Thomas MacMillan Photo
Moses Nelson on trail: Parents key to crime fight.
Foskey-Cyrus: Rev up clergy.
Want to avoid paying that parking ticket? Try showing up at parent-teacher night at your kid’s school.
That’s the latest idea coming out of the campaign trail in Newhallville.
It comes from Moses Nelson, one of two Democrats running for alderman in Ward 21.
Parent involvement is the most important element of school success, Nelson said. So parents should be given incentives for participating in their children’s education, like having a parking ticket forgiven, he said.
Nelson’s notion was one of several he offered to address what he said is the number one issue in Ward 21: violence. Improving schools would reduce crime, he said.
His proposal offered an inverse echo to a similar call by one of the four Democratic candidates for mayor, Clifton Graves. (Read about that here.)
Brenda Foskey-Cyrus, his opponent in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary, agreed that crime is the neighborhood’s top concern. She offered a different solution: get church ministers involved, have them march on the Green to stop violence.
The two candidates shared their ideas in separate interviews. They’re both vying to replace Alderman Katrina Jones, who’s stepping down as alderman at the end of this year.
Jones represents Ward 21, which is shaped a bit like a donkey loaded down with supplies and plodding westward, with its hooves in Dixwell and its body in Newhallville. The ward is in the so-called “crime corridor” which extends North-South through the city from Newhallville to the Hill and is the theater of most of the city’s violent crimes.
Q House Roots
Both Nelson and Foskey-Cyrus touted their roots in the ward and their connections to the now-defunct Q House, which once served as a center of life for young people in the area.
Nelson, who’s running for alderman for the second time, said he got his first job at the Q House teaching people to use computers. He also has had his first taste of politics when he helped then‑Q House staffer Peter Stein in an unsuccessful bid for an aldermanic seat. That sparked an interest that eventually led to a political science degree at Southern and six months working for the 2008 Obama campaign in Michigan, and two campaigns to become an elected official himself.
Nelson, who’s 28, said he wasn’t planning for a second bid for alderman this year. But people kept asking him “Are you running again?”
For Foskey-Cyrus, who grew up on Winchester Avenue, declined to give her age. “I’m old as snow. I’m definitely old.”
For her, the Q House is part of a bygone era, a better time. She said she’s running for alderman to “bring this neighborhood back.” It used to be a “loving neighborhood” where “everyone was a family,” she said.
“We didn’t know anything about guns,” she said in an interview at her house on Sherman Parkway. The Q House and other community centers “kept down a lot of crime,” she said. Now, things have changed, she said. “Today you look at a child wrong you probably get shot.”
Crime and Kids
Asked what she would do as alderwoman to “bring the neighborhood back,” Foskey-Cyrus said that’s the wrong question. “It’s not what I would do, it’s what we and the people would do,” she said. “I would bring a team together and we would sit around and work out solutions. I would bring people together to try to fix problems.”
She said people mention crime at every door she’s knocked on. “A lot of them feel the ministers could take a more active role,” Foskey-Cyrus said. “I have that same look at it.”
Church pastors should march on the Green, like the Million-Man March, she said. As alderwoman, she would ask them to do that. “If you ask not, you have not.”
Foskey-Cyrus said she’d also like to see more police on patrol, and more jobs as part of the Youth At Work program.
A poster on Foskey-Cyrus’ wall lists Ward 21 goals, including to get her elected.
Education is a key to addressing crime and all of its causal factors, Nelson said. “We have one big problem, which is poverty,” he said. “When the economy is bad, crime spikes.” Better schools can counteract that spike, he said. And the “number one thing” in education is parent involvement, Nelson said.
The city hasn’t done enough to make parent involvement an important part of school reform, Nelson said. He offered a couple of suggestions. The first is “absolving” parking tickets for parents who attend PTA or teacher meetings.
The second: “How about adopt-a-parent?” Parents who are involved could pair up with less involved parents and help to keep them in the loop about developments at school. “Maybe you can be co-parents,” Nelson said. Each month pairs of parents with kids in the same school would switch off the task of checking in with kids and the school and sharing all important information.
“When we do this effectively, we take kids off the street,” Nelson said. The plan would also build connections between parents and strengthen the community, he said.
Nelson, like Foskey-Cyrus, said summer jobs an important component of crime-reduction. When kids work all day, they’re engaged in positive activity, then they come home and are too tired out to go out and cause trouble, he said.
Nelson said he’d also like to see more communication between police and neighbors through revitalized block watches.
Experience
Foskey-Cyrus has seen the effects of Newhallville violence first hand. Her brother was killed on Winchester Avenue on Christmas 15 years ago. “My brother was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said.
Such crimes tear up families, and not just by taking a life, but by committing another to prison, she said. “We lost on to the dirt. They lost one to the system.”
Foskey-Cyrus suffered another loss in November, when her husband passed. “His pacemaker didn’t spark.”
A countdown calendar in Foskey-Cyrus’ house, made by her grandkid.
Her household now consists of three grandchildren — 9‑year-old twins and their 15-year-old sister — and a 20-year-old relative. Her full-time job is taking care of them, she said. Her past work experience includes employment at Foxwoods, as an administrative assistant at a temp agency, and as a receptionist at the Department of Labor. She said she’s currently active as a missionary and the president of her apartment complex.
Nelson, in addition to being a two-time candidate, participates in two community management teams, in Dixwell and in Newhallville. He’s a graduate of the city’s Democracy School and its Citizens Police Academy, and a member of the Civilian Review Board.
He works as a case manager with elderly and disable people for Continuum of Care, a social services agency. “I’m like a consiglieri,” Nelson said. His job is negotiate the bureaucracies of city and state agencies to help his clients get the resources they need. That’s good training for being an alderman, he said.
Independence
With this year’s aldermanic races shaping up as a battle between the so-called machine of establishment Democrats and a new influx of union-backed candidates, both Nelson and Foskey-Cyrus said they’re not part of either camp.
“I don’t know about no union,” Foskey-Cyrus said, a few days before Yale Locals 34 and 35 officially endorsed her candidacy. She said she’s running on her own with support from volunteers she’s recruited on her own. “It’s not the mayor and it’s not the union. It’s Brenda and her whole campaign,” she said.
Nelson ran two years ago as the insurgent candidate against an incumbent backed by the Democratic town committee. This year, he’s got official nod from that same body. “I think that was a mistake, probably,” Nelson said. “I was the only stated candidate.”
He said the official endorsement hasn’t yet led to an outpouring of support from city Democrats. “I don’t mind too much,” he said. “I don’t want to be elected to the Board of Aldermen owing people.”
Both Nelson and Foskey-Cyrus said they agree with the mayor on some issues and disagree on others.
provide incentives to people to be good parents? this is tiring!