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MacArthur Foundation "Geniuses" Have Connecticut Ties

The MacArthur Foundation named the 2014 class of MacArthur Fellows, commonly referred to as the “genius grants.” This year’s class of 21 Fellows announced Wednesday includes New Haven native Ai-Jen Poo. Also winning a grant is Mary Bonauto, who served as co-counsel in the case that brought marriage equality to Connecticut in 2009.

In a statement, the MacArthur Foundation credits Ai-Jen Poo with "catalyzing a grassroots, worker-led movement for better conditions and protections for in-home workers (i.e. nannies, housekeepers, caregivers for the elderly and disabled), an industry dominated by women."

"It's long hours and then it's low wages," Poo said in a video provided by the Foundation. "There [are] wonderful employers who want to do the right thing and we've just not established what that is."

Poo graduated in 1989 from the Foote School, a private institution in New Haven.

Also winning a grant was civil rights lawyer Mary Bonauto, who was co-counsel in the 2008 Connecticut Supreme Court case Kerrigan v. Department of Public Health, which ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry was unconstitutional.

Earlier this year, Massachusetts marked the ten-year anniversary of legalizing gay marriage. Bonauto was the lawyer who argued this case. NPR interviewed Bonauto about the protests that resulted from that decision.

"There were times I felt despairing, knowing the vile, vile things that people said. I just felt like this is going to be such a slog, getting to state number two was so difficult," said Bonauto. State number two was Connecticut.

There is no application process for the MacArthur Fellowship, and each recipient is given a $635,000 grant with no-strings-attached, paid out over five years. More than 900 grants have been awarded since the program started in 1981.

Tucker Ives is WNPR's morning news producer.

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