#WhiteLivesMatter? An Insight Into Racist Flyers

Today the ProJo featured a story about racist flyers proclaiming '#WhiteLivesMatter' that were distributed around East Greenwich on Grand View Road, Cora Street, Phillips Road and Lebaron Drive.  However, typical of the Journal, the coverage was rather shallow and childish, but a little sleuthing on Google reveals some more information about the group behind this move.
Apparently an uncoordinated campaign, the text is derived from a white supremacist website, American Renaissance, run by Jared Taylor and Henry Wolff out of Oakton, VA.  The website, admittedly a little more refined than the typical messes seen offered up by kooks, is a collection of barely-legible screeds, rants, and ruses that seem intent on proving the coming apocalypse for the white race.  Taylor, who has a career of bigotry dating back to the 1970's, is also connected to the Council of Conservative Citizens, which was claimed by Charleston shooter Dylann Roof as an inspiration for the carnage in South Carolina last week, as reported by Michelle Goldberg at The Nation.

Park Avenue Bridge Closed, Matiello Claims Conspiracy

The bridge over the railway line located on Park Avenue has been closed due to serious structural compromise.  Speaker Matiello has taken this as a sign that some conspiracy being afoot, tied to a pending toll bill making its way through the General Assembly.  He claims it is suspect that the bridge was able to pass inspection in September and now has suddenly become problematic.  What he forgot to mention was that the state went through a record-breaking winter that brought in loads of eroding snow and ice.  

Marriage Equality Rally

In anticipation of the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, a rally is being held at Roger Williams National Memorial Park at 5 pm on the day of the verdict.  At this point, it is unclear whether the verdict will be announced on Thursday (June 25th), Friday (June 26th), Monday (June 29th) or Tuesday (June 30).
The suit, Obergefell v. Hodges, is a combination of several cases that brings the marriage equality battle to the forefront because, unlike previous cases, it deals with whether it is Constitutional for states to refuse to acknowledge same-sex unions from other states.  The main plaintiff, James Obergefell, filed suit against the State of Ohio in 2013 when the Attorney General refused to acknowledge the license he and his husband, John Arthur, had obtained in Maryland.  Arthur died of ALS and the controversy erupted over whether the coroner would list Mr. Obergefell as the surviving spouse.

• Parties interested in further details can contact Katherine Monteiro at kmonteiro@cox.net

60 Year Of The Freedom Charter

In 1955, the South African Congress Alliance, a conglomeration of the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats and the Colored People's Congress, unveiled The Freedom Charter.  Created by a democratic consensus where some 50,000 volunteers went into the country to collect demands of the people, it embodied the core principles of the South African liberation movement and placed into the international arena the goal of socio-economic liberation of the people, regardless of class or race.  It said:

