September 11, 2015 – RI Future

September 11, 2015September 12, 2015

Remembering Sept. 11, and the decade it ended

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I was among the many Americans who felt 9/11 indirectly – and yet, how indirect was it? My mother taught at school where a parent was killed in the attack. My high school English teacher’s friend from childhood was a firefighter who was killed. College friends had high school classmates whose parents were killed, or who could recount the smoke billowing over their homes. An innocent man was arrested in the Providence Amtrak Train station in a spasm of paranoia. I saw image after image appear on television screens, read commentary, wrote my own, and tried to make sense of what happened –where were we? Can we wake up?

I was a suburban American child of the 1990s, a decade, in certain ways, for certain Americans, of prosperity and growth. From malls to condominiums, from minivans to MTV, from the Gulf War to Kosovo, from Pat Buchanan to Britney Spears, from Macs to PCs, the 1990s brought with it an explosion of digital technology, an unmatched period of United States power, dreams, and lusts.

What country did I grow up in? Generally speaking -a wealthy one. A place where history had ended – where the great struggles involved fighting consumerism and moving beyond materialism. As a very young activist, I felt that my biggest challenge would be to try to do something for worker rights internationally – how could effects of international shopping be made equitable? How could the rights of workers in China, Mexico and the US be guaranteed?

9/11 shook me. Did we also have to now organize to stop wars? What about worker rights? What about immigration? I have not done enough for my original hope of fighting for workers rights. I’ve been active in education and local work, but 9/11 shook some of my intentions, and perhaps made education a bit more attractive, in the hopes that by promoting an education of history and diversity, less violence would happen in the future.

In many ways, the 1990s saw a continuation of the shiny promises of the “return to order” of Reaganism. Reagan promised an end to the cultural confusion of the 1960s and 1970s- he promised a strong America, a weak welfare state, and a stronger military. His order was based on undermining the social supports – Social Security, Unions, well-funded public universities and affordable higher education- that had produced the Great American Middle Class of the Post War period. Reagan and his cohort believed in the beauty and violence of disaster capitalism – the freedom to grow and collapse, rather the slow stability of well paid, well supported work and education to promote a broadly wealthy society. In exchange for that broad middle class, policies favored the pocketbooks of millionaires and billionaires (and the hopes and chance of becoming a millionaire) – and rhetoric grew of the unworthy or hopeless poor, the corrupt unions against the pure free market, the holy believers against the secular university. There was something comforting in the world of Reagan’s suburbs – but over the decades many suburban homes were paid for with unrealistic mortgages, many families had to work two jobs not out of choice but to maintain a semi-wealthy lifestyle, and many children were forgotten or left to play with toys.

9/11 was a shock to this American urban/suburban world I had grown up in. The America I had known- safe, secure, powerful , isolated– was scared. I remember my mother made me survival packs to take to school in case there was a terrorist attack. I remember an eerie feeling that people in my high school building, constructed in 1925, had experienced many disasters before – World War II, the murders of President John, Minister King, and Candidate Robert Kennedy, the saga of Vietnam, the Gulf War. All these conflicts had happened, and my high school was still there. People in the halls before me had lived and responded to disasters – and life went on. But it was still uncertain, and always changing.

In so many ways, isn’t our national story, our international story, linked to our daily lives? I’ve had classmates who are veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars. I’ve had friends try to join the army, and worry for them has increased greatly because of the wars. I’ve attended protest rallies, lectures, and peace vigils, written letters to the editor, argued with friends and strangers, and tried to make sense of what is going on. I’ve been in an American school building closed because of physical neglect as billions of dollars are spent on war machines and drones. I was in New York City with my best friends the night the Time Square Bomber attempted his mayhem. I’ve written to friends in London following an attempted bombing in Piccadilly Circus. I’ve read poignant essays on continuing on despite the threat of terror, one of the most striking for me being on life in Bombay following a terrorist shooting rampage. My grandparents once visited Italy simultaneous to an airport bombing in Rome during the Years of Lead (when left and right wing terrorists killed dozens, if not hundreds, of everyday people in the pursuit of a cause). Even in hellish times, growth happens when people connect.

