Bridgeport election: Time for a change

 

                                                Opinion 

     By Reginald Johnson

       BRIDGEPORT --- The special primary election between incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim and challenger John Gomes will take place this Tuesday, January 23.

 The election is a do-over at the order of the court after a judge found numerous irregularities relating to absentee ballot usage in connection with the original primary in September.

 Given the overwhelming Democratic Party enrollment advantage in Bridgeport the winner of this primary will likely become the mayor for the next four years.

 It is the opinion here that John Gomes would be the better person to run the city for the next four years over Joe Ganim.

  I can’t say that I’ve followed every in an out of Bridgeport governmental actions and budgetary matters in recent years, nor do I know every detail about Gomes vs Ganim in terms of what they’ve done and what they stand for. But I do know a lot and, as B.B. King would say, I’ve been around, so I can talk credibly about some broad themes that I think are important.

 First, just in terms of the number of years Ganim has been leading the city, it's time for a change. Between the years in his first go-round, before his legal problems landed him in prison, and his last eight years that he’s been serving since his comeback, Ganim has been mayor for about 20 years. That’s a long time. It really shouldn’t be that long for anybody.  You need a fresh face from time to time with new ideas and new energies.

 New York City has a two-term limit on how long a mayor can serve and I think that’s a good idea. Presidents can serve no more than two terms. Elective positions in government are not supposed to be life-time jobs.

 But aside from that general principle of the need to have turnover after a certain period of time, there’s other reasons for saying it’s time for a change.

  While Ganim can point to some accomplishments in the city, and there have been some that he was responsible for, there’s a lot of areas during his long tenure where his performance has not met the mark. In fact in some respects, the record has been very poor.

 First, let’s talk about something that’s important to a lot of people in a working-class city like Bridgeport, which is as everyone knows is not a high income town. That's affordable housing.

 During the Ganim years a lot of housing has been torn down, both public housing and single-family housing, to make way for some hoped-for development or possibly new housing. Hundreds and hundreds of housing units have been wiped out. Very little has been built to make up for what has been lost.

 Now part of the problem there, is that vis a vis public housing, the federal government is not putting much money into public housing and the Bridgeport Housing Authority doesn’t have the resources to build a lot of new housing. They are building some but it doesn’t make up for what’s been lost.

 Now people may say that the mayor doesn’t have much to do with that, that’s a federal program. But he can be an advocate for more federal funding and push for more action by the public authority to do more with the resources available, and he really hasn’t done that.

  In the late 1990’s  Ganim, in the interest of building the baseball stadium (now gone to make way for the ampitheatre) and the arena and a possible hockey rink in the South End, had the old Marina Apartments worth of 100 units torn down. A short while after that the Pequonnock Apartments, a state run facility with 250 units, was razed. There was talk at the time that something would go in at the place of Pequonnock, possibly new housing or a mixed-use development.

 But here it is 20 years later and there is nothing on the Pequonnock site and nothing on the Marina site. In fact, the Pequonnock site, which I think is still state owned is being used as a parking lot for concerts at the ampitheatre. So here you have publicly-owned land where there was once affordable housing now being used as a parking lot for a concert venue and a private person is making money off of this arrangement.  That’s an outrage. Similarly, the Marina site stands empty.

 I have not heard any advocacy by Joe Ganim about building new low-income or affordable housing at those sites and not much anywhere else to make up for what was lost which is about 350 units there and hundreds more elsewhere.

 Some new housing is coming into Bridgeport, but it is almost all market rate. Translation --- it’s not affordable for most people in Bridgeport. New market rate housing usually means you start at $1900 for a one-bedroom unit and you go up to $2000, $2100 and often higher. Let’s say you’re a single person and you want to rent a new $2,000 apartment. Using the old rule of you pay 25% of your monthly income for housing that means you have to be making $8,000 a month. That means you have to be earning about $96,000 a year to afford one of those apartments as a single person.

  How many people in Bridgeport are making $96,000 a year? Not many.

 The average median income for a single person in Bridgeport is about $25,000. That’s far short of what’s required to pay for a new market rate one-bedroom unit. It’s also far short of what’s required to pay for even older, cheaper market units in the city.

  Even if you go by household income, most Bridgeport residents are going to find it very hard to buy the new market rate housing coming online. The median household income in Bridgeport is $47,000. With that kind of income you’ll have to pay 50% of your monthly income to buy one of the new units and that’s a one-bedroom.

So we have a shortage of affordable housing in the city and the question is what’s being done about it. Not much.

