EMERGE in the News
EMERGE in the News
A Clean Lawn, & A Path Past Prison
By Laura Glesby, New Haven Independent
“You can’t work with a cluttered mind,” said Harold Jones as he de-cluttered the Ijeh family’s front yard — on a job outing where stories of incarceration and reentry, witnessed and experienced from different angles, had a chance to intersect.
Jones brought that sense of calm to a three-person crew landscaping an Edgewood Way house in Upper Westville Thursday morning — part of his work with EMERGE, an organization that aims to help men re-entering society from prison find employment, community, and more internal peace as they navigate their transition.
New Haven program for former prisoners expanding to Bridgeport
A New Haven organization that is committed to helping former prisoners successfully transition back to society is expanding its services to another shoreline community. EMERGE Connecticut is a nonprofit social enterprise that began in New Haven in 2011, with a focus on providing formerly incarcerated people a job and support services to reintegrate back into society.Executive Director Alden Woodcock said they are working to expand their services in Bridgeport at the beginning of 2025.
“We want to be that place where people begin that process of healing, once you come home and just build a little bit of a community, positive support system,” said Woodcock.
A Case For Carceral Reform EMERGES On The Stage
By Lucy Gellman, Arts Council Greater New Haven
Lights up on the bare stage. At the far left, Tabari "Ra" Hashim is a kid again, eating cereal as police descend on his neighborhood in the small hours before school begins. His eyes follow their gear-clad bodies, wondering what kind of strange game this is. It's his mother, an edge in her voice, who interrupts to let him know that it's not.
Hashim is part of As We EMERGE: Monologues of the Formerly Incarcerated, a collaboration between Quinnipiac University and EMERGE Connecticut that puts the narratives of formerly incarcerated people on stage and on screen.
New Doc Puts Reentry In Focus
By Lucy Gellman, Arts Council Greater New Haven
The camera is rolling. Babatunde Akinjobi stands to the left of the stage, skin nearly glowing in a pool of light. Already, the men around him have begun to tell their stories, narratives weaving in and out of each other. There is Abdullah Shabazz, grieving a wife and daughter gone far too soon. There is Tabari “Ra” Hashim, who can still see the cramped dimensions of a prison cell when he closes his eyes.
There is Akinjobi himself, an aspiring comic book artist placed behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit.