HARTFORD, Conn — Gale Hunter Martin, 78, has seen North Hartford’s Unity Plaza on Barbour Street change throughout her life.
“I wake up in the morning and say who is it this morning? Whose mother does not have a child or have a person? Every morning I wake up, somebody’s dead and it wasn’t always like that,” the retired Hartford Public Schools teacher said.
Now, Martin is shepherding her own great-grandkids in a hot spot for violence where bullets pierced the heads of two bystanders recently.
“When this plaza was striving, you had a grocery store, you had a drug store. It was thriving. People had places to go,” said Corrie Betts, President of Greater Hartford Branch NAACP.
Betts, 52, also grew up here during a time when he knew all his neighbors.
“Twenty-eight murders and we’re still in the year, that’s not normal,” said Betts, who launched a new initiative called ‘Wake up Wednesdays.’ It’s intended to connect community members with resources, such as job training and food pantries.
“Every time I turn around, somebody getting shot, somebody always fighting,” said Johaunna Neal, one of the dozens of North Hartford residents sparking conversation in the once thriving strip mall.
Wake up Wednesdays is a new initiative by the Greater Hartford branch of the Connecticut NAACP that will bring volunteers to the Unity Plaza parking lot from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every Wednesday.
“In a crisis, there’s that fight, flight, or flee, so we don’t know where to start. I said we have to start somewhere,” Betts said.
Hartford’s top prosecutor stopped by, calling for the community’s help in crime reduction.
Sharmese Walcott, State’s Attorney, Hartford, said, “We’re not going to arrest and prosecute our way out of it. It’s a piece, it’s a tool.”
Statewide leaders for the century-old civil rights organization say it’s not limiting its efforts to Hartford’s most impoverished zip codes.
“We’re going to be talking to the presidents of Aetna, Travelers, and Cigna. All of them, come down, meet with us,” said Scot X. Esdaile, State President of Connecticut NAACP. “They have big tax exemptions, they use federal dollars, they use state dollars to build these big pots of money.”
NAACP leaders say they intend to call on the business community to help expand resources and employment opportunities where it’s needed.
Samaia Hernandez is a reporter for FOX61 News. She can be reached at shernandez@fox61.com. Follow her on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
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