A mayor of this city should be raising hell with both the state and the federal government to provide the monies needed to put up this new housing that’s required. Ganim hasn’t done that and I think that Gomes will make an effort in that direction.

A second point about Ganim’s record. This has to do with the city’s heritage and its history. Over the years from what I’ve seen Ganim has not shown a lot of interest in preserving the city’s heritage. Many historic buildings have been torn down and there’s been little effort to restore remaining historic buildings including some that could be real gems for the city. 

 For instance, the old Majestic and Poli theaters in downtown have been sitting there languishing for years, decades really, and there’s been almost no effort that I can see from the Ganim administration to grab the bull by the horns and have these buildings restored and turned into something valuable. Years ago, I was lucky enough to take a tour of the inside of these theatres and they are really so impressive with gorgeous staircases, chandelier lights etc. These theatres could be a showcase for Bridgeport in the downtown. But there’s been very little movement to do anything about them and this is truly a waste.

  I’ve been told that there’s not much state money available to work with but it seems to me that if the mayor and the state delegation pounded the drums hard enough they could get some money. I don’t think there’s any been any effort either, to bring in possible private money to do this work.

 Meanwhile, the city of Waterbury renovated their old theaters, similar to what Bridgeport has, and they have become a mecca for people coming into that city to see various forms of entertainment.

Other historical buildings have been needlessly torn down during the Ganim years. One case that I found particularly irksome and that shows how bad the planning has been during the Ganim years, was the decision to allow an auto parts dealer to come in and buy up the old Sanborn library, a beautiful architectural building in the West End, tear it down and build an auto parts store.

The zoning commission allowed this and of course Ganim said nothing about it. It was heartbreaking to see such a lovely building with beautiful columns in the front and a brick façade just leveled to make way for an auto parts operation. It was particularly stupid given the fact that there’s already an auto parts store several blocks down on State Street. The Sanborn building, with a little creativity and a little drive could’ve been turned into something useful to house either some small commercial offices or maybe make space for some nonprofit. A beautiful piece of architecture could have been saved.

                        

The city allowed the old Sanborn library to be torn down to make way for a new auto parts store, even though another auto parts store is a few blocks away. (Reginald Johnson photo)

  And what has happened to the Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses in the South End? These historic buildings which were part of the early Native American and African-American community called Little Liberia are on the National Register of Historic Places. They were supposed to be restored but nothing is happening. The structures sit there getting more dilapidated by the year.

 Again, if this restoration took place it could be a real draw for tourists coming to the city and would add to Bridgeport’s attractions. But under the present administration there doesn’t seem to be much interest in getting this project done.

So the record on preserving Bridgeport’s history by Mr. Ganim has been very poor.

Onto a third area --- lack of transparency in government.

 As long as I have known him, Ganim likes to operate in secret and behind closed doors. He doesn’t seem to like to work collaboratively with people. I could be wrong on this but I just haven’t seen it. He doesn’t seem to want to get input from the community on anything. He doesn’t go to community meetings. I was following the school board for several years up until the Covid crisis hit and I never saw him attend any of the board sessions. I did see former Mayor Bill Finch attend at least one.

  I did try to reach the mayor on a few occasions about some fairly serious issues that I was writing about on my blog and I could never get through.

 Ironically enough, I did get a call from him the other night asking for my vote on Tuesday. That is the first time that I’ve talked with him in years. I don’t think he remembered who I was and I think he was just going down a list of registered Democratic voters and he decided to give my name a call. Not wanting to get into a long debate with him I told him that I was undecided how I planned to vote. He said “Oh” and that was the end of the conversation.

  I’ve heard other people complain as well that Ganim does not get out to the public enough. He doesn’t seem to want to have a spotlight put on what his administration is doing and that really isn’t good.

 Then there’s the issue of integrity in government and integrity in elections. This has been a problem with Ganim and his administration even though the mayor has not been involved in any criminal illegal activity that we know of, as he was back in the ‘90s. Obviously the prime example of the at least moral corruption of this administration is the way they have apparently been trying to fix elections through absentee ballot fraud.

Absentee ballot chicanery has been going on in Bridgeport for a long time and I believe Ganim and others in the Democratic Party have used the absentee ballot process improperly to win a number of elections.

  Hopefully the state investigations that are underway now will put an end to these improprieties. But it certainly would be very helpful if John Gomes was the mayor because I think a lot of these types of problems would go away. I know there are critics of Gomes who said that he and his camp have played similar games but I don’t think that any of that possible misconduct has risen to the level of what the Ganim people have been doing.

