nutrition programs are among The Census Bureau works with state the many reasons it is so important to and tribal governments to ensure recipi-

ents of SNAP don’t lose their benefits if they come to work for the 2020 Census.

They are working to get census income excluded so recipients who receive benefits can work as census takers (enumerators) without losing their benefits or eligibility status.

The Census Bureau has partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (which administers SNAP) to exclude income from temporary employment for 2020 Census. While it is ultimately a state decision whether to exempt 2020 Census income earned, a great majority of states have already agreed to this waiver.

U.S. Census Bureau, www.ceusus.gov

Journalism Industry Needs Coronavirus Relief Funding Antitrust Settlements with Google and Facebook Could Recover Journalism Rescue Funds

WASHINGTON – In a small win for the journalism industry, the Seattle Times and Tampa Bay Times were each granted a loan that would ensure the publications could avoid layoffs and pay cuts for its staff. The collapse in advertising revenue during the pandemic exacerbated the already perilous financial position of news outlets, who have been decimated

by Google and Facebook’s monopolistic actions. The Tampa Bay Times was even forced to cut back to two days a week of printed copies. The forgivable loans will allow these newsrooms to obtain some sense of normalcy but won’t nearly restore the damage done during this crisis.

Seattle Times Co. President Alan Fisco noted that “at least for now, we are putting on the back burner any plans for broad

scale layoffs, or cuts to hours worked.

There still may be some targeted reductions, but nothing to the extent of cuts we would have had to make without this support.” And while this is an essential step to help news media survive this crisis, thousands of local outlets have been unable to get these specific loans. Despite being deemed an essential service, newsrooms again have been left out of the recent round of federal relief that doesn’t provide direct assistance for news outlets.

Unlike other industry rescue packages, there is real potential that the government could recoup all or most of the support it provides to news outlets. Australian regulators recently forced Google to pay licensing fees to news outlets. U.S. federal and state antitrust regulators are

pursuing both Google and Facebook in a major investigation. Google and Facebook have siphoned off tens of billions in ad revenue from news publishers through their exploitation of the digital advertising market. That revenue used to sustain the journalism industry and part of any antitrust settlement can be used to repay the relief package.

John Stanton, laid-off former D.C. Bureau Chief at BuzzFeed and co-founder of the Save Journalism Project, Access to these loans is helpful to keep these outlets afloat, but a drop in the bucket for an industry that has already been crushed by Google and Facebook, and now the coronavirus. More than 33,000 reporters and staff at news outlets have been forced out of their jobs or subjected

15

to pay cuts during this crisis. What we need is a specific funding pool for news outlets to ensure that the money goes directly to the local outlets that need it, rather than the private equity vultures who are preying on the industry. News publishers have already been bled dry by big tech.

What they need now is the government to help them survive this crisis or else the local news business may be completely wiped out.

Journalism in America is facing an existential threat from the monopolistic control of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple. Big tech’s dominance over the digital advertising market and their unrivaled capacity to monetize its platforms are having drastic effects on journalism as a whole.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

COMMENTARY:

May 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

Congressional Black Caucus: Prioritize Black People First! Word! told to put on your mask first before you mask others. Black leadership needs to follow that example for Black people!

By Thomas Muhammad, Texas Metro News

As a person who’s been on the front lines of protests advocating for Black folks for media job hiring, slavery reparations and more Black history teaching in public schools, just to name a few.

I’ve witnessed for decades how my work was being translated by news reports as “working on behalf of minorities!”

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

But unfortunately, it’s how White leadership has seen Black protesters and the sad commentary is, it’s been primarily a narrative pushed by Black leadership in their need, it appears, to be loved by everybody in the world.

However, the people primarily hurt by this compromise has been the voiceless masses.

It seems that finally there appears to be some powerful help on the horizon in the name of a group of activists known as the Black Business Empowerment (BBE). This movement is made up of a crossbreed of business owners, community organizations, religious leaders and grassroots groups that decided to come together to show unity and to pool their strengths to advocate for Black people.

