Mount Trashmore, Marching With Jesse Jackson And The Coalition To Rebuild Bridgeport

Joshua Nessen, the Executive Director for Greater Bridgeport Interfaith Action from 1991-1998, shares in this commentary the coalition that brought pressure to remove the illegal pile of demolition debris called Mount Trashmore from the East End that was subsequently incinerated.

The related video above from 1992 was narrated by the late Bill Garrett, a champion of environmental issues.

The fires were still burning inside the massive 40-foot high  Mount Trashmore whose toxic odors were polluting the lungs of neighborhood residents on Bridgeport’s African American East End.

We were gathered 2000 strong in front of the mountain with Jesse Jackson on the first day of the 6-day march from Bridgeport to Hartford to “Rebuild America” in August 1991.

“This is a mountain of ignorance, of neglect, which never would have been permitted in a white suburban neighborhood” said Jackson who was flanked by New York City Mayor David Dinkins and AFSCME head Brian McCantee.

In June 1991, I had started work as Executive Director for Greater Bridgeport Interfaith Action (GBIA), an alliance of 20 Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant congregations. In 1991 Bridgeport–one of the nation’s 10 poorest cities in the middle of wealthy Fairfield County–had filed the largest petition for municipal bankruptcy since the Great Depression.

This drew the attention of Reverend Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition. Working with the statewide progressive union, District 1199, Reverend Jackson called for a “March to Rebuild America” to address long-neglected urban areas through a domestic Marshall Plan.

The situation in urban America had worsened during the Reagan and Bush Administrations while spending on the military rose dramatically, tax cuts for the wealthy were enacted, and a multi-billion dollar bailout of the failed Savings & Loan Industry was engineered.

On the Road to Hartford

In Bridgeport, we formed an organizing group to kick off the march, including our interfaith organization GBIA, the NAACP, the Puerto Rican Coalition, the Housing Alliance, the Carpenters Union, and the Council of Churches. We went door to door for weeks to draw ordinary people together for an initial interfaith service at Golden Hill United Methodist Church, which flowed into the march led by Jesse Jackson that first took us to the slopes of Mount Trashmore on that hot August afternoon.

The mountain had grown because the City had continued to award demolition contracts for years to the Capozziello brothers, who rather than pay disposal costs dumped hazardous materials containing creosote, mercury, and lead in a lot behind their offices in the middle of a residential African American neighborhood.  Local residents now joined by Jesse Jackson and the marchers at their first stop demanded that the City and State dispose of the waste site.

From Trashmore we were off down the road to our first day’s destination—Milford. As we approached the town, there was a stone bridge over a stream. It was not the Raymond Pettus Bridge, where in 1965 marchers from Selma to Birmingham had been viciously attacked by mounted State Policemen–naked violence televised nationwide that spurred passage of the Voting Rights Act. Still years later, perhaps recalling that other bridge, Jesse paused and seeing a little girl who suffered from cerebral palsy on the side of the road, picked her up with Mom’s okay and carried her beaming on his shoulders across the bridge to the promised land.  That night in tents pitched by the town’s march organizing committee, we slept on the verdant Town Green.

Next day, we marched into New Haven, where we were greeted by hundreds of cheering Black schoolchildren dressed in red. This is a city that epitomized the division between the privileged and poor in Connecticut. While known for prestigious Yale University, a great deal of the city was impoverished and crime ridden.

Throughout the March Jesse was acutely attuned to local realities. Speaking on the historic New Haven Green surrounded by the red-garbed youngsters, he ran it down: “It costs more to send an inner-city kid to Jail for a year, than to Yale. We need to invest in our schools to keep hope alive for the children who are our future.”

That night, as we marchers entered a Baptist church down the center aisle, the congregation rose to their feet applauding. We ate a meal in the basement prepared by congregants before bedding down on cots they had set up.

For the next few days, we wound our way through rural and suburban Connecticut and towns like Wallingford and Berlin, as Jesse and the march itself drew national attention to the gaps in wealth that ultimately affect everyone.

