The FLYNN Project: Fair Haven Matters

06/17/2026

05/11/2026

In memory of my wife's mother we are dedicating the June 6th Chatham Square Park 9am-12pm clean up and bring awareness to

05/01/2026

🚨FAIR HAVEN COMMUNITY UNITES FOR “FAIR HAVEN DAY”🚨‼️Share‼️Share‼️

Neighborhood Parade, Festival & Wrestling Show – Saturday, May 2, 2025

New Haven, CT – May 1, 2026 — JUNTA for Progressive Action and the Fair Haven community invite you to an extraordinary neighborhood celebration on Saturday, May 2, featuring a vibrant community parade, free neighborhood festival, and exciting wrestling show: the fourth annual re-imagined Fair Have Day.

More than 800 parade participants, including school bands, community organizations, youth groups, and popular characters, will march down Grand Avenue to kick off the celebration. A full day of festivities follows on the grounds of Fair Haven School, offering live music, multicultural dance, local food and craft vendors, sports clinics, and family-friendly activities for all ages. Over 90 resource tables will offer information on healthcare, youth programs, voter registration, job training, social services, and more.

“Fair Haven Day embodies the spirit of community and unity,” said Kiana Cintron, Youth Leader & Project Manager at JUNTA. “It’s a testament to our shared values, diverse cultures, and support for one another. Join us as we celebrate our past, embrace our present, and shape our future together!”

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Parade

Where: Martinez School, 100 James Street
Lineup: 9:30 a.m. | Step-Off: 11:00 a.m.
Route: James Street → Grand Avenue → Fair Haven School

Festival

Where: Fair Haven School Grounds, 164 Grand Avenue
Time: 12:00–5:00 p.m.
Includes: Live music, food, vendors, performances, and activities.

🔴 Elm City Wrestling Show

Where: Fair Haven School Gymnasium
Time: 6:00–9:00 p.m. (Doors open at 5:00 p.m.)

05/01/2026

Fair Haven community join me in showing local parks sum love

04/27/2026

Going to keep showing love to my volunteers that came out to support the inaugural Earth Day celebration event Hosted by The Flynn Project Fair Haven Matters and sponsored by Freedom Reads 🤲

04/27/2026

Thanks to all the volunteers that came out & made The Flynn Project Fair Haven Matters Earth Day event an awesome event. We really cleaned the Dover Beach Park - great job everyone 🤲🤲🤲