We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:
that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people;
that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality;
that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities;
that only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief;
And therefore, we, the people of South Africa, black and white together equals, countrymen and brothers adopt this Freedom Charter;
And we pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing neither strength nor courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.
The People Shall Govern!
Every man and woman shall have the right to vote for and to stand as a candidate for all bodies which make laws;
All people shall be entitled to take part in the administration of the country;
The rights of the people shall be the same, regardless of race, colour or sex;
All bodies of minority rule, advisory boards, councils and authorities shall be replaced by democratic organs of self-government .
All National Groups Shall have Equal Rights!
There shall be equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts and in the schools for all national groups and races;
All people shall have equal right to use their own languages, and to develop their own folk culture and customs;
All national groups shall be protected by law against insults to their race and national pride;
The preaching and practice of national, race or colour discrimination and contempt shall be a punishable crime;
All apartheid laws and practices shall be set aside.
The People Shall Share in the Country`s Wealth!
The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people;
The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole;
All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the wellbeing of the people;
All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.
The Land Shall be Shared Among Those Who Work It!
Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger;
The state shall help the peasants with implements, seed, tractors and dams to save the soil and assist the tillers;
Freedom of movement shall be guaranteed to all who work on the land;
All shall have the right to occupy land wherever they choose;
People shall not be robbed of their cattle, and forced labour and farm prisons shall be abolished.
All Shall be Equal Before the Law!
No-one shall be imprisoned, deported or restricted without a fair trial; No-one shall be condemned by the order of any Government official;
The courts shall be representative of all the people;
Imprisonment shall be only for serious crimes against the people, and shall aim at re-education, not vengeance;
The police force and army shall be open to all on an equal basis and shall be the helpers and protectors of the people;
All laws which discriminate on grounds of race, colour or belief shall be repealed.
All Shall Enjoy Equal Human Rights!
The law shall guarantee to all their right to speak, to organise, to meet together, to publish, to preach, to worship and to educate their children;
The privacy of the house from police raids shall be protected by law;
All shall be free to travel without restriction from countryside to town, from province to province, and from South Africa abroad;
Pass Laws, permits and all other laws restricting these freedoms shall be abolished.
There Shall be Work and Security!
All who work shall be free to form trade unions, to elect their officers and to make wage agreements with their employers;
The state shall recognise the right and duty of all to work, and to draw full unemployment benefits;
Men and women of all races shall receive equal pay for equal work;
There shall be a forty-hour working week, a national minimum wage, paid annual leave, and sick leave for all workers, and maternity leave on full pay for all working mothers;
Miners, domestic workers, farm workers and civil servants shall have the same rights as all others who work;
Child labour, compound labour, the tot system and contract labour shall be abolished.
The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall be Opened!
The government shall discover, develop and encourage national talent for the enhancement of our cultural life;
All the cultural treasures of mankind shall be open to all, by free exchange of books, ideas and contact with other lands;
The aim of education shall be to teach the youth to love their people and their culture, to honour human brotherhood, liberty and peace;
Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children; Higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit;
Adult illiteracy shall be ended by a mass state education plan;
Teachers shall have all the rights of other citizens;
The colour bar in cultural life, in sport and in education shall be abolished.
There Shall be Houses, Security and Comfort!
All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security;
Unused housing space to be made available to the people;
Rent and prices shall be lowered, food plentiful and no-one shall go hungry;
A preventive health scheme shall be run by the state;
Free medical care and hospitalisation shall be provided for all, with special care for mothers and young children;
Slums shall be demolished, and new suburbs built where all have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, creches and social centres;
The aged, the orphans, the disabled and the sick shall be cared for by the state;
Rest, leisure and recreation shall be the right of all:
Fenced locations and ghettoes shall be abolished, and laws which break up families shall be repealed.
There Shall be Peace and Friendship!
South Africa shall be a fully independent state which respects the rights and sovereignty of all nations;
South Africa shall strive to maintain world peace and the settlement of all international disputes by negotiation - not war;
Peace and friendship amongst all our people shall be secured by upholding the equal rights, opportunities and status of all;
The people of the protectorates Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland shall be free to decide for themselves their own future;
The right of all peoples of Africa to independence and self-government shall be recognised, and shall be the basis of close co-operation.
Let all people who love their people and their country now say, as we say here:
THESE FREEDOMS WE WILL FIGHT FOR, SIDE BY SIDE, THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES, UNTIL WE HAVE WON OUR LIBERTY

To celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the charter's unveiling, The Rhode Island People's Assembly will host a Freedom Dinner on Friday, June 26 from 6-9 pm at DARE-Direct Action for Rights and Equality, located a 340 Lockwood Street in Providence.

Rhode Island Black Heritage Opens New Exhibit

The history of African American education is on full display beginning this month until September at The John Brown House with 'Learn Your Lessons Well: Black Education in Rhode Island'.  Featuring items from both the Black Heritage archives as well as private collections, the showcase includes items related to everyday students as well as notable figures like Rudolph Fisher.  Curated by Robb Dimmick, interested parties can learn more by contacting the following:

• John Brown House: 401-273-7507
• Rhode Island Black Heritage Society: 401-421-0606

The ProJo Hates Teachers

I have had a very tumultuous relationship develop via e-mail correspondence with the Editorial Page fuehrer and Vice President of the ProJo, Edward Achorn.  There's something fundamentally wrong with the guy who is in charge of operations also being the gatekeeper of all the dissent that is fit for print.

Today was the Charter School Blitzkrieg, with a Staff Editorial at the top of the page lamenting the bill in the General Assembly that dares to refocus funding to our barely-standing public schools and away from the barely functional neoliberal nightmares.  Then, in the Letters section, there was the ingenious epistle from a reader about the glorious advances her son made at a charter school.

Mr. Achorn may live on a different planet than we great unwashed masses, but on planet earth, the results are in and the corporate charter school model is an abysmal failure.  The original notion of the charter school was an ingenious idea, a grassroots-developed educational experience for populations that had been disenfranchised by the public school system.  It borrowed its basic logic from parochial schools but shed the white privilege and religious studies.  But, as with all good things, corporate America got its hands on the idea and transformed it into a perverted doppelgänger.  

