After All Things

Education and empowerment

Policymakers urge Connecticut to include youth voices in its plans to fight climate change. Governor Hochul reveals an extreme heat action plan. Former Suffolk DA Thomas Spota is released from prison early. New Haven’s Fair Rent Commission rejects a city tenant's union claim. And the latest from WSHU's Off the Path.

Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 18 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

"You're listening to After All Things, WSHU's daily news and culture update from the Long Island Sound region. Policymakers urge Connecticut to include youth in its plans to fight climate change. Governor Hochl reveals an extreme heat action plan. Former Suffolk DA Thomas Spoda is released from prison early, and the latest from WSHU's off the path. Those stories more are ahead. I'm Sabrina Garon. An international refugee expert has urged policymakers in Connecticut to involve youth and vulnerable communities of color in the planning for climate change. WSHU's Ebongudama reports. Imad Amid heads a non-profit that provides education and economic empowerment to refugees in Bangladesh. He says climate change cannot be effectively tackled without input from the most vulnerable. You don't go into build solutions with your own personal bias. You go in to understand what are those people truly going through, what do they want? He says that makes for a more effective plan. So it's really about not sympathy. It's about building solutions around empathy. Backbed was one of several experts invited to speak at a legislative hearing on climate disasters and building community resilience. Lawmakers are seeking to improve on a state climate change bill that failed to pass this year. Ebongudama, WSH News. New York Governor Kathy Hochl has released the state's extreme heat action plan to address how to mitigate such conditions, especially for disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. But as Jenna Flanagan reports, not everyone is impressed. Patrick McClellan is the policy director for the New York League of Conservation Voters. He says now that severe heat waves and air quality impacts are more frequent than ever, he's glad that the state put out a plan. And while officials behind the plan say it takes a multi-pronged approach to reduce severe heat, McClellan says he wishes it were more concrete in its mission. We're going to have to be really aggressive about decarbonization, but the fact remains that a certain amount of global warming is already, unfortunately, baked in, and we're going to have to deal with the consequences of that. Extreme heat in New York City alone is estimated to kill about 350 people per year. He says while there is no silver bullet that will fix extreme weather events, the new goal should be keeping global warming below two degrees Celsius. People in positions of authority and making these kinds of decisions have been more aware of the science around climate change and taking it more seriously, 10, 15 years ago, there are a lot of things that we could have gotten rolling sooner. He says initiatives like cooling centers can be set up immediately, but plans like tree planting will take years to have an effect. In Albany, I'm Jenna Flanagan for the New York Public News Network. Former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spoda has been released early from federal prison. He was serving a five-year sentence for corruption and witness tampering. WSHU's Desiree Diorio reports. Spoda is now 82 years old. He's been released to what's called community confinement, according to prison officials. That could mean either home confinement or a halfway house. Spoda's conviction stems from a 2012 incident where former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke beat a handcuffed man. A jury convicted Spoda in 2019 on charges of conspiracy to cover up the beating, and also found him guilty of obstruction of justice and civil rights violations. Spoda served less than three years at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, Desiree Diorio, WSHU News. Vital Lewis is one of the most celebrated lighthouse keepers in American history. Her story is coming up first, a message from our supporter. Local support comes from Hartford HealthCare, the only health system in the Northeast, with all its hospitals receiving aid grades for safety from the LeapFrock Group, the nation's leading independent safety watchdog group, HartfordHealthCare.org. New Haven's Fair Rent Commission has rejected a tenant's union's claim that a landlord retaliated against his renters. WSHU's Shelly Hasman-Cadish reports. The commission ruled this week the new landlord of Emerson Apartments did nothing illegal when he chose not to renew tenants' leases last month. The tenants' union filed a complaint after learning their leases would not be renewed in order to make repairs on the building. They say the move violates city and state law by retaliating against tenants who are members of the union. According to the New Haven Independent, the commission says the tenants failed to prove the landlord chose not to renew their leases because they were part of a union. Shelly Hasman-Cadish WSHU News. Connecticut is the third worst state to travel through for summer road trips according to WalletHub. Each state was ranked by their travel costs, safety and available