  One other thing and this is a particular beef for me. What is this business of dumping millions of taxpayer dollars into the amphitheater and then not putting "Bridgeport" on the name of the facility? Our city is investing millions of dollars so that this new concert site can be successful and yet and still the name of the venue is called “Hartford Healthcare” amphitheater. Memo to Joe Ganim: we are in Bridgeport not Hartford!

 It is galling to me that so much public subsidy from the hard-pressed taxpayers of this city is going into that facility and the city’s name cannot be at the top of the building. I know the city is making money on these so-called naming rights but I still find it to be an outrage that the administration and the City Council allowed the name of Hartford and not Bridgeport to be at the top of this amphitheater.

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 So I think there’s a need for a fresh start in Bridgeport. Gomes is by no means perfect. Some people have raised legitimate concerns about his record but I think overall, he is a good candidate. I like what I see on his website with the various ideas that he’s pushing, including bolstering education funding and having more transparency in government. I get the feeling as well that he’ll try to be much more in touch with the community than Ganim has been.

  I’m also impressed by a lot of the people who are working with him and trying to get him elected because I know they do care about the welfare of the Bridgeport community. They include people like Maria Pereira, Bob Halstead, Pete Spain and the group Bridgeport Generation Now. That support group speaks well for Gomes.

  So Gomes is my pick for Tuesday and hopefully Bridgeport can turn the turn the page on the Ganim years and move forward.

     

 

  

 

 

 

 

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Martin Luther King, Jr.: Turn away from war

By Reginald Johnson 

 

 

    NEW HAVEN --- Most people remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr as a great civil rights leader who helped end segregation in the South and bring about a greater level of racial equality in our society. 

 What is not as well known is that King was a peace advocate who spoke out strongly against the Vietnam War and militarism in general the last two years of his life.

  He expressed that opposition eloquently in a speech at the Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967. The address was entitled “Beyond Vietnam --- A Time to Break Silence.”

It was in that speech that King outlined why he decided to expand his focus from civil rights work --- for which he had won wide acclaim --- and take the risky step of  protesting a war which was backed by the media, the foreign policy establishment and most of the American people.

  “There comes a time when silence is betrayal,” he told the more than 3,000 people gathered at the church. “And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.”

 In the speech King condemned the violence of the war in Southeast Asia which he said was harming both the peasants of Vietnam but also destroying the lives of young Americans, particularly black and brown youth. He also deplored the fact that so much money was being spent on war which could have been spent on rebuilding cities in the United States and improving the lives of the poor.

He called for a “revolution of values” ---  turning away from violence and military interventions.

 “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” he said.

 As they have done for many years, New Haven-area residents took part in a community reading of  the “Beyond Vietnam” speech at New Haven City Hall on Friday, Jan. 12, two days prior to the official observance of  Dr. King’s birthday.

  About 30 people attended the event, with 20 reading portions of the speech.

The community reading of "Beyond Vietnam" in New Haven.

 The reading took on extra significance this year because another violent war, also backed by the United States, is going on in Palestine. The nation of Israel, using billions of dollars in American aid, has been conducting a brutal attack against the people of Gaza, with an estimated 30,000 people now dead and residential buildings and schools lying in ruin.

 Nearly 2 million people have been displaced and hundreds of thousands are in danger of starvation, according to the UN.

 A number of human rights experts maintain that Israel is now conducting a genocide against the people of Palestine and that the United States is a party to this crime.

The nation of South Africa is now lodging charges of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

  “Martin Luther King said war is the enemy of the poor. He saw us engaged in endless wars and he talked about how if we don’t stop Vietnam we would continue fighting endless wars and protesting more wars” said Henry Lowendorf,  of the Greater New Haven peace Council, which helped sponsor the community reading.

  Lowendorf  added,  “There’s just so many aspects of this speech that resonate with what’s going on today and particularly because as we see this slaughter of Palestinians --- a real genocide that Israeli leaders are promoting, they talk about it, an ethnic cleansing … They are doing everything they can to drive them out of their homeland, continually, repeatedly. And we have a government (here) that is supporting them. We have a government that is making it possible.”

 Lowendorf continued, “Martin Luther King talked about the starvation of the poor. The poor in Vietnam, but also the poor in the United States. There are just too many ways you can map what Martin Luther King was talking about on today’s situation…You can take the speech transform a few words and it would be so appropriate.”

     

Twenty people took part in reading Dr. King's speech from 1967 in which he condemned the Vietnam War and US militarism

   Some notable excerpts of the “Beyond Vietnam” speech read in New Haven:

 “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak of the the poor of America for paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: the great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.”