The corporate charter school is a graveyard where a child's potential goes to die.  The staffers are not licensed educators.  Discipline is often akin to a gulag.  Students in the vital range of fifth to eighth grade, the period when they decide whether to drop out or not, have their self esteem destroyed by the non-existent pedagogical model and are flushed down the school-to-prison pipeline.  But don't take my word for it, just check out the free documentary film THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH BEHIND WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, produced by a coalition of New York City students, parents, and teachers who were disgusted by the insanity.

Ultimately this latest putsch will fail, despite Mr. Achorn's efforts the teachers union is deep in the pocket of the Democratic majority and they know who butters what side of the bread.  But be warned, this is not the last battle cry of the assault on the public education system and the unionized teachers movement.

Protest Lifespan Closings June 11

On June 11, there will be a protest held at Rhode Island Hospital.  The action comes after it was announced that the medical conglomerate plans to close six treatment facilities for addiction.  This is occurring in conjunction with the proposed cuts to Medicaid made by Gov. Raimondo recently.  Rhode Island, rated as one of the most successful states in the implementation of the Afordable Care Act, has seen its Medicaid rolls expand significantly as a result of the healthcare reform.  The cuts in subsidies are expected to make a significant impact on the way low-income Rhode Islanders obtain medical treatment.  This also occurs simultaneously with a major Supreme Court decision regarding federal subsidies to the insurance exchanges created by the reforms.  In that case, the Plaintiffs argue that the federal government overstepped its authority by going into states that refused to implement the new law and creating federally-run exchanges.  If the Court were to rule in favor of the Plaintiffs, it could result in a major funding gap for those who lived without health coverage prior to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Parties interested in attending the protest can learn more at (https://www.facebook.com/events/785683471537590/).

Deborah Gist Leaves RI

With no celebration or jubilee, Deborah Gist has left her position as Commissioner of Providence Public Schools.  During her tenure, Ms. Gist was known for a variety of neoliberal policy decisions that had a negative impact on students and teachers under her command.  Whether it was union busting the faculty with teacher evaluations, cramming students into crowded classrooms by closing down troubled schools, enforcing a culture of conformity with Common Core and standardized testing, or committing her own form of academic fraud by playing funny with the statistics on her Ed.D dissertation, Gist was a politician who used the Ocean State as a Petri dish for bad ideas, bad policy, and bad leadership.  Her exit is a welcome gain for all those capable of independent thought.

Say NO to XO

XO Cafe, located at 125 North Main Street in Providence, has been reported by reliable sources to be engaged in a variety of wage abuses and malfeasance towards the staff.  Located on the historic East Side and adjacent to the Providence Art Club, owner John Elkhay is not exactly starving.  Sources close to the situation have also indicated that Mr. Elkhay this evening is hosting several legislators involved in the effort to raise wages for tipped workers in Rhode Island, providing yet again that the Democratic Party is just as corrupt as the Republicans.  Until Mr. Elkhay cleans his act up, avoid XO Cafe.

OPINION: Race, Sexuality, and Gordon Fox

Today the Providence Journal featured a story on the front page about the sentencing phase of the Gordon Fox trial and how a barrage of letters are inundating Judge Mary M. Lisi, who will sentence the former Speaker of the House later this week.  Fox plead guilty in March to wire fraud, bribery and filing a false tax return and, as part of his plea agreement, could face three years in prison.  As part of this putsch, Joh DePetro, the despicable right wing political talk radio host on WPRO with his own bizarre trail of malfeasances, has launched a campaign to have Fox sentenced to the maximum in the name of sending a message to corrupt politicians everywhere while simultaneously plagiarizing Spider-Man with his 'great power comes great responsibility' line.  I always had a sneaking suspicion that DePetro was a comic book villain, but this is just too much.