04/23/2026

Weird but true to his BELIEFS AND FAMILY 🤲

Dwayne was born in 1980. Maryland. His dad wasn't around. Had been to prison himself. Mom raised him alone.
Smart kid. Real smart. Read everything. Honor student. Class treasurer. Gifted programs his whole life. Going to be an engineer. Good grades. Bright future.
December 6, 1996. Friday night. Dwayne was 16. Got in a car with some boys. Couple friends. Couple he barely knew. They were high. Wanted money. Drove to Springfield Mall. Virginia.
Driver handed Dwayne a gun. First time he ever held one. Ever. Told him go get the keys.
Dwayne walked up to a green Pontiac. Man asleep inside. Tapped the window with the gun. Demanded keys. Demanded wallet. Got maybe 10 dollars. Drove off in the man's car.
Cops caught him next day. First time ever in trouble. Ever.
Prosecutors charged him as an adult. He was 16. Too young to understand what was happening.
Court sentenced him to 9 years. Adult prison. Max security. A kid walking into rooms full of grown men who killed people.
Prison terrified him. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't breathe. Just a scared kid surrounded by violence.
Then they put him in solitary. Small cell. Alone. 23 hours a day. Fourteen months straight. Guards took his mattress every morning. Couldn't sleep during the day.
Men around him went crazy. Some strapped to beds. Some talked to walls all day. Dwayne felt himself disappearing too.
Then one night something came under his door. A book. Someone slid it to him. Didn't know who. Prisoners passed books that way. Shared what they had.
The book was called The Black Poets. Poetry collection. Dwayne opened it. Started reading.
Robert Hayden. Sonia Sanchez. Lucille Clifton. Poems about Black life. About pain. About love. About being a person the world didn't see.
Dwayne read all night. Something happened in him. Right there in that cell. He decided: I'm going to be a poet. Didn't know how. Didn't matter.
Inmates gave him a new name. Shahid. Means witness in Arabic. Because that's what poets do. They witness.
He started reading everything. Smuggled books. Borrowed books. Read Malcolm X. Read everything he could get.
Then he started writing. Poetry. Essays. Stories. About prison. About the men. About the silence. Pages every day.
Finished high school inside. Got his GED. Kept reading. Kept writing. Became a different person than the boy who walked in.
March 4, 2005. Dwayne got out. Served over 8 years. He was 24. Went in a boy. Came out a man.
Outside was hard. Nobody wanted to hire a felon. Finally got a job at Karibu Books. Black owned bookstore. Maryland. Stocking shelves. Around books all day.
They made him manager. He started a book club for Black boys. Teaching them what saved him. Books could open everything.
Started college. Community college first. Then University of Maryland. Graduated 2009. His first book came out same year. A Question of Freedom. Memoir about prison. Won the NAACP Image Award.
2010 his first poetry book came out. Shahid Reads His Own Palm. Named after his prison name. Won the Beatrice Hawley Award.
Kept going. Warren Wilson College. Got his MFA. Became a teacher. Taught poetry in Washington DC. Visited juvenile detention centers. Read poems to locked up kids.
2012 President Obama put him on the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice. Kid who'd been locked up at 16 now advising the White House on locked up kids.
Then Yale Law School accepted him. 2013. The guy with the felony record. Yale said yes.
Graduated 2016. JD from Yale Law. Connecticut bar denied him at first. Said he had to prove good moral character. Because of the carjacking. From when he was 16. Twenty years earlier.
He fought for it. Wrote briefs. Made his case. Connecticut finally admitted him 2017. Became a real lawyer. His mom watched.
2015 he published Bastards of the Reagan Era. Poetry about his generation. Black men lost to drugs and prison. Critics loved it.
2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. One of the biggest awards a poet can get. Also got a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Same year.
2019 he published Felon. Poems about life after prison. Won the American Book Award. NAACP Image Award. Turned it into a one man stage show. Performed at theaters across the country.
2020 Mellon Foundation gave him 5.25 million dollars. To start something new. Freedom Reads. Nonprofit. Mission: put libraries inside prison cellblocks. Not the locked library down the hall. Right where people sleep.
Beautiful handcrafted bookshelves. Maple. Walnut. Cherry. Curved shelves. 500 books in each one. Books he picked himself. Toni Morrison. Homer. Frederick Douglass. Poetry. Fiction. History.
First library opened November 2021. Massachusetts. Inside a cell believed to have held Malcolm X in the 1940s. Right in the housing unit. Open access. No permission needed.
September 2021 the MacArthur Foundation called. Genius Grant. 625 thousand dollars. No strings. Kid who went to prison at 16 became official American genius.
Then Freedom Reads exploded. More libraries. More states. More prisons. Virginia where he did his time. New York. Maryland. Louisiana. Massachusetts.
Today Freedom Reads has opened 520 libraries. 52 prisons. 13 states. Books for thousands of locked up people. Dwayne wants a library in every cellblock in America.
Princeton partnered with him. Harvard made him a visiting lecturer. Yale kept him as a Research Scholar. Every major fellowship. Every major award.
2025 he published Doggerel. His fifth poetry book. March 4, 2025. Exactly 20 years after he walked out of prison.
Think about what Dwayne did. Honor student kid. 16 years old. Never been in trouble. Got in a car with some boys. Held a gun for the first time. Robbed a sleeping man for 10 dollars. Didn't think. Just did it.
Got tried as an adult. Sentenced 9 years. Sent to max prison at 16. Fourteen months in solitary. Mattress taken every morning. Men losing their minds around him. Losing his own mind too.
Someone slid a poetry book under his door. Changed his life. Decided right there in solitary: I'll be a poet. Started reading. Started writing. Took the name Shahid. Witness.
Got out at 24. Worked at a bookstore. Went to community college. University of Maryland. Warren Wilson. Yale Law School. Became a lawyer.
Wrote a memoir. Four poetry books. Won American Book Award. NAACP Image Award. Guggenheim. MacArthur Genius Grant. Advised President Obama.
Then started Freedom Reads. 5.25 million dollar grant. Builds beautiful libraries. Puts them inside prisons. 520 libraries built. 52 prisons. 13 states. Thousands reading because of him.
Victim of his crime was a man asleep in his car. Lost 10 dollars. Had his car stolen. Dwayne has spent his whole life trying to make up for it. Trying to help the boys he used to be.
Dwayne is 45 now. Lives in Connecticut. Lawyer. Poet. Professor. CEO of Freedom Reads. Married. Two sons.
Still performs his one man show. Still writes poems. Still teaches at Yale and Harvard. Still visits prisons. Still reads his work to locked up kids. Tells them he was where they are now.
Every library he puts in a prison is for the 16 year old kid he was. Scared. Alone. Mattress taken away. Waiting for someone to slide a book under the door.
Carjacking kid became Yale Law graduate. Solitary confinement taught him poetry. Ex felon became MacArthur genius. Built 520 libraries for the people he left behind. Still fighting for locked up kids today.

~Weird But True

04/23/2026

Celebrating The Flynn Project's Fair Haven Matters 2nd year on Facebook. Thank you for your continuing support. I could never have made it without you. 🙏🤗🎉