Biden the best choice

 

   ELECTION VIEWPOINT

By Reginald Johnson

 

 I have to admit that I have my problems with the Democrats and Joe Biden.

 I don’t like the fact that the party has been weak in opposing future wars and reducing the military budget. In fact, many Democrats have been vigorous supporters of huge military budgets, which siphon away vital resources from domestic needs.

 I also don’t like the fact that party leaders embraced the phony “Russia-gate” narrative, which held incorrectly that  President Trump was some kind of Russian agent. All the talk about Russia collusion served to undermine the potential for a more peaceful relationship between the US and Russia. 

 Additionally, I’m not happy that the party failed to condemn the violence that engulfed American cities this past summer, violence which was provoked in considerable part by left-wing groups.

 Finally, I’m troubled by the recent allegations of possible corruption and ethical wrongdoing by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. These certainly need investigation.

   Having said all that, I’m casting my vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in tomorrow’s presidential election. The choice is very clear --- based on a number of critical issues.

 First and foremost is climate change. This is clearly an existential threat and we have to marshal all our resources to fight it. That means the United States must get back into the Paris Climate Accords and the nation must change our energy use ---- moving to renewable sources and getting away from fossil fuels. That means implementing the Green New Deal. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for vice president, support going back to the Paris Accords and moving to green energy conversion, even if Biden has equivocated recently on the issue of fracking. They’re headed in the right direction.

 By contrast, Trump has rejected the Paris Accords and wholeheartedly supports the continuation of fossil fuel use. This kind of position is simply unacceptable, given the gravity of global warming and its consequences, which include ever worsening forest fires, deadly heat waves and ever more violent hurricanes.

  Second is health issues. President Trump has badly fumbled management of the Covid-19 pandemic and has consistently sent the wrong signal to the American people about how serious this crisis is. He has pooh-poohed the Covid threat and that has probably cost many lives. Biden would clearly set a better tone on handling this crisis and move to set up a comprehensive testing program. He would likely push Congress more vigorously to come up with a badly needed stimulus package to help the American people, and not just corporations.

  Relatedly, Biden and Harris would shore up and likely improve the Affordable Care Act program. “Obama-care” as it is known, clearly has deficiencies, but it is certainly better than what the nation had before, which was nothing. Trump has proposed to eliminate “Obama-care” altogether and come up with what he says will be a new and better plan. But he has offered no details on exactly what this would be. This situation again is unacceptable. While the ultimate goal should be for the nation to move to Medicare-for-all, retaining Obama-care for now is clearly the best option over doing nothing.

     Finally, I think Biden would try to heal some of the divisions that now the beset our country and be much better on the issue of race. Trump has all too often stoked racial divisions and been divisive with his rhetoric. Biden is not perfect either on the issue of race, but he’ll be a lot better than Trump.

   One important point to remember is that while Biden is not the most progressive person in the world, he will likely be pushed towards more progressive policies by people who will likely have serious power in Congress, including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

 So, Biden-Harris is my choice tomorrow.

 And with that, I’m taking a break from writing for a while. 

 It’s off to the park to take a few fall walks and head back to the garden to harvest some late broccoli.

  Happy voting!

 

Progressive journalist quits over censorship

By Reginald Johnson 

      In the latest journalism travesty, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Glenn Greenwald has been forced out of the publication he co-founded because editors there were censoring his stories about possible corruption by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

  Greenwald, who started The Intercept in 2014 after he broke stories about unlawful surveillance of the American people by the National Security Agency, resigned from The Intercept after editors said they would not run any of his stories unless he removed all material critical of Joe Biden.

  The Intercept --- along with almost all of the mainstream and left media --- have blacked out all the revelations in stories done by the New York Post concerning apparent influence peddling and possible criminal wrongdoing in connection with payments by foreign nationals to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son. Also blacked out has been a statement by a Hunter Biden business associate that contradicted claims by Joe Biden that he knew nothing of his son’s business ventures in countries including Ukraine and China.

 The FBI is reportedly investigating Hunter Biden for money laundering.

   Biden, who served as Vice President from 2009-2017 in the administration of Barack Obama, was in charge of foreign policy concerning Ukraine and China, when his son went into business in Ukraine.

