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NeighborShare is an exciting giving opportunity to directly help Carver families

Carver is an enthusiastic partner with and beneficiary of NeighbiorShare. Click here to go to the website.

Carver is an enthusiastic partner with and beneficiary of NeighbiorShare. Click here to go to the website.

@NeighborShare is a rapidly growing digital platform that helps local non-profits connect households in need directly with neighbors who are eager to share.  They make it easier for the organizations such as Carver to highlight specific, validated cases of need and resolve them quickly. We ask that you DONATE, FOLLOW & SHARE to help ignite our cause. #neighborshare #sharebygiving #sharebysending #sharebyreferring #readytoshare

@NeighborShare inspires a world where local communities are enabled to easily share what they have with those who need it right now. We ask that you DONATE, FOLLOW & SHARE to help ignite our cause. #neighborshare #sharebygiving #sharebysending #sharebyreferring #readytoshare

@NeighborShare mission is to empower institutions that understand communities best—local nonprofits and service organizations—by enabling them to connect households in need directly to community members who are eager to share. We ask that you DONATE, FOLLOW & SHARE  to help ignite our cause. #neighborshare #sharebygiving #sharebysending #sharebyreferring #readytoshare

We are so excited to announce we have partnered with @NeighborShare, a rapidly growing digital platform that helps local non-profits connect households in need directly with neighbors who are eager to share.  We ask that you DONATE, FOLLOW & SHARE to help ignite our cause. #NeighborShare #sharebygiving #sharebysending #sharebyreferring #readytoshare


"Black Lives Matter in Rowayton" initiative benefits the Carver community

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Several days ago, a Black Lives Matter sign was vandalized — again — in Rowayton. Rowayton residents, led by Jane Seymour, created a GoFundMe campaign to restore the sign. Carver was designated to receive all donations that exceeded the cost of replacing the sign: $160. At the time of this post, that fund has raised $4,750.

The Black Lives Matter In Rowayton sign was vandalized again on June 16th. Please help us raise the $160 to replace the sign. All money collected over $160 will be donated to The Carver Foundation of Norwalk. Carver’s mission is to close opportunity gaps for all children and to ensure they graduate high school on time and ready for college and careers. Carver is Norwalk’s largest provider of before and after school and summer programs. Carver leads a highly collaborative citywide system that leverages and coordinates efforts and financial and in-kind resources, including full access to almost every school in Norwalk. The Carver Foundation of Norwalk.

Thank you, Rowayton friends! You are meeting the urgency of this time with appropriate heart and support. This is one step in the global fight against racism, but it is an important and vital step. Many Rowayton residents have formed long-standing relationships with the Carver community through the decades, and we are grateful. Thank you for serving as powerful supporters and allies through the years and especially now during this urgent time of renewed awareness and more importantly this time of real change and progress.

Today is Juneteenth

We recently wrote about Carver’s past Juneteenth celebrations and this year’s controversy.

Short for “June Nineteenth,” Juneteenth honors the end of slavery across the United States when enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas finally received news of their liberation—two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. 

Today, the world is more aware of the significance of Juneteenth and is joining in on the commemoration that signifies the arrival of the news in Texas of emancipation from slavery in the United States.

Locally, Juneteenth will be recognized at 5 p.m. today at Veteran's Park. The event will include speakers, music and art, and attendees are asked to wear a mask to protect from the coronavirus. For more information, click here.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order on Wednesday making Juneteenth a holiday for state employees, and many companies and organizations have done the same. A group of senators are proposing to make Juneteenth a national holiday.

The National Archives on Thursday located what appears to be the original handwritten “Juneteenth” military order informing thousands of people held in bondage in Texas they were free. The decree, in the handwriting of a general’s aide, was found in a formal order book stored in the Archives headquarters building in Washington. It is dated June 19, 1865, and signed by Maj. F.W. Emery, on behalf of Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger. “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, ‘all slaves are free,’ ” the order reads. This order was issued as U.S. troops gradually reasserted Union control over the defeated South in the spring of 1865, flying the American flag and bearing news of President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.

It took a long time for the freedom message to get to Galveston. And it's taken a long time for the importance of Juneteenth to fully enter the American consciousness. Today, it seems to have finally arrived.

Typically, African American families across the nation celebrate this day with a cookout, a parade, or a community festival such as what we have organized at the Carver Community Center.

But in 2020, as the coronavirus ravishes black America disproportionately both physically and economically, and as police brutality continues to devastate black families, Juneteenth for many people, regardless of race, is a day of protest.

Today, from coast to coast there will be marches and demonstrations of civil disobedience, along with expressions of black joy in spite of an especially traumatic time for our nation.

COVID-19 Testing, Thursday, June 18

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Test Collection Sites/Call Centers

COVID-19 call centers in Norwalk and around the state have medical staff to answer your questions, screen you for symptoms, and help you with next steps if you meet criteria for testing. 

PLEASE NOTE: Each site operates differently, including hours, procedures, cost, and turnaround time for results. Please call sites for details. 

If you need a doctor, please contact your health insurance company to find one or call one of the Community Health Centers listed below. If you do not have health insurance or a doctor, call one of Norwalk’s community health centers to establish care and learn more about testing. 

