Michael Lee-Murphy 2016-11-22 01:28:10
THE ORGANIZATION: North End Action Team, Middletown
THE STORY: The North End of Middletown has changed a lot over the years. In the 18th century, the city’s location on the Connecticut River fostered a lot of trade in sugar, and slaves. Then the railroad and the brownstone quarries in Portland brought Irish immigrants, who cut the stone that would build large swaths of American cities, such as Brooklyn. After the Irish, the Italians built St. Sebastian’s Church on Washington Street, modeled after a church back home in Melilli, Sicily. The great domestic migration of the 20th century brought millions of African Americans north from the Southern states, and the North End became home to the city’s black population. The decades — centuries, even — of population changes in the North End have created a neighborhood that has always been dense and cohesive, but faced outward, toward the world. All the best parts of parochialism, mixed with all the best parts of cosmopolitanism.
This distinct North End attitude is perhaps best exemplified by the North End Action Team. From urban gardening, hip-hop and spoken-word workshops, to organizing defense against specific threats such as home foreclosures, NEAT is a catch-all. The organization is built to address many of the needs that a vibrant community like the North End can generate — needs that are not independent of the poverty that is another feature of the area. One of those needs is the saving of Macdonough Elementary School on Spring Street. The Middletown Board of Education, hoping to correct what it sees as a potential racial imbalance and to clear $700,000 from a strained budget, has proposed closing Macdonough and dispersing its students to other schools in Middletown.
One of the first people up to the microphone during an October board meeting’s public-comment period is Precious Price, NEAT’s new community director. A Middletown native who now lives in Waterbury, she tells the board about NEAT’s community meeting the previous week. “I was astounded by the generational conversation about Macdonough School closing,” she says. More than 30 people follow her, all testifying to the importance of the school. No one advocates closing the school. Bookending Price as the last testimony, a team of nearly 20 former and current Macdonough students belts their anthem, Knowledge is Power, for the Board of Education.
Knowledge is power, I know what I know. The more you learn, the farther you’ll go. When you get an education, you’ll be taking a stand, Because knowledge is power. Grab it while you can. Yo!
After the North End makes its case to the board, Price talks about NEAT in an interview that is broken and choppy, because there are hugs and “thank yous” that need to be doled out to almost everyone leaving the city council chambers. Price had only been on the job for a month and a half when, at one of NEAT’s monthly community meetings, the topic on everyone’s lips was the potential closing of Macdonough. The topic needed its own meeting, Price realized. “People are so frustrated, and they were having conversations, like, right outside the school, but they had the kids [with them] and don’t want to traumatize the kids. So I’m like, ‘Let’s create a space for the parents to talk.’”
Price says she went out canvassing door to door to draw parents to NEAT’s three-hour meeting about the school, pulling in about 50 people. The meeting produced a petition, local news coverage and talking points for those parents who wanted to speak to the Board of Education. State Rep. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, himself a North End resident, had worked with NEAT for years. In 2014, Lesser brought state money from Hartford to fund a NEAT-operated gun buyback program. “I think it has done an extraordinary job of helping North End residents realize their own power, and make the community a stronger, more vibrant place to live,” Lesser says.
The youngsters who chanted their anthem at the school board meeting know the power they can exert if they stick together. And they know what’s at stake.
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