  Biden, who is facing Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential election, has denied any wrongdoing related to his son’s business dealings and said the stories were part of a Republican “smear campaign.”

  That denial has satisfied most of the media, the same media who acted like sharks smelling blood every time a report surfaced in the past about possible nepotism or nefarious activities by Trump family members.

  Biden supporters and many in the media have instead labeled the Post stories as “Russian disinformation” --- based on statements by former CIA Director John Brennan and former NSA Directors James Clapper and Michael Hayden.

 In an interview on FOX with Tucker Carlson, Greenwald said he was shocked to see even The Intercept ran a story referencing the claims by the former intelligence chiefs about Russian disinformation, even though the officials admitted in their full statement they had no hard evidence of a Russian link.

  Greenwald said The Intercept was founded on the idea that the media must be skeptical about the claims of the intelligence community, in light of the revelations about illegal mass surveillance by the NSA brought forth by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported by Greenwald.

  The investigative journalist said that in recent years an "unholy union" has come about between the media, the intelligence community, neo-cons, Silicon Valley (tech companies such as Google and Facebook). Democrats and Wall Street to advance a certain point of view and rule out independent voices. 

 Part of the reason for that joining of forces is that the left, which used to criticize the CIA, now likes the intelligence community because the CIA and FBI promoted the Russia-Trump collusion investigation, which nearly drove Trump from office, Greenwald said. The collusion narrative fell on its face however, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation found no conspiracy had taken place between the Trump campaign and Russia in influencing the 2016 election. 

  That "union of power," Greenwald contended, fully backs the Democratic Party which is likely to take over the Senate and possibly the presidency on Tuesday.

   "That is a very alarming proposition because they are authoritarian, they believe in censorship, they believe in suppression of information that exposes them in any kind of critical light," Greenwald said.

  The media has behaved very unprofessionally in refusing to probe the Biden allegations. That failure, together with the mistakes the press made in not covering the Russia-collusion controversy more critically, has left the media as an institution in tatters.

 That has grave implications for our democracy, since a vigorous and objective press is vital for our system to work well.

 Glenn Greenwald has not sold out. In my book, he's a hero.

   

 

 

 

 

Local officials look to block UB merger

 

BRIDGEPORT REPORT

    By Reginald Johnson

     BRIDGEPORT --- A city council member and other officials are demanding answers about the deal for three colleges to take over operations at the University of Bridgeport --- an agreement which they say may have major implications for the city and the South End.

  According to City Councilman Jorge Cruz, D-131, the group is angry that Mayor Joseph P. Ganim secretly negotiated the merger without any council or community input.

    The councilman said the group of council members, district leaders and state elected officials have had several meetings, and are planning legal action to block the tentative UB deal.

  “We feel deceived, lied to, kept out of the loop and disrespected,” said Cruz, who represents the South End, a section with a heavy minority population. Many residents are low-income.

 Cruz said he has learned the academic classification for the university will be higher than that of the current UB, and that the new institution may not be affordable for minority students.

  That change, together with the demolition of the nearby low-income Marina Village housing project ---- to be replaced by a smaller complex with some market-rate units --- has Cruz and others concerned that gentrification will set in and poor people will be priced out of the South End.

  Under the tentative agreement, Sacred Heart University of Fairfield, Goodwin University in East Hartford and Paier College of Hamden will merge with UB, co-locate programs on UB’s campus and purchase all of the school’s property and programs.

  Cruz has submitted a resolution before the City Council, which meets Tuesday, calling for an “informational meeting to clarify the University of Bridgeport merger.”

  Cruz said his group is asking that representatives of the colleges attend the meeting, proposed for Sept. 16, to answer questions about the merger.

  The resolution reads in part “Whereas, the Bridgeport City Council understands these kinds of collaborations can lead to economies of scale, and long-term benefits for students, drive economic growth and create jobs, but many questions remain unanswered.”

  One question apparently is how the new Bassick High School fits into the equation. The new school is to be located on former UB land. Cruz said he just found out that the city paid UB $6 million for the land.

   Cruz said Ganim, who sits on the UB board and teaches part-time there, is in a “huge conflict” regarding the merger agreement.

  “What’s up with this? How could he do that by himself?” the councilman asked.