The groups all agree that the consistent use of labeling their causes under the word “minority” has many times weakened their abilities to assist Black people.

And it is those Black people who through nearly 210 years of forced slave labor and an additional 100 years or more

Don’t get me wrong!

of Jim Crow laws; Black businesses should have been sectioned off with relief funds for Black people only!

After all, it’s been Black businesses that have employed Black people in Black communities in America as White businesses and businesses owned by foreigners have exclusively discriminated against Blacks, even in majority Black

neighborhoods.

So yeah, I’m pissed off to the highest pissivity over constantly sacrificing for other ethnic groups! It’s time for others to take a hit for the damned team!

It’s time for us to look out for us first!

It’s like riding on an airplane and you’re

Sure, if brown, yellow, red or white folks benefitted from my work, okay that’s fine! But my initial plan was for Black people, so the word minority should not even enter the conversation!

So now we’re faced with the issue that the Small-Business Loan Program has run out of money! $350 billion from the first Payroll Protection Program (PPP) has run out of money. You now see owners, like Denny Moe’s Barbershop, in Harlem say, “I can probably last until May. But I don’t want to think about that!”

Currently, Congress approved $450 billion more in the PPP 2 bill. For this bill we need Black congressional leadership to sing the words, “Say It Loud I’m Black And I’m Proud!” And by the way James Brown was a Republican, so political partisanship should be put aside!

Think about these facts. The National Bureau on Economic Research (NBER) presented a working paper that found that the medium firm/business with expenses over $10,000 per month has only enough cash on hand to last for two weeks.

Problem is that reference doesn’t refer to the much smaller businesses like brother Denny Moe’s mentioned and the many mom/pop businesses that only employ two to five people but have been in business for decades! I’m talking about

your neighborhood cleaners, beauty salons, bakeries, t-shirt making shops, bookstores, and the list goes on. What about them?

Put that up against Ruth’s Chris Steak House chain that grossed $42 million last year but received a $20 million forgivable loan and Potbelly and Shake Shack restaurant chains receiving $10 million.

Excuse me, but all I can say is, ‘huh!’

Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris just recently announced they are returning the stimulus checks. I guess this proves they do have some scruples. But it also proves that they didn’t need the f!:/“@; money in the first place, don’t you think?

Which brings me to this point, that if the CBC believe their job is to advocate for minority communities then maybe it’s time Congress creates a Congressional “Ethic” Minority Caucus which should then allow CBC to advocate for Black people only. How about that for some clarity?

As for the BBE Movement we need Black people in all 50 states of America to come together and join this call of BBE to get Black congressional leadership to continue seeking federal funding to support Black businesses, which in return will employ Black families and help them survive America’s white supremacy legacy!

A Lata Continua: The Struggle Continues…

Thomas Muhammad is Chairman of the National Black United Front (NBUF)Dallas Texas Chapter.

Celebrated Princeton University Summer Program For Black Teen Girls Now Available Online BlackNews.com

The program celebrates 10 years of empowering minority youth to be global leaders In accordance with the COVID-19 social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines set forth by Phil Murphy, governor of New Jersey, along with organization’s concern for the well-being of students and families, Glass-Campbell cancelled the original program formerly held at Princeton University.

Now, students from across the country have the opportunity to receive this prestigious online education that is easily accessible and affordable. It is a two-week online summer program held July 19-24, 2020 and July 27-31, 2020, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The program is currently offering a discounted rate of $599.00 to the first 50 applicants. Applications are currently available on the ATW website at AtTheWellConferences.org. There is no application fee.

Minority girls who are entering their eleventh and twelfth grade years in high school will participate in classes with core curriculum specifically created to

develop Black female corporate leaders. They learn critical thinking, college essay writing, as well as, attain higher confidence in standardized testing, and increase academic achievement.

