November 10, 2015 – RI Future

November 10, 2015October 22, 2016

Fast food workers rally for $15 and a union at Wendy’s in Warwick

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Fast food employees, restaurant workers and labor allies rallied outside the Wendy’s restaurant at 771 Warwick Ave in Warwick around noon as part of a national effort to kick off a year-long $15 minimum wage campaign ahead of next year’s presidential elections. Nearly 100 people gathered in the parking lot of Wendy’s, where the management had locked the doors ahead of the protests and only served meals through the drive-thru window.

Led by outgoing Rhode-Island Jobs with Justice executive director Jesse Strecker, workers chanted and marched around the building, finally settling in front for a series of speeches from various workers and advocates “all the way down the food chain.”

Long time Wendy’s worker and minimum wage advocate Jo-Ann Gesterling spoke not only about fair wages, but about wages stolen when management forces workers to work through their breaks, lack of accountability in the management structure, and other issues fast food workers deal with on a daily basis.

Demonstrators were not only demanding $15 an hour, fair treatment and a union, they were also demanding that Wendy’s join the the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program (FFP). Attentive readers will remember that the Brown Student Labor Alliance lead a protest in October around the FFP, described as a “ground-breaking model for worker-led social responsibility based on a unique collaboration among farmworkers, Florida tomato growers and 14 participating buyers.” It is “the first comprehensive, verifiable and sustainable approach to ensuring better wages and working conditions in America’s agricultural fields.”

Emelio Garcia, a former employee of Teriyaki House Restaurant in downtown Providence spoke about not having been paid for work he did at the restaurant. Wage theft is a story sadly common in Rhode Island, as more and more employees stand up and demand the wages that have been stolen from them by employers. Garcia says that he was docked for two hours of pay a day for breaks he was never actually allowed to take.

Flor Salazar, who worked at Café Atlantic and was owed thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, was allegedly assaulted by owner Juan Noboa with a baseball bat when she and a group of workers confronted Noboa at his home Halloween morning. “We are tired of having our work stolen, we are tired of being disrespected in our workplace,” said Salazar, “It’s enough.”

The final speaker was a not a restaurant worker but Magdalene Smith, a CNA working at a Pawtucket nursing home. “This is not a fight for just restaurants, but for everybody,” said Smith. “Everybody deserves $15. We work hard.”

In addition to Jobs With Justice and the Brown Student/Labor Alliance the event was sponsored by 1199 SEIU Rhode Island, Fuerza Laboral/Power of Workers and Restaurant Opportunities Center of Rhode Island.

November 10, 2015

The minimum wage is a moral outrage

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“The worker deserves his [or her] wages.”
– Apostle Paul (1 Tim 5:18)

Let’s get real. Any adult working for $7.25 an hour is being exploited, and the $9.60 Rhode Island minimum beginning January 1, 2016 also falls far short of being just.

Ask any Haitian garment worker: Survival requires servitude—-even if paid a scandalous 64 cents an hour.

Slavery is forced labor which legally rescinds all freedoms. A poverty wage is wage slavery, legally allowing employers to pay wages which eliminate many freedoms: The freedom to obtain decent housing; the freedom to take a paid vacation or sick day; the freedom to spend time with children; the freedom to retire; and, for some families, even the freedom to eat every day of the month.

Of course, the minimum wage promotes at least one freedom: The freedom to work two or three jobs.

The Declaration of Independence speaks eloquently to the minimum wage, stating that the Creator endows us “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

How can a person experience Life when their work is punished with poverty? How can a person experience Liberty when unjust wages impose soul-crushing limitations? How can a person pursue Happiness with the drudgery of constant work? Are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness truly today’s “unalienable Rights”?

Living Wage Benefits Many

Two practical arguments win the day for a minimum wage which is a living wage. First, a raise stimulates the economy because minimum wage workers spend virtually all they receive. For example, with a raise to $10.10, the Economic Policy Institute estimates the boost in Gross Domestic Product would support the creation of 85,000 new jobs.

Second, a raise also decreases government spending to assist minimum-wage workers. Think corporate welfare. Government’s indirect subsidies to unethical businesses cease when a living wage is mandated.

The most pertinent argument for a living wage is moral. As the Apostle Paul wrote: “The worker deserves his [or her] wages.”

I recently heard a politician cynically argue we could raise the minimum wage to $50. This logical fallacy is absurd. Similarly, we could argue for a minimum wage of three dollars. Of course, the minimum wage should be the legally permissible minimum enabling a decent life.

Some opponents maintain the minimum wage is for training teenagers. To the contrary, the Department of Labor reports 88 percent are at least age 20. Moreover, even a single adult requires $11.86 an hour to escape poverty.