Now there is no doubt that Fox is guilty, he admitted it.  But let's be clear on exactly what he did.  He took a few kickbacks to grease the rails for a bar on Thayer Street, paid some personal expenses, and helped rescue an abused dog with high-cost veterinary bills.  Buddy Cianci beat a man with a fireplace log and got probation.  Fox's malfeasances were crimes, yes, but let's be clear, they were essentially victimless.
The reality is that we never saw such a campaign for the maximum sentence when Buddy was being brought down for turning Providence City Hall into a criminal enterprise.  Why is this now happening with Gordon Fox?  What could perchance be the difference between Cianci and Fox?
There are two big issues, race and sexuality.  Fox, despite the fact he looks Armenian, is in reality African American, his father was Irish and his mother Cape Verdean.  He is also the first openly gay man to reach the level of Speaker of the House in not just Rhode Island but American history.  In short, Fox had the audacity to be a double minority, whereas Cianci was a Silver Lake-derived Italian with not a minuscule number of connections to Federal Hill.
What can really be said for this?  Let's begin with race.  I oftentimes try to emphasize the findings of the March 2007 paper THE EFFECTS OF SKIN TONE ON RACE-RELATED AMYGDALA ACTIVITY: AN FMRI INVESTIGATION, published by the medical journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, when in discussions about race and racism.  In that study, participants were placed in an fMRI machine and shown a series of images.  The first several were relaxing images of babies, puppies, all sorts of visual comfort food.  However, when they were shown the image of a black man, every subject, both white and black, showed the amygdala response, colloquially known as the 'fight-or-flight' response.  There is something culturally hard-wired into people to fear black men, which no doubt has some connection to the DePetro deluge.  And let's not make any mistakes, this is not an isolated incident, in February Rep. Joseph Almeida, also black, was brought to court for a campaign fund misappropriation charge.  It is open season for black politicians on Smith Street.
And then there is the other naughty behavior, Fox is gay.  Not only that, he's out of the closet and married to a hairdresser, which is about as homosexual as you can be unless you are Provincetown incarnate.  When he oversaw the passage of the gay marriage bill into law at the General Assembly, he had the audacity to exchange kisses with his now-husband on the rostrum, sending the uber-Catholic religious fanatics into a fit of hysterics and screaming 'First sodomy in the State House, next the Governor will be performing abortions in her office under the Soviet flag!'  (Oh, wait.)  Don Carcieri, the Governor who oversaw the 38 Studios debacle and was militantly anti-choice, has yet to even be indicted for the Schilling boondoggle.  Can you say 'double standard'?
Ultimately this instance is a very important teachable moment about racism and homophobia in the Ocean State.  I cannot endorse what Fox did, but at the same time, it is not exactly rocket science to see how ridiculously bigoted John DePetro looks.  Then again, you'd have to be a deaf, dumb, and blind kid to miss that one.

ISIS Comes To Warwick (UPDATED)

Today the quiet neighborhood of Governor Francis Farms became the center of a federal-level investigation as state and local police, as well as members of the FBI, investigated a house on Aspinet Drive linked to Usaama Rahim, a African American Muslim killed yesterday in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston by police.  Rahim, whose older brother Ibrahim is an imam at the Oakland, California Lighthouse Mosque and earlier Masjid Al-Quran in Dorcester, was said by police to be carrying a "military-style" knife.  However, the brother of the deceased claims that his brother was on the telephone with his father at the time he was confronted at a bus stop beside a CVS Pharmacy, hoping to create a record.  The authorities claim that the deceased had recently become radicalized by ISIS via the internet and had been under surveillance for some time.
Police Commissioner William Evans later convened a meeting with local civic religious leaders, including Boston Imam Abdullah Farooq, and screened a copy of the security camera video.  Farooq said that he felt the video was inconclusive and described it as vague while also saying that the deceased was not at a bus stop, was not shot in the back, and he appeared to be approaching the police officers.
This is not the first brush with violence linked to Islam for Rhode Island.  It is known now that a man from West Warwick was perhaps involved in radicalizing Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder brother of convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was killed in the manhunt for the two assailants after the 2013 attacks.  The elder Tsarnaev also was married to a woman originally from North Kingston.  However, the wind blows both ways on this account.  On September 12, 2001, Providence Police responded to a tip and arrested Milford, Massachusetts resident Sher J.B. Singh at the Amtrak station over alleged connections to terrorism, even though Mr. Singh was in fact a Sikh, not a Muslim.
UPDATE, JUNE 3, 10:16 PM: Information has yet to be forthcoming about the exact nature of the investigation.  However, Glenn Greenwald over at The Intercept has posted this great commentary piece about the situation:

Even the police’s version of events, if believed, raises all sorts of questions. They say Rahim was under “24-hour surveillance” by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, and were monitoring him for at least two years. When they approached him, they had no arrest or search warrant, but instead simply wanted to question him. When they did so, he pulled out his knife, and when he refused to put it away and walked toward them, they shot and killed him…  What was their intention in approaching him this way? Were they wearing uniforms, and — supposedly believing he was an ISIS operative eager to kill police — did they do anything to make him feel threatened?

Voter Initiative Against Stadium Now Live On FaceBook

As reported last week by Bob Plain at RIFuture.com, Sam Bell, head of the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats, has begun spearheading a petition to get an initiative put on the ballot that would prevent “the stadium from being built on the part of the I-195 land designated a public park, and it forbids Providence from providing any special financial treatment for the stadium, including tax breaks”, as Bell told Plain last week.
Now the campaign has taken its next step, having become a FaceBook group called Providence Campaign Against the Stadium Deal.  This writer would be remiss to not admit that I was involved in forming the group, but the onus now sits on the shoulders of others in the community who can get involved in collecting signatures.  Parties interested are invited to click the link above or contact Sam Bell at swbell11@gmail.com.

