Noah Daponte-Smith
Staff Columnist
Author Archive
DAPONTE-SMITH & SCHICK: No more snow days

To peruse the News’ archives is to enter another world. Consider the following quotations: “It is important to recognize that education is not merely a […]

DAPONTE-SMITH: State of perpetual crisis

Gov. Dannel Malloy must hate the month of February. It’s in this shortest and bleakest of months that our governor makes the short walk from […]

DAPONTE-SMITH: The Corbyn trap

The Democratic Party cannot consign itself to the footnotes of politics. It cannot succumb to the temptation that Corbyn’s Labour has — that of a self-indulgent irrelevance, satisfied with being in opposition forever, having so much fun protesting the oppressors that it can’t be bothered to consider what it means to rule.

DAPONTE-SMITH: Against early voting

This election has tested our democracy unlike any other in recent memory. You’d have to look back to the convention walkouts of 1860 to find a presidential election that has so directly cut to the questions at the core of democracy — those fundamental principles which render our republican system legitimate.

Katherine Xiu
DAPONTE-SMITH: Fractured media

The events of the last year have diminished my faith in the future of the American nation and, in turn, the future of the American republic. Within our lifetimes, I believe, our country will no longer exist in its current form — not after a second Fort Sumter, but through a long, gradual process of coming apart, as the institutions that once held the nation together either take sides or just disintegrate into nothingness.

DAPONTE-SMITH: The Flight 93 abstention

Let the collapse run its course; let the people realize what they have lost. Only then, we may begin to rebuild.

DAPONTE-SMITH: A civic renewal?

New Haven is in crisis. No, not a financial crisis: Those, their peril having vexed the city for years, have been mercifully dispelled. So too […]

Disputes wrangle state Independent Party

When Connecticut voters go to the polls in November to decide if Sen. Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 should serve a second term in Washington, they will see all the familiar labels on the ballot: Democratic, Republican, Working Families.

Board of Alders takes representation online

The Board of Alders kicked off a new legislative season Monday night, as the aldermanic leadership announced the creation of an online survey to help determine the board’s legislative agenda for the next two years.

Proposed Metro-North fare hikes provoke outcry

Thousands of commuters depend on Metro-North to get them to and from Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan each day. That trip, though, may be about to get a lot costlier.

CT prison population drops below 15,000

Gov. Dannel Malloy’s efforts to place criminal justice reform at the forefront of his domestic agenda have begun to pay off, as he announced last week that Connecticut’s prison population briefly dropped below 15,000 — where it now hovers — for the first time in nearly two decades.