The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
City’s lone primary a three-way race in Newhallville’s Ward 20
NEW HAVEN — Democracy is alive and well in Newhallville’s 20th Ward.
That’s the report from all three candidates who will compete Tuesday, in the city’s only primary, to determine who will represent the Democratic Party on the Nov. 2 ballot.
With no Republican on the ballot, the primary winner also will represent the 20th Ward on the Board of Alders.
Shirley Lawrence, a longtime labor organizer who is co-chairwoman of the Newhallville Community Management Team, has the 20th’s Democratic Ward Committee endorsement in the primary. Challenging Lawrence are Devin Avshalom-Smith, a legislative aide to state Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, and Shepard Street Block Watch captain and community garden organizer Addie Kimbrough.
The election will determine who will replace longtime Alder Delphine Clyburn, who recently stepped aside after moving out of the ward she had represented for 10 years. Clyburn has endorsed Lawrence.
For all three candidates, combating the recent torrent of gun violence, both in Ward 20 and across the city, is a key issue.
Shirley Lawrence
Lawrence, 58, said that during tough, pandemic times, Newhallville needs additional mental health resources — and she believes that even if there are longtime plans for the former state offices on Bassett Street, they should be put to use now to provide those resources.
In Newhallville, “we all are in a state of emergency,” Lawrence said. “Right now, we are in dire need of some serious services in this neighborhood. Open up that building” and make it a place “where we could get some serious mental health services,” she said.
“What we’ve really got to figure out is how to create safe spaces,” Lawrence said, asking “What’s the safety plan for the neighborhoods?”
Right now, “we have a dark cloud over this neighborhood, with the violence ... like our neighborhood is traumatized,” Lawrence
said. “There’s not one resident that I talked to that didn’t mention mental health as an issue.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in the Bronx, Lawrence has spent much of her adult life in New Haven, working for many years as an organizer with Unite Here Local 35 at Yale University.
“Organizing is my life’s work. I’m a real grassroots organizer,” said Lawrence, onetime president of the Brookside Tenants Council. “I’ve got friends and family members in each neighborhood in the city of New Haven.”
She said she’s a single mother of two grown adults, and now a grandmother — and is proud of the fact that both of her children are now college-educated, married parents.
Lawrence said she was thrilled to get the ward committee’s endorsement “and I’m honored that the people of this great community voted for me overwhelmingly and have confidence in me that I would be a good candidate for Ward 20.
“And they didn’t vote for me just because I gave a good speech,” she said. “... Like I told the folks in Newhallville, it will be my voice and their words. I stand on truth.”
Devin Avshalom-Smith
Avshalom-Smith, 32, said his family has lived in the same house on Starr Street in Newhallville for more than 60 years, since his grandparents came up from the South.
“I love my community,” said AvshalomSmith, founder of the Newhallville Community Action Network and a Labor and Public Employees Committee clerk for Porter.
He said he decided to petition for a primary because “I realize that we deserve some strong leadership in City Hall” and because “I’m always trying to find ways to lend my skills, knowledge to the community.
“I have a deep passion for helping others — and if elected alder I’ll work hard to help others,” Avshalom-Smith said.
He’s enjoyed the candidacy so far. “For me, it’s been exhilarating — exhilarating and exhausting,” he said.
He thinks having three candidates in the primary is a good thing.
“To me, it says that democracy is alive and well in Ward 20,” Avshalom-Smith said. “People want to be involved. I think it’s exciting — letting the voters choose.”
But make no mistake: Avshalom-Smith thinks he’s the best person for the job.
“I have respect for everyone who’s running, but I do” think that he could do the best job as an alder. “When it comes to understanding policy, when it comes to having the energy to move ahead, I do feel that I’m leagues ahead,” and “I think my campaign has some of the highest level of detail.”
While Avshalom-Smith went away to college and then lived in New Britain for a period of time, he was spurred to run for alder after he came home to find “a neighborhood that has serious needs,” he said.
Aside from making the neighborhood a safer place, Avshalom-Smith said a major concern neighbors have is about trash in the neighborhood, and he would work with city crews that collect trash to see whether there’s a way to lessen what’s left after pickups.
He also said he would work with community members to assist with organizing community gardens and farm stands
Addie Kimbrough
Kimbrough, a retired insurance worker who later spent time working at Columbus House with people experiencing homelessness, said she has used the primary run to get to know her community better, among other things. Everywhere she goes, people are concerned about drugs and gun violence — which are issues she considers to be priorities.
So far, “it’s been going great,” she said. “I’m busy every day out there, knocking on doors, talking to people.”
Kimbrough offered one solid reason why she would be a good alder that neither of her opponents did: “I’m a fiesty old lady!” she said.
Asked what she thought it meant that there are three candidates running, Kimbrough said, “It means that one of us is going to win. But it’s a good thing,” she said.
“We’re all out here to help our community,” Kimbrough said. “That’s why I decided to run, to help the people in the community; to help them to get a better understanding of their community, which I don’t think a lot of them have.
“My goal is to get a lot more people involved ... especially the younger children,” said Kimbrough, organizer of the Shepard Street Community Garden. “This summer, the younger people were active in my garden. They got to plant, weed. Everything that you get to do in a garden, they got to do it.”
In her community involvement, “my goal is to get the younger people more involved, have more things to do outside — and to get the outside to where they’re not afraid to come outside,” she said. “I’m in it to better the community, do what’s needed and to listen to the people in my community — not just what I think should be done.”
Newhallville is changing, Kimbrough said. “As you know, we are going through gentrification . ... It started in 2012. So now Newhallville is 85 percent renters, where basically before it was (mostly) homeowners,” she said. “So that’s a big change.”
What Newhallville needs for long-term stability “is education for jobs, job training,” she said. Kimbrough said she also wants to help people in the 20th Ward “get some of the stuff that they want done, like sidewalks, speed bumps and the trees” trimmed and pruned, as well as quality-oflive issues such as better drainage.