Even in pain, people can overcome when they connect. In thinking about the violence and the loss, some people use memories to build walls. Others to connect across barriers. What type of country we become, and the type of people we will be, in the next ten years and beyond, will be greatly shaped by us drawing inward or finding better ways to connect.

September 11, 2015September 11, 2015

Why does Mike Stenhouse want your daughter to get cervical cancer?

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Mike Stenhouse, preserving freedom for white, straight men.

Mike Stenhouse has a talent for finding any cause he can to make himself look important, most recently band-wagoning onto the 38 Studios debacle, and is the Gomer Pyle of the Rhode Island right wing. Whenever I see the Stenhouse name appear in the headlines, I know to lower my expectations by an average of .190 and pull out the tin foil hat.

For those of you just tuning in, Stenhouse has a long record in trafficking in racism, sexism, and just plain stupid. He is the champion of astro-turfed fake populism that promotes a rich man’s agenda, with private funders who talk a big game but are not brave enough to show their faces in public, leaving us instead to deal with this pompous has-been and a select few frothing-at-the-mouth Know-Nothings who are so revved up they should not be allowed near sharp objects, along with a great majority of good-intentioned people who sadly do not realize they have been played by a con man.

There was the time that he claimed HUD was Stalinism, a lunatic bit that was really about making sure those brown people from Spanish are not allowed to afford decent living conditions. Or the time he said Rhode Island had outlawed light bulbs, which really was about him denying climate change. In moments of desperation when I loose hope, I have to simply remind myself that Mike Stenhouse exists and moronic statements fall from his mouth like sand in an hourglass.

Now we have Mike out on the trail again, promoting a notion that is as stupefying as it is dangerous. Apparently Mr. Swing-and-a-Miss is revving up parents by trying to encourage them to not get the HPV vaccination for their kids, insisting that inoculation against cancer-causing genital warts will bring about all sorts of huge side effects and infringes on religious/personal autonomy. Of course, when you ask Mr. Stenhouse about that ultimate issue of medical freedom, abortion, he has no problem signing his name to petitions calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood. Apparently Mike wants government so small it can fit inside a woman’s tumor-encrusted cervix. That also would mean that someone affiliated with his whacked-out agenda is getting some action, but I digress.

Any baseball manager would avoid these stats like herpes!

Is there something wrong with the HPV vaccine? The CDC says 8 percent or fewer people who are vaccinated with Gardasil experience side effects. By contrast, the American Cancer Society says that 4,100 women will die from cervical cancer in 2015 out of the estimated 12,900 diagnosed with it. Likewise, HPV is one of the most common-occuring STIs known to medicine. Not being a woman, I am personally unclear about how it would feel to have tumors growing on that particular part of my anatomy, but I highly doubt it is like walking in a quiet green meadow (a space akin perhaps to outfield when Mr. Stenhouse takes the plate).

The anti-vaccine crowd has existed for some time now on the fringes of the internet, populated by hoaxers, hucksters, and a Kennedy. Yes, they are the gift that just keeps on giving, for it was that doofus Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that began the whole idiocy about children’s booster shots causing autism with an over-wrought and under-thought article for Rolling Stone (they don’t, and the original doctor that proposed that theory was later stripped of his medical license in the UK). How a washed-up and perpetually silly GOP prima donna ended up in the same clique as the one of the Cape Cod Commissars is anyone’s guess, but it becomes obvious as the days go by that Kennedy and Stenhouse need the attention or they might be forced to do the unthinkable and get real jobs.

The fact I even have to write about this topic is probably leaving my editor befuddled. I can hear Bob Plain now, “what in the name of good gravy do RIFuture readers care about this fool?” I keep looking at the MOVE TO TRASH button longingly as I write this. But here’s the rub: Stenhouse has people falling for this nonsense! There is a group of parents who are actually saying NO to the vaccine just as the school year is beginning and those hormone-addled teens at risk for infection begin to mix and mingle in the hallowed halls of education. And while I do think that Tea Partiers have been a tumor on the body politic, I certainly would not wish cervical cancer on their daughters. And I am likewise all in favor of religious liberty, I think it’s totally wrong that France forbids Muslim women from wearing the hijab. But this is not an issue of religious liberty, it is a con.

