2019’s Perpetual Protests Produced Results

In 12 months of near-constant protests, New Haveners took to the streets — and to City Hall, the Board of Education, public parks, rezoning meetings, out-of-state immigrant detention centers, the Yale Bowl, and many, many more places besides. 

These demonstrators sometimes won what they asked for. They always sparked debate. And they seemed to herald a new era of vibrant, disruptive participatory democracy at a time when civic unrest has swept the country and the globe.

The year that was saw a remarkable number of protests about a remarkably diverse array of topics — not just in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, Bolivia, Los Angeles, and Chicago, but also right here in the Elm City.

Reporters and analysts have interpreted the surge in worldwide protests as indicative of public alienation — from corrupt governments, violent totalitarianism, and inequality-exacerbating capitalism. New Haven’s year of rallies and demonstrations seemed to point towards a different, no less powerful collective desire of people from all wakes of life: to have a say in what their neighborhoods look like, and in what values their city embodies and acts upon. 

They spoke to a faith in the power of municipal government to address some of the most pressing issues of our times, but only if residents first organize en masse and target specific, relevant levers of power best suited to make those changes a reality.

Local protesters spoke out for police accountability and emergency climate action, and against involuntary teacher transfers and the demolition of historic buildings.

They were as likely to be seen in the pews of the Aldermanic Chambers and the back seats of City Plan Commission meetings as they were on the front steps of City Hall and the grassy lawn of the Green. 

In her new book Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age, Harvard historian Lizabeth Cohen wrote about this very rising tide of public demonstrations in New Haven as an attempt by regular people to have a larger say in citywide decision making.

Granted, the New Haven protest culture Cohen wrote about in her new book took place over five decades ago in the wake of urban renewal’s leveling of entire city neighborhoods.

But Cohen’s words seem to ring as true for New Haven in 2019 as they do for New Haven in the 1950s and early 1960s.

“Urban renewal likewise contributed to citizens’ growing recognition that the most crucial kind of social knowledge required for democratic change resided with ordinary people, not just independent experts,” she wrote.

Cohen also identified the potential frustrations and messiness that arose from this type of surge in direct democracy.

“But implementing a more decentralized participatory democracy in a city like New Haven raised challenges of its own. While it held out the promise of a more humane and equitable urban redevelopment, it did not offer easy answers to big structural problems, such as … how it should judge whether those speaking the loudest in a community in fact represented the majority’s will and not the self-interest of a vocal minority.”

That question of who best speaks for a community has been front and center over the course of the year’s many protests.

While the answer to that question may still be up in the air, one point is clear: More and more New Haveners are speaking up.

Police Accountability

Some of the largest demonstrations of the year took place in the realm of police accountability.

In January, a months-long public pressure campaign culminated in the Boards of Alders unanimously passing legislation to form a all-Civilian Review Board (CRB) with subpoena power.

As the mayor nominated and the alders vetted candidates for this still-not-yet-convened board over the summer, public outcry derailed the potential appointment of a retired East Haven police officer and applauded the confirmed appointment of an outspoken police critic.

Following the April 16 shooting and injury of an unarmed black couple in Newhallville by a Hamden police officer and a Yale police officer, hundreds of demonstrators embarked on weeks of protests calling for state investigators to release as much information as possible and for the two officers to be fired immediately.

They blocked downtown streets for hours and shut down Hamden Police Commission meetings as they called for the firing and arrest of the officers involved.

State police released body camera footage and details about the shooting, a swifter act of public transparency than has been in the past. In October, the state’s attorney formally brought charges against the Hamden officer, Devin Eaton. And The town’s own police department recommended that Eaton be terminated from his job.

Protesters, led by Police Against Police Brutality’s Kerry Ellington, kept up the pressure on the Hamden mayor’s office, town council, police department, and police commission throughout.

Earlier this month, a state judge put a halt to Eaton’s firing—agreeing instead with the police union that Eaton cannot be dismissed from his job until his criminal court case is complete.

Yale did, however, suspend Officer Terrance Pollock for 30 days for his involvement in the shooting. The university also announced that Pollock will be confined to duty without a gun when he returns to service after the suspension.

Climate Crisis

This year also saw frequent protests, led by New Haven middle school, high school, and college students, calling for action on the environmental crisis of climate change.

Sunrise New Haven and the New Haven Climate Movement and Fossil Free Yale led protests in support of a nationwide Green New Deal and a citywide climate emergency resolution.

They rallied by the dozen outside City Hall, by the hundred on the Green, and to great national and international fanfare during halftime at the annual Yale-Harvard football game.

The protesters successfully pushed the Board of Alders to pass a climate emergency resolution in September.

Alders also unanimously passed a resolution in December urging city and Yale police to drop all charges against the Yale-Harvard football game protesters.

And after Justin Elicker defeated incumbent Mayor Toni Harp in November’s general election, climate protesters gathered in the freezing cold outside City Hall to keep up the pressure on the mayor-elect to follow through on the budgetary and policy priorities laid out in the climate emergency resolution.

School Showdowns

Students, parents, and teachers also filled Board of Education meetings throughout the year — largely in opposition to cost-cutting measures and other actions undertaken by former Superintendent Carol Birks.

She was formally pushed out of her city schools leadership position in October.

In June, over 150 people protested outside the public school administrative headquarters on Meadow Street against the proposed involuntary transfer of 53 teachers.