 

 

Marina Village torn down amid gentrification fears

BRIDGEPORT REPORT

    By Reginald Johnson

BRIDGEPORT ---  The Marina Village apartments, which provided public housing for thousands of poor people for nearly 70 years, is being torn down to make way for a far less dense housing complex which will provide both low-income and market rate units.

    Park City Communities, which has managed Marina over the years, is partnering with a private firm, JHM of Stamford to build the new complex, called Windward Commons. The new development will offer 1 and 2 bedroom garden-style townhouses, a big change from the 2-story brick row houses of Marina Village. 

   The first phase will have 54 units, of which just 5 units will be public housing. According to Dave Ghio, director of  planning, redevelopment and modernization for Park City Communities, the rest of the units will be market rate and others called "affordable" and "deeply affordable" --- for residents whose incomes are above federal poverty guidelines but who can't afford market rate housing.

  When completed, Windward Commons will provide 100 units on the 27-acre Marina site ---- a sharp reduction from the nearly 400 units in the old complex.  Though figures have not been finalized, Ghio said between 20 and 40 units would be public housing  The total project will reportedly cost $200 million to build.

  Ghio said the new complex will offer a better quality of life for residents than Marina Village, which was the kind of high density housing project the federal government is moving away from. "We don't like to warehouse people," he said

  "What you'll see being replaced at Marina Village are new, modern, everyday, market-rate looking properties that have a private investment aspect to it, but much less dense" he said.

   But one local city council official is blasting the new development and says it offers too little public housing. 

   "That doesn't sound too good at all ---- only 5 units public housing," said Jorge Cruz, city council member from the South End.

 "It's an absolute farce what they're doing," he said. "Deliberately, they're gentrifying the place, really. To me, it's a form of gentrification if you're giving people a little bit of crumb of five apartments for low-income housing, but the vast majority, no, when the whole interest of Marina Village was for public housing," Cruz said.

   The councilman also claimed that officials at Park City Communities, formerly called the Bridgeport Housing Authority, misled people at Marina ---- when demolition and relocation of residents was first discussed several years ago ---- by saying that residents there would have first choice on coming back to the new complex.

 "How can you promise that, knowing that 95 percent are not going to be able to come back?" Cruz asked.

 On the issue of possible gentrification in the neighborhood --- which is close to Seaside Park and the University of Bridgeport ---  Ghio didn't deny it was a possibility.

 "I'm very familiar with the term gentrification and that can be cross-referenced with evolution of a neighborhood," he said. "Gentrification can be defined as negative and I don't see this as negative. Certainly the intent is not negative or to change the neighborhood for purposes other than the safety, health and well-being of our clients, the residents of our community."

   Ghio also said everyone at Marina was relocated into some type of publicly-subsidized housing. Most of them, he believed, got housing through the Section 8 program, where families get a voucher to cover most of the cost of a rent in the private market. The resident usually has to pay about 30 percent of their income for the rent.

  "Ultimately, everyone was relocated, and peacefully, I have to say," the housing official said.

 Denese Taylor-Moye, a long-time resident of Marina and head of the tenants' association said she thought the process of relocation had gone well. "Some people moved out of state, some went to scattered site housing, some to Section 8, some went back to public housing...nobody was left without a place to go."

  Taylor-Moye, who also has a seat on the City Council with Cruz, said residents weren't rushed out of Marina to make way for the new development. "Everybody had choices. It wasn't like, 'We're taking down Marina. You gotta go.' It wasn't one of those things," she said.

   The councilwoman feels positive about the new complex. "Windward is going to be a great place coming up, if it's designed to be. It will be the future housing...It will be what's needed for people in housing."

  Ghio said there were a host of reasons for tearing down Marina Village --- which dates to the early 1950s.

 "There's a financial obsolescence formula used --- look down 10-20 years, what will be the cost to maintain and operate them, there's the drug and crime issues and primarily the end of its useful life," said Ghio.

   The demolition project is being done by Standard Demolition, a firm in Bridgeport, Ghio said. The company is a "Section 3" contractor, meaning that they are required to hire low-income residents from the local area, in return for receiving federal funds. The cost of the contract is $2 million.

  Cruz said he is concerned about the impact of the development on the neighborhood at the same time another major event is taking place in the South End ---- the dissolution of the University of Bridgeport.