At least $12 an hour—and a benefits package which includes health insurance, vacation time, sick time and retirement pay—would provide a living wage. Indeed, the Institute for Policy Studies estimates that if the 1968 minimum wage was adjusted for income growth and inflation, workers would receive $21.16. The U.S. permits 34% of this wage.

Pols Opposing Minimum Wage

This prompts the question: Who is responsible for this repugnant impoverishment of workers? The answer is straightforward. While raises are frequently passed when Democrats are in charge, Republicans blocked all raises during the 16 years of the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.

In what moral universe do these politicians live?

The jargon of plutocrats and pols tell the story: They cite ‘capitalism’ (meaning the choice of those with capital to fleece workers); they cite ‘the free market’ (meaning misers seek freedom from regulation so they can pay paltry wages); and they cite ‘supply and demand’ (meaning employees are priced the same as goods and services—-ignoring the requirements for Life).

Worshipping at the altar of unregulated capitalism justifies treating people as property. Isn’t this the very definition of slavery? What a crude and callous obscenity.

Want to make a difference? Encourage your RI Senator and Representative now to introduce a living wage bill this January. You can identify your state legislators at https://sos.ri.gov/vic. Oppose the moral outrage of today’s slave labor with a demand for wise and caring justice.

Rev. Harry Rix is a retired pastor and mental health counselor living in Providence, RI. He has 50 articles on spirituality and ethics, stunning photos, and 1200 inspiring quotations available at www.quoflections.org. ©2015 Harry Rix. All rights reserved.

November 10, 2015

National Grid responds to liquefaction opposition

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National Grid has proposed a liquefaction plant as an addition to the Field’s Point gas storage facility, to be located in South Providence, and every single comment the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) received on the proposed facility from the public was negative and against the facility’s construction. No one from the public, it seems, is in favor of the project.

Of course this will not deter National Grid.

In a 39 page letter, National Grid’s legal counsel responded to every commenter. Of course, some of the comments were dismissed as irrelevant with the phrase, “Expression of commenter’s view.” This phrase was repeated 27 times, in response, for instance, to Greg Gerritt saying, “Climate change is the crisis of our times” or Jesus Holguin saying, “This facility is not going to benefit us in any way. Something that would benefit us is [a] just transition away from fossil fuels.”

National Grid’s legal team sorted through the testimony of the various commenters and pulled out all the statements that “identify potential environmental effects, reasonable alternatives, and measures to avoid or lessen environmental impacts.” Expressed concerns that were not environmental in nature will be addressed at a later time, says National Grid.

The sloppiness of the response’s composition is evident in some of the misspellings of various names. Monay McNeil is misspelled Money McNeil and state Representative Aaron Regunberg is misidentified as Erin Regunberg for instance.

Further, the response to each comment, if the comment was deemed worthy of response, is footnoted in some 13 documents called “draft resource reports” and filed with FERC on November 2 and 4. This means that finding the reason for National Grid’s objection to a particular comment requires cross referencing footnotes with the draft resource reports.

For instance, when Rhode Island state Senator Juan Pichardo was paraphrased as saying he was, “Opposed to this LNG or this facility being built and the waterfront is so close to hospitals and so close to the neighborhood,” National Grid responded with:

Refer to Resource Report 1, Section 1.4 (page 1-14) (Operation and Maintenance).

Refer to Resource Report 5, Section 5.3.2 (pages 5-8 through 9) (Fire Protection), Section 5.7 (pages 5-13 through 5-22) (Environmental Justice) and Section 5.9.2.6 (page 5-28) (Environmental Justice Socioeconomics).

Refer to Resource Report 8, Section 8.2.2 (Existing Residences and Buildings).

Refer to Resource Report 11, Section 11.1 (pages 11-2 through 11-8) (Safety Issues), Section 11.2.3.2 (pages 11-10 and 11-11) (Thermal Radiation and Flammable Exclusion Zones) and Section 11.3.1 (page 11-11) (Facility Response Plan).

Refer to Resource Report 13, Section 13.14 ((pages 13-102 through 104) Hazard Detection System), Section 13.15 (pages 13-105 through 109) (Fire Suppression and Response Plan) and Section 13.16 (pages 13-110 through 111) (Hazard Control Systems).

Senator Pichardo could spend quite a bit of time wading through page after page of reports to find out exactly why National Grid believes his concerns are without merit, if he were so inclined.

To be fair, pages 2-9 of National Grid’s legal response attempt to distill the information from the draft resource reports into a few paragraphs organized by subject, such as “Traffic Impacts” or “Comments on Rate and Cost Impacts on Retail Gas Customers.” In these sections, the concerns and opinions expressed by the public are legally elided by claiming that the law is on the side of National Grid, a legal position that National Grid maintains, but does not prove. Remember that all the documentation National Grid is submitting to FERC are essentially sales documents, created to convince FERC to approve the project over the objections of the public.