ATW partners with many celebrities, high-profiled figures, educators and activists who share life challenges and personal testimonies. Recent speakers have included actress Nicole Ari Parker, scholar Julianne Malveaux, motivational speaker Brandi Harvey, 2016 Democratic National Convention Chief Leah Daughtry, physician Michele Reed, and plus-size super model Liris Crosse.

Workshop facilitators include role models from the medical, legal, financial, and non-profit fields. Financial guru and The Real daytime talk show’s Tiffany “the Budgetnista” Aliche, Lisa Ascolese, founder of A-to-Z and featured inventor on QVC and HSN, and young, rising actress Eden Duncan Smith are past participants. Topics range from financial literacy, body image and entrepreneurship, to health and wellness, and building self-esteem.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the board of At the Well Conferences, Inc. has

made the difficult decision to cancel the At the Well 8th and 9th Grade Weekend Intensive at Princeton University. The weekend program is now available as part of the Online Distance Learning Program, and will be held July 31 – Au-

16

gust 2, 2020. The first 50 applicants will receive a discounted rate of $199.00.

For more information about At the Well Young Women’s Leadership Academy’s Online Distance Program and the 8th & 9th Grade Online Distance Learning

Program, visit AtTheWellConferences. org For questions, please email info@atthewellconferences.org or call 646-5921488.

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - May - 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020 INNER-CITY NEWS July 27, 2016 - August 02, 2016

Garrity Asphalt Reclaiming, Inc seeks:

NOTICE

NEEDED

Phone: 243-2300 HOME INC, on behalf of860Columbus House and the New Haven Housing Authority, Email: tom.dunay@garrityasphalt.com is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments at this develWomen Minority Applicants are New encouraged to apply income limitations apopment & located at 108 Frank Street, Haven. Maximum rmative Action/ Opportunity Employer ply.Affi Pre-applications willEqual be available from 9AM TO 5PM beginning Monday Ju;y 25, 2016 and ending when sufficient pre-applications (approximately 100) have been received at the offices of HOME INC. Applications will be mailied upon request by calling HOME Reclaiming, INC at 203-562-4663 during those hours. Completed preGarrity Asphalt Inc seeks: applications must be returned to HOME INC’s offices at 171 Orange Street, Third Reclaimer Operators and Milling Operators with current licensing Haven, CTbe06510. andFloor, cleanNew driving record, willing to travel throughout the North-

Part Time Delivery Needed

One/Two Day a Week,

east & NY. We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits

NOTICIA

Contact: Rick Tousignant Phone: 860- 243-2300

Must Have your Own Vehicle

Email: rick.tousignant@garrityasphalt.com VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/deEqual Opportunity Employer HOME INC, en nombre la Columbus House y de la New Haven Housing Authority, está

If Interested call

aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un dormitorio en este desarrollo ubicado en la calle 109 Frank Street, New Haven. Se aplican limitaciones de ingresos máximos. Las pre-solicitudes estarán disponibles 09 a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando Martes 25 Tractor Trailer Driver for Heavy & Highway Construction Equipjulio,Must 2016have hastaacuando se han recibido suficientes pre-solicitudes ment.

CDL License, clean driving record, capable of(aproximadamente 100) en las oficinas HOME INC. Las pre-solicitudes serán enviadas operating heavydeequipment; be willing to travel throughout the por correo a petición llamando&a NY. HOME 203-562-4663 horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse Northeast We INC offeralexcellent hourlydurante rate &esas excellent benefits a las oficinas de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CTQSR 06510 .STEEL

Union Company seeks:

(203) 387-0354

Contact Dana at 860-243-2300

Email: dana.briere@garrityasphalt.com Women & Minority Applicants are encouraged to apply Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer

HELP WANTED:

NEW HAVEN

Large CT guardrail company looking for Laborer/Driver with valid CT CDL Class A license and able to get a medical card. Must be able to pass a drug test and physical.

