Justin Farmer is running in the Democratic primary for Connecticut's 17th State Senate district on August 11th against Jorge Cabrera. Farmer discussed his upbringing, moving frequently between different neighborhoods in New Haven as a child due to gentrification and financial difficulties. He also talked about discovering he had Tourette's syndrome in high school and having to advocate for himself to get accommodations. Farmer then discussed his path to politics, being inspired to run for office after the 2016 election. He currently serves on the Hamden Legislative Council and advocates for educational reform as an activist elected official.

1. 1
An interview with
Justin Farmer
Connecticut’s 17th State Senate district primary will take place on August 11th. Justin Farmer will
face Democrat Jorge Cabrera in the hopes of advancing to the general election on November 3rd.
Interview by Henry Jacob, SY '21
Transcribed by Grace Blaxill, PC '22
The
1701
Project
Candidate for Connecticut's 17th State Senate District
YHR
SPECIAL
ISSUE

2. EMMA PLATOFF
2
JUSTIN FARMER
2
July 27, 2020
YHR: Today I will speak with Justin Farmer, Ham-
den Legislative Councilman and Connecticut
State Senate hopeful. Justin joins me to discuss
his path to politics and to share his reflections
on our historical moment. Justin is finishing his
undergraduate studies on politics and marine
biology at Southern Connecticut State Univer-
sity. It's a pleasure to have you here, Mr. Farmer.
Justin Farmer: Thank you for the kind introduc-
tion and for providing this space to share my
perspective.
YHR: Let’s start with you, your personal history.
You have family ties to Jamaica, but you grew
up right around the corner. Please elaborate a bit
on your upbringing.
JF: Few people know this about me — I didn't
know this about myself until a few months ago
— but my family has moved all around New Ha-
ven. When I was born, my family moved to East
Rock. At first, we could afford to live there. The
next year, gentrification came and the prices
jumped.
We were pushed out of the East Rock
community; often I think about what would
have been different if we had stayed, if I grew up
in that environment. So we moved to Newhall-
ville. I often read headlines like “Pistol Wavin’
New Haven” where they had 25 shootings in a
three week period. And 11 of those were in my
immediate community of Newhallville.
I saw needles, I saw addicts. I found gun
shells in the street when playing as a kid. I did
not recognize the gravity of this situation then,
but as I became older, I thought, “Wow, there's
a stark juxtaposition between my lived reality
now and what my community looked like 10-15
years ago.” 10-15 years is a long time, but I'm only
25. Everything was different before...
I grew up as the youngest of five, techni-
cally the youngest of nine. The youngest older
brother I have is 11 years older than I. In many
ways my family had the “Coming to America”
experience. Because I was born after we came to
the U.S. I felt like an outsider. I thought to myself,
“I'm an immigrant, but I'm also not. I was born
here, but the English we speak in the house is
different, the food that we eat is different, the
culture is different. I am part of this American
experience, but I'm also not.”
Anecdotally, I remember counting, “one
two ‘tree’” instead of “three.” I told my friends,
“No, no, no, I’m the same as everyone, we have
the same experience!” But I also recognized that
something was different. They told me, “Bro.
You can't say “three.” Same with “zero” -- I told
them, “No, it’s zed!”
My home was built on a toxic waste
dump. We moved into Hamden when I was
about four or five. The house I lived in for the
first couple of years was across the street from
where we are now. My childhood home, that I
see and know, actually sunk into the ground and
now is an empty lot across the street wedged be-
tween two
factories.
The Winchester gun factories were
there before they left during the late 1970s. A sta-
ple of the black community, Winchester was the
largest employer mostly of immigrants and the
African American community, Italian commu-
nity, Irish community, where people had good-
paying union jobs with healthcare and pensions.
Now we only have the remnants of this indus-
trial area.
I started at Spring Glen, a homoge-
neously white, affluent school. When I go to the
PTA now, I joke that I'm a proud Black Panther,
a proud Black, Spring Glen Panther. There are a
few Black panthers at Spring Glen, and I am one
of them.
Since elementary school, I wanted to be
a marine biologist. In fifth grade, we did a Black
History Month project. I did mine on the ocean-
ographer Evan B. Forde. I thought, “that's kind of
cool, but why would you go out onto the ocean
and just look at waves all day? That sounds kind
of boring.” I thought it would be better to play
with animals. From that point on, I wanted to be
a marine biologist; but the experience of advo-
cating for myself by myself changed my plans.
Then I went to Hamden Middle and en-
joyed some great experiences there. But I strug-
gled a bit during my first couple years in high

3. THE 1701 PROJECT
school. My junior year, I realized something was
wrong with me. I discovered that besides special
education, besides needing extra help, I was dif-
ferent.
