by Laura Glesby The New Haven independent
President Donald Trump poses an urgent threat to basic rights. So does the poverty that has flourished since long before Trump took office.
New Haven must be ready to fight both.
Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers conveyed that message by way of the alders’ annual Black and Hispanic Caucus State of the City address on Monday night.
Walker-Myers delivered the address in the Board of Alders chambers, just before the board’s usual proceedings on Monday night. Onlookers including the mayor, city department heads, and a variety of labor advocates filled the public pews.
In introductory remarks, Newhallville/Prospect Hill Alder Kimberly Edwards, the chair of the Black and Hispanic Caucus, acknowledged a pervasive anxiety in New Haven about the state of democracy under Trump’s presidency.
“With so much chaos occurring in our country presently,” she said, “many people are suddenly up in arms — scared, depressed, and angry — because we all are now faced with uncertainty. The uncertainty of not knowing what craziness those folks in ‘The Very White House’ will come up with next to further put our livelihoods and families in turmoil.”
Still, Edwards said, “As a Black woman… this is not a new feeling for me and many others.”
Walker-Myers echoed that sentiment. “The federal government is separating families, taking away the rights of women, and trying to control who people can be,” she said. “They are determining, without all the facts, who has the right to reside in our country, while illegally sending people to dangerous prisons in other countries.”
America is in a “national crisis,” and it’s time to “fight with everything I have for the next generation,” she later said.
But she focused most of her speech on older perils: poverty, educational disparities, income inequality, and other ongoing injustices with roots extending back to African American slavery and segregation.
“The suffering in the Black and Brown communities has been going on so long, some residents have lost hope and given up on the American dream,” she said. “The dream to be able to work one job with dignity. The dream to raise your family in a safe community. The dream to acquire generational wealth to leave to your loved ones. The dream that all people would be treated equally.”
She argued that New Haven has reason to hope on these fronts, pointing to affordable housing developments, local labor organizing, declining unemployment rates, and more.
Walker-Myers also delved into the long path forward toward truly achieving the alders’ legislative priorities. “The data show that since the pandemic, unemployment rates in New Haven County have decreased,” she said, but the types of jobs predominantly available to Black and Brown city residents are not paid well enough.
“Many people in the Black and Brown communities work in the hospitality industry, retail, and entry-level healthcare positions. Others work as paraprofessionals, school custodians, and cafeteria workers,” she said. “These are important jobs, and our city couldn’t function without them. Yet they also pay low wages. One job should be enough to take care of your family, give back to the local economy, and when it’s time, retire with dignity.”
Yale provides many of these jobs to local residents, noted Walker-Myers — in part due to the advocacy of the union for which Walker-Myers is a chief steward, among other Unite Here and New Haven Rising affiliates.
The university’s funding and independence are now facing threats, as Trump launches overt attacks against higher education institutions, with a particular focus on the Ivy League. Yale may soon become Trump’s target, in line with its elite university peers, and face the choice of whether to join New Haven’s city government as Trump’s active opponent.
But Walker-Myers made clear that in the broader fight against white supremacy in America, Yale has its own atoning to do.
She pointed to the Yale and Slavery Project, a body of research on Yale’s role as an enslaver of African-Americans published last year.
She also noted that New Haven could have had the country’s first Black college, had it not been for the city leaders and university alumni who successfully blocked its founding in 1831. “It is hard to overstate the hope and opportunities that a New Haven HBCU would have provided for our city’s Black and Brown students,” Walker-Myers said.
Nearly two centuries have passed since that decision to block a Black college in New Haven. And still, Walker-Myers said, “it is sad to say that we have one of the best Ivy League schools in the world right here in our city, and still so many of our school-age kids are below grade level in reading.”
It’s time, Walker-Myers argued, to reckon not only with breaking news, but also with history’s impact on the present.
And that reckoning won’t happen on Yale’s neatly-packaged terms. “Together,” she said, “we must decide on the steps Yale must take to address its historical injustices.”
Newhallville/Prospect Hill Alder Kimberly Edwards: “This is not a new feeling.”
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