Painting The Town Red
The term painting the town red comes from the English town of Melton Mowbray in 1837. The Marquis of Waterford and his friends on a night of drinking knocked over flower pots, pulled knockers off doors, and broke the windows of some of the town buildings. They painted a tollgate, the doors of several homes, and a swan statue with red paint; in other words, they painted the town red.
Similar incidents are still happening today. Time and time again, people act like reckless fools for the sake of foolishness, peer pressure, anger, or as a cry for help; yet the consequences for people with privilege and power are much different. For ages, young men have long shown displays of barbarism during nights out on the town destroying things, what seems to them as “fun”: such as the riot after the 2004 Redsox game that left one woman shot and killed by the police, or the flipped cars at the Keene, New Hampshire Pumpkin Festival in 2014. Another example would be the San Francisco riot after the World Series in 2012 when the team lost, and the rioters set many city buses on fire. The consequences of these acts left others in the community to pay for the damages and feel the effects. I could only imagine getting up the next day to go to work and then explaining to my boss I was late because dudes set a ton of city busses on fire…
While people felt uncomfortable — to say the least — in these situations, and the cost to these communities was significant, the rioters weren’t demonized but were told they were too old to be acting like children. We didn’t start talking about harsh punishments for rioting at sports games. We didn’t start talking about these men like they were wild beasts that needed to be locked up for the general public safety. We did not talk about using the full weight of the carceral state as a response to these events. Yet, that’s what we do anytime any violence happens in black and Latin communities…
On Saturday, October 30th, I was assaulted in an incident similar in many ways to these violent events perpetrated mainly by young men “having fun,” but what I experienced is more preventable than the mob mentality of the examples above. Preventing what I experienced Saturday requires investment and a sense of community whereas senseless acts above are what happens when privilege goes unchecked.
Saturday night, heading home, I rounded the corner of Edgerton Park. This neighborhood is one of the wealthiest communities of Hamden and New Haven. I was about halfway up the road when a car sped up behind me, and I was suddenly struck with a barrage of enormous force. Momentarily confused about what struck me. I remembered a constituent a week prior mentioning that a group of young people had shot him with paintball guns. It all made sense. -I was being assaulted with paintball guns. The rounds continued in my back, head, and anywhere else that allowed an opening, as I hopped off my motorized skateboard/Onewheel to avoid crashing into a car. I dropped my phone in the process and was trying to regain my balance when a blow of paintballs hit me inches from my eye. I tried to retrieve the Onewheel. Two people jumped out of the car, rushed at me, and continued to shoot me as I took cover behind a van. Every time I peeked from behind the vehicle, a hailstorm of pink and yellow projectiles danced my way. One of the boys yelled: “grab the board.” The next thing I knew, the Onewheel and the $2000 I spent on it vanished in an instant into the night.
As they left, I knew I was going to have to reach out to the police department despite being an abolitionist, as if the board is ever found I would need a police report verifying that the board was stolen. I also knew I would have to do the police’s job for them as they weren’t going to take it seriously. To them, the Onewheel was an expensive toy, to me as an environmentalist and someone who doesn’t drive it is my low carbon form of transportation. I knocked on the door of a community member across the street, to ask if they had a video from their Ring doorbell. I rang the doorbell and stepped about five feet back. It had begun drizzling, and I became cold. No one came to the door. I knew people were home, hearing the TV set in the living room. I understood their fears at this time of night in their neighborhood. I rang the bell again and waited at the curb. About four minutes passed, then finally a man appeared and nervously asked me if he could help me with something. I told him I had been assaulted and showed him the neon pink paint on my bag as proof. He cracked the door timidly; realizing how I might be perceived wearing my hoodie, I zipped it down to reveal a shirt and tie as if this would make all that was wrong right. I threw my business card on the floor of the house through the crack in the door. I asked him to email me or call me if he caught any video of the incident.
He closed the door, and I wondered if he had fully processed what I said about being attacked. My thoughts wandered, and I became increasingly upset. For some reason, these young people decided to shoot me while I was riding. Did they not think about the consequences of their actions? Did they not realize that I could have broken my neck, and even die? Did they not care? Was it peer pressure, each one one-upping the others to get brownie points? Was it because no one cared for them, or getting out aggression on someone else for the transgressions that have been done to them?
As I wondered if I would get the board back, the police arrived and asked for a description of the vehicle. I told the officer it was a black hatchback. I hesitated as I shared the information with the police, noticing that one wore a mask, the other didn’t. I asked the officer what charges might be brought against these young people for having paintball guns. Would it be considered a serious offense? The officer lamented that if they were juveniles, it would only be a slap on the wrist. I shared my concerns that the punishment might be too harsh, worrying about potential long-term ramifications. I left without getting a police report as the two officers talked through other incidents that had happened that night, then realized I forgot to get a report and doubled back. I. After getting the report, I walked away up the road talking to a friend about how the experience connected with my thoughts about abolition and public safety. I started to blame myself for not asking for a ride, not being more aware of my surroundings, etc. We talked through the idea of victim-blaming and other shootings in the neighborhood that week. I walked about another block and then I thought I saw the car. It was either that or random people deciding to hotbox in a wealthy neighborhood in a very similar car. I struggled to decide what to do as I chatted with my friend. Should I approach the assailants, or should I call the non-emergency number for the police? Hoping to recover my means of transportation. I made the compromise once again and called the police for “help”.
