Got Equality? Not if you’re 51% of the population.

The new campaign slogan for the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women certainly gets right to the point. And if anyone is unconvinced of their assertion, then I wish you could have attended Women’s Day at the Capital on Tuesday.  Invited speakers and the public submitted testimony on Tuesday and called attention to many issues like health care, domestic violence and protection, education, employment, women in politics, and childcare.  Two high school students from the Young Women’s Leadership Program essay contest also read their winning essays which focused on breaking the cycle of domestic violence and the need for more women in leadership positions. Read the full story

Downtown Hartford residents, business owners and activists will gather at City Hall, 550 Main Street in Hartford, Tuesday from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM to protest the relocation of the No-Freeze Shelter from Center Church in Downtown Hartford to Lafayette Street. The original proposed location of the shelter resulted in howls of protest from certain downtown business leaders, who used stereotypes and baseless arguments to force the move. A “Tent City” will be erected during the protest, then donated to those in the homeless community. Warm food and drinks will also be provided to those in need.

Citing concern that opening a shelter so close to the city’s “business and entertainment” hub would be bad for business (amongst a host of other crazy reasons), members of the Hartford Business Improvement District (BID) are trying to railroad the city into rethinking its proposal to open a no-freeze shelter. Read the full story

Brian Baker from South Park Inn, a shelter in Hartford, Natalie Matthews and Sara Zucker from the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness discuss CT’s current homeless situation, in a time when the economy is making getting by a lot more difficult.

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BREAKING NEWS: There are street gangs in Hartford. An internal police memo that was obtained by the Hartford Courant describes the gang activity in the city as an “infestation”, citing a total of 138 crews and 4,000 members, 800 of whom are under the age of 17. A large portion of the gangs are said to be affiliated with cliques such as the Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings & Los Solidos, all national organizations. After parents, city officials & educators expressed their concern, the cops said, “Oh, that number isn’t really accurate – groups that don’t meet the Department of Justice definition of gangs were included in the totals”. The tone deaf city school Superintendent Steven Adamowski’s reaction was “Gangs? What Gangs? We don’t have gangs in our schools!” It was amusing yet sad to watch Adamowski change course after parents confirmed during an October 21 community meeting that yes, gangs are a fact of life in Hartford schools. Former Weaver High principal Paul Stringer weighed in, stating that Adamowski was well aware of the presence of gangs in city schools. Read the full story

Sociologist Tim Black discusses his new book, When a Heart Turns Rock Solid, about three Puerto Rican brothers on and off the streets in Springfield, MA over two decades.

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Tuesday’s Middletown Food Not Bombs appeal hearing at the Dept. of Public Health and the breakfast/demonstration on the street beforehand was covered in CT News Junkie and on the Hartford Courant’s front page Wednesday. (I’m wondering why the Courant puts “sharing” in scare quotes in nearly every article they write about FNB. Anyone have ideas on that?) Read the full story

Greg Tate, founding co-artistic director, and actors Chinaza Uche and Brian Kopp discuss Hartbeat Ensemble’s Plays in the Parks 2009 and its theme: the economy hits home.

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After a series of crackdowns by Middletown officials against Middletown Food Not Bombs, the food activists are going on the offensive.  Today, FNB filed a federal injunction that would halt a cease and desist order which bars the group from meal-sharing activities unless food is prepared in a Health Department registered kitchen.   The target of the injunction is both the city of Middletown and the state of Connecticut.   According to the FNB press release, the cease and desist order also applies to “political” activities as well.  And, in a lawsuit filed on Friday, FNB argues that attempts to stop FNB’s public meals infringe on the group’s constitutional rights and has a chilling effect on such activities elsewhere.  Read the full story

I don’t count. And maybe you don’t count either. What makes us important to the people that we the people, put in office are; what color our skin is, how much money and power we have, what gender we are and how old we are. On the surface, the landscape seems to be diversifying; but the attitudes, practices and injustices are the same. The same racist attitudes, sexist beliefs and flagrant discrimination towards our elderly population still exist. It is right before our eyes, as it has been for years; and still, and still, and still; we won’t crawl out of the abyss.

Listen, my people. I have been around a long time. I have not only seen discrimination and injustice; I have felt its sting more than once. And I’m feeling it again. What is currently happening in our state and local government in the way of budget cuts and backroom tactics is just that, discriminatory and unjust. The poor, people who are currently experiencing homelessness, the sick, the mentally ill and the aged are all getting hit hard.  Social services are always the first to go. Public safety services are the next and then it goes into our schools with the removal of arts programming and transportation. It’s always the same. It never changes, and that is apparent again in the way our state and local government is trying to fix budgetary issues.

The thing is; they know exactly what they are doing, they know who will suffer and they just don’t care because it doesn’t further their own political careers or agendas. It doesn’t fund those special projects and it doesn’t get a certain populations vote.  You’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise. You see – if you are poor, homeless, sick, in recovery, mentally ill or from another culture there is this punitive attitude that permeates.  In the good old US of A, you’ve got to pull yourselves up by the bootstraps and if you don’t, if you can’t, you are penalized and punished by those in power. You are punished repeatedly by society as well. I think that attitude is part of the reason why many of our elected officials are getting away with obvious discriminatory practices towards and upon this States poor, ill and aged. Not only do politicians have this attitude, so does the constituency. But I ask this: how can we pull ourselves up, when we keep getting set up to fail? How can we help ourselves without the resources?

It’s a cycle that is long overdue to be broken.

It’s written somewhere that hope springs eternal, but based on what I’ve seen over and over again, my level of hope for this city and this state is waning fast. Until we the people change our attitudes towards racist ideals, gender and age discrimination; and how we treat our fellow human beings, it will remain the same.