Pride Month Begins in RI

June is LGBTQQI Pride Month nationwide and Providence is no exception.  On Friday, June 5, 2015 at 5:30 pm, Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza will participate in a Rainbow Flag Raising ceremony at City Hall to officially mark the beginning of Pride Month in the Ocean State.  Parties interested can click here for more information.

Celebrations of LGBTQQI Pride date back to 1970 in New York City, where a group of activists held a march to commemorate the one year anniversary of the riots at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a multi-evening series of confrontations between New York Police and disenfranchised youths.

#SaborLatinoRI Holds Taco Mania!

Rhode Island Latino Arts, in collaboration with Rhode Island Food Fights, will celebrate Latino Heritage Month from September 15-October 15, 2015 with a month-long culinary exhibition event, Taco Mania.  For the cost of a book of tickets or a passport, patrons will have to opportunity to visit participating venues and receive two tacos.  As of this printing, twelve restaurants are already involved, with a list to be finalized by July 1.  Founded as The Hispanic Heritage Committee Rhode Island in 1988 by Marta V. Martínez, the organization has sponsored Hispanic heritage celebrations since 1989 while promoting pride in the immigrant population, encouraging second generation engagement in Latino heritage, and reaching out to non-Latinos to foster understanding of major contributions of their neighbors.  In 2013, the organization was re-named Rhode Island Latino Arts in celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary.
Parties interested in registering for this event or obtaining tickets can do so at its FaceBook page or by clicking here.

Protest March For Tipped Workers On June 2

On Tuesday, June 2, 2015, Restaurant Opportunity Center of Rhode Island, in collaboration with Rhode Island Jobs With Justice, will hold a protest march to the State House called '20 Years Is Long Enough!'  Beginning at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, located at 15 Hayes Street in Providence, the protest is intended to bring attention to the plight of tipped workers in Rhode Island.  As of this writing, it has been two decades since the minimum wage for laborers on such income has been adjusted, with the current wage at $2.89 per hour.  In a statement issued via email today, one such worker said

The industry teaches servers that we are worth less. We are not paid as professionals with a skill but are instead made to curry favor with whoever we can in order to scrape together a living...  How am I supposed to stand up for myself when the customer who sexually harasses me pays 68% of my hourly wage?  

Parties interested in further details or registration can do so here.

And So It Begins! Bill For 'Public-Private' Funding Sent to Finance Committee

Representatives Stephen M. Casey, K. Joseph Shekarchi, Michael Morin, Mia A. Ackerman, and Cale P. Keable sent a bill to the Finance Committee on May 27, 2015, H 6250, that would allow for what they call 'public-private' partnership funding of facilities and infrastructure.  While the PawSox are not mentioned in the text, the fact is that Michael G. Riley, sometimes Republican political candidate, has called the term 'public-private financing' a lot of "gobbledygook".  This move is not out of step considering the unpopularity of the proposal, with public protests that have attracted the support of the Rhode Island Green Party, Tea Party, Progressive Democrats, and Republicans alike, something that almost never happens in this state.  Larry Lucchino, remaining majority owner of the PawSox after the death of James Skeffington earlier this month, published a multi-column appeal to the masses in the Providence Journal on May 27 with timing that could not be more perfect, titled DOWNTOWN PARK WIL BE RI GEM, closing with the line "We invite you to join us on this journey. We believe your children and your grandchildren will thank you."  Some may beg to differ, including economists Robert Baade and Victor Matheson, who have aired their opinions and written papers on how these sorts of funding proposals rarely have long-term benefits for the taxpayers.

ACLU Police Filming App Hits The Streets, Needed in Rhode Island

The American Civil Liberties Union, in collaboration with Quadrant 2, Incorporated, has recently released an app called Mobile Justice.  Originally released for use in California, it now has variants available in North Carolina, Missouri, Mississippi, and Nebraska.  Along with the ability to film a video that automatically uploads the the ACLU servers, it also includes a tab that summarizes your rights when encountering a law enforcement official, the capability to file a digital incident report with the Union, and notifications of upcoming events.  The only question remaining is when this program will be available in the Ocean State.

