Top: Alder Sarah Miller, Ana Paola Juarez, Kiana Cintron, and Sound School senior Raychel Juarez. Bottom: Emmy Rosario and Dontae James lead the Wilbur Cross High School Marching Band in the parade. Lucy Gellman Photos.
The horns sounded over James Street, clear and brassy as they cut through the day’s rising heat. Drums rumbled to life behind them, making it seem as if the street had a thrumming, exuberant heartbeat. Beside John S. Martinez School, teacher Paula Gallagi gave one last command to the Fair Haven School Color Guard, and watched as students launched a dozen silk flags into the air.
Neighbors, summoned by the noise, streamed out of their houses, padding down porch steps and huddling on corners and behind police barricades.
It was the beginning of a sun-soaked, song-filled and very much alive Fair Haven Day/Día de Fair Haven, now in its third year on Grand Avenue and the parking lot of Fair Haven School. After months of planning and neighborhood collaboration, the day became a vibrant celebration of community, showcasing the strength and resilience of the neighborhood at a time when its diversity is under attack.
Top: Sandra Trigueros and her son, Elmer Galvez serve up pupusas from La Cocina de Sandra. Middle: Junior Miss Connecticut Alianys Ayala, who said it was amazing to be part of the parade. Bottom: Sabrina Mangene, 9-month-old Brandon David and Q, who came out to support the wrestling community.
Just as in years past, it was a collaboration with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, which holds several neighborhood festivals throughout the months of May and June. While performances unfolded on a main stage, vendor tents lined Grand Avenue, with more behind Fair Haven School. By the end of the afternoon, well over 1,500 people had come through, many with multiple generations of Fair Haveners in tow.
“Just because of everything going on politically, I felt that this was needed,” said organizer Kiana Cintron, a member of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition who grew up just across the street, watching her mother serve Latino families at Junta for Progressive Action. “It’s powerful. This is home for me—I’m used to the diversity, and this is something that I look forward to.”
“It’s so beautiful,” added Shamain McAllister, associate director of education and community impact at the Festival, as strains of jarana and requinto drifted by from down the street. “And so organized. To see this come back to life feels so good. I just feel blessed.”
Top: Jessica Soto, director of programs at Mary Wade. Bottom: Justice, Jasmine, Mercedes and Manni enjoy the parade.
While the spirit of Fair Haven Day goes back decades—it was for years a beloved neighborhood festival in the 1970s and 80s, and then a parade that the Mary Wade Home ran through the 2010s—the current iteration began two years ago, in May of 2023. Since that first festival, it has grown into an entire afternoon of live arts and culture, with kids’ activities, a resource fair, and an opening parade that celebrates the community.
For the first time this year, the Elm City Wrestling Club also hosted a charity wrestling show, titled the Fair Haven Fallout. Fair Haven Alder Frankie Redente, who has loved wrestling since he was four, called it the biggest single wrestling event since the closure of the Coliseum in 2002. He can still remember watching a match there in 1978, and getting hooked on the sport.
“It’s the most inclusive community I’ve ever been a part of,” he said Saturday, checking in on a large wrestling ring set up in the school’s auditorium. Three years ago, bringing back Fair Haven Day was one of his first assignments with the Connecticut Violence Intervention Project, or CT VIP. To see it grow into a day-long, multi-part event, he said, “it’s hard to put into words.”
“Today is a testament to what Fair Haven is,” he added, gesturing around him. “We’re a great and diverse and loving and wonderful people. It doesn’t matter where you’re from or what you believe or who you love, we’re a community.”
Lydia Cuapio (in green) of Auntie Rose Child Development center expressed her excitement to be marching. Bottom: The scene on Grand.
Saturday, that was fully on display even before the main acts arrived, as school groups, small businesses, child care providers and marching bands lined up in a staging area beside John S. Martinez School, ready to march in the opening parade. Close to the front of the line, retired language arts teacher Noreen Adams settled into the back seat of a red convertible, remembering her days as a language arts teacher at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School (BRAMS).
Beside her, drum majors Emmy Rosario and Dontae James gripped their red-and-white batons, making sure the band from Wilbur Cross High School was getting into formation. Just two days after playing in a May Day rally in downtown New Haven, the drum line looked tired—but ready. At rehearsal just a day before, drummer Iris Baden-Eversman had noted how much the group helps her connect with the wider school and New Haven communities.
As she pedaled to the front of the line, Jessica Soto held onto that excitement, handing out neon-colored noisemakers and Mardi Gras beads in full clown makeup, checkered pants and a tall, floppy red top hat and matching red nose. The director of programming at the Mary Wade Home, Soto called participating in the parade a no-brainer. “It’s a meaningful event for the community,” she said.
Top: Noreen Adams, Miss Senior World Connecticut. Bottom: NHPS Crossing Guards, who chanted "We cross our kids and keep them safe!"
Before long, she was trailing a flat bed truck on James Street, people jamming to Big Pun’s “100%” as people waved from the top of the truck. Among them, Johanelyz Arroyo and Sophia Olivia Quiñones—or as they are known lately, Miss Puerto Rico and Junior Miss Puerto Rico of Greater New Haven—cupped their palms ever so slightly, beaming beneath their glittering crowns. Nearby, Junior Miss Connecticut Alianys Ayala extended a hand and waved excitedly.