  Speaking about interventions by the US in various parts of the globe to maintain stability for economic investments, King said, “It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said  ‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.’ Increasingly by choice or by accident this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person- oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme nationalism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say “this is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “this is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.”

  At the beginning of the speech, King told his audience that when he began to speak out against the Vietnam War, he was questioned by many about the wisdom of his path.

  “At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?” “Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” “Peace and civil rights don’t mix,” they say. “Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people?” they ask.

  Despite the critics, King would not be deterred and kept up his opposition to the war, which by 1967 had killed hundreds of thousands of people, both Americans and Vietnamese. It had laid waste to the Vietnamese countryside from constant bombing and the use of the deadly herbicide, “Agent Orange.”

  The Vietnam War, he felt, stood against everything that he had devoted his life to as a Christian pastor, to create a more loving and just society.

 In the spring of 1967 he was invited by “Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam” a group that was similarly opposed to the war, to speak at the Riverside Church.

  The “Beyond Vietnam” speech was not well received by major media at the time.

  According to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, “Both the Washington Post and the New York Times published editorials criticizing the speech, with the Post noting that King’s speech had ‘diminished the usefulness of his cause, to his country, and to his people.’ through a simplistic and flawed view of the situation.”

  But over time the address given at the Riverside Church has come to be viewed as perhaps King’s greatest speech, surpassing in importance the “I Have a Dream” speech given during the March on Washington in 1963.

 This year’s community reading of “Beyond Vietnam” honored Al Marder, a long-time peace and justice advocate from New Haven who passed away recently. Lowendorf  said Marder had been “one of the initiators of this tradition and many others.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For peace now, impeach now

                             

                   Commentary

           By Reginald Johnson

  I think impeachment is something that has to be talked about vis a vis Joe Biden.

 The unlawful and highly dangerous air strikes on Yemen are the last straw for me.

 Biden has enabled two major wars, one in Ukraine and the other in Gaza/Palestine that are creating massive death tolls and have the potential for becoming catastrophic regional or even world wars.

In so doing, he has endangered the safety not only of all Americans, but everyone in the world.

 He lied repeatedly about growing US involvement in Ukraine and spurned peace agreements. He has failed to get Congressional approval for our near direct involvement in Ukraine and for the Yemen attacks, though the Constitution says Congress, not the Executive Branch, makes war.

 His greenlighting continuous military aid to Israel while that nation carries out a genocide in Gaza, makes the US an accessory to genocide, a violation of the genocide treaty.

 I know people may say, "It's an election year, people can vote him out, so what's the point?" But do we have time to wait?

 Peace now!

Bridgeport passes Gaza ceasefire resolution

        

       BRIDGEPORT REPORT 

         By Reginald Johnson

   

 

    BRIDGEPORT, CT --- In a historic vote, the City Council passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the brutal Israel-Hamas War, which has taken the lives of 29,000 people, a majority of them civilians.

   Rejecting the views of a few council members who said that city legislators had no business taking up an international issue, others on the council said it was not right to sit by and say nothing as a slaughter of innocent men, women and children goes on in Gaza.

  “You know I watch the news, I watch the news a lot. And what I have seen on Oct. 7^th was one of the most horrible acts, of violence perpetrated against the Israelis,” said Council Member Jorge Cruz. “I saw what happened afterwards, how the Israeli military acted. That was also harsh. I see the news everyday. And when I see the massive amount of children in Gaza being slaughtered, being killed, being dug out from under collapsed buildings, it breaks my heart, absolutely. I’m human. This resolution is simply calling out, ‘stop the damn violence, stop the killing.’ ”

   Council Member Mary McBride-Lee was another supporter. “I’m not taking sides tonight. I will be voting yes on this, because I don’t want anyone suffering --- Jewish people, African-Americans or anyone else,” she said. “This is what I want to see. No more war!” she said, as a packed City Council chambers erupted in cheers.

  The ceasefire resolution passed 13-2.

  The statement calls on members of Congress and President Biden to work to facilitate a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and make sure that humanitarian aid is promptly delivered to the area.

  Bridgeport is the first city in Connecticut to pass a ceasefire resolution. New Haven is now considering one.

  Other cities around the country that have passed resolutions are Atlanta, Ga., Detroit, Mich, and Oakland, California.

   The vote to approve the resolution came after some last-minute negotiations between leaders of the Jewish and Muslim communities and some councilmembers. Wording of the original resolution was apparently softened at the request of Jewish leaders who objected to phrases  relating to such things as the number of civilian deaths in Palestine, to Palestinians living in "apartheid," and even to the term “Occupied West Bank.”

