On a day of action, leaders seek tangible change

BLOOMFIELD — On a day marked by rallies and protests calling for tangible changes to create racial equality, Gov. Ned Lamont and Lieutenant Gov. Susan Bysiewicz spent Friday morning listening to community leaders from across the state discuss how to make it all happen.

What, Bysiewicz asked, can the state do both in the short and long term to create change? It’s a conversation that’s been had at length through the years, as Lamont pointed out.

“We’ve had these moments before, and you don’t want to waste them. You want to make sure that we’ve learned and we can do better,” he said.

At the same moment down the road, Senate Democrats unveiled a broad and ambitious legislative package aimed at addressing racial inequality in health care, housing, policing and more. And just a few hours later, an estimated 3,000 people would gather on the north steps of the state Capitol building in Hartford to call for changes to policing in Connecticut and across the country.

Rev. Cornell Lewis, an

activist who lives in Bloomfield and helped organize several protests, stood silently behind them, holding a Black Lives Matter flag. After nearly an hour, he stopped waiting to be called on and spoke into his megaphone with a clear message: Do something.

“We are tired of pious platitudes and rhetoric that reach up to the sky with nothing substantive,” he said. “You’re lucky that the rallies that occurred in Hartford maintained the rage of the people. If you ignore us here now, I will go back and organize more rallies and then you will have to listen. We want fundamental change in the way things are going on in the state in terms of racial inequality.”

His frustration echoed that of people around the world who have cried out for change since the death of George Floyd, who was killed during an arrest in Minneapolis nearly a month ago on May 25.

“There’s a lot of protests, there’s a lot of talking,” said Hartford City Council President Maly Rosado. “And I think the community is tired of a lot of talking. For us to do that, we have to have conversations and have a timeline where we can say, ‘we have this in place’ and we have these timelines.”

The fervor was clear at the Capitol rally.

“We are done living by the rules of racists,” Katharine Morris said as the crowd cheered her on. “Look around you. Take it in. This is youth-led. We organized this because we are taking hold of our future.”

The crowd grew larger as the speeches continued into the afternoon, occupying nearly all of the green space of Bushnell Park visible from the Capitol steps. They came to demand that police be defunded and abolished, and the money be reinvested

in communities across the state so health care, housing, education and social services are available to all.

They came to demand that law enforcement officers be removed from inner-city, under-resourced schools. That mass incarceration be ended. That all racist statues and monuments be destroyed. That wealthy people and corporations are taxed so the state becomes more equitable for all.

In Bloomfield, the panel discussed a number of measures that could be taken to improve racial equality in the state, the most heavily emphasized by all members was the need for independent review boards to evaluate police misconduct. But those boards must have “teeth,” several people said.

“We don’t need a board that can make suggestions,” said Bloomfield Mayor Suzette DeBeathamBrown, the only Black woman to currently lead a Connecticut municipality.

State Rep. Anthony Nolan, D-New London, is in his first term as a legislator, after being elected in a special election in February 2019. He’s a longtime member of his local police department and he agreed, calling for a number of police reforms including requiring mandatory reporting for all police interactions with the community and a requirement that all officers wear identification on the outermost layer of their uniforms.

“I want to be part of the action and not just part of the talk,” Nolan said.

“A lot of times people talk the talk. Especially during politics season. I’m standing up. I should have done it 10 years ago and I just wasn’t able to,” he said.

This story includes reporting by Kelan Lyons of The CT Mirror