New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
New Haven Board of Alders to consider resolution calling for immediate Gaza cease-fire
NEW HAVEN — ProPalestinian protesters who have been calling for three months for the Board of Alders to pass a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the return of hostages will get a hearing.
As more than 100 proPalestinian activists conducted a three-plus-hour “public hearing” of their own on the City Hall steps Monday night, Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers, D-23, said just prior to an alders meeting inside City Hall that she has assigned the measure to a committee.
The Board of Alders’ Committee of the Whole, chaired by President Pro Tempore Jeanette Morrison, D-22, will take up the request at a date that will be determined by Morrison and Walker-Myers.
Meanwhile, protestors gathered outside for hours at a rally organized by a coalition of groups, blasting the Board of Alders for failing to respond, unaware a committee had been tasked with the resolution.
“We have shamefully heard nothing from the Board of Alders,” said one man on a portable bullhorn on City Hall’s outer steps. “We need to continue applying mass pressure and take a confrontational approach.”
Protester Nick Fortunato urged the Board of Alders to stop stalling and act on the request as soon as possible.
“The Board of Alders has a moral responsibility to call for an immediate cease fire,” he said.
Later, when told that Walker-Myers had assigned the request to a specific committee, rally organizers were happy to hear that the request had at least been acknowledged.
“I think that the committee is an ideal solution,” said one of the organizers, Francesca Maria, a native of Italy who lives in the city’s Edgewood neighborhood and said she has “a dear friend” who is a medical student working in Gaza.
She said Walker-Myers’ decision to assign the ceasefire request to a committee was “a testament to the power of the grassroots movement that we built in New Haven.”
She said it shouldn’t take the destruction and killing happening in Gaza for a resolution to be passed.
“It should not take five months of a genocide,” Maria said. “It should not take every hospital in Gaza being destroyed ... It should not take a United States serviceman self-immolating to draw attention.”
Two protesters who came inside City Hall just after the Board of Alders meeting ended to drop off written “testimony” from the protesters outside also were pleased to hear the measure had been sent to a committee.
Bridgeport became the first Connecticut municipality to pass a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire on Jan. 2. Windsor followed on Feb. 5. Hamden debated a ceasefire resolution on Feb. 20 but recessed without taking immediate action.
A number of cities across the country have passed similar resolutions, including Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Atlanta, St. Louis, San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., Providence, R.I., Cambridge, Mass., Portland, Maine and Wilmington, Del.