January 24, 2013 – RI Future

January 24, 2013January 24, 2013

Rhode Island Needs Marriage Equality

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As Speaker of the House in the Rhode Island General Assembly and as the Mayor of Providence, we urge both Chambers of the General Assembly to take immediate action on marriage equality legislation. It is time for Rhode Island to join with our neighboring New England states in granting full access to the unique protections and recognition of civil marriage to loving, committed same-sex couples.

We believe the right to marry is an issue of fundamental fairness. Since Roger Williams first crossed the Seekonk River and founded the settlement he would call Providence more than 375 years ago, this great city and our state have sought to live up to his call for tolerance and a “lively experiment” in liberty. Extending the legal rights and inclusion offered by civil marriage to all Rhode Island families is the logical extension of this long march towards justice.

Allowing same-sex couples to marry in Rhode Island will also support efforts to grow our economy in Providence and all of Rhode Island. Providence is the Creative Capital, and marriage equality would further our efforts to attract creative professionals who are drivers of the 21^st century knowledge economy.

We are proud to stand with the LGBTQ community, straight allies, elected officials, parents, friends, neighbors, families and faith leaders and advocate for Rhode Island to join our brothers and sisters throughout all of New England by welcoming and affirming the commitment of loving, committed couples, gay and straight alike, through equal access to civil marriage.

January 24, 2013January 24, 2013

Environmental Disobedience

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For those of you trapped in caves, the weather has been getting unruly of late. 2012 was the latest in a long string of very hot years, the hottest on record in fact. It brought with it extreme drought, raging wildfires and Superstorm Sandy. The accumulated damage is still being tabulated but it will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars and countless lost lives. Climate scientists, conservative by nature and cowed by bombastic and well funded deniers, have finally grown so alarmed with the rapid progression of global warming that they are sticking their necks out and attributing the extreme weather to climate change.

Hallelujah! Now armed with overwhelming science and growing public support, it’s time for environmentalists (by which I mean everyone who would like to have a habitable planet) to get unruly, too. That appears to be the rationale behind my employer the Sierra Club’s recent decision to endorse civil disobedience for the first time in its 120 year history. As our national executive director Michael Brune says in his recent “From Walden to the White House” letter:

“For civil disobedience to be justified, something must be so wrong that it compels the strongest defensible protest. Such a protest, if rendered thoughtfully and peacefully, is in fact a profound act of patriotism. For Thoreau, the wrongs were slavery and the invasion of Mexico. For Martin Luther King, Jr., it was the brutal, institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow South. For us, it is the possibility that the United States might surrender any hope of stabilizing our planet’s climate…

We are watching a global crisis unfold before our eyes, and to stand aside and let it happen — even though we know how to stop it — would be unconscionable. As the president said on Monday, “to do so would betray our children and future generations.” It couldn’t be simpler: Either we leave at least two-thirds of the known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, or we destroy our planet as we know it. That’s our choice, if you can call it that.”

Fight, or resign ourselves to a climate that threatens civilization as we know it: it really isn’t much of a choice is it? Sierra Club and numerous other organizations have been using traditional grassroots and institutional advocacy for decades to fight climate change, and it hasn’t been enough. Others like Bill McKibben’s 35o.org and many individuals have already crossed the line of civil disobedience in the effort to save the planet. It’s about time we all stand as one and make it clear that our halfhearted and incremental progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is unacceptable.

With that in mind, let’s do it. On February 17th, there is a massive climate action rally planned and you’re invited. This will be the biggest such rally ever held and should draw more than 25,000 people to the White House to tell President Obama among other things that the Keystone XL Pipeline must not be allowed to proceed.

A bus or buses will be going down to D.C., cars full of people too. Can you make it? You can pledge your attendance and find out more information on how to get down there by following this link.

January 24, 2013January 25, 2013

NLC’s 40 Under 40: Andy Posner, Capital Good Fund

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Andy Posner is the Executive Director of The Capital Good Fund. He’ll be honored as one of the New Leaders Council’s Class of 2013 40 Under 40 at an event on Saturday night.

Capital Good is a non-profit microfinance organization that targets root causes of poverty through innovative microloans and personal financial coaching. By providing low-income Americans with small loans and the knowledge of how to use them, Capital Good Fund strives to empower them to improve their lives and better their communities.

As a co-founder of the Capital Good Fund, Andy developed a model for innovative microfinance as a Master’s student at Brown University. He traveled to Bangladesh to receive training from Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and was inspired to use microfinance as a tool for fighting poverty back at home. Andy’s work has been mentioned in Providence Business News, the Providence Journal, the Providence Phoenix, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s magazine, Rhode Island Monthly, and right here on RI Future. He has also presented his ideas to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau founder Elizabeth Warren and Rhode Island Treasurer Gina Raimondo.

Andy is a co-founder of the Campus Microfinance Alliance and a member of its advisory committee, and is a member of the national board of directors of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity. Andy’s ideas have been published in the Huffington Post, treehugger.com and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. He is also a blogger, a poet, a cyclist — and once trained to be a professional tennis player.

January 24, 2013January 24, 2013

RI House of Reps to Make Marriage History Today

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The Rhode Island House of Representatives is ready to make history today by voting on – and probably passing – a bill that would lift the local segregation against same sex marriage. Advocates are asking people to arrive at the State House by 2pm for a rally “Be sure to wear red,” suggests a photo circulating around Facebook made by Rhode Islanders United for Marriage.

