Thomas Breen photo
New Haven Rising volunteer John Lee leaves a “Yale: Respect New Haven” door-knocker (below) on Spring Street.
Dozens of local labor organizers, union members, students and other volunteers fanned out across New Haven to deliver 26,000 door-knocker messages that called on Yale University to share more of its wealth with the cash-strapped city.
The bulk of that mass canvassing event took place Saturday morning and early afternoon.
It was organized by the local labor advocacy group New Haven Rising and the UNITE HERE union chapters that represent Yale’s pink collar, blue collar, and graduate student-teacher workers.
Between Friday and Monday, the group planned to drop one “Yale: Respect New Haven” door-knocker each at 26,000 different front doors across the city.
“We need the leaders at Yale to do more,” New Haven Rising leader Scott Marks (pictured) told a socially-distanced and masked crowd of canvassers Saturday morning during a pep rally on the Upper Green.
“People in New Haven are waking up to the fact that we can no longer accept a tax break for wealthy institutions like Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital while our families are struggling to eat and our schools are underfunded. We’ve got to do a lot of work.”
“This is a fusion movement,” he continued. “Nobody out. Everybody in.”
The lit drop campaign comes soon after Yale posted a $203 million operational surplus and the city projected a $13 million deficit amidst the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
It also follows Mayor Justin Elicker revealing that he has put together a new secret team — including former mayoral challenger Henry Fernandez — to negotiate directly with the university about increasing the latter’s support to the city. (Elicker refuses to divulge whom else he appointed to the team, claiming it is not a “public” matter.)
Marks framed the mass campaign lit drop as a local extension of UNITE HERE’s political canvassing work in the runup to the presidential election. He said that UNITE HERE volunteers knocked 3 million doors in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada on behalf of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris Democratic ticket.
New Haven played a key role in that national political fight, he said, sending 60 residents to Pennsylvania, 10 to Florida, and dozens more to the phones to make 1,200 three-hour phone banking shifts between Aug. 6 and Election Day.
“Thank you for what you have done,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (pictured) said about the union’s presidential canvassing push. “You have changed history.” Next up, he said, is going down to Georgia to make sure that two Democrats win in the state’s two U.S. Senate runoff elections in January.
Roughly 60 canvassers stood six-feet apart on the Green Saturday to kick start a more local campaigning effort: To leave door-knocker after door-knocker after door-knocker on front doors across the city calling on the university to pay its “fair share.”
New Haven Rising has calculated that the university and hospital would have to pay $157.7 million each year in local property taxes on currently tax-exempt properties. The university and hospital are slated to contribute $12.5 million to the city this fiscal year in voluntary payments.
“Shame on Yale,” Hill Alder Ron Hurt (pictured) said. He called on the university to use its surplus funds to support more jobs, affordable housing, food, and public education in the city. “We’re all struggling.”
Yale spokesperson Karen Peart told the Independent by email Saturday that Yale is the city’s third-highest taxpayer, contributing $5 million in property taxes on non-academic properties annually and, on average, paying $5 million in permitting fees each year to the city.
“Like churches and some schools, Yale is a nonprofit institution and is exempt from paying property tax on its academic properties,” she wrote. But that doesn’t mean Yale doesn’t contribute directly and indirectly to the city it calls home.
Click here for a fuller accounting by Yale of its contributions to the city, which Peart has calculated as topping $700 million annually spent directly on New Haven in the form of compensation to employees and other local payments.
Canvassers: “Yale Can Do More”
Henry Lowendorf picks up a canvassing packet from union spokesperson Ian Dunn.
Eduardo Reyes and Dana Green.
The canvassers who turned out for Saturday’s lit drop were unconvinced that the university is currently paying its “fair share” to help New Haven.
“Many people are suffering right now,” said Local 34 member and New Haven resident Eduardo Reyes, who was paired up with fellow union member and city resident Dana Green to hit 250 doors in Newhhallville Saturday. “Yale can do more.”
Green agreed. “Just do your part, Yale, so that we can all live safely, healthily, and with food on the table.” She said that, as Yale prospers, so too should the city’s neighborhoods.
“People should not have to take one, two years to find a job. We can have a rich, bountiful New Haven” if Yale contributed more.
Dana St. Mark and Stephan Alderman.
“I believe in working families. And it’s hard right now,” said Stephan Alderman, a University of Hartford employee and member of UNITE HERE Local 217. He and fellow Local 217 organizer Dana St. Mark were slated to hit 250 doors in the East Shore Saturday.
Beaver Hills resident and longtime Local 34 member and New Haven Rising organizer Jess Corbett (pictured) spoke of how he and his brother were raised by a single mother who was only able to keep her family afloat thanks to government programs like welfare, food stamps, Section 8, utility help, and, occasionally, emergency housing.
Then his mom got a union job at Yale in Local 34, and helped him get a temp job which turned into a full-time union job as well. The stable employment, paid time-off, and health insurance that came with those gigs transformed their family’s quality of life forever.
“That was a huge turning point for our family,” he said, and a motivating impulse for his continued organizing around pressuring Yale to hire local and invest more in its home city.
Lee, Culver and Taylor review turf assignments at Spring and Howard.
After picking up their turf packets and plastic baggies filled with hundreds of “Yale: Respect New Haven” door-knockers, New Haven Rising volunteers John Lee and Rose Taylor and Yale grad student Jacob Culver headed to the Hill to blanket Spring Street and Howard Avenue with the local lit.
Just like the other volunteers spread out across the city Saturday, they did not set out to knock doors and engage individual residents in conversation about Yale’s financial relationship to the city.
Rather, they walked from door to door, leaving door-knockers and then moving on, so as to make sure they hit as many homes as possible during their late morning/early afternoon shift.
One Spring Street resident who did answer his door after Lee visited his home with a “Yale: Respect New Haven” door-knocker was Mark Aceto (pictured).
The son of a former Hill alder and a resident of the neighborhood for nearly six decades, Aceto said he agreed with the push to get Yale to contribute more to New Haven.
“They make a lot of money,” he said about the university. How would he like to see some of that money spent in his own neighborhood? “More programs for families,” he said. “More social programs.”
Click on the video below to watch Saturday morning’s rally on the Green.
Would the union agree to a residency clause that required new hires to live in New Haven? New Haven would be much better off if most UNITE members lied in New Haven and spent their earnings, paid their taxes, etc, in New Haven rather than the suburbs. It's not that Yale pays poorly. Porto says his workers start at $47/hour entry level. It's just that they don't live in the town they work in.