For instance, in response to a complaint made that the public meetings were not adequately advertised within the affected community, National Grid’s legal team writes, “Some stakeholders commented on the quality of the public notification that has been provided to local residents for the proposed Project. Resource Report 5, section 5.7.2 discusses the public outreach undertaken by NGLNG to communicate with the environmental justice populations near the proposed Project…”

In other words, despite the experience of the community, National Grid maintains that they satisfied the letter of the law.

There’s a lot in the legal team’s response worthy of comment, and I hope others will chime in with comments on this, but one more point is worth consideration. National Grid is a huge company, with many subsidiaries and ventures. So when National Grid says that there is a customer need for the new liquefaction facility, it should be noted that the customer mentioned is The Narragansett Electric Company, which is owned by National Grid.

At another point, when discussing rate impacts, National Grid disingenuously claims that, “State public utility commissions regulate retail rates.” This is true as far as it goes, until one realizes that the Rhode Island Public Utility Commission serves as a virtual rubber stamping agency for any rate increase proposed by utility companies such as National Grid or its subsidiary, Narragansett Electric.

Like an evil octopus, National Grid wants us to believe that it’s various tentacles aren’t actually all parts of some enormous beast, but independent snakes acting alone.

This is why it is difficult to take seriously National Grid’s answer to the comments of Nick Katkevich, who “urged that the environmental effects of the proposed Project be considered in the same environmental document as pipeline projects sponsored by subsidiaries of Spectra Energy Partners, LP in New England, specifically the AIM, Atlantic Bridge, and Access Northeast projects.”

National Grid claims that these are all separate projects that must each be judged independently, and that there will be no cumulative environmental effects, at least as can be judged under present law. National Grid claims that the liquefaction facility “would be undertaken even if those pipeline projects did not or do not proceed” and “is an unconnected single action that has independent utility so it would not be appropriate to consider it in the same environmental analysis with any of the pipeline expansion projects.”

Despite the contentions of National Grid’s legal team, the planned expansion of fracked and unfracked methane gas infrastructure in Rhode Island seems part of a grand plan to keep our state addicted to fossil fuels that are destroying the environment. These proposed projects have lifespans of 50 years or more, yet optimistically we have much less than 35 years to kick the fossil fuel habit.

No amount of corporate legalese can change that math.

November 10, 2015

Ike was right: Military industrial complex corrupted economy

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“We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” said President Dwight Eisenhower, in his 1961 farewell address. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Ironically, President Eisenhower’s time in the White House was marred by a massive arms buildup spurred on by the “red scare” paranoia of the Cold War. Eisenhower didn’t heed his own advice during his presidency. In fairness, the American global military empire began long before Ike, and overspending on its military budget still persists today. The sphere of influence that the military has on our economy has only grown exponentially. Eisenhower’s prophetic words have come true. Military overspending dominates America’s industry and economy.

Over the past half century the United States has spent $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons alone. That outrageously exceeds the combined spending on education, social services, job programs, environment, science, energy production, law enforcement, and community development. In the effort to achieve mutually assured destruction with Russia, America has achieved mutually assured stupidity. Granted, such military waste kept the Cold War from becoming hot, and thankfully we never used those nuclear weapons. Yet surely we could have used more diplomacy and saved some of that $5.5 trillion for programs which we really need and would definitely use here at home. America is falling apart internally as we keep our eyes on problems abroad. Our roads and infrastructure are crumbling while “the department of defense pays $511 for 90-cent light bulbs, $640 for a toilet seat, and $5,096 for two pairs of pliers” (p. 503, Social Problems, Charon and Garth).

Absolute power breeds absolute corruption. The United States military-industrial complex lacks any real system of checks and balances. Independent oversight committees exist, but they do not have the power or purity to stop this runaway train. Our military-industrial complex has become too powerful, and it is corrupting our economy from within.

This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:
- ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
- Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
- Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
- Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
- Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
- Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas
- Incarceration is the new slavery – James Poston
- Justice isn’t blind with data-based sentencing – David Brown
- Ending welfare entitlements opened the door to disability fraud – Dan Davidson
- Post prison services would stem system’s revolving door – Michael Wheelock
- You’re vote doesn’t matter as much as your money – David Brown
- How schools emulate prisons, and prepare students for them – Richard Pimiental
- Cars that are good for society – David DeGrasse
- PTA involvement instead of prison mentality in schools – Mustapha Bojang
- Prison is about re-socialization, not corrections – Christopher Marsich
- ACI administrator praises Prison Op/Ed Project – Ralph Orleck
- Alcohol, incarceration and what it means to matter – Laura Baumgardner
- Was Myron Magnet a genius or just a Republican? – Danny Mercure

November 10, 2015February 15, 2016

On the new PawSox management

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The recent announcement of the new management team of the Pawtucket Red Sox, with Dr. Charles Steinberg as president, Dan Rea III as senior vice president/general manager, and Jeff White as treasurer, struck all the activists who spent the summer stirring up a protest about the proposed construction of a new stadium in Providence as team owner Larry Lucchino doubling down on his proposal to help gentrify Providence. The three are veteran spokesmen for Lucchino and all made cameos this summer on the listening tour circuit, refusing to actually listen to the public and instead telling we poor stupid Rhode Islanders from on high how they planned to save us from ourselves.

