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.