Janell Brown Takes The Stage June 6

On June 6, 2015, Rhode Island Black Heritage Society will present Classical High School student vocalist Janell Brown in her first solo jazz concert.  The evening, titled THE WAY YOU WEAR YOUR HAT, is being held at 2 PM at the Rhode Island School of Design Ewing Multicultural Center at 41 Waterman Street in Providence, featuring Rod Luther on piano along with guest performances.  Tickets are $25 and can be purchased here.  A senior at Classical, Ms. Brown has previously attended the 'Jazz Is A Rainbow' summer training program led by musicians Michael Palter and Lynne Jackson and with Robb Dimmick as artistic director.  Purchase of a ticket will also enter the buyer in a drawing to win a $150 overnight stay at The Dean Hotel if purchased by 4pm on Thursday, May 28.  Located at 122 Fountain Street in the heart of Downtown Providence, the Dean features as an in-house vendor Bolt Coffee Company and is connected to the German restaurant Faust.
Inquiries can be directed to the following:

• E-Mail: info@ribhs.org
• Telephone: (401) 421-0606

Rhode Island Sierra Club To Hold The "Environment is Everyone's Business" Rally

On Wednesday, June 10, 2015 (rain date June 11), the Rhode Island chapter of the Sierra Club will be holding a rally on the South Lawn of the State House from 5 to 7 PM.  Featuring musical performances by the Eastern Medicine Singers and a host of community artists, the rally will feature keynote speaker Dr. Michael K. Dorsey.  

With a B.S. and Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environmental Policy from the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, as well as a Master of Forest Science from Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and an M.A. in Anthropology from The Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Dorsey has been active for over twenty years in a variety of causes related to ecological and environmental policy, including work for the first Obama Presidential campaign, the EPA's National Advisory Committee, and leadership in the national Sierra Club.  He is considered an expert on the topic of sustainability and implementation of environmentally-sound infrastructure policies on the government level, as well as maintaining a study on the inter-connections between financial instruments and the environmental.  He now serves as an advisor at the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service.
For more information, interested parties can visit the following:

• FaceBook Event Page
• E-Mail Event Organizer Robert Malin
• Contact Via Telephone at 401-497-7419 

Pasha Hookah Bar Remains Closed Over One Death, Others Remain Open Despite Cancer Risks

Photo by Steve Klamkin, WPRO News

The big news story today was the continued closure of Pasha Hookah Bar on Allens Avenue in South Providence after a recent shooting outside the establishment.  However, there was no discussion of the deaths associated with the sixteen other hookah lounges or bars in Rhode Island that allow smoking inside.
Since March 1, 2005, there has been an indoor smoking ban in effect.  However, exceptions exist for the following:

• Cigar bars (income over 50% tobacco products) 
• Outdoor areas 
• Private and semiprivate rooms in nursing homes 
• Retail tobacco stores 
• Stage performances involving smoking 
• Private residences, except used as a licensed child care, adult daycare, or healthcare facility 
• The two state-licensed gambling facilities, Newport Grand and Twin River Casino

In the wake of the general indoor smoking ban taking effect, a niche market of specialized venues to host smokers has become a thriving industry.  Rhode Island has sixteen other hookah bars in operation throughout the state.  And despite efforts to mediate issues caused by smoking by means such as ventilation, tobacco consumption remains a deadly habit that affects not just the individual smoker.  Data from CDC.gov says that there are 42,000 deaths each year among adults from secondhand smoke in America, with 7,333 annual deaths from lung cancer and 33,951 annual deaths from heart disease caused exclusively by secondhand smoke.  Further risks from hookah include the consumption of carbon monoxide by both the smoker and those in the surrounding area.
This can spell certain dire consequences for the staff and servers of such establishments.  Furthermore, pay in these venues is far from ideal.  Many of the servers earn $2.89 per hour plus tips, which can often come at the expense of respect or dignity.  Sexual harassment of female wait staff is a real phenomenon, with patrons making lewd remarks or even physically violating boundaries that would otherwise be deemed poor table manners, especially since these venues also have liquor licenses, Pasha being case and point.

Photo taken from Pasha FaceBook page.

There is now an effort at hand to increase the minimum wage for tipped staff in Rhode Island, a movement bitterly opposed by industry lobbyists and barely acknowledged by Democrats in the General Assembly.  Parties interested in these efforts are encouraged to contact the Providence IWW here for further information.

Opinion: Notes From An Overdose Epidemic, In Memoriam of Danny L. and Elijah F.

As noted by Dan McGowan of WPRI 12 News Providence and other reporters, death due to opiate overdose is becoming a tragic problem in the Ocean State.  According to this collection of data from the Department of Health, 2014 saw 239 total deaths from such overdoses.

