Real Hartford

Land of Knee-Jerk Reaction

I’m hoping that there are important details left out of this story. Now, 200+ paroled burglars are going to wear tracking bracelets?! The article does not say if these are burglars with a history of physical violence, or even ones with severe drug addictions, like the two men involved in the Cheshire murders. Are these burglars with a long history of arrests, or does this include one-time criminals? Making no distinction between these is making a mistake. This seems like a misuse of money.

Rell is being reckless here. Throwing money at a problem (is a freak incident even an ongoing problem?) doesn’t usually have results, but could Rell even throw that kind of money at the root causes of crime that are in her backyard?

An Indictment

Here is a thought that I’ll finish later:

He talked about the hypocrisy people embody when they can step over the dying alcoholic sprawled outside their front door on their way to the newsstand where they buy a paper and become horrified at a printed photograph of a starving ethiopian.

from Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration by David Wojnarowicz- page 178.

Movin’ On Up

It’s about time that CCC employees got vocal. The past few weeks, we’ve seen several articles and letters to the editor regarding the college.  Then, there’s the backlash– people saying nasty things along the lines of “There shouldn’t be a college in Hartford anyway.” Several years ago, when starting employment with CCC, a friend remarked that he’d heard it wasn’t a good college. No doubt many of these comments are made by people who’ve never been to CCC, have a vision that every college must have a sprawling green lawn (grass is part of the environmental problem!), or, and I hesitate to say this, harbor racist or classist ideas about who deserves access to higher education.  In today’s Courant, another CCC employee responds:

Cost Of Parking In Hartford

Gone are the lofty days when education and the arts were revered and measured not by cost, but by the enrichment bestowed on community and self.

Now it’s all about the money.

The Courant’s June 27 editorial “Be Fair To Downtown College” cited parking for faculty, staff and students at the Morgan Street Garage as an unreasonable cost of having Capital Community College in downtown Hartford.

If the city, through the Hartford Parking Authority, feels the need to charge such an exorbitant rate, perhaps the state should tighten up usage of its own parking lots and no longer allow free parking to the patrons who frequent the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, myself among them.

Quid pro quo, Mayor Perez?

Anne Romus
Newington
The writer is a staff member at Capital Community College.

Boxes, Not Box Cutters

Another follow-up on the ever-so-dangerous empty FNB box:

News item: Police called in the bomb squad Monday afternoon in Bushnell Park to inspect a package that originally was described as suspicious and turned out to be harmless.

We live in strange times.

The suspicious package on June 11 was actually an empty cardboard box, with the words “Hartford Food Not Bombs” written on it with a marker, along with a cartoon picture of a cupcake. The box was left from the day before, when volunteers who have distributed free vegan food in the park every week for 13 years left behind one box of meals for late-comers.

It’s what they’ve always done. Everyone in the park knows them, and the irony of the police getting involved - or of anyone thinking the nonviolent Hartford Food Not Bombs organization would distribute bombs and not food - is not lost on the volunteers, many of them veterans of multiple protests who have decided they need to do more than march.

“I used to go to protests, and I still do sometimes,” said volunteer Dave Rozza. “I see protests more as a morale booster now. You can march all you want, and that’s good, but the powers that be aren’t listening.” And so he cooks food for the hungry.

This past Sunday, FNB volunteers gathered again at the Charter Oak Cultural Center - Hartford’s epicenter of cool - to prepare meals to hand out at the park and to assemble grocery bags to distribute at the center’s door.

Sometimes the people to whom they give the park meals don’t show up precisely for the 3 p.m. distribution time, and so the group has taken to leaving a box full of meals behind. It was a box like that - emptied by the people in the park - that caught the eye of whoever called the police.

Sunday, as Rozza talked about the group, volunteer Kelsey Larsen of West Hartford slipped papers (in Spanish) into the bags explaining that Food Not Bombs is a volunteer organization dedicated to nonviolence and sharing vegan (easier on the planet) food with the hungry and people abandoned by the rest of society.

Meanwhile, eight people - including longtime volunteer Ken Tong of West Hartford - gathered in the kitchen making salad and roasted potatoes. Tong said people in the park know the group and have come to expect them.

Food Not Bombs started in 1980 in Cambridge, Mass., and has spread around the world. It’s an all-volunteer organization dedicated to nonviolence that somehow has still attracted the interest of federal intelligence agencies. The organization often has been among the first to provide hot meals after disasters like the California earthquakes, Hurricane Katrina and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York.

Locally, food comes from places like Garden of Light Natural Food Market and Whole Foods Market. Say what you want about that last pricey shop (who some refer to as Whole Paycheck, because that’s what it takes to shop there) - at least they consistently contribute.