The financially-pressed UB recently reached a tentative agreement with three other universities --- including Sacred Heart --- for taking over parts of the school. Cruz said the deal was worked out with the help of Mayor Joseph P. Ganim, who Cruz said has a teaching position at UB.

  Cruz said the agreement should have had some input from the City Council and that was not the case.

 "We've got a lot of questions about what's going on," said Cruz.

Cruz said a group of Black and Latino elected officials have been meeting recently to discuss the agreement and possible legal action to stop it.

 The councilman said people are concerned about the impact of the new school on the South End and Seaside Park.

   "We're not happy with this deal," he said.

    

   

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Flooding Linked to Remington Woods Development

    BRIDGEPORT REPORT

By Reginald Johnson

   BRIDGEPORT ----- Environmental activists and a city council member say new construction in the Remington Woods forest may have triggered the historic flooding which destroyed cars and damaged homes in an East Side neighborhood earlier this month.

 Homes along Ohio Avenue and some nearby streets were hit by the massive flooding after two downpours on June 30 and July 3rd, said Councilwoman Maria Pereira, D-138.

   Flooding two to four feet deep engulfed cars and poured into basements, she said.

 “Two cars were totalled and two people had to be rescued by the fire department,” Pereira said. “The city engineer told me that in his 20 years working for the city, he had never seen anything like it.”

  Some homeowners have had to spend thousands of dollars to clean up, and in some cases, insurance companies are refusing to pay for the damage, the council member said.

   A meeting will take place Thursday at 5:30 pm in the Thomas Hooker School to give residents a chance to air their concerns about the flooding with city officials, Pereira said.

  The big mystery is what caused the flooding in the neighborhood, which is in the northeastern section of the city, off East Main Street. Oddly, Ohio Avenue, which crosses East Main Street, was only flooded on the eastern end. The western side of the street was untouched.

   Instead of faulty sewers causing the flooding, Pereira said the cause might be new construction at the Remington Woods tract which sits on the eastern end of the flooded area.

  “This does not appear to be raw sewage, but water with dirt and grit,” Pereira said of the overflow.

  The Remington Woods site --- 422 acres of mostly woods and a 22-acre lake ---- is owned by Corteva, a subsidiary of DuPont, the giant chemical corporation. Corteva is planning light industrial development for the area.

 In recent years, Corteva has been conducting an environmental clean-up of the tract, which contains munitions waste left by the Remington Arms company. The firearms company, now owned by DuPont, had a factory in Bridgeport and used to test its products at the woodlands site.

  Environmentalist Lela Florel is also suspicious that recent tree cutting and construction work in the woods may have sparked the unprecedented flooding. Florel points to the fact that Remington Woods is at a significantly higher elevation than streets such as Ohio Avenue. Ohio Avenue is at 49 feet above sea level, while Remington Woods sits at 62 feet to about 138 feet, she says.

 “The woods is high!” Florel said. “The water runs down. Either the Woods is left natural to absorb it, or the neighborhood floods,” Florel said.

  Pereira said construction of a dam on the site might also have been a contributing factor.

  Meanwhile, Florel, Pereira and others in the group “Preserve Remington Woods” are fighting a long-term battle to save Remington Woods from construction. The group is seeking to have the city change the zoning designation for the tract from light industrial to one “that specifies preservation of the entirety of the woods as a Nature Wildlife preserve.”

  Florel says the tract is an environmental gem --- home to deer, fox, eagles, turkey and thousands of large hardwood trees.

  She and the other advocates say it makes no sense to destroy the woods to make way for new industry, when Bridgeport has so many vacant buildings that can be redeveloped to provide the same thing.

 Already, the city has granted a wetlands permit to Corteva to proceed with development. Florel says full-scale construction work could begin by the end of the year, unless the zoning is changed.

    

  

Debate rages over Bridgeport Ampitheater

By Reginald Johnson

 
  BRIDGEPORT ---- Is it salvation for a city still trying to remake itself years after industrial plants shut their doors?

  Or is it an expensive boondoggle, saddling the city with debt for years to come?

  Those questions are still being debated by city leaders and residents following the City Council’s vote to approve $4.5 million more in city funding to complete the Harbor Yard Ampitheater, a concert venue in Bridgeport’s South End.

