July 23, 2012 – RI Future

July 23, 2012July 24, 2012

Board of Govs Should Treat Grad Assistants Fairly

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Graduate Assistants UNITED, a union for graduate assistants at the University of Rhode Island, will be paying close attention to decisions made tonight by the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education. After an upsetting and unexpected rejection of their contract as well as all other contracts related to higher education this past Spring, the Board of Governors have decided to reconsider GAU’s contract in an executive session tonight. I’m the GAU’s newly elected President and a graduate student in political science at the University of Rhode Island and here’s the letter imploring the board to decide in their favor.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board of Governors,

My name is Danielle Dirocco. I am a graduate assistant at the University of Rhode Island and the new President of Graduate Assistants UNITED (GAU) at the University of Rhode Island.

It is with great hope and anticipation that I write to you today, the day that the Board reconsiders the contract for University of Rhode Island’s Graduate Assistants UNITED. First and foremost, thank you for doing so. The GAU is a unique organization that at first glance may appear to some to be a sub-group of the professor’s union, but this is not the case. The GAU is an independent union that is comprised of nearly 600 graduate students who provide services to the University in exchange for the opportunity to attend graduate school that, for many, would otherwise be inaccessible due to the barrier of rising tuition costs.

I am one of those very students. My stipend, (roughly equivalent to minimum wage), is what I depend on to stay afloat while I attend school. I am proud to say that I am a lifelong Rhode Islander, a first generation college graduate, and a single mother. Without a reasonable stipend, graduate school would simply be impossible for me to attend. I realize that $5-600 dollars may seem like nothing, but I assure you, it makes an enormous difference to a student like me. Every little bit counts. It could contribute to the cost of childcare so I can attend class. It could be used to mitigate the cost of textbooks in a semester. It could put a dent in transportation costs to get to and from class and to the recitations that I teach as part of my responsibilities associated with my assistantship. It could even go to the ever-increasing budget necessary to begin paying down over $60,000 in student loans that I incurred as an undergraduate and in the first year of graduate school here at the University of Rhode Island.

I implore you to recognize that GAU students provide vital educational services to fellow students, faculty and the administration at the university. We are proud to be considered a critical component to many departments on campus. We teach recitations, grade papers and examinations, provide direct support to students, and generally act as intermediaries between the faculty and the student body.

As I am sure you are aware, our funding comes primarily from grants and from departmental budgets. Approving our contracts will not cost the state of Rhode Island a single additional cent. We simply need your approval to release funds that are already set aside to provide this modest increase in wages to our aspiring students who go above and beyond the call of duty to contribute to the university.

As you know, it is becoming more and more difficult for students to find their way to a better, brighter future through higher education. Tuition hikes, decreased funding and skyrocketing student debt have left many of us wondering if we’ll ever be able to gain access to the same opportunities of those who came before us. This small increase that the GAU has worked so hard for would cast a small light of hope into the darkness that has descended upon higher education in America today. It would show that the Rhode Island Board of Governors of Higher Education recognizes that the GAU is an independent organization whose interests simply address the needs of graduate students who are trying to do the right thing and get a fair shake.

Thank you to all of you for reconsideration.

Danielle Dirocco

President, Graduate Assistants UNITED

Graduate Assistant, Political Science

University of Rhode Island

July 23, 2012July 23, 2012

Olneyville Unidos Voter Registration Week!

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Wondering what to do this week to support democracy?

Join us this tonight to kick off Olneyville Unidos (Olneyville Together) voter registration week! Meet fellow activists, enjoy a popsicle and sign up for a voter registration shift this week. If you can’t make Monday’s fiesta, contact Kristina Fox Kristina@oceanstateaction.org to sign up for a volunteer shift to register voters Tues-Thurs 6pm-8PM this week.

Help Olneyville make sure its voice is heard this election and many more to come!

Olneyville Unidos Voter Registration Kick Off!
Olneyville Square, Providence RI (next to Citizen’s Bank)
Kick Off: Monday July 23 @ 6PM Volunteer Shifts: Tuesday – Thursday 6-8PM
Contact Kristina@oceanstateaction.org for more details

Democracy starts at the voting booth. Let’s make sure everyone get there this fall!

July 23, 2012July 23, 2012

Peter Green and the Raptors of Downtown PVD

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People often think they have to go to far flung locales like Acadia, Ninigret or Pardon Grey to see some of Rhode Island’s most exotic birds of prey. Not Peter Green, whose favorite place to look for raptors is right in downtown Providence.

Almost every day, he takes a short walk from Burnside Park up to the State House and back looking for some of falcons, hawks, kestrels, merlins, osprey, owls and even the occasional bald eagle who live and or hunt right in the center of the Capital City.

falcon-petergreen — A falcon in flight over downtown Providence. (Photo courtesy of Peter Green)

As you can see by the photo he took, his pictures are professional grade – for many more like this, I highly recommend checking out his blog Providence Raptors, which has some of the most amazing bird pictures I’ve seen anywhere, and they are all from either Providence or the surrounding area.