activities. Connecticut was only ranked above Rhode Island and Delaware. New York was ranked the third best state to travel through for summer road trips only behind Texas and Minnesota. The new nonprofit has been created to protect Messock's Bay from pollution due to fertilizers and outdated septic systems from nearby Hampton's homes. The Messock's Bay Conservancy seeks to attract funding from government agencies focused on water quality programs. A former Southampton town supervisor is the group's first executive director. Former Long Island Congressman Lee Zeldin spoke at the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin last night, the theme of the evening was international security. Zeldin, who's in the U.S. Army Reserves, criticized President Biden's military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and his response to the Israel Hamas War. Even in his prime, he had bad judgment. And it's only gotten worse with age. We cannot count on Biden to make this kind of crucial 3 a.m. decision. Heck, we can't rely on him at 3 in the afternoon. Former President Donald Trump is expected to accept the Republican Party nomination for President tonight. Ida Lewis is one of the most celebrated lighthouse keepers in American history. She may have rescued dozens of people starting in her teens in the waters off the coast of Newport, Rhode Island in the 1800s. WSHU's Davis Donovan tells Lewis' story for the series off the path. It was called Lime Rock Light when Ida Lewis was keeper. These days it's the headquarters of the Ida Lewis Yacht Club in Newport. It sits on a tiny rocky island about 900 feet into the harbor. It's located in the south side of the harbor of Newport, the inner harbor. I'm here with Tony Knowles of the Yacht Club. You wouldn't recognize the structure as a lighthouse. There's no tower. It wasn't a lighthouse, as you normally know it, with a rotating light on the tower, usually with stripes on because the light was a fixed light and it was put out here for mainly for harbor traffic. That's because things started to get very busy in the harbor. Rhode Adams, a coastal army post, was established here in 1799. And then the fishermen came, lots of them, especially lobstermen. There were several accidents way back in the early 1800s of boats running in the fog onto the rocks. And then in the mid-1800s, gilded-age stone mansions began to line the shores of Newport Harbor. After the mansions went up, the harbor became even more abuzz with traffic, and they decided to build a lighthouse. The lighthouse keeper was appointed. The lighthouse keeper was Captain Hosea Lewis, who was Ida Lewis' father. Captain Lewis moved out to the lighthouse in 1857. He brought his family, including 16-year-old Ida. But just four months later, he had a stroke that left him permanently incapacitated. Then Ida's mother became ill and so did her siblings. So Ida really took over and became the unofficial keeper. Every night at dusk, Ida climbed narrow, creaky stairs to an attic room carrying a canister of oil. She lit a big glass lamp that shone across the harbor. Then she refilled the oil again at midnight. The lamp is on display downstairs. "It was an oil lamp. Would this still work if you were to light it?" "Only if there was an oil supply to it." There was no bridge from the island to the mainland. The only way to get to shore from the lighthouse was in a boat. So Ida rode her siblings across every day to go to school. "And if there was an emergency, she would launch the boat, row out and rescue people as best she could." She made her first rescue when she was still a teenager, four young men whose sailboat capsized in the harbor. More rescues followed over the years, 18 in total, officially, maybe many more. "I've heard numbers like 25 and 30 people that she rescued from drowning." The rescue that made her famous came during a snowstorm in 1869. Her mother saw a boat capsized in the harbor and called to her daughter. Ida, who had a cold at the time, jumped in her rowboat without a coat or shoes. "She went out in the middle of winter, breaking ice, rowing her dinghy out there, and then pulling sailors into the dinghy." The yacht club has a sketch that was originally published in Harper's Weekly, depicting the rescue. It's framed on a wall of Ida Lewis memorabilia. It shows Ida pulling the sailors from the icy water. "One, she's been able to drag into the boat. The second one is hanging onto the side of the boat and she's trying her hardest to pull him into the boat. Of course, there's a lot of waves breaking into the boat at the time so you can see that in the drawing." The drawing in Harper's was just the beginning. In fact, she made the cover of the magazine and more attention followed, but the humble lighthouse keeper was a reluctant celebrity. That's on the next, off the path from WSHU, public radio. I'm Davis Donovan. For the latest news from Long Island and Connecticut, you can listen on the radio stream online at WSHU.org or download the WSHU app, After All Things, is supported by Hartford Health Care. Whether it's news, classical music, or podcasts like this one, they're all made possible with support from our listeners. So thank you so much for listening, and if you'd like to make a donation to our station, visit our website to learn more. I'm Sabrina Garone. Have a great rest of your day. I'll talk to you tomorrow. [music] [music] [music]