A coalition of New Haven-area activist groups rallied outside and inside of the Ives Main Branch Public Library on June 27 to voice their protest of the opening of an expensive café annex within the downtown-based public library that replaced what had been a place of refuge for many of area homeless people.
“The owner of this café says he’s excited about the social impact, but the social impact that I see is going to drive the homeless out of the only safe place they can gather. The only place where they can come and search for work,” stated rally emcee and Party for Socialism and Liberation member Norman Clement.
More than 30 demonstrators showed up to protest a continuing anti-homeless crackdown.The café, owned and developed by the local G Café chain, is part of the library’s Ives Squared “technology innovation” hub project. The cafe, The cafe, which cost around $800,000 and was funded partly by grants and partly by the city planning budget, is being built during a period of multiple school closings and job loss for over 1,000 school employees. The rally addressed this hypocrisy sharply, as well as the fact that the policies of Mayor Toni Harp’s administration criminalize homelessness.
These policies have included a city-endorsed anti-panhandling propaganda campaign, bans on certain people entering the library itself, and a recent spate of police repression against homeless people on the New Haven Green. Local youth activist Jerome Richardson was assaulted and injured by New Haven Police on June 6 while observing harassment of the homeless, and noted the connection across those policies.“These people have nowhere else to go,” Richardson said, “So they are downtown minding their own business and they are being targeted by the police and harassed and that’s something I’m not going to stand for.”
Bealton Dumas, a homeless advocate, spoke passionately about the need for homeless people to not only be able to have a safe place to be warm, but also to have access to technology for job searching. While Mayor Toni Harp would later claim that the library does offer all people an opportunity to use its space and technology, the trend of homeless people being arrested or banned from the library for having a bag or falling asleep shows a different story.
Following the rally on the steps of the library, 30 community members entered the library to protest the ribbon-cutting ceremony chanting “Shame! Shame!” They were met by resistance first from police chief Anthony Campbell and then from city and library officials, including Mayor Harp, who stated “We are the only city in the state that provides over a million dollars in our budget to serve the homeless.” Yet, as organizers pointed out, shelters have been closing, not opening, under Harp.
As protesters chanted “People over profits,” library official Martha Brogan callously commented: “They find a home in the library, but to address ‘houselessness’ they can use our 3-D printers and they can start building prototypes. This in fact is happening in other countries.” Brogan later stated that she would be open to a “town hall” at the library to address the concerns of demonstrators, but one local activist noted the underlying message that the project in general, and this addition in particular, sends. “They’d rather say ‘let them find somewhere else. Let them starve’,” Dumas implored. “That’s the message you give to the community.”
Protest organizers plan to unveil a petition drive to end the bans on the homeless people by the library and vowed further organized actions against police harassment of homeless residents.