“The world is watching #RI,” Rev. Gene Dyszlewski tweeted this morning about a story in today’s New York Times story about Ocean State’s struggle to become the last state in New England to legalize gay marriage.

According to the Times’ story:

If the measure passes here, New England would become the first solid block of states in the country to allow gay marriage, underscoring the region’s reputation as the nation’s most liberal, and perhaps its least religious. A Gallup surveyfound that all six New England states rank among the bottom 10 states for weekly church attendance.

And yet Rhode Island has seemed out of step with the rest of New England in not embracing gay marriage sooner. It was only on Tuesday that the House Judiciary Committee approved a same-sex marriage bill, albeit unanimously. It had come up in committee once before, in 2001, but only one person supported it.

The voting here comes almost a decade after same-sex marriage became legal in neighboring Massachusetts.

January 24, 2013January 24, 2013

Why We Honor Our Dead With A Homeless Memorial

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Candles lit for the deceased at the 2013 Homeless Memorial

It dropped down to single digit temperatures this week; conditions perilous for anyone caught on the street. Some will be fortunate enough to spend the nights in their cars. Others will find shelter at a system that is already short 156 beds. But many will sleep outside; beneath bridges, in abandoned lots, behind dumpsters, in makeshift camps in the woods.

It was under these circumstances that we held our homeless memorial on Wednesday morning. We do this yearly to remember those involved in the issue of homelessness who passed without seeing an end to homelessness. We usually do this quietly, inviting people to attend the ceremony and luncheon as members of the general public. But this year there was a great amount of press interest, and it feels important to explain the event and why we do it.

The people who died over the last year were a varied group. Some had experienced homelessness in their lives. Others had fought to end it. Some died on the street, others died in warm beds. They were all integrally involved in this issue.

They were daughters and sons, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. They laughed and cried, and they lived and died; just as anyone else does.

There is a real consequence to allowing homelessness to continue: we will hold another memorial next year for those who will die this year. We will honor our dead again and again. We will do this each year until no one else dies without a home, until no one else dies fighting to make sure no Rhode Islander has to go without a home.

The cost of inaction and half-measures will be paid with human lives; doing nothing is not free. People will die on the street. Deaths that could have been avoided. Deaths that we know how to prevent. Our state has a plan to end homelessness, based on actual real-world solutions that work. It merely requires funding to begin working. Homelessness is not an impossible issue to solve; we know the solution.

Unfortunately it costs money to implement, and some of that money will have to come from the state. But switching our government’s mindset from that of a state that allows homelessness to continue to that of an anti-homelessness state will save the state money as well. People will get back on their feet and cease to be marked as “homeless” and instead be known simply as “Rhode Islanders” without any qualifiers.

The best way to honor those who have passed this last year is to end homelessness in this state. Until such a time that our government decides this is a priority, that the cost in human life and suffering is too high, we will honor our dead as best we can.

January 24, 2013January 24, 2013

Academic Argument for Equality: Diverse Religious Views

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Today, 53% of Americans believe same-sex marriages should be recognized by law as valid (Gallup), and almost 70% of voters under the age of 40 support the freedom to marry. Acceptance of civil same-sex marriage has been gaining more support over time, with a significant surge in the past two years. According to Republican pollster Dr. Jan van Lohuizen, “The remarkable surge over the last two years can’t be explained by generational change alone. It suggests that people across the political spectrum are rethinking their positions—and deciding in favor of the freedom to marry.”

Religious views on gay marriage vary and are not monolithic within any one group. For example, nationally, 50% of White mainline Protestants and 59% of White Catholics favor gay marriage. Twenty-two percent (22%) of White evangelical Protestants favor gay marriage while 38% of Black Protestants and 57% of Hispanic Catholics favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry (Pew Research).

In Rhode Island the public stance of the Catholic Church is against same-sex marriage. But in Maine in 2012, for example, a group called Catholics for Marriage Equality published a Statement of Conscience (We Maine Catholics Say “Yes” to Same-Sex Marriage Rights) in newspapers throughout the state in support of secular marriage. In part, the statement read: “Secular marriage is different. It is, simply, a civil right. It is not a civil right that compromises other civil rights; if this law is passed no religious institution or clergy person will be forced to marry any couple they do not wish to. This proposed law is not about sacraments, or forcing religious institutions to act in any way that is not comfortable for them.”

In 2012, the Maine vote in support of legalizing same-sex marriage was 53% to 47%, which totally reversed a 2009 vote of 53% to 47% against! The New York state legislature approved a gay marriage bill in 2011. The remarks of one Republican Senator who voted for the bill succinctly capture one approach to religion and gay marriage votes, “I am Catholic but I am NOT just Catholic!” Current same-sex marriage laws in 9 states (including all of New England except R.I.) and the District of Columbia protect religious freedom by explicitly exempting religious institutions from participating in any marriage ceremony that conflicts with their doctrines or teachings regarding who may marry within their faiths.

Surprising gay marriage religious tidbits pop up in the popular press from time to time demonstrating growing support. In December 2012, a lesbian couple exchanged vows in the first same-sex wedding ceremony at the Cadet Chapel, a Gothic landmark at West Point and spiritual center at the U.S. Military Academy. On Wednesday, January 10, 2013, the 106-year-old Washington National Cathedral announced it would begin holding nuptials for same-sex couples using a ceremony approved by the Episcopal Church.