For this reason, I read the DSM4 when
I worked at my town’s special education depart-
ment during the summer. I also took some old
Disability Advocacy law books that they threw
out. I wanted to read these, to know more about
my rights. I soon thought that I had OCD, but I
skipped anorexia, bulimia, and
Tourette's at the time. I under-
stood Tourette's to be cursing, and
I thought “I don't, I don't say inap-
propriate things,” so, which actual-
ly ended up being the main prob-
lem, because I have Tourette’s.
I confronted this real-
ity during my junior year. I had
serious seizures — an ambulance
would have to be called — when-
ever a fire alarm went off. I didn't really know
what was going on. I'd feel jittery, but I didn't
know what was wrong. After enough fire alarms,
I put on noise-cancelling headphones. Instead
of struggling through the day I decided, “I’m just
going to leave my headphones on."
I still battled with my school to get re-
sources. I needed a $2,000-word processor, but
they didn't want to spend money on it. My se-
nior year, I ended up doing homebound school-
ing for two or three months. I called 20 teachers
every day to say, “Hey, I need access to get my
education. I want to go on with my life, I want to
go to college. I need you to help me be prepared.”
But I had to prepare myself. I called the
State of Connecticut Disability and Advocacy
Office, and I got an advocate and a lawyer. The
school didn't take my case yet, but we went over
to this PPT, a school meeting for my education.
Because I was 18 at the time, I was in charge of
my own education and my life. My mom was
there, but I handled all of the decisions.
Hamden High School forced me to be-
come my own spokesperson. Without notice,
the authorities told me that this was my last day
of school, no ifs, ands, or buts. But I didn’t want
to just take the bus home: I told them, “I am the
steward of my own education. I am going to my
classes. If you don't like that, we both know that
y'all are liable if anything happens to me. So you
have two choices. I will go to class. Pack up my
stuff, say goodbye to my friends, say goodbye to
my teachers, peace out. We'll revisit this, which
is probably what we should do. Or you can get
me a taxi or get me a bus here and I can go home.
Those are your choices. Mind you, I’m about 17
or 18, so they just looked at me and said “what?”
One last time, I told the principal, vice principal,
staff, these are your choices. I said
“I know you're liable” and then left
the room.
From there I went to my class.
They called security. They called
the police. Police handcuffed me.
They put me in the back of a squad
car. I had a seizure. That experi-
ence taught me that I couldn't be
selfish and just care about marine
biology and the environment.
After that experience, I got more in-
volved in politics. But first I had to figure out
myself in college. I joined many groups and
clubs at SCSU and in New Haven.
Soon enough, I went from a community
member to an activist. In 2016, a professor told
me, “if you’re studying political science, then
you should probably work on a campaign.” I said,
“hmm, that's not for me.” But then he offered
the alternative of taking a Research Methods
class and writing a 20-page paper. It took me no
time to respond: “I love campaigns. Campaigns
are the best. Let me join a campaign right now!”
I ended up working in Milford, Woodbridge, and
Orange. I soon gained a newfound passion for
organizing. My current campaign manager, who
is also on city council with me, suggested that I
run for office. I was hesitant at first because of
my recent health issues.
Then the 2016 election happened. After
working on the polls on Election Day I got home
and jumped into bed around four o'clock. Before
closing my eyes, I heard my phone buzzing vio-
lently — either Hillary or Trump won. It just kept
going, going, going, and I knew that she lost.
Within that week, I decided to run for
office. I told people, “We keep talking about rac-
ism and Trump and what he's done. But we’re
3
“I'M JUST
GOING TO
LEAVE MY
HEADPHONES
ON
”

4. EMMA PLATOFF
4
not talking about institutional racism. We’re not
talking about how we, on the left, have not talk-
ed about issues.” So I ran my campaign by push-
ing the liberal agenda.
I also pushed myself to meet my future
constituents. I knocked on doors for seven to
nine hours a day, for three months. I turned 23
the month before the election, and then I won
by 23 votes. Since then, I've been on the city
council as an activist elected official.
Educational reform has been central
to me. We are redistricting the schools for the
first time in 20 years. The former policy was in-
herently racist. I thought to myself, “Maybe we
aren’t the cause of this disparity, but we perpetu-
ate the gap by not speaking about it.” And now
from the administrative side, I understand the
difficulties of resource allocation. We have a $10
million Board of Education deficit in New Ha-
ven. When you don't have the funds to properly
educate kids, then you have to pick and choose
who will fail and succeed. If I were betting on
myself, if you would have told me that at 25 I'd be
an incumbent elected official running for Sen-
ate, I would have said you’ve lost your mind. And
that was what, seven, eight years ago?