Compensation based on experience. Email resume to dmastracchio@atlasoutdoor.com AA/EOE M-F

ELM CITY COMMUNITIES

DELIVERY PERSON

Construction Equipment Mechanic preferably experienced in Reclaiming and Road Milling Equipment. We offer factory training on equipment we operate. Location: Bloomfield CT We offer excellent hourly rate & excellent benefits VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE Contact: Tom Dunay

Request for Proposals Hearing Officer Services The Housing Authority of the City of New Haven d/b/a Elm City Communities is currently seeking Proposals for Hearing Officer Services. A complete copy of the requirement may be obtained from Elm City’s Vendor Collaboration Portal https:// newhavenhousing.cobblestonesystems.com/gateway beginning on Wednesday, April 29, 2020 at 3:00PM.

Dispatcher

Galasso Materials is seeking a motivated, organized, detail-oriented candidate to join its truck dispatch office. Responsibilities include order entry and truck ticketing in a fast paced materials manufacturing and contracting company. Must be available to work nights and/or days. We are willing to train the right individual that has a great attitude. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE. Reply to Hiring Manager, PO Box 1776, East Granby, CT 06026. Galasso Materials is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employmentwithout attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.

Centrally Located Construction Company in Connecticut has positions

available for experienced project managers, laborers and truck drivers.

This company is an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity Employer M/F. Females and Minorities are encouraged to apply.

Please fax resume to ATTN: Mike to 860-669-7004.

Centrally Located Construction Company in Connecticut has a position available for experienced Full-Time Office assistant / Bookkeeper. Job Support A/P, A/R Payroll. QuickBooks experience required, MS Office, Internet / Emails. Salary depending on experience.

This company is an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity Employer M/F. Females and Minorities are encouraged to apply.

Please fax resume to ATTN: Mike to 860-669-7004.

CORPORATION

APPLY NOW!

Steel Fabricators, Erectors & Welders Top pay for top performers. Health Invitation to Bid: Benefits, 401K, Vacation Pay. 2nd Notice

242-258 Fairmont Ave Tri-Axle Dump Truck driver needed with min. 2 years’ experience. Reliable, Email Resume: Rose@qsrsteel.com Hartford, CT 2BR Townhouse, 1.5 BA, 3BR, 1 level , 1BA SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE honest, and respectful a must. Class B, valid medical card, Osha 10 card, clean drivAFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

ing record, Old Saybrook, CT pass a drug screening, and have reliable transportation to and from work.

The job is full time, Monday thru Friday (some OT and night shifts), hourly pay. A (4 Buildings, Best 17 Units) Buy Premium Fuel & Trucking LLC is a New Haven based company and an Tax Exempt & Not PrevailingEqual WageOpportunity Rate ProjectEmployer. Email resumes to nancytomassini@yahoo.com

All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 highways, near bus stop & shopping center Pet under 40lb allowed. Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258

New Construction, Wood Framed, Housing,CITY Selective Demolition,Seeking Site-work, CastOF MILFORD qualifi ed condidates to fill numerous vacancies to include, Director ofSiding, Operations Milford Landing Marina, Recreation Director, and more. in-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Invitation to Bid: information and detailed application instructions, visit WWW.ci.milford.ct.us Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties,For Appliances, Residential Casework, Bayonet Street Apartments Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

St. New Haven, CT 433 Bayonet Street This contract is subject to state set-aside and contract compliance requirements.