I have listened to Stenhouse give an interview on B101, a veritable ode to obnoxious self-importance and false panic that is going to result in kids being put at risk for a chronic illness that cannot be cured. He begins with a lot of obfuscation and nonsense about the issue being ‘very complicated’ and that the vaccine causes more trouble than genital warts, both of which are demonstrably untrue. “Why should Rhode Island be just the second state in the nation to mandate this and why should we have been the only one to have done it by executive fiat?” Batten down the hatches, Gina Raimondo’s apparatchiks arrive at midnight! The Block Island Gulag nears completion as we speak! We get conspiracy theories about the CDC, who historically are too underfunded to do much of anything, the argument that an STI has nothing to do with sexually-active teens, and even a segue into teacher union bashing and advocacy for home schooling.

Mike wanders way into right field when he compares poor Sen. Josh Miller, who is in fact Jewish, to a Nazi, a not-so-subliminal message that brings to mind Mr. Burns ordering “Smithers, release the hounds“. I knew B101 broadcast the golden oldies, but I had no idea they also gave airtime to 1950’s-era John Birch Society soap operas. Next thing you know, Stenhouse will be rambling on incoherently about fluoride in the water supply and how Keynesian economics are a Commie plot while TC and Kristen get a traffic report. Why no one is going after the radio station’s broadcasting license after spreading false information about a communicable illness to the public and promoting violence toward an elected official is itself a small scandal.

The HPV virus is not like pubic lice or gonorrhea, it lasts for the rest of your life and can result in cancer. If a woman infected with the virus goes into labor and delivers a baby through a cervix that has HPV warts on it, the baby can be blinded. If the newborn comes into contact with the warts in utero, they can risk of blood infection and suffocation caused by warts forming in the air passage. You want the freedom to inflict this on infants? Stay classy, Stenhouse.

In all likelihood, Mike has discovered the cause of vaccines after making a fool of himself protesting the Affordable Care Act. And into the mix he has pulled people who would otherwise vomit if they knew his wretched agenda, folks who are also going completely nuts for Bernie Sanders and were counter-protesting the anti-choice rally a few weeks ago my colleague Steve Ahlquist covered. This thing has grown some serious legs and is making people who usually would make sane decisions team up with the perfect example of the village idiot.

So I am not writing this as a report on Mike Stenhouse as much as a public safety bulletin.

The young women of this generation are being given the opportunity to once and for all be nearly rid of the pain caused by cervical cancer. The underlying logic of the opposition to Gardasil is not liberty, it boils down to the usual nonsense about pre-marital sex and whether women should have control over their own bodies. Even if you are a parent who is trying to encourage chastity until marriage, you should get your daughter vaccinated, one cannot be certain that a rapist wears a condom. And considering that 1 in 4 women in college experience some form of sexual assault before graduation, this is a real issue to take into consideration, not false-flag alarmist drivel. As for qualms about personal autonomy and government over-reach, I agree that those things exist, but not in this instance. I am all in favor of a public discussion of reducing the Pentagon budget and closing eight or nine hundred of the foreign bases that make up our tottering imperial footprint, especially considering that we could clothe and feed the homeless while giving free college tuition to everyone if we spent our money on sensible things. But mandatory mass-innoculation against potentially fatal illnesses is part and parcel of a responsible social safety net. The people who say otherwise are those who need the wider population sick and distracted so they cannot properly participate in our democracy and raise these real concerns. Thankfully, Rhode Island has a high percentage of inoculations caused by the fact that, lucky for us, Stenhouse’s brand of idiocy is not as contagious as HPV. We can be proud of that fact and should encourage that trend to continue.

