Summer of Fun Hits Edgerton Park

What an insulting comment from Lumpkin about Edgerton being perceived as a park for the wealthy. Where is the evidence for this ridiculous and untrue slander against an area of the city of New Haven. Do we have to always pit one group against another and throw fireballs or is Lumpkin just angling for a new job in the NHPS???? Tiresome

While the land of the park was once owned by the Whitney family, the park as we see it today is the work of Fred Brewster, who built it as a wedding gift for his bride, Margaret Fitch. After her death, the main house was demolished and the grounds given to the city for use as a park.
https://www.nytimes.com/1964/09/05/archives/furnishings-of-doomed-mansion-in-new-haven-will-be-put-to-auction.html

I once accompanied a NHPS group as a school volunteer as a education major student to the greenhouse at Edgerton Park. The students had to enter the greenhouse in small groups, so while my group was outside waiting for the other group to finish the tour to get on the bus, the students begged me to let them run around on the park grounds among the trees, grass and flowers. Their school was in a neighborhood where those green things are in short supply. I agreed as long as they kept within my eyesight. The joy in children being able to run and play in a green park that they would never have access to unless someone either drive them there or took 2 buses to get there, was wonderful and upsetting for me.
No child should be denied the joy of playing safely outside in a beautiful park filled with green growing plants and trees. When the other children were back outside and they wanted to run around too, the teacher denied them, saying we were in a schedule with the bus driver. The sadness of the children who didn’t get to run on green expansive park grounds was deeply felt.
And yet, the board of alders, is willing to sell off a pocket park in the middle of a urban concrete neighborhood within high asthma rates and few plants or trees. They agree on a poor park substitute across town, in a rival group conflict neighborhood, across the street from a notorious bar with many issues, that would require a car ride or two bus routes to get to.
If I didn’t know any better, I would say that the alders didn’t grow up in the city poorest neighborhoods, where parents work multiple jobs, and can’t afford to transport their kids to a park across town to play in, or didn’t know that the neighborhood playgrounds in the poorer sections of town are concrete and rubber mulch and dirt heat islands, with trash, broken play equipment, littered with used condoms, broken glass and used drug paraphernalia, and many parents feel are not safe places to play.

I'm confused. Was somebody saying certain people weren't allowed in the park?

Daniel Diaz showed the kids how to smell the flowers gently without breaking them why would he assume that these kids would break the flowers when smelling them as if they didn't already know to he respectful of the flowers .Also why would he assume that these kids don't have the opportunity to attend parks and be outdoors in green spaces ? Just because families reside in apartments doesn't mean they don't navigate the city to go outdoors for parks and to enjoy green spaces.I personally have been going to this park since the 80's and now bring my children there to run around,play and just to enjoy park for whatever.Families don't just go to Edgewood park they also go to Edgerton Park it is just as equally enjoyable without the jungle gyms and swings.Mr. Diaz and Ms.Lumpkin don't need to stereotype and yes we know that the park is open to the public despite where someone lives.