Aliyya Swaby Photo
The mayor Tuesday accepted a giant check representing a $7,500 donation to help open its Dixwell drop-in activity center for young people and homeless teens.
A few months after signing an agreement to open “The Escape” at 654 Orchard St., city officials received their first major donation from Wells Fargo Bank through its annual holiday giving program. The center is expected to open in March.
“We’re fortunate to have a private sector supporter … underwrite some of these expenses,” said Mayor Toni Harp. The Escape center will help keep teens “safe, supervised, engaged and productive.”
The Escape will be housed at Bethel’s Community Outreach Center at 654 Orchard St. It will feature a new 30,000-square-foot teen drop-in and activity facility with continual programming and hang-out space for young people. It will also include a downstairs shelter for homeless teens. The city is paying for 10 beds for homeless boys, with hopes the not-for-profit running the center will raise money for at least five more beds. (Read more about the project here.)
Kimberly Chamberlain, Wells Fargo’s local district manager, said she chose Escape as the recipient project because it is a “great way to support New Haven youth.”
Bethel AME Church has partnered with the city to offer a $4,000 monthly lease of its space and to staff the shelter. Organizers are seeking partnerships with other local groups to offer programming or financial support.
“We want the door to open for other community organizations,” said Meredith Benson, who will head shelter for Bethel.
The center hasn’t yet opened but officials are already trying to recruit young people to be involved in the process of creating the space by visiting schools during lunch periods.
“We want young people to drive what we’re doing,” said Earle Lobo, a city youth services specialist. An advisory council and board of directors meets weekly to continue planning.
Again sold out by Judas Goat Leaders. This is Blood Money. Do you all know the history of Wells Fargo bank.This is the same bank that referred to people of color in minority communities as ghetto loans and minority customers as 'mud people.
Systemic Racism in Banking: The Wells Fargo Case
http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2009/06/08/systemic-racism-banking-wells-fargo/
The Kerner Commission Report from 1968 famously concluded:
What white Americans have never fully understood— but what the Negro can never forget— is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it."
The same banks that masquerade as caring stakeholders of the cities command their subsidiaries to drain the equity of homeowners and entire neighborhoods, destabilizing communities through slow, hemorrhagic death. The people are confronted with highly organized crime, a well dressed gang that stalks the unwary, baits and switches with impunity, chokes the innocent on their own, unfulfilled aspirations, and relentlessly steals the fruits of lifetimes of labor – all under the protection of accomplices at the highest levels of government. Since this is an American crime syndicate, the victims of choice are, naturally, Black.And so, too, will be the agents of their destruction. A people without equity must seek justice through collective action – outside of a rigged marketplace.
The Black Commentator