nothin The Week That Was | New Haven Independent

The Week That Was

Top: Church Street South apartment. Bottom: Pundits Rawls-Ivy, Ugly, Ricks.

Yes, Black Lives Matter. Yes, Church Street South matters. But what do you do about it?

Throw four pundits” in a room, and you might get five opinions.

Which is what happened Friday at the inaugural week-in-view pundits panel” on WNHH’s Dateline New Haven.”

The panel of local journalists — New Haven Independent reporter Markeshia Ricks, Inner-City News Managing Editor and WNHH Love Babz” show host Babz Rawls-Ivy, and WNHH and Ugly Radio morning drive-time host Joe Ugly — explored the State Supreme Court’s decision to abolish the death penalty, the (fingers-crossed) reopening of the State Street Bridge, a new pilot program to have city cops wear body cameras, and the emergence of a new campaign by tenants and the city to force the owners of the Church Street South subsidized-housing complex across from the train station to finally fix slum conditions.

Click above to listen to the show. Or download it here from iTunes to listen later. (Choose Dateline New Haven Ep. 5.”)

That last question was the easy part: No one argues that people should live in apartments that kids can’t breathe in. But what about Church Street South itself? Should it be fixed up as is? Should it be torn down and replaced by a similar project? Should it become a more mixed-income development?

Those questions have been more than academic for Rawls-Ivy, who grew up there, then considered earlier versions of plans for the project as a former city alderwoman. She remembers realizing: Well, you can tolerate poor white people. You don’t want to see poor black people.”

And more than academic for Joe Ugly, who hung out with his friends there. They remember a safer, happier complex back in the day that even then was in the lens of planners looking for a different kind of development in prime real state. They saw crack gangs help destroy the complex, then mismanagement allow the place to atrophy. (The Church Street South discussion begins at 19:30 in the audio file.)

Similarly, the easy part of the Black Lives Matters” debate concerns the quest to improve the relationship between America’s cops and the African-American community. Will body cams help — or possibly hurt? And should activists from the Black Lives Matters movement have disrupted Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ campaign event earlier this week in Seattle? Joe Ugly said no, that the movement should recognize when it has an ally with whom to work rather than whom it should shut down. Rawls-Ivy and Ricks argued yes, pointing to the subsequent decision by Sanders to hire an African-American woman from the movement as his campaign spokesperson and the release of the Sanders campaign of a racial-justice platform. The back-and-forth got passionate. (The Black Lives Matters segment begins at 42:30 in the audio file.)

You can hear the full program by clicking on the audio file at the top of this story.

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