Stenhouse may have repackaged this to sound like ‘freedom’, but cervical cancer is not liberating. It is a painful, sad illness that takes too many women at too young an age. No woman deserves a potentially lethal illness because they have sex outside of marriage. If Mike Stenhouse wants genital warts, more power to him, I will pay good money to see that snuff film. I will even volunteer the labor to film and edit it for free, putting my Film Studies BA to a good public use. But he has no right to insist others, particularly minor children, be made susceptible simply because he needs to score a few political points. So talk to your friends, share this story with vaccine opponents, encourage young women to get vaccinated, and let’s make Stenhouse strike out here as badly as he did in the big leagues.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Following the publication of this story, some readers have come forward and argued that the human papilloma virus clears up. This is a true statement, genital warts can clear up on their own. However, as with every other virus known to man, once it is in your body, it does not go away. If one’s immunity were to weaken, it could result in a recurrence of warts. It also does not serve as a guarantee that the virus will not cause cancer at a later date. The CDC recommends everyone get vaccinated to avoid this disease.

September 11, 2015September 11, 2015

How Richard Cosentino died in Providence police custody

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Richard Cosentino died in the custody of Providence police on Sunday. The way the police describe his death leaves a lot of doubt. Even from the police’s story, which is pretty much the only version we have, it appears they treated him too harshly, and he didn’t need to die.

Like many of those who have died unnecessarily at the hands of police, he suffered from mental illness. But when he came to the police’s attention on Sunday morning, he had committed no crime, nor was he acting strangely. He was just dealing with a problem that plagued all the residents of his apartment building: an elevator in the building that kept breaking down. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, the elevator in his building had gotten stuck between floors again, with him inside it. He tried to attract attention the same way a lot of people would, loudly requesting help. Another resident heard him and called 911. That brought in firefighters and police. Soon after the firefighters got him out of the elevator, Richard Cosentino was arrested and put in a police car where he died.

As often happens in these dubious deaths in police custody, police are putting out negative information about the dead person. They say that Richard Cosentino had a criminal record, having been arrested in 2011 for larceny and tampering with a vehicle. He pleaded no contest to the tampering charge, and we don’t have more details about what exactly he was accused of doing in that case. Was he a danger to others? Was he another of the mentally ill people, like Darius McCollum and others, who are tagged with criminal records even though they didn’t mean any harm? It’s significant that his neighbors use the word “nice” repeatedly in speaking of him. One neighbor described Richard Cosentino as “A nice guy. He didn’t bother nobody. He’d sit out and talk to himself sometimes.”

I know the police see him as a criminal. And I can understand how it might have attracted a suspicious police response in the past when he’d go outside at night, talk to himself, and so on. But even if his relationship with the police in the past wasn’t the best, that doesn’t mean we should dismiss him as a wrongdoer. Let’s look at why he was arrested.

Police say that they responded to Carroll Towers apartment complex at 243 Smith St., following a 911 call at 4am Sunday from a resident there about another resident who was “causing a commotion in an elevator”. I wish Cosentino’s calls for help hadn’t been interpreted that way: “causing a commotion in an elevator.” In any case, firefighters and police went to the building after Cosentino’s neighbor called 911. The firefighters got him out of the elevator after turning off the electric power. His interaction with the authorities didn’t go well afterwards. According to Providence Police’s Major Thomas Verdi and Colonel Hugh Clements, Cosentino appeared “agitated” and was “highly intoxicated” as soon as the elevator doors were opened. That’s how they perceived this person who had just been through the traumatic experience of being stuck in an elevator in the middle of the night. Look, I know he had some mental illness, and I’m sure he did appear agitated after being stuck in the elevator, but none of that is his fault. With better training, the authorities might not have jumped to perceiving him in that way when they found him inside the elevator.

The police also say that Cosentino refused to comply with them and with firefighters. If that’s what happened, I don’t think he’s really to blame for that given what had just happened to him. I don’t believe they should have arrested him over that. The compassionate thing would have been just to let him go, since he had clearly just been the victim and wasn’t doing any harm. Too often that’s not how police treat the mentally ill or others.