I represent the richest and the poorest
people in town. Three weeks before I was first
elected and sworn in, a young man was killed
three blocks from my house. Shot in broad day-
light. Two weeks before I was re-sworn in, after
reelection back in November, a man was killed
two blocks from my house. And then I also have
community members who pay $40,000-50,000
a year in taxes, and I live amongst a commu-
nity where the majority don't make more than
$40,000 a year as collective families. I’ll stop
there.
YHR: I'm glad you are talking freely, getting a bit
Proustian, because I'm learning more and more
about you and starting to see why you excite so
many people.
You mentioned the word difference in
various contexts. Your family is from Jamaica
but lived the “Coming to America” experience.
You felt different because you counted zed in-
stead of zero, tree instead of three. Then your
family moved from East Rock to Newhallville.
You could see the detritus — literal and meta-
phorical — left from stages of capital extraction
in your community. You witnessed the naked
inequity of environmental waste and land dis-
tribution. You watched your old house sink into
the ground. You experienced the difference be-
tween the Hamden and New Haven borders. As
one of the few black Spring Glen panthers you
did not come from the same background as
many of your classmates. In your junior year
of high school, you discovered that you were
different from your peers in another way, with
your diagnosis of Tourette’s.
But your story is not just one of differ-
ence. You have navigated beyond these dualities
to forge your own identity as an activist elected
official. In fact, I see in you the trait of a great
politician — the ability to unite across divisions.
I want to shift to the theme of connect-
ing in physical and not symbolic terms. I know
that you choose the bike as your form of trans-
portation. I can imagine you now riding around
in a suit. It’s a perfect image for you as an orga-
nizer.
JF: Pre-COVID-19, I probably biked anywhere
from 18 to 20 miles a day. In addition, I would
take buses, Uber, rideshare. The other day I went
to an event, and a stranger tapped me on the
shoulder and said, “Dude! I know you! You're
running for Senate! You probably don't know
me, but I gave you an Uber ride three months
ago.” I’ve realized that transportation ties me to
the community in a different way.
To your point, now thinking with more
of a political mindset, we see candidates out-
side of the norm like AOC, Ayanna Pressley, and
Charlie Booker emerge on the national stage. I
am an activist, so I go to rallies at every commu-
nity. Pick an issue. Reproductive, environment,
policing, housing, immigration — I talk about all
of them.
The police shooting in Hamden last
year radicalized me beyond everything else. This
event reminded me that I have to fight for my
community. As a black official, my own police
department has profiled me. Probably within
the last two and a half years I've been elected,
police officers have stopped me twenty-three
4
JUSTIN FARMER

5. 5
THE 1701 PROJECT
times for jaywalking. I don't drink. I don't smoke.
I don't drive. It's a very awkward situation. I al-
ways tell the police, “One, I have nothing on me
and I'm not afraid. Two, I'm going to shake your
hand and give you my business card.”
Paul Witherspoon's mom is my constitu-
ent — she lives maybe two and a half blocks from
my house — so this was different for me. I had
spoken to her for maybe 20 minutes a year be-
fore, asking, pleading for support in a primary.
I was in the government, but also outside it as
an activist. But up until a couple of weeks ago,
it wasn't the norm to say like you’re an activist
elected official, it wasn't the norm to say that we
demonstrably need to change public safety in
our country.
We're fighting not only to be seen and
to be heard in our government, but also for sur-
vival. Someone like AOC might be daunting to
someone, someone like Bernie Sanders might
be daunting to someone, but then I look at na-
tional politics and think, “Cool, the three most
popular people are more or less populist.” We
had Bernie Sanders, who is not a Democrat, not
a Republican, but really an independent. Social-
ist-leaning, but really an independent, and who
has been consistent with that for 20 years. You
have Elizabeth Warren, who was a Republican,
who realized, “Oh, I was kind of wrong about my
notions about poverty.” And then you have Don-
ald Trump, who has just been a cult personality
and spoken to people's concerns and fears and
just echoed it back to them. I don't know where I
was going with that rift, but all that to say: this is
a time of change.
YHR: I followed your rift and all of its contours:
it was brilliant. You redefine the political bound-
aries. You extend the traditional liberal agenda
because they concern you in a deeply personal
way. Redistricting, schooling, shootings, and
housing all relate to your “lived experience.” You
encountered these difficulties years ago as a citi-
zen and must do so again as a councilman.