  The ampitheater, being constructed on the old Bluefish baseball field and incorporating stadium seating, was slated to open in 2019.  Developer Howard Saffan and his partner Live Nation predict the entertainment facility will draw tens of thousands of music fans from around the region and provide much needed revenue to the city and boost business downtown.

  But Saffan told city officials earlier this year that he has run into unforeseen infrastructure problems which have driven up costs and the city needed to give him another $4.5 million to complete the project.

  Some of those infrastructure problems reportedly dealt with rerouting an old sewer line under the baseball field and which was interfering with amphitheater construction. Other issues concerned broken elevators and faulty sprinkler systems.

  Under the original agreement, Saffan said the city would have to put in no more than $7.5 million for the project, to be matched by the developer’s $7.5 million for a total $15 million project .

  Despite going back in his original pledge, a majority of the City Council went along with Saffan’s request, citing the ampitheater’s importance in helping to revitalize the city’s downtown.

    “I support this project here 100%,” said Councilman Jorge Cruz who represents the South End and the downtown. “We here in the South End need an infusion of energy of development,” he told the Connecticut Post.

  “If you want to grow things in the city, you have to begin with something to make it grow,” said Councilwoman Denese Taylor-Moye, who also represents the South End.

  Taylor-Moye said the city will benefit from the revenue from rent, ticket sales, the hundreds of jobs created and spin-off development from the amphitheater.

 “This will definitely benefit the city,” she said.

The concert ampitheater being built in the city's South End.

 But Saffan’s request for more money was not greeted favorably by all.

 Councilwoman Maria Pereira from the East End criticized Saffan and doubted the viability of the project overall.

  “The ampitheater is not an “economic development” project. It is nothing more than a taxpayer-funded handout to a developer closely aligned with Mayor (Joe) Ganim who is also a generous donor to Ganim’s political campaigns,” wrote Pereira in an opinion piece in the Connecticut Post.

   Pereira said that when you add in the interest on long-term bonded debt for the city, the cost of police and fire protection and facility maintenance, the city is looking at a final cost of $17.5 million, which she said will never be recouped.

   The council member also disputed Saffan's contention that he had no way of knowing about the infrastructure problems when he signed onto the project. The developer has maintained that the city denied him access to inspect the Bluefish Stadium before the agreement was reached.

  Pereira said in her op-ed that the the former director of city facilities had told her that Saffan had never requested an inspection and if he had, the city would have granted him access.

  Also expressing skepticism is AmyMarie Vizzo-Paniccia, a council member from the North End.

   Commenting on the problems at the stadium, Paniccia said “It was common knowledge… He knew about it.”

  Paniccia, who said she had reservations about the viability of the project when it was first proposed three years ago, questions how many people will actually come to the amphitheater concerts, given the fact that Live Nation also runs concerts at the Oakdale in Wallingford and the Mohegan Sun Casino. She said those concert sites will siphon away patronage from the Bridgeport facility.

  The amphitheater she said, may become a “big drain“ on the city financially.

 On the issue of the long-term bond debt and the financial burden that would pose for the city, Taylor- Moye disagreed with Pereira. She said the $4.5 million given to Saffan now is coming out of an “old” bond package approved for downtown improvements.

  “ It’s not new money,” she said.

 City Council President Aidee Nieves said she was not troubled by the fact that the developer had asked for more money based on his claim he had run into unforeseen problems in building the amphitheater.

  “Sometimes you find these things as you go along,” during a remodeling or construction project, she said.

   On the whole, Nieves predicted, the amphitheater “will be a big draw and reinvigorate the downtown.”
  There's disagreement as well over the number and quality of jobs to be created by the new facility. Pereira said she was skeptical that "800-1,000" jobs would actually be produced, as Saffan has promised. She also maintained the jobs would be "part-time and low-wage."  But Taylor-Moye countered that while the concert jobs would be part-time and seasonal, the same workers will have jobs during the cold weather months at the nearby Webster Bank Arena, giving them good, year-round employment.
   The baseball stadium now to be the ampitheater is located on the site of where a thriving factory, Jenkins Valves, once stood.  The manufacturing plant --- one of many heavy industrial facilities in Bridgeport in the 20th century --- employed about 400 workers, all union members and making solid pay and benefits for the day.  But Jenkins, along with dozens other plants, began shutting down in the 1970s and 1980s, as de-industrialization took over the Northeast. Companies fled Bridgeport to gain higher profits in low-wage, anti-union Southern states or in foreign countries.
   The Jenkins building sat vacant for years until it was demolished in the 1990s when Ganim in his first tenure as mayor proposed the idea of bringing a baseball team to Bridgeport, as a means of helping to redevelop the city.  After opening, the Bluefish were very popular and drew many people from the suburbs. Over time, however, the team ran into financial problems, there were issues with rent payments, and the city opted to move in another direction in 2017.
     