State of Connecticut New London, CT Office of Policy and Management (2 Buildings, 64 Units) Bid Extended, Due Date: August 5, 2016 Project documents include but not limited to: Demolition, site-work, paving, concrete, landscaping, gypsum underlayment, Anticipatedmisc Start: AugustThe 15,State 2016of Connecticut, Office of Policy and Management is recruiting for Sealedrough bids&are invited by thewood Housing Authority ofmetal the Town of Seymour metals, finish carpentry, trusses, insulation, roof panels, gutters & downspouts, vinyl siding, EPDM, doors,available viaanftpInformation Project documents link below: Technology Technician, a Leadership Associate, and a Fiscal and Program Policy Section Director position. until 3:00 pm on Tuesday, August 2016 atglazing, its office at 28 bearing Smith Street, frames and hardware, storefronts, vinyl 2, windows, non-load steel framing, drywall, flooring, painting, louvers, http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage signage, postal specialties, toilet & bath accessories, knox box, residential appliances, casework & countertops, window blinds, Seymour, CT 06483 for Concrete Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement at the Further information regarding the duties, eligibility requirements and elevator, HVAC, fire protection application instructions for these positions are available at: Smithfield Gardens Assisted Living Facility, 26plumbing, Smith Street Seymour.and electrical.. Fax or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com CT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s Certificate Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assist in the intellectual formation of Candidates in response to the Church’s Ministry needs. The cost is $125. Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:303:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., B.S. (203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY

Bid Due Date: May 12, 2020 @ 5pm

HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses https://www.jobapscloud.com/CT/sup/bulpreview.asp

or Email Questions & Bids to: Estimating @ 203-881-8372 estimating@haynesct.com Haynes Construction Company, 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 ?R1=200420&R2=7602FD&R3=001 A pre-bidFax conference will be held atProject the Housing Authority Office 28 Smith is Tax Exempt. No Wage Rates.

Street Seymour, CT at 10:00 am, on Wednesday, July 20, 2016.

AA/EEO EMPLOYER

Link to access plans and specifications: http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=bayonetstapartments available from the Seymour Housing Authority Of-

https://www.jobapscloud.com/CT/sup/bulpreview.asp ?R1=200422&R2=1585MP&R3=001

Bidding documents are fice, 28 Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 (203) 888-4579.

This contract is subject to state set-aside and contract compliance requirements.

The State of Connecticut is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and strongly encourages the applications of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities.

HCC encourages the participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses Construction Company, 32 Progress Seymour, The Housing Authority reservesHaynes the right to accept or reject any orAve, all bids, to CT 06483 AA/EEO EMPLOYER

reduce the scope of the project to reflect available funding, and to waive any informalities in the bidding, if such actions are in the best interest of the Housing Authority.

https://www.jobapscloud.com/CT/sup/bulpreview.asp ?R1=200422&R2=5989VR&R3=001

17

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - May 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020 INNER-CITY NEWS July 27, 2016 - August 02, 2016

Electric NOTICE Chief Engineer – The Town of Wallingford Electric Division is seeking a highly qualified engineer with

The Housing Authority of the City of New Haven is currently accepting applications for it’s Scattered Sites waitlist.

strong technical and leadership/management skills that will be responsible for the planning, designing, and maintenance of the electric generation, transmission, and distribution systems and related facilities of the VALENTINA MACRI RENTAL HOUSING PRE- APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE Electric Division. Must possess a bachelor’s degree from a recognized college or university in electrical, mechanical, or civil engineering, plus eight (8) years of progressively responsible engineering managerial HOME INC, on behalf ofor Columbus House consulting and the New Haven work for electrical utilities an engineering firm doingHousing work forAuthority, electric utilities. An Associates is accepting pre-applications for studio and one-bedroom apartments this devel- requirement. One year Degree in one of these fields may substitute for two (2) years of the workatexperience opment located at 108 Frank Street, New Haven. Maximum income ap-maintain a Connecticut of supervisory experience as a supervisor is preferred.

In addition, mustlimitations possess and ply.

Pre-applications will be available from 9AM TO 5PM beginning Monday Ju;y Motor Vehicle Operators License. Salary: $97,203 - $124,140 plus an excellent fringe benefit package.

25, 2016 forms and ending sufficient pre-applications (approximately have Application will bewhen mailed upon request from the Human Resources100) Department.

Phone: (203)-294been received at the offices of HOME INC. Applications will be mailied upon re-be June 2, 2020. EOE 2080. Fax (203)-294-2084 Email wlfdhr@wallingfordct.gov . The closing date will quest by calling HOME INC at 203-562-4663 during those hours. Completed preapplications must be returned to HOME INC’s offices at 171 Orange Street, Third Listing: Commercial Driver Floor, New Haven, CT 06510.