I decided to call the police chief in Hamden to no avail. Then I decided to call a rank-and-file officer. Also: no answer. I called the New Haven non-emergency line, an operator picked up asking for my location, I struggled to find it as my phone screen was now broken and the phone was lagging since its fall, they hung up on me after about 3 minutes. I decided to text a group chat of fellow counselors and the chief to see if that would spark dialogue. A couple of minutes passed, and a fellow councilperson responded that the chief said he would send some people to my house. I laughed; I was not near my home, but in an affluent neighborhood ten or so blocks from my home. Looking at my broken phone screen to find where I was again. This time I was able to get my location in seconds, but then waited another 20 minutes for the police to arrive. I wait in the cold as it continued to rain, annoyed that I had decided to reach out to the department.
At this point, I had spent almost an hour and a half after the incident in the cold being rained on and annoyed. When the cruiser came with its lights on, I mentioned to the officer that he wasn’t inconspicuous. The car in question was just at the top of the street. The officer informed me that he couldn’t approach the car by himself, that he needed backup; I asked him why he hadn’t been sent with backup. And once again I wondered to myself, why was I talking to another unmasked officer? When backup arrived they were also unmasked… The officer seemed confused about the series of events. He tried to inform me that there was nothing he could do as the event had happened in New Haven and not Hamden, despite that, I was half a block at most from Hamden when it happened. I then pointed out that the car in question is in Hamden now and so are we. I explained that I had already reported the situation and the only reason that I had called again was that I thought I had seen the car, but could not get close enough to get the license plate information, and thought it would be smarter to reach out to them. As we bantered back and forth, the car I suspected passed by but the officer told me he could do nothing until he had backup. Then another officer arrived with lights on, also not inconspicuous. The officer on the scene filled in the second officer then asked me if there was anything that they could do for me to help me tonight. In frustration, I said: “abolish capitalism.” The officers seemed taken aback. It was clear he wanted to share what he thought would be a persuasive argument. Something must have been telling on my face because as quick as the idea came he threw up his hands and got back into the car before sharing with me how great capitalism was. I walked through the night with the officer, explaining to them that I had been waiting in the cold in the rain for about an hour and a half at this point, and was frustrated and annoyed with the whole process. I wasn’t sure what I got out of calling the police or how it made me feel any safer or secure. The part I did not share was feeling complicit in the fear-mongering that comes from such an incident. I got a ride home from a friend and went through my texts before I went to bed. I saw a text informing me I would be knocking doors with a politician the next day, though I had not committed to doing so. I looked through the other texts, reflecting on the annoyances of being a politician and wondered to myself: “why do I do this work?”
Some of you may be asking yourselves: how are my thoughts about capitalism, and my work as a politician, significant to the story above? The fact is, the real theft and assault in this story started before I was born. The thing that makes me feel unsafe is a lack of investment in my community. We complain about high rates of certain types of crime although crime is actually about the same as it has been in this community for the past decade but we won’t complain about the theft of resources. Black people in particular, have been systematically oppressed and denied opportunities to build wealth for centuries — with new forms of discrimination engineered as old ones fade, from slavery, to Jim Crow, to redlining and denial of New Deal benefits, to mass incarceration and so-called welfare reform. Structural racism continues to block equal access to jobs, housing, education, affordable credit, helping to explain why the vast racial wealth gap — with Black families having less than 1/10th of the wealth of white families — has worsened in the last forty years, not shrunk, despite claims of a post-racial society. As wealth is a key determinant of health, so health outcomes for Black and poor families are dramatically worse than for White families, with areas redlined in the 1930s predicting with frightening accuracy the health outcomes of residents today. There are a hundred jobs in my public works department in Hamden, yet no people of color hold positions. We have officers making $130,000 plus overtime, and yet, it takes someone 20 or 30 minutes to respond after an assault. We continue to invest our money and surveillance in policing, but not into economic development, job development, and youth programming. So while I’m grateful for people’s words of concern for my safety after this incident, I continue to live in a community in need that is under-invested in and under-protected. I take it with a grain of salt from the political people who have chosen not to do anything for decades. Statistically, situations like this will happen to me, my family members, and community members because we refuse to spend the time and resources to change the dynamics that allow this to be possible. For 20 years, my community has needed a community center. Right now we wait for $2,000,000 in bonding from Governor Lamont; to refurbish a building that has two program rooms, one being a gymnasium with falling ceiling tiles; parts of the room have to be partitioned off for events on rainy days, and the other half a room where pampers, baby powder and other toiletries are stored for parents and guardians. Coincidentally my neighborhood of Newhall abuts the neighborhood of Newhallville in our sister city of New Haven. The Newhallville community has been without a community center for 20 years as well. Non-whites, Connecticut is one of the most unequal states in the country and when two communities have gone without community centers for decades and we talk about putting up 500 hundred more cameras, while 1 and 8 families go hungry in the backyard of Yale, a 31.2 billion corporation, I wonder if we are missing the mark.
Bad things are always going to happen. There’s only so much we can do to prevent them from happening. My mind wanders and is saddened that incidents like this will be used to justify demonizing black and brown people; it will do the same to poor people. Year after year I watched scores of white people assault buildings, rob, destroy things because their favorite sports team won a game. People don’t cross the street or avoid white community members for these acts of anarchy. I can’t blame community members who are in need for not having a stronger resolve to do better. People look down on them for generational disparities, yet expect them to do better and more with less. So I write this out of frustration, not knowing what to do differently than what I’ve done every single day; but I’ve been elected and I’ve become colleagues to 19-year-olds deciding to tackle the issues in our community, especially in our Board of Ed and in our town council. I have hope that someday we will win. It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but I see the beloved community being built over time. So I ask you over the next couple of months to help me be a better legislator, to help me tackle these issues, to help me protect these kids, to allow them to learn from their mistakes and do better. We are planting the seeds of change; so we can grow together. I thank y’all for watering and nurturing me despite being in this harsh tumultuous climate.