     

  

 

   

   

New York City: Catastrophe Looming

    

By Reginald Johnson

   

  

     NEW YORK --- The mayor of America's largest city is warning that unless hospitals in the city receive critically-needed medical supplies in the near future, people will die unnecessarily from the Coronavirus disease.

   Mayor Bill deBlasio told CNN Sunday the city has over 8,000 cases of COVID-19, a third of the total cases nationally and the “worst is yet to come.”

   But the federal government is not coming through with the level of assistance needed to deal with the crisis, he said.

  “We’re not getting shipments. We’re not getting the stuff we need,” deBlasio said. “If we don’t get more ventilators in the next 10 days,  people will die that don’t have to die.”

  Mayor deBlasio spoke as the nation continues to reel from the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. Many cities and states are on a virtual lockdown, where non-essential businesses have been shut down and residents are being largely confined to their homes, as authorities try to stop the spread of the virus.

  Leaders from different areas of the country have been complaining that hospitals in their localities are facing shortages of key medical supplies and equipment to treat patients with COVID-19. And they’re demanding that the federal government do more.

  The most vocal critic has been deBlasio, who says that the Trump administration’s piecemeal efforts to deal with the pandemic are totally inadequate. The administration has encouraged various companies to ramp up production of needed supplies and then either donate or sell them to hospitals. Governors have also been authorized to use the National Guard where necessary to help out and the Army Corps of Engineers is being brought in some cases to build more temporary hospital beds.

    But the New York mayor said Trump has to go further and invoke the Defense Production Act, which will allow him to order private companies to go full speed on manufacturing vital supplies and equipment and get them to hospitals. The law will also enable the president to get the military involved in distribution and in providing medical personnel where needed.

  “If you don’t order companies to maximize production of ventilators, surgical masks and all the things that are desperately needed, and organize that, and prioritize where it's going to go, it won't happen in time," he said.

  Mayor deBlasio said that a "full-scale mobilization of the military is needed to deal with the greatest crisis domestically since the Great Depression."
  He added that invoking the Defense Production Act and mobilizing the military are steps that presidents in the past, Republican and Democrat, would have taken by now.
  "Eisenhower would have done it, Truman would have done it, John Kennedy would have done it. Come on!"
  US Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, agreed with deBlasio's view in another interview on CNN. She said officials from hospitals in her district are predicting shortages of ventilators and beds.
  She said Trump needs to invoke the Defense Production Act immediately. 
  "We cannot wait until people are really dying in large numbers to start production, especially of more sophisticated equipment like ventilators and beds," she said. 

  

Saving Remington Woods

  By Reginald Johnson    

    

   BRIDGEPORT --- It sits on the edge of the state’s most densely-populated city --- 422  acres of unspoiled woods and a beautiful 23-acre lake.

   It’s home to nesting eagles, deer, wild turkey and 70 species of birds.

   How many people have heard of Remington Woods?

   Not too many.

  “It’s Bridgeport’s best-kept secret,” says Lela Florel, a member of the group Preserve Remington Woods.

   The Remington Woods tract, with 347 acres in Bridgeport and another 75 acres in Stratford,  is owned by the DuPont Corporation. DuPont years ago bought up Remington Arms, which once had a manufacturing plant on the East Side, and tested its firearms at the Remington Woods site, located on the northeastern end of the city.

  The testing stopped long ago and the site has sat virtually untouched, except for pollution remediation carried out by DuPont, a chemical products company.

  Now, Florel and others in the group are sounding the alarm that Remington Woods may be destroyed, if a subsidiary firm of DuPont is allowed to go ahead with development plans.