 According to Aziz Seyal, a board member of the Bridgeport Islamic Community Center, the backers of the resolution agreed to the changes because the key point about requesting a ceasefire was retained.

                                 

Supporters of the Gaza ceasefire resolution in Bridgeport (Reginald Johnson photo) 

  Maria Pereira, one of the council members who has opposed the resolution all along, said she objected to the manner in which the last-minute changes were made. “This was a secret meeting not open to the public. None of the people there were elected representatives,” she said. “That’s our job. We are the legislative branch. We are elected by the people of Bridgeport.”

  Pereira reiterated her position that the City Council had “zero authority” to pass an official resolution on behalf of the city which took a position on international affairs.

  Council Member Jazmarie Melendez, who originally authored the resolution,  countered Pereira by saying that the meeting to revise the resolution was not a secret meeting and both she and another council leader were present for the discussions.

Bombing kids not acceptable. (Reginald Johnson photo)

  And Councilman Ernie Newton said that it is appropriate for the Bridgeport City Council to weigh in on such a critical issue as the war in the Middle East. He said things come up from time to time that do not directly tie in with Bridgeport affairs but are nonetheless important enough to take a stand on.

 “We have the right to voice our opinion,” he said

   Many of those who attended the Tuesday council meeting were Muslims and Arab-Americans. But members of the Jewish community also attended to show their support for the resolution.

 One of those was Stephanie Carrow of Fairfield.

 Carrow decried what was going on in Palestine and called it a “genocide.”

 She said that Jews have experienced considerable prejudice in their history and she was raised to believe that as a result of that prejudice “we stand up for all people and we would never oppress anybody and we always speak out against oppression. That’s the Jewish ethic that I was raised with and that’s what I believe in.”

 She also said,  “I’m also very upset, in addition to the horrors of what’s happening there, that it is being done in my name as a Jew.”

                              

Members of Jewish Voice for Peace back the Bridgeport ceasefire resolution
(Reginald Johnson photo)

 Others, from the group Jewish Voice for Peace came down from New Haven  to the Bridgeport Council meeting to show their support and held a banner in the back of the room which read, "Another Jew for a Free Palestine."

 Hanan Abdulwahid, one of the organizers behind the ceasefire resolution and someone whose 16-year old nephew was killed by an IDF soldier in the West Bank, said after the resolution passed that she was “very, very happy and pleased with the City of Bridgeport for doing this. We really thank them for this. They gave us so much hope.”

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  Prior to the council session, there was a public forum where a number speakers made powerful statements about the terrible situation in Gaza and the need for council action.

 Mohammed Shaham began his talk by saying, “The silence speaks for itself.”

After a long pause, he said, “28,000 slaughtered, yet you remain silent.”

After another period of silence he said, “More than 10,000 innocent children, yet you’re silent.”

He continued making statements, interspersed with long pauses.

“Bombs are dropping yet you’re silent.”

“New Year. Same genocide.”

“Day 88, yet you’re silent.”

Then he said, “We the people will not be silent until you take action.”

 Another speaker was Seyal, of the Bridgeport Islamic Community Center. He said that he was a journalist, lawyer and human rights activist in Pakistan before moving to the United States in 1984.  Seyal said he was very happy coming to America because America was in his words the “champion of human rights” in the whole world.

   “I never thought that one day the political leadership of this great nation will go against basic human values and will help a foreign nation with our tax dollars to kill innocent children of Palestine,” he said. “Today the whole world is crying for peace but only our country America is using its veto power in the UN and has become the main hurdle in stopping the genocide. The champion of human rights has become the main financier and supporter of a nation that has crossed all limits of humanity,” he said.

  Seyal described atrocities he says Israeli forces have carried out in Gaza such as bombing refugee camps, killing innocent children and shooting pregnant women on their way to the hospital. He further maintained that “more than 7000 bodies are still under rubble.”

   He said, “Palestinians cannot bury their loved ones. The dead bodies have become pieces, scattered. Have you heard of these types of atrocities in human history?”

   Seyal continued, “This is definitely not a war between two armies. This is a genocide of the oppressed. Israeli former head of Security Council Giora Eiland wrote in an Israeli paper last week that we must kill every Palestinian to win the war yet Netanyahu is already working on this barbaric plan. We’re all watching this with their own eyes in the 21^st century yet are being threatened to stay quiet?”

    Seyal then said, “I know with your resolution this genocide will not stop. But it will bring us closer, and you will be able to tell your children and grandchildren that you did your part and tried to save children of God.”