nothin Peace Breaks Out In West River | New Haven Independent

Peace Breaks
Out In West River

Allan Appel Photo

Snappy the Peace/Peas Pod & little Ryan and John Fitzpatrick

Snappy the Peace/Peas Pod greeted one of the newest neighborhood activists, 5‑week-old Ryan Fitzpatrick, with a May peace/peas be with you,” as the West River Neighborhood Services Corporation staged a festive party to mark the sixth annual United Nations International Day of Peace (not Peas).

On a bright, optimistic Sunday afternoon several hundred people flocked to the green space where Legion Avenue meets Ella Grasso Boulevard.

At the end of the now verdant site where bulldozers in the 1960s wiped out houses and stores of the immigrant Oak Street corridor, kids flew kites, meditated, prayed, pinned their peace wishes to the wispy branches of a dwarf Japanese white pine tree, and ate all the ice cream they wanted, provided free by Start Bank.

Following creation in 1988 of the City of New Haven Peace Commission, peace gardens began to sprout in town, the first in West River.

Since then, peace trees and gardens have been planted in Trowbridge Square, Criscuolo Park, and on Bassett Street, said Al Marder, president of the commission.

West River’s remains notable for two reasons: It is designated to show the United Nations logo marking New Haven as one of the world’s 62 Peace Messenger Cities. Second, no other neighborhood has seized on the park to sustain the horticulture and to use it to organize neighborhood-involving clean-ups and other community-building activities.

The commission and the West River Neighborhood Services Corporation (WRNSC) organized the event, as they always do in the run-up to the U.N. General Assembly gathering in New York. On Wednesday Sept. 21 at 10:30, as part of the ongoing activities, 1,500 New Haven schoolchildren are to plant peace pinwheels on the New Haven Green.

Marder is both chair of New Haven’s Peace Commission and also the president of the International Association of Peace Messenger Cities.

The call for peace is a call for jobs, especially in New Haven,” Marder said.

(l-r) Stacy Spell and Kel Young

Sunday’s party was a time less for speeches and more for peace-related fun. So Snappy (aka Eric Triffin) was busy doing his greetings and handing out snap peas — eat one and now peace/peas is inside you.” Near the corner of Legion Avenue, kids with ice cream daubed still on a few faces thronged an inflated black and yellow bounce house.

WRNSC President Stacy Spell pinned a peace wish on the dwarf pine under the instruction of Kel Young, the lead environmental teacher at nearby Barnard Environmental Studies Magnet School. Young said the tree will go over to Barnard on Monday to inspire kids at school.

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