  “Dow/DuPont with its spin off Corteva are planning to destroy the living forest community. They plan to build a road splitting it in two, a large industrial complex by the lake, cutting off wildlife access to the lake, and another building complex on the edge of the forest, which they call a research facility,” said Florel.

  There will be construction of infrastructure --- including roads, water piping, and sewer and electrical lines.  Florel estimates that thousands of trees --- many of them decades old --- will be removed in the process.

  “The forest is not an object, it is a living organism.  Destroying part will destroy the whole,” she says.

   

Remington Woods

  Recently, Florel and others in the group spoke at a City Council meeting, alerting officials to the environmental threat and asking for their help.

  They are asking the city to change the zoning of Remington Woods from industrial to one which preserves the entire woods. They are also asking that the city not issue any permits that would allow development to proceed.

  Dr. J.D.  Smith spoke of the many environmental and health benefits that the Remington Woods provides --- including holding carbon and controlling global warming; cooling air; mitigating drought; aiding in the physical and mental health of local residents; and giving off oxygen.

 He also noted that the forest helps to fight air pollution, which has been a significant problem in Bridgeport and Fairfield County.

 “Air pollution is a serious threat to our health and safety,” he said. “Bridgeport deserves clean air. Forest cleans the air.”

  Smith also commented, “Destroying nature has a terrible cost, but it never makes it to the ledger books.”

  Erik Kuranko talked about environmental racism in Bridgeport, and how in more affluent, whiter communities, nature is valued and people have access to it.

   The group also noted that Bridgeport’s 10-year Master Plan emphasizes the need to “Value Nature,” and that preserving Remington Woods will honor that goal.

   Florel says that a "win-win solution" is possible --- preserving Remington Woods in its entirety and using "the many vacant existing commercial buildings" in Bridgeport for commerce instead.

  

     

Protesting a War with Iran

      By Reginald Johnson 

   NEW HAVEN  ---  Scores of protesters gathered here Sunday to condemn the US airstrike in Iraq which killed a top Iranian military official, an act which they said could touch off a catastrophic Middle East war.

   “Unless the people rise up and stop it, this war will engulf the whole region and quickly turn into a global conflict,” said a speaker from the anti-war group A.N.S.W.E.R, which sponsored the rally.

  “For all who believe in peace and for all those who want to avert another catastrophic war, now is the time to take action,” she said.

   The rally in New Haven was one of more than 70 protests around the country which took place over the weekend, following the assassination airstrike which killed Qaessem Soleimani after he arrived at Baghdad, Iraq airport. Soleimani was the head of Iran’s elite Quds military force and considered the second most powerful person in Iran.

   President Trump said that he ordered the airstrike after receiving intelligence which indicated that Soleimani was planning a number of deadly attacks on American forces in the Middle East. The American administration also blamed Soleimani for orchestrating the killing of hundreds of Americans in the past.

  But speakers at the rally questioned the intelligence and said that Trump and other officials are lying just the way Bush administration officials lied 16 years ago about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction (which were never found) to provide a pretext for the invasion of Iraq. That invasion began a long and bloody war which led to the deaths of 5,000 Americans and upwards of 1 million Iraqis.

  “If he (Soleimani) was the kind of person they are claiming, he would’ve been taken out years ago,” said one speaker from A.N.S.W.E.R, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

   That speaker also said that the Iraq War cost hundreds of billions of dollars --- money diverted from funding social services and human needs back home.

   Another speaker who identified himself as an indigenous person, reminded people that the land where they were standing on was once land held by the Quinnipiac Indian tribe.  But the land was later taken away by European colonial governments.

  “Just like the Quinnipiac people, the people of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, don’t have a say in how they are treated by this illegal, imperialist and immoral government.  This is what’s been happening for the last 527 years,” he said, referring to the landing of explorer Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean in 1492.  Columbus’s arrival began a wave of European immigration to North and South  America and in the process the systematic decimation of native peoples on the continents.

   The speaker went on, “There has not been a period in the history of this government when it hasn’t been attacking some country around the world. Whether it is in South America, Central America, the Middle East,  Asia, the Philippines,  Puerto Rico, Cuba... this government is criminal and what happened the other day was an act of war and a war crime.”

   He then led the crowd in a chant: “Trump says more war. We say no war!  Trump says more war. We say no war!”