There are mornings when I choose to take a longer route to work just to take in the sights and greet some fellow constituents.
What I see is no shock; private industries that make a profit off of vices, only see what they can take from communities and don’t see what they leave behind.
Some might be able to open up bodegas, or mom-and-pop shops, and I take it upon myself to support these businesses and make myself readily available to hear their voices.
I find value and hope in the belief that our democracy enables people, like those deprived of equal opportunity, to have a voice in this process — that the belief that our people’s best interest is always at the forefront of the crafting and finalizing of policies aimed at benefiting them the most.
We need a fighting chance, but our families need reparations — for years of lost income for Black and brown families who have had to live without a father or mother due to the abusive and inherently racist war on drugs in our country.
With this bill, I am being told that decriminalizing our youth and Black and brown men is only possible when the state has more important private interests attached to it.
We are just finding out how existing grant programs aimed at helping women in the private business sector are being abused by those who only place a self-identified woman as a business owner on paper.
There was talk on how the bill would have made the difference and transformed our most neglected school districts into the likes of the prospering schools we see not even 10 minutes down the road in the neighboring town of Fairfield.
We see new funds that are supposed to come into aid in our schools, our health services, our housing, and our social services, but at the same time, we see historical funding that was supposed to always be there, being reduced, appropriated elsewhere, or taken out completely.
This bill needs to protect the existing funding our cities receive and no executive power should be able to alter that.
However, I am being told our state cannot and will not do so unless it is wrapped in a capital-hungry tactic to legalize cannabis.
Bill 888: An Act Responsibly and Equitably Regulating Adult-Use Cannabis, a Senate bill, calls for the legalization of recreational marijuana for individuals 21 and older.
Connecticut’s state Constitution prevents early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, severely reducing the ability of many eligible voters to cast a ballot.
We need to legalize marijuana in Connecticut.