Tina Li, Contributing Photographer

At the Yale College Democrats meeting last Tuesday, city engagement fellows gave a crash course on New Haven’s political structure and history and facilitated a discussion about town-gown relations.

Keertan Venkatesh ’28, a city fellow and one of the presenters, recalled that when he asked the dozens of attendees whether they considered themselves New Haven residents, everyone silently shook their heads.

Then, he asked if they wanted their relationship with New Haven to change. The response was a unanimous yes.

Following the disappointment after President Donald Trump’s re-election, Yale College Democrats’ city engagement fellows have doubled down on their attention to local advocacy.

“When national chaos ensued after Trump became president, I turned to local action. Becoming a Dems city fellow felt like the perfect place to start,” Emma Buretta ’28 wrote to the News.

The Yale College Democrats’ city engagement branch has historically been a space for interested students to meet and work on community advocacy and volunteering. According to Buretta, there are about a dozen fellows, mostly underclassmen.

The city fellows choose local organizations whose mission they are passionate about and work with them independently over the course of a semester, their service ranging from regular volunteering to policy research. These organizations have included New Haven Reads, Haven’s Harvest and the New Haven Climate Movement.

This semester, the city engagement fellows have been working with For Cameron, a nonprofit organization that works to reduce addiction stigma in New Haven. At a recent bill hearing in the Connecticut General Assembly, they gave oral and written testimony for open safe use centers, Buretta told the News.

Local organizations often do not get the same recognition as their federal counterparts, Venkatesh said. But for City Engagement Fellow Esperance Han ’28, her work with Citizens’ Climate Lobby has felt uniquely enriching and provided mentors outside of campus gates. 

This semester, though, the city engagement fellows’ new informal initiative aims to incentivize and make city engagement more accessible for students, Venkatesh said. The efforts will be twofold: increased promotion of New Haven advocacy, such as protests and volunteer events, and enlisting students to show up together in person.

“The majority of Yale students, I believe, want their relationship with New Haven to improve, but we’re so busy and focused on careers and extracurriculars that it’s hard to allocate time and effort for that,” Han said.

This Thursday, they plan to kickstart the new initiative at the New Haven Climate Movement’s transportation resolution at the Board of Alders meeting. Resolutions are difficult to pass, Han said, without strong turnout and support.

The fellows — who plan to testify at the meeting — will be joined by members of the Yale Student Environmental Coalition.

“The signs [will be] ready for you, we’ll tell you where, when to be there. It’s like a five minute walk from Old Campus,” Venkatesh said. “Just show up so they can see the numbers in support of this resolution.”

Han and Buretta were both galvanized to join the city engagement branch of Yale College Democrats after Trump’s reelection.

Han also recalled when she was tabling at a packed organization fair at the New Haven Pride Center and was inspired by the myriad of New Haven activities — cooking events, Frisbee teams, book clubs — that she had never heard of before. She felt energized by how excited residents were about joining the groups but also shocked by how few Yale students were present.

Venkatesh felt instinctively pulled to join the city engagement fellows. He cited the stark wealth disparities he noticed between Yale and New Haven, something he found “hard to reconcile” when he first arrived on campus.

In the past, the city engagement branch has not been the most prominent in Yale College Democrats, Venkatesh said, with other branches, such as the legislative advocacy group, attracting more students.

For him and other city engagement fellows, though, now is the time to focus efforts on local change. 

“I feel like city engagement is a branch where you can impact people most directly and most intimately,” Venkatesh said. 

Yale College Democrats was founded in the late 1950s.