But while he’s easily the most well-known local urban wildlife photographer, when he moved to Providence four years ago he was neither a birder or a shutterbug. But when he moved to a downtown loft that gave him a daily view of peregrine falcons he figured “it was time to invest in a better camera,” as we both lugged our big lenses around downtown the other day in search of birds.

He got a better camera and quickly learned that red-tail hawks would hunt for pigeons right in Burnside Park. “I started getting these pictures and I couldn’t believe they were mine.”

He has pictures of hawks picking off pigeons in Kennedy Plaza, falcons attacking a man on top of the Superman building and some other amazing raptors from in and around the city – a bald eagle over the East Side, a very rare albino hawk in Lincoln and, of course, the snowy owl who was here earlier this year.

If you enjoy the pictures, you spend some time on Tuesday with Green in Burnside Park where he’s leading a raptor spotting/photographing talk as part of Providence’s Public Square Day at 1pm.

It’s not too uncommon for Green to spot birds, too … on the day I went with him he saw a falcon having breakfast and later we saw a falcon on the side of a building and another two soaring up above.

peter green — Peter Green, looking for raptors near Waterplace Park last week. (Photo by Bob Plain)

July 23, 2012

Coming Soon: ALEC Enters the Ed Reform Debate

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Now that the American Legislative Exchange Council is distancing itself from Stand your Ground voter ID laws, the next area of policy we are likely to see it rear its ugly head might well be what is alternatively described as either the education reform movement or the education privatization movement – pick whichever monicker suits your point of view.

Back in February, EducationWeek published this piece on how and why ALEC plans to enter debate on education policy in states across the country. But for a simpler version, watch this youTube video Diane Ravitch recently posted to her blog:

It’s worth noting that Mitt Romney is pushing an ALEC-approved platform on education reform, not at all unlike the one often defended by Maryellen Butke, a state Senate candidate and former RI-CAN lobbyist.

Before Josh Barro gets all worked up, I should note that this isn’t to say that Butke – or Romney, for that matter – has been secretly recruited by ALEC to clandestinely do its bidding … but sometimes it’s worth noting who ones’ allies are, if for no other reason than to shed a little light on the playing field.

July 23, 2012July 23, 2012

Progress Report: The Geography of Shooting Sprees and the Politics of the Second Amendment; Veggie Medicine

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There are just too many unanswerable questions in the case of the Colorado theater shooting … one that I keep going back to is why did two of the deadliest shooting sprees in the nation’s history happen so close to each other. Unlike any other place I know of out west, the front range area of Colorado seems the spot where modern society begins to clash with the wild west of yesterday, where our cultural mythology tells us the heroes (or anti-heroes, depending on your point-of-view) would bust into the saloon and either challenge someone to a duel or simply shoot up he joint. Based on population alone, one would think more massacres would occur in urban areas simply based on sample size alone … but according to this list it seems all too many of them have happened where the old west and the new west collide.

Few of the liberties guaranteed to Americans in the Bill of Rights are absolute, and the Second Amendment certainly isn’t one of them – we no more have the right to possess rocket launchers than we do have the right to yell fire in a crowded movie theater. But is this the right time to have a national debate about gun control, as Bill Kristol suggests Democrats should do? The AP reports that both Obama and Romney “have softened their positions on gun restrictions over the years.”

Ian Donnis has a fascinating interview with Bob Walsh of NEA-RI on the Rhode Island Public Radion airwaves this morning … here’s his post from Friday, and here’s hoping he posts the audio from the interview too. Walsh says the state got bad legal advice and should have negotiated with unions about pension cuts like Mayor Angel Taveras did in Providence.

Whether or not the state or municipality have been better at funding public schools in Woonsocket, the simple fact is there isn’t enough money there to properly educate the kids. The Projo reports that teachers haven’t gotten raises in four years and we know that property taxes were raised as much as the General Assembly would allow during that time period … so, given that the objective is to educate students not assess blame, what do we do to ensure that Woonsocket students get the education they deserve?

“Take Two Tomatoes and Call Me in the Morning” – ecoRI reports Woonsocket and West Warwick farmers’ markets that are giving .

Interesting, from Barrington Patch: “Michael Messore, Barrington’s new superintendent, is married to the head of the foreign language department at the high school. So, Messore would be directly involved in negotiating a new contract with the teachers’ union that would have an impact on his wife’s compensation.”

It seems to me he should recuse himself from these negotiations. Thoughts commenters?

Anthony DeRose, chairman of the Democratic LGBTQ Caucus, is profiled in GoLocal today … here’s hoping he’s successful in his goals for this election season.