Because there are so many hungry people in Hartford, about two years ago, Food Not Bombs started distributing food on Saturdays as well. Volunteers had to stop Saturday distributions for a while because of a lack of helpers - there are maybe 60 altogether - but word got around, and the group will start up again next month for twice-a-week meals.

Rabbi Donna Berman, Charter Oak’s executive director, said the group has been using her facility to prepare food for about three years. She said bar and bat mitzvah students and their families have volunteered with FNB, as well as participants in the center’s “Learning To Repair the World” program, which brings together Jewish, Muslim, and Christian students. It’s a great laboratory for teaching, Berman said.

This Sunday, a half-hour before bags of bread, leafy greens and cereal would be handed out at the door, five people already were lined up waiting.

This is an important service, said a woman dressed in a Mets T-shirt. Without it, her family would be struggling.

Later, in the park, there were no leftovers, and so no scary boxes were left behind.

Last year, one of my students volunteered for this group, and it made a positive impression on her. While other students chose community service that was more routine, she risked being associated with a non-church organization, whose volunteers don’t always appear clean-cut and wholesome. I don’t know if she still helps at all, but I hope she read this and got a laugh from it.

mobster mentality

What teachers do off of school grounds should have no bearing on their careers, granted those things don’t involve harming children. But when you’re at work, you need to be on the top of your game. I’m no expert here, but I believe that letting kids get out of detention for a small fee is just possibly teaching them a very bad lesson.

healthcare for all

Today’s rally in the park had more people than I thought would actually come out.

And I sincerely hope that people picked up after themselves. This city hosted the rally, and has hosted many others. I’m composing (in my head) a zine called Ethical Protest, which will give activists some pointers for minding their manners. Here’s a boiled down version of what I’m thinking about:

1. Familiarize yourself with the city you plan to protest in, finding out things like where to park, where the jails are, and where the restrooms are.
2. Avoid fast food! Give your support to the people and businesses of the host city. (Today I saw a lot of people walking in with Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks. Gasp!)
3. Throw your trash in receptacles, or carry it out with you. Just because you don’t live here doesn’t mean nobody else does. We don’t enjoy your empty coffee cups and napkins blowing into our streets.

Thanks and have a nice day!

“Bullish, Bubble, or Bust” Reportback

Tonight the Hartford Public Library provided a venue for a large audience who would witness a range of opinions regarding the city’s revitalization. The audience, though not all white, clearly did not fairly represent the ethnic diversity of Hartford. The panel, even less diverse in terms of race, had some distinct ideological differences.

The atmosphere was insular, with an undertone of sucking up (to whom, I’m not sure). It was not cozy so much as exclusive-feeling. Either you were following their conversation for years and on a first name basis with everyone, or you couldn’t get a microphone to ask a damn question for over an hour.

Rather than go subject-by-subject, I’d like to pull out a few gems from what individual panelists said. I’ll begin with comments from Chuck Coursey, who is the spokesman for Northland Investment Corporation, “downtown Hartford’s largest private property owner,” which happens to own Hartford 21. Spoiler: the cliche, “those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it” fits well here.

Coursey remarked early on that Hartford 21 is “already” over 1/3 leased out, which means that Hartford 21 is ahead of their schedule. In explaining his adaptation of Reaganomics, Coursey mentioned how in the future, he’d like to see the developments that began in downtown to move “south toward Hartford Hospital,” and then later toward the north. He acknowledged the problems created by the physical barrier of I-84, and even began to sound progressive by suggesting that some parking lots downtown be razed and made into “entry level housing.” Too bad the clientèle for that entry level housing is an afterthought in all this, coming in behind the nouveau riche who now get to “tower above the rest.” Continue reading “Bullish, Bubble, or Bust” Reportback…

Town Profile Information

CERC provides a clear database of information pertaining to demographics, economics, education, government, housing, labor, and quality of life. You can compare/contrast towns’ statistics with each other and to county and state averages. This is very useful to have when analyzing issues, such as discrepancies between cities and surrounding towns. For instance, the poverty rate in Hartford is at 30.6%. Compare that to 4.5% in the neighboring West Hartford, and 2.2% in Simsbury.

Labor Action Monday

A protest of immigration raids is slated for the morning of Monday, April 2nd at 8:30 in front of the Federal Building on Main Street in Hartford. The action intends to show support for the eleven Ecuadorian day laborers who were arrested in Danbury by a federal agent.

New Britain-Hartford Busway

Private ownership of vehicles is an environmentally detrimental luxury that not everyone has. Recognizing that both eco-conscious and poorer people have transportation needs, plans for the New Britain-Hartford Busway are expected to move forward this Friday. Who will use this? CERC puts the number of people commuting into the city at 37,720, and that’s only from the closest surrounding towns. That does not count the number commuting from Hartford to work elsewhere. Hopefully, public interest will defeat selfish desires and tempt many of those thousands to take advantage of improved public transportation.