However, pure numbers fail to do justice to what has been defined as an epidemic by the DOH.  Already we have seen 91 deaths in 2015, according to this piece by the Boston Globe.  Behind each of these digits stands a family destroyed, a friend loss, a parent made absent.  The addition of a synthetic opiate called fentanyl has increased the potency and fatality of heroin here in Southern New England.
Today I went to the second memorial for someone I knew due to opiate overdose.  Last August, someone I knew at Rhode Island College was also made a statistic in this disaster.  Two memorials in less than one year is far too uncomfortable for any person, but especially when the two individuals were under the age of thirty.  To quote HAMLET:

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Rhode Island's substance abuse problems are not new fare, having previously been ranked for one of the highest concentrations for marijuana, cocaine, and binge drinking per capita population.  The state does not have a substance abuse problem as much as a recovery problem.  Detoxification centers are one of the major businesses in the state.  What is truly wrong is the dynamic and method we as a society not just encourage but sanctify as praxis.
Journalist Johann Hari has written in this story on Huffington Post and in his new book CHASING THE SCREAM: THE FIRST AND LAST DAYS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS that addiction has almost nothing to do with chemical hooks and everything to do with social standing.  He writes:

Professor Peter Cohen argues that human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It's how we get our satisfaction. If we can't connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find -- the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop talking about 'addiction' altogether, and instead call it 'bonding.' A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn't bond as fully with anything else…  [T]he opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection…  When I returned from my long journey, I looked at my ex-boyfriend, in withdrawal, trembling on my spare bed, and I thought about him differently. For a century now, we have been singing war songs about addicts. It occurred to me as I wiped his brow, we should have been singing love songs to them all along.

Here is Hari this past February on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman:

When I talked with people who were also familiar with these two drug deaths I knew of, what struck me was that both ended their short lives in extreme loneliness.  That is a painful life.  The need for an outlet, be it drugs, drink, or other vices, is powerful and obviously deadly.

So what do we need to do as a state?  There are some obvious steps to take:

• Encourage the abolition of our social stigma about addiction and replace it with a dynamic of empathy.
• Re-design our drug abuse prevention curriculums to create a better understanding of the user as an individual.
• End the Drug War and our Prohibition culture while re-directing the funds spent putting people in jail for being lonely towards programs based around this new socialization dynamic about addiction.

In the meantime, we must mourn those we lost and pray we might not loose others.  This is a long-winded, tedious, seemingly endless process.  But until we implement the aforementioned steps at the minimum, we will continue to loose people we love.

Opinion: Why You Should Oppose The PawSox Stadium

James Skeffington, PawSox Owner.

On February 23, 2015, the new ownership of the Pawtucket Red Sox, led by Boston owner Larry Lucchino and Providence political superstar James Skeffington, announced their intent to move the team from McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket to a prospective stadium in Providence, suggested to be built on a parcel of land newly developed following the re-routing of I-195.

Proposed Site of New Stadium.

There are several reasons why this is an awful idea.  I will expound in the following sections.

THE OWNERSHIP

The new owners of the PawSox are all known players in the corrupt system that is the Rhode Island government.  The most problematic persona in the circus is Mr. Skeffington.  As a lawyer at the law firm Edwards Angell Palmer and Dodge, he has been instrumental in arranging financing deals that have resulted in the tax payer getting the raw end of the stick, such as the arrangements for the Providence Place Mall and the Rhode Island Convention Center.  The Convention Center is of particular note because, in the fine print, Mr. Skeffington arranged for taxes to fund the operation until they should get out of the red.  Founded in 1994, the Rhode Island tax payer continues to subsidize this debacle.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Following the removal of the de-comissioned sections of the interstate, Providence began a project to re-design the sewer system.  In order to accommodate a new stadium, this newly-laid sewer would need to be renovated, which could cause further leaks and pollution of the waterfront.  Furthermore, construction of such magnitude would cause air, water, and noise pollution.  This in and of itself would be a disaster.

THE FINANCING

The owners have argued that they will require what they call 'public-private' financing, a scheme that local businessman Michael G. Riley has described as 'gobbledygook'.  In essence, the taxpayer foots the bill and the owners reap the profits.  The details of the actual financing are galling and seem like a nightmare from the mind of Charles Dickens.  They want $5 million per year from the taxpayer.  They want a 30-year lease, $1 per year, and the option to buy the land at fair market value at the end of the lease.  And no doubt, if the team does not do fantastic, they will include a sub-clause to move the team to greener pastures at their whim, leaving Providence with a monstrosity that has no chance of being re-purposed.  In the case of the 38 Studios debacle, the offices and computers were easily re-sold and re-purposed.  It is very difficult to do the same with a baseball stadium.

