‘They don’t represent Stamford’
City resident leads effort to remove Purdue Pharma name from Mill River Park
STAMFORD — In her walks each week through Mill River Park with her boyfriend and silver labrador, West Side resident Samantha Chiafalo enjoys exploring the downtown oasis.
But there is one sight in the park’s north end that displeases her.
In the past year, she has noticed a rectangular stone in the grass next to the walkway connecting the carousel pavilion with the river. “The Glade,” reads the letters etched into the slab. “Gift of Purdue Pharma.”
Having learned about the thousands of lawsuits alleging the Stamford-based company fueled the nation’s opioid crisis with deceptive marketing of OxyContin, Chiafalo questioned the firm’s support of the park.
Moved to take action after Purdue pleaded guilty last month to criminal charges of defrauding the government and violating anti-kickback laws, Chiafalo has launched an online petition calling for the park’s nonprofit manager to remove the stone and publicly denounce the company. The proposal has garnered more than 500 signatures.
The effort mirrors others around the country that have called on nonprofit beneficiaries in the past couple of years to cut ties with the firm and its owners.
“Purdue Pharma — yes, they’re an employer here — but they’re a stain on our community,” Chiafalo said in an interview this week at the park. “They don’t represent Stamford, and I don’t think they represent the people who use this public
park.”
Purdue said in a statement that “we share people’s concern about the opioid crisis and respect their right to express themselves.”
The stone’s installation and the naming of the glade after Purdue recognize a $50,000 gift that the company made in 2009 to a capital campaign of the Mill River Park Collaborative, which manages the park. Many parts of the park are named after donors.
In total, Purdue has made monetary contributions totaling about $287,000 to MRPC since 2004, according to the organization.
MRPC’s board will decide whether to take any action related to the petition, according to the organization’s CEO and president, Dudley Williams Jr. The petition is a discussion item on the agenda of the board’s next meeting, which is scheduled for Monday.
Last year, MRPC decided to not accept additional donations from Purdue until the resolution of the litigation against the company, according to Williams. Through a bankruptcy procedure, Purdue is trying to reach a comprehensive settlement of the lawsuits.
“I don’t want to get into an issue of Purdue’s status,” Williams said when asked about his opinion of the petition. “They were an early and longtime supporter of the park as they have been to a host of other organizations.”
Purdue’s statement cited company reforms in recent years that have included ending its opioid marketing and disbanding its sales force. But such arguments have persuaded few critics.
“Purdue Pharma has ruined lives, families and decimated entire communities,” the petition says. “Purdue Pharma acted with impunity for years, but now faces a public reckoning. We demand our local institutions, like the Mill River Collaborative, uphold the values of our community and stand on the right side of history and against the criminal actions of Purdue Pharma.”
Chiafalo, who works in affordable housing development and management, referenced a family member’s past struggle with addiction to prescription opioids including OxyContin. The relative is now in recovery.
“I have seen firsthand the toll this can take on a family,” she said. “It can strain and even ruin personal relationships outside of the family. It often has a very real financial impact on the family. And of course, the trauma and stress associated with having an addicted family member never ends because recovery is so often tenuous. This doesn’t even begin to speak to the personal impact on the individual struggling with addiction.”
At the same time, Chiafalo remains a strong supporter of the park.
“The Collaborative and Mill River Park are not the enemy here. I sincerely love the park,” she said. “I think the Collaborative is an example of the transformative power of publicprivate partnerships.”
Distance from company
Purdue and the Sackler family members who own the company have denied allegations made in the thousands of lawsuits against them, but the controversy has piled pressure on museums, universities, medical organizations and other groups to disavow their support. Sackler family members have cumulatively given tens of millions of dollars to such institutions.
At the Palace Theatre in downtown Stamford, there was an art gallery named after Arthur Sackler, who died in 1987. His late brothers, Mortimer and Raymond, bought Purdue’s predecessor company in 1952.
“The Board of Directors approved decommissioning the Sackler Gallery in February. Plaques have been removed in the building,” Michael Moran Jr., the Palace’s CEO and president, said in an email. “Stamford Center for the Arts bought The Palace with the Sackler Gallery name in place. We did not receive contributions from any Sacklers for that. ... We are seeking a potential new donor for the space.”
Moran declined to comment on whether the lawsuits contributed to the board’s decision to decommission the gallery.
In October 2019, the University of Connecticut said it would redirect to addiction research and education efforts the unspent portion of some $4.5 million that it received from the Sacklers between 1985 and 2014. The only exception was for a donation that supports an engineering lab.
Among related moves, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced in May 2019 that it would not take new donations from the Sacklers. The Met’s decision did not involve a renaming of the Sackler Wing, which houses the Temple of Dendur from ancient Egypt.
At the same time as the Met’s announcement, the American Museum of Natural History said that it, too, would not take more Sackler donations.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, a neighbor of the Met, and the United Kingdom’s National Portrait Gallery and Tate galleries also announced last year that they would not accept additional Sackler contributions. The Louvre in Paris, the world’s mostvisited museum, removed the Sackler name from a wing housing eastern antiquities following a protest.