JF: We need to regionalize Connecticut political
boundaries. We have 155 municipalities all try-
ing to do it differently even though we share the
same needs. We compete for the same resourc-
es, which leaves some with too much and others
with too little. New Haven, West Haven, East Ha-
ven, heck, they all share Haven. They could have
a few representatives for the whole community.
For instance, I'm running for the 17th
Senate district. There are seven municipalities
in that. Five consider themselves towns, one
considers itself a city, and one considers itself a
borough. Most of that is Naugatuck Valley.
These conversations about identity are
pivotal because they reveal what brings us to-
gether and what divides us. Every single state
has had a demonstration around George Floyd’s
murder, his lynching. This issue has persisted
for decades, from Rodney King before we were
born, to Tamir Rice. Tamir Rice’s mother is a con-
gresswoman now. She is a congresswoman, and
yet we still need these conversations.
And that's not just us, you can have that
conversation about the Sioux Nation and Dakota
Access Pipeline, you can have that conversation
about the school decision today around repro-
ductive rights, you can have that conversation
about DACA, or how up until last week it was
legal to fire someone because of their sexual at-
traction.
This time, there's a conversation about
how effective our government is, and I am young
enough where I don't necessarily believe we can
dismantle the master's house with the masters'
tools.
The majority of the staff and people on
the team are younger than I. The oldest person
is 42. Our campaign raised the most amount of
money in the state for this election cycle, the av-
erage contribution being $24. There is a hunger
for change, and I think both parties have to fig-
ure out what that means.
YHR: Necessity for connection. Let’s dwell on
that idea for a moment. You have knocked on
doors for hours and hours. You've been trying
to, and hopefully will continue to, bridge these
communities.
As your comments show, this is not just
a question of current politics and the current
shootings, but of an institution. Do you have any
final reflections on how we can address these
entrenched issues? How can we teach older sec-

6. EMMA PLATOFF
6
JUSTIN FARMER
6
tions of society, ourselves, and the younger gen-
eration? How can our audience keep in touch
with this historical moment and be ready for the
coming change?
JF: Dope. I’ll just shamefully plug
Justin for CT, justinforct.com or
Insta, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter,
heck you can hit us up at Gmail.
All the same tagline, Justin for CT.
People Against Police Brutality,
Black Lives Matter New Haven, and
the CT Bail Fund have all done a
ton of great work.
I've been rereading Invis-
ible Man by Ralph Ellison, which is a critique of
leftist movements, about being black in those
spaces. Every time I read it, I think, “How did
you write a book about my life like before I was
born?” Sister Outsider and People's History of
the United States are two other great resources.
Ta-Nehisi Coates and other scholars have also
contributed to this conversation. You can even
go back to Jane Jacobs and look at how commu-
nities are developed. A place like East Rock was
meant to offer mixed housing instead of gentrifi-
cation. We are in a unique position where it's not
a lack of access to resources to talk about things
and how they work. Before enacting change, we
have to admit that things are wrong.
A lot of people just want to have hope.
People will often quote King with the “arc of jus-
tice,” that it always bends towards the right, but
there's also such a thing as passive peace. We've
had passive peace. We have this idea that time
is neutral and all these things. Time is not neu-
tral. Climate change is real. We have a limited
amount of time. Racial tension and violence
have bubbled in this country, to the point where
we cannot just wait on the wheels of eventual-
ity to get here. We actually need to get there. I
would say one of my favorite readings by King
is “Negroes are not moving too fast.” Back in
1964, he talks about police brutality, the police,
and frustration with white liberals and conser-
vatives. Tactics lie beyond the point: we need to
confront the issues now.
I want to have hope too but sometimes
I have no reason to be optimistic: Amazon had
to be shamed into helping in a time of coronavi-
rus and putting thousands of workers at risk. We
have to be uncomfortable to move
forward with these difficult con-
versations — that is the only way
that we will see change.
Right now, we are on the verge
of a revolution. I don't say that
lightly. If you do not see this mo-
ment as a revolutionary one, you
are not awake and not paying at-
tention. I'd like to end with this: I
try to create safe spaces all around.
We all have to nurture the environment that we
want to see. This is not about politics but about
humanity. If COVID-19 has taught us anything,
it’s that we cannot continue with the system we
have. We are all essential.
YHR: That provides us a perfect ending. Now
is a time for humanity, not for passive peace.
Change is coming and we need to be together.
It’s been a pleasure to meet you, and
best of luck with the coming election.
JF: August 11th!
“
RIGHT NOW,
WE ARE ON
THE VERGE OF
A REVOLUTION
”