After nearly nine years, Hartford IMC has decided to discontinue operations, as volunteers pursue other projects.  We would like to thank all of the contributors over the years who made our print publication, The Hartford Undercurrent, the website, and the radio show, RadioActive, such a huge success.  We would also like to thank all the readers/listeners who have supported us and hopefully have benefited from our work.  Finally, thanks to all of our guests and interviewees for working with us over the years.

While we haven’t ruled out the possibility of return, effective at the end of July 2011 HIMC will cease all operations.  The website will remain intact to preserve an archive of writings, and RadioActive MP3s.  Please feel free to peruse the body of work we have amassed here.  We are tremendously proud of what we accomplished, against many odds and always with a grassroots spirit and a commitment to the Hartford and central Connecticut areas.

Thank you for the years of support and participation.

Sincerely, HIMC volunteers

We spoke with members of Stephen Willis and Fisher Williams, two of fifteen (and counting) members of Orlando Food Not Bombs who were arrested this past week for sharing meals in a public park.

Download podcast here.

(New Haven) After a successful boycott against Cafe Goodfellas restaurant for refusing to pay employees a minimum wage, organizers will hold a press conference celebrating the victory. The event will take place at 5 pm at Cafe Goodfellas, 758 State Street in New Haven.

For more info and background, visit: http://ulanewhaven.blogspot.com/p/wage-theft.html

(Hartford) AIDS Awareness Day

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Hundreds of people with HIV/AIDS will be converging on the state capitol for a rally and to meet with their legislators on Wednesday, May 11th at 10 AM for the 11th Annual AIDS Awareness Day sponsored by the CT AIDS Resource Coalition (CARC). A number of public officials are expected to attend the rally including Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, Comptroller Kevin Lembo and Deputy Secretary of OPM, Mark Ojakian. Speakers will include Shawn M. Lang and Leif Mitchell, co-chairs of the AIDS LIFE Campaign, Connecticut’s statewide AIDS policy group, as well as people living with HIV/AIDS, and poet-activist-educator Fredrick Douglass Knowles who will inspire the crowd with his very personal experience with HIV and his energetic style with the spoken word. Participants will be wearing provocative red T-shirts asking “HIV+? Get tested!” in order to raise awareness about the epidemic in our state and to spark discussion on the importance of getting tested for HIV in order to know your own HIV status. “If you haven’t been tested for HIV, then you don’t know your status and you could unknowingly be infecting others with HIV,” said John P. Merz, Executive Director of CARC. Nationally, someone is infected with HIV every 9 ½ minutes, and it is estimated that 25% of all those living with HIV don’t know it. The CT Department of Public Health 2006 HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report estimates that there are nearly 19,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in the state; yet only 10,574 people with HIV/AIDS have been reported and are in the state’s HIV/AIDS registry. Advocates are rallying to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS in our state and urging legislators to hold the line on AIDS funding. “Over the past decade, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has doubled, yet funding has never kept pace.” said Shawn M Lang, Director of Public Policy for CARC. Lang went on to say, “We are painfully aware of the realities of the budget and believe we can live with the cuts to AIDS lines. We are here to thank the Governor and legislators who voted for the negotiated budget.”

Fore more info, please visit: http://www.ctaidscoalition.org/

Dannel Malloy looks more and more like Tom Foley, and Chris Christie, and Scott Walker every day.  The governor seems to have forgotten Bridgeport, the electoral battleground which thanks largely to working class and labor people, clinched his election.  In his proposed budget, he threatens collective bargaining of state employees in two ways: by eliminating the higher education exemption for managerial employees and by changing the requirement for that classification from two of four criteria, to only one:

Sec. 15. Subsection (g) of section 5-270 of the general statutes is repealed and the following is substituted in lieu thereof (Effective July 1, 2011):

(g) “Managerial employee” means any individual in a position in which the principal functions are characterized by [not fewer than two] one of the following: [, provided for any position in any unit of the system of higher education, one of such two functions shall be as specified in subdivision (4) of this subsection:] (1) Responsibility for direction of a subunit or facility of a major division of an agency or assignment to an agency head’s staff; (2) development, implementation [and] or evaluation of goals and objectives consistent with agency mission and policy; (3) participation in the formulation of agency policy; or (4) a major role in the administration of collective bargaining agreements or major personnel decisions, or both, including staffing, hiring, firing, evaluation, promotion and training of employees.

Full text of the Governor’s budget act is here.

The governor may be using this tactic as a way to compel serious concessions on the part of public employees, though as long as it’s in the bill, union members have no choice but to take it seriously.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, normally a friend to working people, has not killed Section 15, though he has the power to do so.  Why?  Because Donovan covets the US Senate seat to be vacated by Joe Lieberman and he wants to stay on Malloy’s good side so that governor can help him raise money.

A Filibuster of Condescension

At Tuesday’s Appropriations committee hearing, AFSCME Council 4 organized its members and like-minded people to testify on behalf of working people and their concerns.  Themes of those who testified included the scant resources of already suffering school districts, libraries, social safety net programs, and elderly care.   Neal Cunningham, Council 4 staff representative, framed the debate as a “revenue problem” in the state, rather than the popular and politicized term “spending problem.”

The process of testifying, however, was marred by obvious contempt and disinterest on the part of many assembly members on the committee.   Speakers were met with condescending remarks, leading questions, rhetorical questions, and downright disrespect from elected officials.  Most who were still in the chamber towards the end of the hearing (between 4:30pm and 5:30pm), like Representative Candelaria wandered drearily into their laptops, or left for coffee and came back.   Sen. Kane outright chastised two presenters who made the mistake of referencing a bill that was not on the agenda.  He was happy to sound like a smug parent lecturing a misbehaving child.  In response to Cunningham’s testimony, a one representative  insisted that CT was lucky to have so many rich people because of their generosity to such institutions as the Gray Cancer Center, or the Wadsworth Atheneum.  She failed to mention that such donations are accompanied by tax right-offs.

The strong showing from Council 4 was a good sign, but the threat to public employees in CT and to social services are real.  And, both Malloy and the Assembly seem fixed to allow the damage to happen unless working people continue to mobilize.

(Hartford) On Friday March 25th, a ceremony honoring the 146 workers who needlessly perished in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in NYC will take place  at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, First Floor Atrium. at 4:30 p.m..There will be speakers and a performance by the Colchester Community Theatre.

For more info on the tragedy, check out: http://homefront.homestead.com/Triangle.html

photo courtesy of Steve Thornton