The other side of this is how Cosentino perceived the authorities. To judge by the police’s description, he wasn’t quick to see them as friendly — in fact the police hadn’t been friendly to him in the past, and the police’s story of his death makes it sound as if they didn’t even start out friendly to him this time. It’s quite possible that, as police said, he refused to comply with something they told him to do. And even if he was correct in deciding that the authorities on the scene weren’t friendly to him, his mental illness may have led him to misinterpret things in a worse light. For instance, given the negative interactions he’d had with authorities in the past, he may not have seen them as his rescuers. After the traumatic experience of being stuck in the elevator in the wee hours, and then realizing that he would soon be dealing with police who had treated him negatively before and who weren’t particularly friendly to him now, I even wonder if he mistakenly perceived the authorities as being more the cause of the elevator problem than the solution.

Fear is important here. Even those who don’t particularly suffer from mental illness often feel fearful when police approach and don’t feel that their own innocence will necessarily protect them from police. The situation where firefighters are rescuing you from a stuck elevator, with police waiting among them, is one which many people would find challenging and scary to deal with, whether one has a mental illness or not. Since this is something that plenty of innocent people would feel, it’s worth thinking about how typical police attitudes and behaviors contribute to it. Is it a good thing when we have a police force behaving in ways that inspire so much fear in the innocent? I can certainly believe that Richard Cosentino was “agitated” as the police say, like many people with or without mental illness would be in those circumstances. And maybe he did fail to comply with the police in that kind of situation that isn’t easy to deal with. But that still doesn’t mean he should end up arrested. And in particular, he didn’t have to die.

We don’t have an official cause of death for Cosentino yet. According to police, Cosentino went into cardiac arrest soon after police took him into custody. Cardiac arrest isn’t a heart attack — instead it just means that his heart stopped beating, and it can be caused by a number of things, including the violence of an arrest. People have gone into cardiac arrest after being Tased by police, or after being hit in the chest. Eric Garner died when he went into cardiac arrest after New York police placed him in a kind of neck hold. So it’s worth considering very seriously the possiblity that Richard Cosentino may have died as a result of whatever kinds of physical force were used in arresting him.

Was Cosentino violent with police or firefighters? The police haven’t been too clear about that. They say he was “combative.” But the way police use the word “combative”, it doesn’t necessarily show there was any violence (for example, here, here, here and here). We’ve already heard that Cosentino wasn’t complying, and it’s not clear whether the description of him as “combative” amounted to any more than that. There is also a claim that Cosentino “assaulted” the fire chief who was on the scene, but that claim hasn’t been substantiated; WPRI News says that their sources say they’re not sure the firefighter was ever actually hit. So I don’t know what to think when the police say that Cosentino “began fighting.” I’ve seen many cases in Rhode Island and elsewhere where officers use force against someone who wasn’t violent, and then the police turn around and say that the victim began fighting. This has even happened to innocent people who are just trying to walk away from police, like Kollin Truss in Baltimore who was beaten and wrongly accused of being violent after trying to walk away from an officer. Sometimes you just have to let the innocent person go.

Richard Cosentino was forcibly taken into custody inside his own Providence apartment complex. The police claim that they didn’t hit him. They do, however, admit using physical force against him: they say they decided they had to “physically place him into handcuffs”. But although they occasionally claim that Cosentino was the one who began fighting, I don’t know if that’s really true. I take very seriously the possibility that he wasn’t violent, but police perceived him as “combative”, “agitated” and noncompliant, and decided to forcibly arrest him. There is some video of what happened, but — significantly — the video hasn’t been made public.

Once he was arrested and taken into a police car, Cosentino asked for medical treatment. Police admit this, and again it shows that they used some force on him. It might have been better if the police made his medical treatment more of a priority. Like Eric Garner in Brooklyn, who said “I can’t breathe” and went into cardiac arrest after being placed in a neck hold, Richard Cosentino in Providence went silent and went into cardiac arrest after asking for medical treatment. He might have lived if he had been taken to a hospital immediately. Police say that firefighters gave Cosentino at least a little medical treatment on the scene. But he really needed to be in the hospital.