Those protests, along with similar outcry made during June Board of Education meetings, ultimately stopped those transfers.

Parents also filled the school system’s Meadow Street offices by the dozen in August in confusion and frustration around porrly communicated cuts to public school bus routes. That public outcry extended through October, as school administrators continued to scramble to meet parents’ demands.

In October, a coalition of local Latino and Latina pastors, parents, and educators rallied inside and outside City Hall in support of greater representation of Hispanics on the school board and in the classrooms.

The protests revealed a rift between African American and Latino alders, and sparked a larger discussion about the public school student body’s changing demographics.

Immigration, Gentrification, Labor, And Much, Much More

New Haven immigrant rights activists stepped up their pressure on City Hall to codify its support for undocumented residents, leading to Mayor Toni Harp’s issuance in August of an official sanctuary city order.

They renewed that campaign outside City Hall in October, calling on the Board of Alders and the mayor to cement in law, not just executive order, the city’s prohibition of cops, school resource officers and security guards from asking crime victims about their immigration status and from detaining a person solely based on that status.

Wilbur Cross students took that fight for immigrant rights to Boston in November as they rallied outside of an immigrant detention center in support of one of their classmates, Mario Aguilar Castañon, who faces deportation. In December, those same students traveled down to Milford to conduct a similar protest outside of that suburban town’s state courthouse.

And hundreds rallied in May outside of a Turkish mosque on Middletown Avenue in support of religious freedom in the wake of a suspected arson at that place of worship.

Anti-gentrification protesters and Dixwell neighborhood activists waged a public pressure campaign in City Plan Commission meetings throughout the summer and fall in opposition to a city-led ​“commercial corridor” rezoning initiative. 

After a raft of public meetings on the topic, city staff ultimately agreed to drop Dixwell Avenue from this version of the rezoning plan with the hope of talking more with residents about their concerns around everything from allowed building height to rent affordability.

Grand Avenue protesters similarly convinced the aldermanic Legislation Committee to drop their neighborhood from this version of the rezoning plan, leaving Whalley Avenue as the only area of the city slated to receive these pilot zoning updates.

Those protests and community conversations, along with a parallel set of demonstrations in opposition to a city, state, and Yale-funded skate park planned for Scantlebury Park, both grew out of the organizing work of legal aid’s recently revived professional community organizing program.

Those protests sparked a lively and ongoing debate (including on the pages of this news site) about the most effective strategies to prevent gentrification, and about whether the city is undergoing gentrification at all.

Legal aid organizers joined with Dwight neighbors and historic preservationists in the Aldermanic Chambers in December to protest the construction of around 1,000 new parking garage spaces on Orchard Street to accompany Yale New Haven Hospital’s prospective $838 million new neuroscience center and St. Raphael campus expansion.

The aldermanic Legislation Committee ultimately voted unanimously in support of the neuroscience center parking plan, with the final vote slated for January.

Dwight historic preservationists, led by Olivia Martson, had greater success this summer as they convinced the state attorney general’s office to help delay the Feldman brothers development company from knocking down two derelict, historic buildings on Howe Street and replacing them with a new 30-unit, stick-and-podium-style apartment complex. 

That campaign included the presentation of over 700 signatures to the local Historic District Commission in opposition to the proposed demolition.

A group of Hill neighbors, meanwhile, turned out throughout the summer and fall to meetings of the Board of Zoning Appeals, the Livable City Initiative Board of Directors, the City Plan Commission, and their own management team to oppose Cornell Scott Hill Health Center’s planned construction of a new addiction recovery center on Cedar Street.

The neighbors succeeded in delaying city and aldermanic approvals for the project, and won a number of concessions from the community health center — including a dedicated community meeting space at the prospective new center.

They vowed to continue pushing their critique that the neighborhood is already over-burdened with social service providers — even as the health center, with the city’s support, recently won a key aldermanic approval for the project.

New Haven and Hamden Stop & Shop workers 30,000 of their colleagues from throughout the region for an 11-day strike in April that brought together local politicians, national labor leaders, and check-out counter staffers together on the picket lines.

The strike ended with a new labor accord that included worker pay raises and preserved their healthcare and pension benefits.

And local labor organizers with New Haven Rising and Yale’s blue-collar and clerical-worker UNITE HERE unions, one of the most politically influential organizing forces in town, filled the Aldermanic Chambers in February to criticize the university for not following through on the entirety of his local hiring commitment.

In August, the unions and local labor leaders celebrated a new pact with the university that created over a dozen new permanent job hiring and training programs for New Haven residents from ​“neighborhoods of need.”

In November, New Haven Rising brought together hundreds of New Haveners in the cafeteria of Career High to brainstorm around a new campaign that draws attention to just how much Yale would pay in taxes—if its nonprofit, tax exempt status weren’t protect by federal tax code and the state constitution.

A mayoral election that did not see mass turnout at the polls but nevertheless delivered an overwhelming change mandate to Mayor-Elect Justin Elicker. The city’s soon-to-be-51st-mayor subsequently held two transition team meetings that brought together hundreds of New Haveners from throughout the city to talk and put pen to paper about what would make this city an even better place to live in the years to come.

Those latter meetings may not qualify exactly as ​“protests” — no sign waving or marching in sight. They did acknowledge what New Haven’s year of protest held in spades: City residents, gathering in large groups in public, to let their local government know that their voices matter and that they will be heard.