Before the pandemic, Connecticut’s recovery from the 2008 Great Recession was the worst of any state. Now, with converging health, economic, and housing crises, the state needs transformative, radical change.
In other words, Connecticut needs its own Green New Deal.

Over the 10-year period ending in 2017, more than 400 young people in Connecticut have been killed by guns. The crisis of gun violence disproportionately affects communities of color. One statistic screams out: young Black men in Connecticut are 39 times more likely than young white men to be slain with a gun.

On Earth Day, some legislative colleagues and I joined about 40 young environmental activists at Hartford’s Riverfront Plaza for a “Meet Your Legislator” event hosted by the youth-led Sunrise Movement. During the introductions, I described myself as “unapologetically progressive.” To my surprise, the group clapped. One young man said, under his breath, “Thank God.” A young woman said, “At least somebody is!”

The bill to legalize recreational marijuana does have important provisions like the expungement of cannabis possession convictions, but despite positive equity and justice elements, there are three features of SB-888 that concern me: 1) legal age of use, 2) unrestricted THC levels of the cannabis products, and 3) the regulating agency.

Martin Looney, for half a dozen years the President Pro Tem of the General Assembly’s state Senate, is fast becoming the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) of Connecticut.

There has been much debate about whether the zoning practices of towns in Connecticut are discriminatory.  Discriminatory has become a politically weaponized pejorative word used to presume the motivations of any town and their residents with a different demographic than what is considered ideologically “righteous.” The reality is there is one gating factor in many of these towns in Connecticut and across the county: the cost of purchasing a housing unit in that town.

“Healthcare heroes,” “We love our healthcare workers,” and large red hearts line the lawns throughout Connecticut. Now one year after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, news coverage is filled with language like “back to normal” and “when this ends.” In the past 20 years, we have lived through SARS, H1N1, MERS, and Ebola. Experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci have been clear: there are likely more pandemics on the horizon.

As states across the country attempt to roll back voting rights and protections, Connecticut must lead the way in protecting the right to vote. But Connecticut has a lot of work to do – as the Center for Public Integrity recently observed, Connecticut has among the most restrictive voting laws outside of the south.

Ratepayers in Connecticut pay the highest rates in the continental United States. Those entering third party electric supplier contracts to save money frequently find that what seems like a good deal initially turns into a costly mistake in the end. This is due to an anti-consumer provision of these supplier contracts that allows them to be auto-renewed at their conclusion.

As a young adult, it can get frustrating sometimes when I speak with certain older adults about transgender identities. Most of the time they are confused about the concept of gender nonconformity and have a hard time understanding or accepting their validity. They may say something like “there’s only two genders” or “if you were born a girl, then you are a girl.”

At a time when access to health care and awareness of related disparities are at the forefront of our minds, it only makes sense to pass legislation in Connecticut that continues to allow residents to afford the treatments their doctors prescribe. SB 1003 will do just that.