  • Norwalk Community Health Center: (203) 899-1770

  • Day Street Community Health Center: (203) 854-9292

The Health Department will work to keep this information up-to-date as testing capabilities expand.

CT 211 compiles community resources, including COVID-19 diagnostic testing sites. Please call 2-1-1 or visit their website for general COVID information or to search for testing sites statewide.

Click here to read the CDC’s guidance on testing for COVID-19.

Digital Media And Communications Academy Students Create Virtual Gallery

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Norwalk High School Digital Media and Communication Academy Students (DMCA) created a virtual showcase to share the passion projects they have created during the second semester. The bulk of the work was completed during the distance learning experience. 

Take a tour and enjoy! 

Working with industry partners, DMCA enables students to master industry standard computer programs. Students enrolled in the DMCA pathway have the opportunity to participate in hands-on experiences that will enable them to enter college or career with a knowledge of industry standards and a mastery of storytelling.

Merriam-Webster redefining racism after college graduate calls for action

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary is revising its entry on racism to illustrate the ways in which it can be systemic.

Currently, the dictionary’s entry contains three sections. The first defines racism as “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”

The second calls it a “doctrine or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute its principles” and “a political or social system founded on racism.” The third section refers to “racial prejudice or discrimination.”

Editors are now working on defining racism as not only prejudice against a certain race due to the color of a persons skin, but as both prejudice combined with social and institutional power. It is a system of advantage based on skin color.

The dictionary’s editors were inspired to edit the definition of racism because 22-year-old Kennedy Mitchum, who recently graduated from Drake University, asked them to do so. She lives in Florissant, Missouri, just a few miles away from Ferguson, where protests over the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown helped solidify the Black Lives Matter movement.

Why is everyone suddenly talking about Juneteenth?

The June 19 holiday, Juneteenth, commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.

It is a holiday long celebrated by the Carver community.

Juneteenth -- a blending of the words June and nineteenth -- is the oldest regular US celebration of the end of slavery. It commemorates June 19, 1865: the day that Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and told slaves of their emancipation.

Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia mark June 19 as a state holiday or observance. That day came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Even after Lincoln declared all enslaved people free on paper, that hadn't necessarily been the case in practice. African Americans and others mark Juneteenth -- also called Emancipation Day -- much like the Fourth of July, with parties, picnics and gatherings with family and friends.

President Donald Trump plans to resume holding his political rallies — in Tulsa on June 19. Yet Tulsa is the site of one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history: the Tulsa Race Massacre. A white mob attacked residents, homes and businesses in the predominantly black Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The event remains one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history, and one of the least-known: News reports were largely squelched, despite the fact that hundreds of people were killed and thousands left homeless.

Many people are calling on Trump to at least change the Juneteenth date of the Oklahoma rally kick-starting his return to public campaigning. Trump campaign officials discussed in advance the possible reaction to the Juneteenth date, but there are no plans as of this writing to change it despite fierce and widespread criticism.

JUNE 13 UPDATE: The president announced he would delay the campaign rally by a day. And there is this op-ed on June 15.

Race and equity now at the center of American culture

Authors and publishers eagerly await each Wednesday's advance look at the weekly New York Times bestseller list.

Amid a pandemic where African Americans are suffering disproportionately, and a global eruption of awareness and protest following the hideous death of George Floyd, new voices are being heard — and read. The list for June 21 is a vivid snapshot of what’s on America’s mind.

No. 1 on the Young Adult Hardcover list: "The Hate U Give," by Angie Thomas: "A 16-year-old girl sees a police officer kill her friend" — on the list for 171 weeks.

The top 10 entries on the Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction list for June 21: 

  1. "White Fragility," by Robin DiAngelo.

  2. "So You Want to Talk About Race," by Ijeoma Oluo.

  3. "How to Be an Antiracist," by Ibram X. Kendi.

  4. "Me and White Supremacy," by Layla F. Saad.

  5. "The New Jim Crow," by Michelle Alexander.

  6. "The Color of Law," by Richard Rothstein.

  7. "Between the World and Me," by Ta-Nehisi Coates: "A meditation on race in America."

  8. "Untamed," by Glennon Doyle: "The activist and public speaker describes her journey of listening to her inner voice."

  9. "Stamped from the Beginning," by Ibram X. Kendi: "[A]nti-black racist ideas and their effect on the course of American history."

  10. "Just Mercy," by Bryan Stevenson: "[D]ecades of work to free innocent people condemned to death."

  • And at No. 11: "Becoming," by Michelle Obama.

The Times' Paperback Nonfiction list opens with six of the titles above, then picks up with:

  • 7. "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" by Beverly Tatum: "The president emerita of Spelman College examines whether self-segregation is a problem or a coping strategy."

  • 8. "Born a Crime," by Trevor Noah: "A memoir about growing up biracial in apartheid South Africa by the host of 'The Daily Show.'"

  • 9. "Raising White Kids," by Jennifer Harvey.

  • 10. "White Rage," by Carol Anderson. 

    And No. 1 on the Hardcover Fiction list (making its debut) is "The Vanishing Half," by Brit Bennett: "The lives of twin sisters who run away from a Southern black community at age 16 diverge as one returns and the other takes on a different racial identity but their fates intertwine."