THE POLITICS

This move will bring Brown University one step closer to it's goal of re-designing the voting districts in Providence so to disenfranchise the poor and minority populations of South Providence.  Such types of gerry-mandering are commonplace on the agenda of the rich and privileged.  This will eventually result in an end to efforts to make the various colleges in the city pay property taxes, something former Brown President Ruth Simmons was dragged kicking and screaming to.  Ultimately, a new stadium will mean that the black/brown or poor in Providence get a bat over the back of the head.

THE ECONOMICS

Holy Cross economics Professor Victor Matheson and Lake Forest Professor Robert Baade collaborated on a 2011 white paper titled FINANCING PROFESSIONAL SPORTS FACILITIES, available here.  Matheson and Baade make clear that there is absolutely no financial benefit for the governments that subsidize these ventures.  Of course, Speaker Nicholas Matiello has hired Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist, a yes-man who is well-respected by the leadership of the Major League Baseball organization, including former Commissioner Bud Selig, a man who did not notice a twenty-plus year scandal involving steroids until half the players in the league had ballooned to the size of small blimps.

THE PRINCIPLE

Gore Vidal once said America is “a unique society in which we have free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich."  This scheme is a brilliant example of such a move.  We are a state that has operated in the red for decades.  Our schools are disasters.  Our pension system is getting marauded by the Wall Street fat cats brought in by Gina Raimondo.  The police force is almost totally made up of white males while the general population is composed of African, Latino, and various other minority populations.  Of the millions of things that could be done with this amount of money, subsidizing a bail-out for Skeffington and Co. is the last thing that should be done.

Do the common sense thing.  Say NO to Skeff-O-Nomics.

Union Organization Meeting For Food and Retail Workers Monday Evening

On Monday, May 18, 2015 at 6 PM, the Providence branch of the Industrial Workers of the World will host a town hall-style organizational meeting for food and retail workers interested in unionizing their workplaces at 319 Broadway in Providence.  Called PRECARIOUS AND PISSED OFF! A FORUM FOR FOOD AND RETAIL WORKERS, the event is described by the hosts as the following:

This is a town hall meeting for and by food and retail workers in the Providence Metro Area to come together and learn about the future of the industry and why we need to organize together as food and retail workers today.

The IWW is one of America's oldest still-extant labor unions.  Founded on July 27, 1905 in Chicago, it is based around the syndicalist model of organization, where members of multiple trades are united in One Big Union instead of divided into different trade unions.  Famous members include Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons, Helen Keller, linguist Noam Chomsky, musician Tom Morello, anthropologist David Graeber, and Roger Nash Baldwin, founder of the ACLU.
For more information or to register for attendance, click here.  Childcare will be available for free.

Providence Police, By The Numbers

The following statistics were taken from the 2014 Providence Police Department Annual Report.

• Providence had in 2013 a population of 1777,994.
• Of that population, 13% is black and 2% is two or more ethnicities.
• The officer to population ration is 2.47:1000.
• There are 443 sworn police on active duty
• There are 14 black police officers.
• In the Academy, there were 7 black recruits and 37 white recruits.

African-American Heritage of College Hill Kick-Off Meeting

On May 14, 2015, members of the Providence community interested in the promotion and preservation of African-American history in Rhode Island gathered at the Old State House at 150 Benefit Street to participate in the opening event of a collaborative effort between the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society and Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, African-American Heritage of College Hill.
Edward Sanderson, Executive Director of RIHPHC, opened the meeting with some general remarks that summarized the project and efforts.  Funded with a grant of $25,000 from the National Park Service, this two year project will aim to lengthen the description of the role African-Americans have played in the history of College Hill, which was made a Historic District on the National Register in 1970 before becoming a National Historic Landmark in 1971.  This was followed by a short talk by Joanna Doherty, who gave a deeper description of the Register and the District.
Ray Rickman, Senior Consultant for RIBHS, described this as an opportunity to "darken history up a bit", saying "we're talking about race again" and describing his own experience working in Providence since relocating to Rhode Island in 1979.  Following this opening, the audience had the opportunity to share insights and remarks regarding a five page hand-out listing sites that were notable for their connection to African-American history.  Members of the audience included anthropologist Ramona Bass-Kolobe and historian Ed Hooks, whose contributions were especially enlightening.

For those interested in further information, contact the following:

• Joanna Doherty, RIHPHC, 401-222-4136, joanna.doherty@preservation.ri.gov
• Sarah Zurier, RIHPHC, 401-222-4142, sarah.zurier@preservation.ri.gov
• Ray Rickman, RIBHS, 401-421-0606, rickman@rickmangroup.com

The College Hill Historic District National Register Nomination form can be viewed here.