“The suburbs cannot maintain a status of affluence and security if the cities that are the hub are in distress. The illusion that a room on the ship can be saved while the ship is sinking is just an illusion.”

Everywhere we went, Jesse and the march lent support to local struggles. We attended a picnic organized by striking workers near Hamden: “If you don’t feed the worker bees, the hive cannot survive, let’s keep hope alive.”

On the night before we arrived in Hartford, I sat with a Bridgeport comrade, Thelma Perkins, outside a community center. After six days and 60 miles, my soles were tired but my soul felt rested.

Next morning thousands joined in the March as we swept towards the State Capitol, where Stevie Wonder joined us in our theme song “Keep Hope Alive” and Jesse called for a Marshall Plan to rebuild America’s inner cities and for a special session of the Connecticut Legislature to focus on meeting human needs.

Suddenly Jesse pointed upwards, “Look a rainbow in the sky mirroring our rainbow on the ground.”

Marching Beyond Hartford  

Each stop enroute to Hartford was hosted by a local coalition of groups and it was hoped that their efforts in support of the March would forge lasting alliances that could affect the State as a whole and their specific causes.

The March had a huge impact in Bridgeport. Afterwards, the organizations that had united in response to Jesse’s call, formed an ongoing Coalition to Rebuild Bridgeport. The first focus was to secure removal of Mount Trashmore.

On a cold December 1991 morning, using a construction truck loaned to us by a civic-minded businessman, Phil Kuchma, I swung by the mountain, where a ton of the dumpsite was loaded onto the truck’s bed. With two nuns from Holy Rosary church, I drove the toxic-laden truck to the State Capitol, with our message to Governor Weicker: use the State’s Emergency Spill Response Fund to remove Mount Trashmore.

Our protest was front page news in all the state’s papers, including the Bridgeport Post which featured a photo of me with the Coalition truck emblazoned with our banner “Governor Weicker: Topple Mount Trashmore”. Our delegation met with Governor Weicker’s press secretary in the Capitol, who with flashbulbs flashing accepted our letter calling for immediate State Action.

Not used to driving a manual shift with a ton of junk in my trunk, on the highway home I felt the truck heading sideways into the guardrail, as my accompanying nuns fervently invoked a non-silent prayer. Fortunately, they were listened to and I managed to correct our path without over-correcting and overturning the vehicle. We took the next exit off the highway and slowly limped back to Bridgeport down the Boston Post Road,

Our Coalition to Rebuild Bridgeport went on to force the corrupt Ganim Administration to remove the dumpsite from the East End as a result of a federal lawsuit, though its illegal incineration of the material at the RESCO incinerator posed its own environmental hazards for Long Island Sound. Proper disposal at a regulated dumpsite was the solution we researched and proposed, though leaving Trashmore to rot in place indefinitely would have been the worse option of all.

Together, we then spearheaded statewide passage of a ban on the sale of assault weapons. In addition, the Coalition was the driving force behind formulation of a grass-roots oriented 10-year strategic plan, which earned Bridgeport a federal Enterprise Community designation and  millions in federal redevelopment funds.

We had come a long way from those late-night meetings at the diner with our friends and coalition allies: Cesar Batalla, Willie Matos, and Alma Maya of the Puerto Rican Coalition and ASPIRA, Jack Goldring of the Housing Alliance, State Representative Chris Caruso, East End Activist Brian “Popeye” Hariskevich, NAACP President Julian Braxton, and visionary Bill Garrett of Greater Bridgeport Interfaith Action.

The Legacy of Jesse Jackson

Jesse Jackson will go down in History for his trailblazing activism after the Civil Rights Era marked by his mentor Martin Luther King, and for his role in paving the way for the election of President Barack Obama through demonstrating that an African American can win elections by uniting a rainbow of progressive supporters.

I will remember him best for bringing us together for those nights of the round table at the New Colony Diner as we organized that August march and strategized for Bridgeport’s future.

Jesse bent the arc of history towards Justice. I saw it in his genius to inspire during those long, sweltering miles from Bridgeport to Hartford, 35 years ago but truly only yesterday.