As an eighth grader at L.W. Beecher Museum Magnet School of Arts and Sciences, “this feels amazing,” she said of Fair Haven Day. “I love it here.”
On the sidewalk below, the sense that it was a party fully extended to the street. As Cross' horns and woodwinds picked up Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” artists Silvia López Chavez and Mario Ramirez put down their brushes, pulled out their phones, and began to record the action. Hired to paint a mural at Fair Haven Community Health Care as it expands into the neighborhood, the two had arrived Friday, eager to get started on the work. The parade was one of the first things they heard about.
By Friday night, they were looking forward to it while working on the wall, jamming out to music on a speaker a few guys had set up nearby. Ramirez, who hails from San Juan, said he loved how animated the community was. “It feels like home,” added López Chavez, who is Dominican and currently lives in Boston.
Top: Artists Silvia López Chavez and Mario Ramirez. Bottom: The band from Ross Woodward Classical Studies Magnet School.
All around them, the day already had that effect, a claim to fame that the neighborhood may have even on regular mornings. In the span of just over a mile, Grand Avenue has become a self-sustaining, polyphonic and immigrant-run small business corridor, where Mexican bakeries and food trucks slinging flour tortillas share space with beloved Peruvian spots, stores for quinceañera dresses and votive candles, Puerto Rican and Dominican barbershops, a salon just for curly hair and at least one farm-to-table restaurant with a veggie burrito good enough to write home about.
As marchers reached Fair Haven School, welcomed by a fleet of volunteers in matching red t-shirts, the day bloomed into action all around them. On stage, emcee Ciara “CeCe” Vasquez introduced Proyecto Cimarrón, a Bomba group that has grown steadily since its full-throated, activist-kissed beginnings in early 2022. At the mic, Carlos Cruz jumped right into performance, the sound of drums and cuá swelling behind him. Across the stage, dancers Naomy and Natasha Velez listened carefully, feet already moving, before lifting their skirts, gesturing to the drummers, and joining in.
“This is the oldest music in history,” Naomy later said, nodding to Bomba’s West African roots, and the words seemed to echo over the stage for the remainder of the day. In the art form is a centuries-old history of resistance: Bomba was for years used as a form of communication between enslaved people in Puerto Rico. On stage, Proyecto members made space for that history, letting the rhythms bridge the distance between New Haven and Puerto Rico.
Proyecto Cimarrón takes the stage. Bottom: Sisters Natasha and Naomy Velez.
“It feels great,” Natasha Velez said afterwards, noting that it’s just one of the ways she and Naomy do cultural preservation work through the arts. The two, who are also healthcare workers, teach Bomba with Latinos for Educational Advocacy (LEAD) in New Haven and Plena in Hartford. “Honestly, it really inspires us to do more in the community.”
When she dances, “I feel liberated, because I let everything out when the drum beats,” she added.
As they cleared the stage, making space for an afternoon of dance, song, and multi-generational music making, organizers appeared, a sea of red and yellow shirts that together captured the diversity of the neighborhood. With Mary Wade staff, they announced the Outstanding Community Leadership Award, which this year recognized Fair Haven Community Health Care CEO Dr. Suzanne Lagarde.
In years past, it has gone to Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller and now-Alder Redente (when he received the award in 2023, he had not yet won his current seat).
Top: Fair Haven Community Health Care CEO Dr. Suzanne Lagarde with Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller and organizing team members. Bottom: Puerto Ricans United President Joe Rodriguez with Johanelyz Arroyo and Sophia Olivia Quiñones.
With a smile, she acknowledged that she had thought something may have been afoot when her family marched alongside her in the parade. But she had never imagined that it would be a recognition from the neighborhood that she serves.
“All I can say is it’s very special to me,” she said.
As musician Tere Luna and members of Music Haven prepared to take the stage, a whole other universe unfolded in the school’s parking lot, where community care meant everything from bookjoy to arts and crafts to social service providers and free blood pressure screenings.
Top: Tere Luna. Bottom: George and Tywanna Aseme, and art student Rachel Greco.
At a table for Ikenga Gallery—once on College Street, and now itinerant in its practice—longtime Fair Haveners George and Tywanna Aseme said they were thrilled to be part of the festival.
The two, who are partners in both life and work, love Fair Haven: they got to know Exchange Street after moving there two decades ago, and raised their daughter in the neighborhood branch library. For years, they used to be part of a block party nearby. So when the festival started up in 2023, participating felt natural.
“Art is part of education,” said Tywanna, who added that she is still close with artist Tracy Massey, from their time together as neighbors in Fair Haven. “It enriches the mind, it gives the kids imagination. Art is everything. Everything is art.”
At a booth nearby for ARTE, Inc., co-founder David Greco agreed as he directed Dontae James to an apprenticeship activity in one sentence, and praised the festival in the next. For him, there's never a bad time to celebrate Fair Haven, and he was excited to help plan the day. He added that there's an added weight this year, when the diversity and cultural richness of such communities is under attack.
With a flicker of a smile, he added that Fair Haven Day is finally hitting its stride—which perhaps means it's time for its youngest organizers to take over.
“I love it,” he said. “I think it’s a great event for the community and it brings out our families. We need this right now.”
Watch more from the parade on the Arts Council's Instagram or click on the video above.