How Hartford-area activist groups are banding together to fight for racial equality, women’s health care and lower cost of living

In an effort to keep issues surrounding race, access to women’s health care and the rising cost of living at the forefront, Hartford-area activist groups have banded together to organize what they say will be a series of rallies to support people of color.

Activists on Tuesday held a second rally at City Hall surrounding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, with an additional message of rental costs being out of reach for many of the city’s residents. The rally, organized by the Nonprofit Accountability Group, included a number of nonprofits throughout the state, including PowerUp CT and Kamora’s Cultural Corner.

“All of it works together,” PowerUp CT founder and organizer Keren Prescott said in an interview before Tuesday’s rally. “We are still in a pandemic, and they couldn’t care less about that. Black and Brown people are more likely to die and suffer from COVID than white people. Black and Brown people are more likely to get unhealthy or unsafe, and potentially die from, unsafe abortions. Black and Brown people are more likely to live with food insecurity because they’re not making a living wage. Because they are not making a living wage, they can’t afford a safe home.”

The group’s plan is to hold a series of rallies to keep safe, legal abortion access in the forefront.

“There are so many issues, it’s like a domino effect,” Quanishe Flippen, a member of the Nonprofit Accountability Group, said.

Organizers held their first rally on June 27 following the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, which turned the issue of abortion to states and overturning the landmark 1973 Roe case.

“Holding one of them doesn’t do anything other than getting us to share our feelings,” said Hartford activist Kamora Herrington, founder of Kamora’s Cultural Corner. “We need to come together and do some actual work. As a nation, we’ve done really good in coming together and sharing our rage and righteous umbrage. The work that needs to happen has to start with people being angry together and then people figuring out how to create solutions. …

“We all know about the issues. Now how do we stop it? The ongoing series keeps it going. The ongoing series reminds people they’re not the only people in their community who believe this, that they’re the only person thinking these thoughts.”

“They just keep thinking that we forget that these decisions are being made,” rally organizer Tenaya Taylor said. “It’s a gathering of expression more so than anything because people do need a platform and a space to talk about things. It’s really more of a space to gather, reflect and take action.”

Herrington says abortion should be legal in the U.S., full stop.

“One thing we’re hearing a whole lot is people pandering to someone else’s argument around reproductive health,” she said. “I’m hearing people say, ‘What about rape? What about this? What about this?’ All these litmus tests that say if a bad thing happens to a person, it is so egregious that she should be allowed to have an abortion. It’s this awful place where we’re not saying, ‘Abortion should be legal, the end.’ The fact that there is any argument and that anyone believes a women’s right to choose should be prefaced with some, ‘Because of these reasons,’ they’re still playing puritanical games.”

And while Connecticut passed a law in 1990 that protects the right to an abortion until the fetus can live outside the womb, rally organizers say the issue is still of monumental import because of what the overturning of Roe v. Wade represents.

“The reason why we are where we are today with the overturning of Roe v. Wade is because too many white people were silent when Black and indigenous people were being slaughtered, when our rights were being violated,” Prescott said. “Nobody said anything. …

“Eventually those people, there will be no more of them. So they’re going to turn on their own white people. That’s what’s happening with a lot of white people with this Roe v. Wade, is that they’re for the first time starting to see white supremacy work against them and not for them. And they’re not used to that. So many times they don’t understand the intersectionality of Roe v. Wade, which is a human right, and how that connects with police brutality, how that connects to the fact that Black women are two to three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. They don’t see how it connects to why Black and urban and poor neighborhoods have more crime because they don’t have the same money going into their school systems and affordable housing than other, more affluent neighborhoods are getting.”

And while abortion is legal in Connecticut, 13 states — Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming — have “trigger” laws on the books that would ban abortions in the first and second trimester.

Prescott says she has a 17-year-old daughter who is likely going to college next year.

“We have to look at the map and look at the law to figure out what place is safe for her,” said Prescott, who said she was raped in 1999 while she was in college and elected to have an abortion.

Prescott said she believes the Dobbs decision and states that ban abortions or severely restrict access to them aren’t really concerned about protecting life.

“We’re not protecting the lives we already have,” she said. “We’re not housing folks. We’re not feeding folks. We’re not getting the hundreds of thousands of kids that are already in foster care in suitable, safe homes. We’re not getting real, affordable and quality health care to folks that need access to it.

“Roe v. Wade isn’t about protecting human life, because we’re doing nothing as a society. Our government is doing nothing to protect the people who are walking and talking and breathing right here right now.”

Which is where the intersection with housing comes in, organizers said. Forced pregnancies mean the necessity of increased, affordable housing options, not to mention time off from work during the pregnancy and after the birth of the child, they said.

Finding affordable housing in Hartford has become increasingly challenging. Flippen, who lives in the North End of Hartford on a month-to-month lease, has been looking for an apartment for a few weeks.

Rents have skyrocketed to a point where Flippen is struggling to find an affordable apartment for herself and her three children, ages 3, 9 and 14.

“To find a place that’s big enough for my family, I have to work at least two to three jobs or at least have a side gig or something like that,” she said. “It’s insane what they’re asking for.”

Flippen said three-bedroom apartments are going for about $1,500 in Hartford.

“I saw one in East Hartford going for $1,700, I didn’t even call them back,” she said. “I feel trapped. … I’ve gotten frustrated looking because everyone is looking right now.”