After he asked for medical help — his last words, perhaps — he seems to have remained in the police car for some time. It’s worth looking at the timeline. This situation started with Cosentino noisily calling help from inside the elevator, followed by a 911 call which according to most news stories occurred at 4am Sunday. A few of the media stories on Cosentino’s death say that the “rescue call” was at 4:30am Sunday, not 4am; maybe 4am was when the 911 call was placed and the big incident with police and firefighters on scene happened around 4:30. In any case, Cosentino and the authorities got into their confrontation, and he was arrested and placed in the police car. He asked for medical help, and it’s clear it didn’t take long for him to ask, because the police say that he went silent shortly after being arrested. So very soon after being arrested, he said he needed medical help. A little after 5am, he was pronounced dead at Rhode Island Hospital. The death itself occurred in police custody, so it seems he died in the police car before he even got to the hospital. Would he still be alive if he had gotten to the hospital at 4:45 or earlier, instead of staying in the police car after “he went silent”?

As one of his neighbors said, “Cosentino had mental health issues but wouldn’t hurt anyone” and “was probably distraught from being stuck in the elevator. The neighbor said it may have helped if Cosentino was put into an ambulance instead of a police car.” There is no reason to think Cosentino was armed or dangerous.

Media coverage has emphasized that Richard Cosentino’s death is under investigation by the Providence police department itself, as well as by the state police and Attorney General Peter Kilmartin (a former police officer who is police-friendly and has not been good at supporting police accountability). So there are several different investigations, all with police in charge. But investigations alone are not enough. The neighbors who knew Cosentino are shocked. If officers used unnecessary force here, they need to face consequences that are more serious than a full-pay retirement.

The public needs to see the video. And it’s long past time for better laws. Police need better training, not just in dealing with the mentally ill, but in dealing with all who are vulnerable and all who are likely to be mistakenly perceived as dangerous. There should be mental health workers on every police shift. Especially when dealing with elderly, mentally ill, or disabled people, police should try to de-escalate and avoid arrest, seeking peace instead. Handcuffing people in these groups should be a last resort (and should often be done with handcuffs in front of the body, not behind). The Providence Community Safety Act needs to be passed, and the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights needs to be repealed. Accepting a tiny bit more risk to law enforcement is worth it if it prevents unnecessary deaths like Richard Cosentino’s.

September 11, 2015

As I begin my fast

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I accuse!
As my friends have dared, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it, in full, since the normal channels of justice have failed to do so. My duty is to speak out; I do not wish to be an accomplice in this travesty, the President’s Business Climate Action Plan. My nights would otherwise be haunted by the specter of the innocent people, far away, suffering the most horrible of tortures for a crime against Mother Nature they did not commit.

There you have it, a piece of my mind, freely adapted from Émile Zola’s J’accuse, but why and why now? Beyond Extreme Energy issued the following press release last Tuesday to announce their No New Permits fast at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC—this is the industry-captured body that rubber-stamps the projects described in a previous post)

(September 8, 2015) WASHINGTON, D.C.—On Tuesday morning, a dozen people begin an 18-day water-only fast in front of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to raise awareness of the agency’s contribution to worsening climate change and to harming the health and well-being of frontline communities where these projects are built.

The fasters, ranging in age from 23 to 72, are demanding that FERC issue “No New Permits” for industry projects such as interstate pipelines, compressor stations and LNG (liquefied natural gas) export terminals until the agency prioritizes solar, wind and other renewable sources of energy. These projects release methane pollution, a potent greenhouse gas that is worsening the impacts of climate change.

Fasters, organized by Beyond Extreme Energy, will hold vigil in front of FERC, 888 First St. NE, Washington, D.C., weekdays from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. They will be joined by others fasting for shorter periods at FERC or in their own communities.

They will end their fast on Friday, September 25, the day after Pope Francis speaks to Congress, where he is expected to address the issue of climate change and its disparate impact on the world’s poor.

In Rhode Island AFSC-SENE, Occupy Providence and Fossil Free RI are supporting the fast of our dear and unshakable friends in DC. I pledged to fast three days centered at each event in our community that I can attend. The fasts are Ramadan style: no food and liquids from sunrise to sunset. Beatrijs, my wife, is joining me to the extent that her diabetes allows it.

Here is our first event: a vigil with the Raging Grannies in Westerly this Saturday—hope to see you there!