While the decision of whether or not to vaccinate is often characterized in partisan political terms, there’s a group of people who are hesitant to get the shot for reasons entirely unrelated to politics.
It could be a lack of information, vague fears or generalized pushback on demands that they do something they’d rather not do.
After efforts to change the ‘Red Raider’ mascot at Spaulding High School were shot down by the Rochester School Board last September, Connor Lempke did not give up. Instead, the rising senior decided to take the issue all the way to the state legislature.
“I want our school to be an environment where everyone from every background can be accepted and not have to look at something that they see as a caricature of themselves,” Lempke said.
As calls for police reform have intensified, one popular response has been to equip more officers with body cameras.
The idea is that increased monitoring of officers will deter misconduct and make it easier to discover and punish when it does happen. Body cameras have support from a broad range of stakeholders — if not always for the same reasons — including many police officials and activists.
Both Sununu’s administration and reform advocates said the new laws represent a significant step forward in police misconduct transparency, like publishing the state’s “Laurie List” of officers with credibility issues and opening police disciplinary hearings to the public. But critics said the legislature effectively “gutted” one of the bills, removing key provisions such as demographic data collection and mandatory implicit bias training for judges.
Gathered together at Hope for Recovery in Manchester recently, a dozen activists began assembling a quilt. On each patch, they plan to carefully stitch the name of a woman incarcerated in New Hampshire seeking clemency.
“I know how it feels when you’re in there and somebody says your name,” Danielle Metz, an organizer with the National Council for Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls, said. “That’s what’s going to give them hope.”
Despite the land’s bloody past, talk between Abenaki tribe leaders and descendants of Hannah Duston was friendly and productive this week under the watchful, granite eyes of Duston herself.
“We want to be one of the first parks in the country that shows we can work together and we can create an inclusive environment,” Denise Pouliot of the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook Abenaki People said Wednesday. “We want an inclusive environment even after something as horrific as what happened. Time can move forward. We don’t live there anymore.”
During the two-hour discussion, Police Chief Michael Carignan fielded dozens of questions, ranging from inquiries about the department's cultural competency training to its outreach with local youth. Though this was the first virtual iteration, these discussions have been taking place for more than five years through a collaborative initiative called Nashua Community Conversations on Race and Justice — and organizers say the program has significantly improved community-police relations within the city during that time.
As the state budget moved through the legislature this year, New Hampshire had its eyes on a provision commonly referred to as the ‘divisive concepts’ legislation. The language has been a point of widespread controversy, but now that it’s law, many Granite Staters are left wondering what exactly is in the bill.
Opponents of the law argue it could put a chill on conversations about systemic racism, white privilege and implicit bias; supporters say the legislation protects all New Hampshireites from discrimination — including white people.
The state budget provision that opponents say puts a chill on important conversations about race has been law for a few weeks, but community members are still looking for guidance on what they call unclear language.
Educators and civil rights activists, among others, say as they await more information from the state, they are concerned the law is already leading to self-censorship in school curriculums, workplace diversity training and police implicit bias classes.
More than half of the state’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion abruptly resigned Tuesday, citing concerns that the state budget signed into law by Governor Chris Sununu silences important conversations about race.
It is now illegal in New Hampshire to teach in schools or train public employees that someone “is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Nearly 30 years ago, Charlotte DiLorenzo moved to Newmarket from Massachusetts, where she had lived her whole life. The lack of racial diversity in her new home state was nothing less than culture shock for her.
“I lived in Beverly, I grew up in Lynn, I worked in Boston. I was sort of used to being in diverse communities and being around a lot of diverse people,” DiLorenzo, who is Black, said. “Things were so different.”
Unknown to DiLorenzo at the time, and to many New Hampshireites today, the same Granite State that Dilorenzo met in 1993 is home to the nation’s first African American person elected to public office — in 1768.
After Asma Elhuni, Lebanon resident and Movement Politics Director for Rights and Democracy New Hampshire, was arrested Thursday alongside four other activists at the State House, she said their fight against the “immoral” legislation in the state budget that Gov. Chris Sununu signed Friday is not over.
Despite the budget being signed and sealed, Elhuni vows to revitalize community outreach efforts in the wake of the legislation. The activist said New Hampshire communities “will not be divided,” and Rights and Democracy will focus this summer on engaging more people than ever around the state.
Like many New Hampshire mothers, Joy Adumene of Manchester struggled to help her four kids with remote learning during the pandemic.
Unlike most parents, Adumene and her husband had an added challenge: as immigrants they never went through the American school system so helping their children — ages 15, 14, 11 and 6 — left them feeling especially lost, she said.
I’m not really a cat person. I mean, I don’t hate them by any means...they just aren’t my thing. Now, I’ve played nice with them in order to win the affection of a woman or two, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I’m not buying catnip and litter boxes for any stray cat looking to seek refuge in my apartment. With that being said, I have a profound respect for their hunting skills and independence.
Members of the governor’s police accountability commission expressed disappointment after Attorney General John Formella shot down a request for an emergency meeting to discuss “divisive concepts” language in the proposed state budget.
The legislation would prohibit discussing or teaching concepts like systemic racism or critical race theory in schools and governmental agencies.
Some Granite Staters believe sworn officers are needed on campus to protect students from threats of violence such as school shootings. Others raise concerns about criminalization of student behavior and the apparent disproportionate impact of school policing on students of color and those with disabilities. And as conversations around policing continue to evolve, some are looking for alternative ways to keep schools safe.