Located in established neighborhoods, our scattered sites units offer larger bedrooms and smaller communities. Available number of bedrooms are 2, 3 and 4 bedrooms, all with convenient access to shopping centers, transportation, great schools and restaurants. Community features include 24-hour emergency maintenance, washer/dryer hookup and playgrounds.,

Immediate need for a full time Class A driver for liquid asphalt deliveries for nights and weekends.

Previous experience required. Competitive wage, 401(k) and benefits. Send resume to: HR Manager, P. O. Box 388, Guilford, CT 06437.

NOTICIA

VALENTINA MACRI VIVIENDAS DE ALQUILER PRE-SOLICITUDES DISPONIBLES

REQUIREMENTS:

********An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer********** HOME INC, en nombre de la Columbus House y de la New Haven Housing Authority, está aceptando pre-solicitudes para estudios y apartamentos de un dormitorio en este desarrollo Project Manager, Superintendent, Equipment Operator, Laborers, ubicado en la calle 109 Frank Street, New Haven. Se aplican limitaciones de ingresos M/F Solid yearsCTDOT 40 hr09Hazwhopper, 10 hr Martes OSHA, máximos.

Las3+ pre-solicitudes estaránExp. disponibles a.m.-5 p.m. comenzando 25 Statewide Work. andsuficientes Minorities are encouraged to apply. julio, 2016 hasta cuandoFemales se han recibido pre-solicitudes (aproximadamente 100) en las oficinas de HOME INC.to Lasoccllchr@gmail.com pre-solicitudes serán enviadas por correo a petición email resume Great Pay for Great Work llamando a HOME INC al 203-562-4663 durante esasAA horas.Pre-solicitudes deberán remitirse EOE a las oficinas de HOME INC en 171 Orange Street, tercer piso, New Haven , CT 06510 .

Earnings must be between 50-80% of the Area Medium Income (AMI). Please see the table below for specific income and household requirements. Placement on the waitlist will be based on the date and time the application is received. Applications will be date and time stamped as they are received.

Construction

Seeking to employ experienced individuals in the labor, foreman, operator and teamster trades for a heavy outside work statewide. Reliable personal transportation and a valid drivers license required. To apply please call (860) 621-1720 or send resume to: Personnel Department, P.O. Box 368, Cheshire, CT06410.

Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/V Drug Free Workforce

NEW HAVEN

242-258 Fairmont Ave The Housing Authority of the City ,of1BA Norwalk, CT 2BR Townhouse, 1.5 BA, 3BR, 1 level

# of people in household

Invitation to Bid: 2nd Notice 2

3

SAYEBROOKE VILLAGE

is requesting proposals for

4

$41,050 $51,300 MinimumOld Saybrook, All new apartments, new appliances, new carpet, close to I-91 & I-95 CT $46,200 Construction/Permanent $62,800 $70,650 $78,500 Maximum highways, near bus stop & shopping centerLender.

(4 Buildings, 17 Units) Request for Proposal documents can be viewed and printed at www.norwalkha.org under the Business secPet undertion 40lbRFP’s/RFQ’s. allowed. Interested parties contact Maria @ 860-985-8258 Tax Exempt & Not Prevailing Wage Rate Project Norwalk Housing is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

5

6

7

$55,450 $84,800

$59,550 $91,100

$63,650 $97,350

8 $67,750 $103,650

Applications may be picked up at: • Framed, Downloaded at http://www.cthcvp.org/ CT. Unified Deacon’s Association is pleased to offer a Deacon’s New Construction, Wood Housing, Selective Demolition, Site-work, CastCertificate Program. This is a 10 month program designed to assistof in the intellectual formation of Candidates CT The Housing Authority the City of Norwalk, in-place Concrete, Asphalt Shingles, Vinyl Siding, in response to the Church’s Ministry needs. The cost is $125. Classes start Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:30• Downloaded at http://www.elmcitycommunities.org isB.S. requesting proposals for 3:30 Contact: Chairman, Deacon Joe J. Davis, M.S., Flooring, Painting, Division 10 Specialties, Appliances, Residential Casework, (203) 996-4517 Host, General Bishop Elijah Davis, D.D. Pastor of Pitts Chapel U.F.W.B. Church 64 Brewster • To receive an application by mail please call 475-355-7289 or Web Site Redevelopment and Rebranding.

Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection.

St. New Haven, CT Request for Proposal documents can be viewed and printed at www.norwalkha.org under the Business seca written request to Attention: This contract is subject to send state set-aside and contract compliance requirements. Waitlist Coordinator, Elm tion RFP’s/RFQ’s. Norwalk Housing is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

City Communities, PO Box 1912, New Haven, CT 06509 Adam Bovilsky, Executive Director.

Adam Bovilsky, Executive Director.

SEYMOUR HOUSING AUTHORITY

Diesel Mechanic

Bid Extended, Due Date: August 5, 2016 Anticipated Start: August 2016 Applications can15,be submitted: Project documents available via ftp link below: • In person at 360 Orange St, New Haven, CT 06511 (via the drop http://ftp.cbtghosting.com/loginok.html?username=sayebrookevillage

Sealed bids are invited by the Housing Authority of the Town of Seymour until 3:00 pm on Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at its office at 28 Smith Street, Seymour, 06483looking for Concrete Sidewalk Repairs and Replacement thelevel of commitment to Our team is CT currently for an experienced Diesel Mechanic to keep upatour box located at the front door Smithfield Gardens Assisted Facility, 26 Smith Street safety and customer service.

In thisLiving role, the successful candidate willSeymour. perform truck repair andFax maintenance or Email Questions & Bids to: Dawn Lang @ 203-881-8372 dawnlang@haynesconstruction.com

Mailed to PO Box 1912, New Haven, CT 06509 work in accordance with factory and industry standards, run diagnostics on vehicles and work closely with the • HCC encourages participation of all Veteran, S/W/MBE & Section 3 Certified Businesses other team members to meet company goals.

Responsibilities may include but not be limited to performHaynes Construction 32 Progress Ave, Seymour, CT 06483 A pre-bid conference will be held at the Housing Authority Office 28 Smith • ViaCompany, https://ecc.myhousing.com/ ing minor and major repairs on trucks and trailers, conduct regular preventative maintenance on service AA/EEO EMPLOYER Streetperform Seymour, CTdiagnostic at 10:00 am, July 20,accurate 2016. records of each repair performed on trucks, regular testson onWednesday, trucks and maintain vehicles. Experience is a plus, but willing to train the right candidates. Apply in person or apply online at If you need a reasonable accommodation to complete americanind.net.

American an AA/EOE. Bidding documents areIndustries, available Inc. fromisthe Seymour Housing Authority Office, 28 Smith Street, Seymour, CT 06483 (203) 888-4579.

American Industries, Inc. 630 Plainfield Jewett City, CT The Housing Authority reserves the right Road, to accept or reject any06351 or all bids, to reduce the scope of the project to reflect available funding, and to waive any informalities in the bidding, if such actions are in the best interest of the Housing Authority.

application call 203-498-8800 ext. 1507 Applications will be available starting 5/3/2020

18

the

THE INNER-CITY NEWS - May - 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

SOCIAL DISTANCING As a public facility, this establishment is actively encouraging Social Distancing 6 Feet

To support public health, please maintain a minimum distance of 6 feet from others during your visit.

For more information and the latest updates about COVID-19 in Connecticut, please visit: Portal.CT.Gov/Coronavirus If you have any questions regarding the Novel Coronavirus, you can call: 833-ASK-YNHH (833-275-9644) 19

THE INNER-CITY NEWS -

May 06, 2020 - May 12, 2020

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