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If you live, work, or simply just care about Milford and Orange, this is the site for you. We'll provide you with interesting news about these communities. Most importantly we want to hear from you. Feel free to contact City Editor Helen Bennett Harvey, at hbennettharvey@nhregister.com or Brian McCready, Milford Bureau Chief, at bmccready@nhregister.com

Monday, February 13, 2012

New Haven Register Milford Community Forum this Wednesday!!

By Angela Carter, Community Engagement Editor
acarter@nhregister.com / Twitter: @reachangi

In December, the New Haven Register introduced a voter-focused election project we refer to as “Citizens Agenda.”

The Register, along with its sister papers in other parts of Connecticut, the Middletown Press, Register Citizen in Torrington and Litchfield County Times, has been polling readers about the issues that matter most to you, so we can have candidates in Senate and congressional races address them during the 2012 election cycle.

On Friday, my colleague Ed Stannard — also a community engagement editor for the Register — and I went to The Grove and attended a meeting of the New Haven Votes Coalition, a diverse group working on voter education, registration and overall voter participation in the nation’s democratic electoral process.

As we join with voters to determine the top issues we will cover, other alliances are developing along the way. The League of Women Voters of Connecticut sent a representative, Jean Rabinow, to our first public forum at the New Haven Free Public Library, held Jan. 25.

The next one will be 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Margaret Egan Center, 35 Matthew St., Milford.

We look forward to the league’s continued involvement and, now, the participation of New Haven Votes Coalition as well.

But we also will be lending our resources in ways we had not anticipated when Citizens Agenda began. The coalition brought our attention to additional ways we jointly can reach disenfranchised communities and how the Register can lend its resources to spreading the word about voter eligibility and other matters, as well as upcoming activities designed to encourage registration and voting during party primaries and on Election Day.

As much as we designed Citizens Agenda to be a public service, we are being helped in this project by our audience and civic groups such as the League of Women Voters and New Haven Votes Coalition.

We thank all of you and invite you to our next forum to continue our discussion about your concerns. Poll respondents have identified the economy as the most important issue to date, followed by the unemployment rate, taxation, national debt, health care and financial industry/banking reform. Those attending our New Haven forum raised concerns about corporate influence in politics, the media’s neglect of lesser-known candidates and the platforms of smaller parties, such as the Green Party and Libertarians, and how the government will redirect resources previously committed to the war in Iraq.

Thanks to a member of New Haven Votes, we now have contact information for the Working Families Party. Continued...

We hope you will chime in by taking our poll, attending the forum Wednesday, commenting on our blog and by all means, come Nov. 6, 2012 — get out and vote!

You may also send questions and ideas to Ed and me at nhrvoices@nhregister.com.

Call Angela Carter at 203-789-5752 or follow her on Twitter @Reach Angi. To receive breaking news first, text the word NHNEWS to 22700. *Msg+data rates may apply. Text HELP for help. Text STOP to cancel.

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