In a recent article for the Providence Journal, Steinberg, whose training as a dentist just screams professional sports business acumen, said he wants to see ‘passion again’ in Pawtucket. Yet only four months ago he and the other two, along with Cyd ‘Vicious’ McKenna, were publicly insulting and antagonizing the very community they now claim they want to nurture.

Meanwhile, Jorge Elorza and Gina Raimondo continue to jump back and forth between appealing to the vast majority of sanely cynical citizens, who see this as a bail-out for a business model Lucchino’s type likes to impose on America’s past time, not to mention a Baltimore-styled gentrification move for Providence, and appeasing big-name Democratic Party donors who are getting cranky over not getting their way. The great political writer Paul Street has coined the phrase ‘Dismal Dollar Drenched Democrats’, one that is totally fitting herein.

If we look at the new leadership, we see a group of individuals who are more dedicated to the bottom line than the community. Steinberg is a long-time hanger-on of Lucchino’s coattails, having followed him to San Diego, Baltimore, and Boston, where they left less-than-desirable legacies. Rea is a year younger than me and does not remember when Bill Buckner let the ball roll through his legs during the World Series while White is obviously a number-crunching middleman with no interest in sports.

Leaving aside these surface observations, there is something much more important to note. Rea is a history baccalaureate graduate of Harvard, a finishing school of neoliberal public relations, and White comes from a long career of neoliberal financial restructuring deals. This school of thought, as fantastically described by Dr. Michael Hudson in a recent CounterPunch podcast with Eric Draitser, is a get-rich-quick ideology that stuffs the pockets of the few while defenestrating the taxpayers and treasuries. It is true that urbanized stadiums are quickly becoming the norm of baseball. Yet it is also true that baseball is functioning as a major lever of gentrification. During the summertime listening tour, McKenna reused as a talking point the idea that she as a Providence resident wished she could feel safe walking along the waterfront location on the old I-195 land corridor. The underlying implication, that those darned brown people make it unsafe, is a profoundly disparaging race- and class-based remark. Her invocation of the notion that a new baseball park would promote pro-active policing is certifiable lunacy when one recognizes the negative impact such policies have on people of color. Considering how Lucchino’s previous hosts in Baltimore were not exploding into demonstrations of celebratory glee for the police department last spring, only a member of the Chicago Cubs could miss how insidious this whole thing truly is.

Anyone who has followed this story in even a passing fashion this year can plainly see how truly desperate the ownership is now. Without any psychic abilities, it seems like they are ruing the day the late James Skeffington talked them into this because he thought he could pull a fast one and get his way due to the fact he had long-time connections going back to when his buddy Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy handed him a sweetheart real estate attorney deal. If one refers back to the original pitch at the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation he made with Lucchino, he looked genuinely stunned that people reacted in such a fashion to what he thought was an open-and-shut hustle. Now that Skeffington has passed on, the team is being led by a bunch of non-Rhode Islanders, which means they have absolutely zero connections and are left with a franchise whose reputation they destroyed and that they thought they could flip at a profit within five years. Why exactly are Rhode Island tax payers supposed to aid and abet such a scam?

At this point, with Lucchino threatening to pack up and leave town unless we pay his bills, I would offer a simple single word: SEYA!

November 10, 2015November 11, 2015

Erik Loomis on TPP: the ugly, the bad and the good

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The Trans Pacific Partnership knows no party lines. It is supported by Barack Obama and Marco Rubio, it is reviled by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton has moved from supportive to evasive.

Nationally acclaimed author and URI history professor Erik Loomis’ new book “Out of Sight” deals with the exact issues the TPP would exacerbate – and he is anything but evasive on the topic. There may well be no one in Rhode Island who understands its complexities as thoroughly. We spoke at length about the new so-called trade deal, which he cautioned me not to see as a trade deal.

“The trade aspects of it are overrated,” said Loomis, who will be speaking about the TPP, as well as his new book, at an event at AS220 next week. “What it really is is a corporate rights agreement.”

In his new book, Loomis argues that we need to create international labor and environmental standards so that companies can’t keep moving around the globe to find cheaper places to pollute and people to exploit.

The most controversial aspect of the TPP are the Investor-State Dispute Settlement courts it would further empower. These courts, explains Loomis, allow corporations to sue countries when regulations infringe upon their profits. He says we need to flip this idea on its head and create something like a “worker-state dispute settlement court” and that they provide the “framework” for international regulations.

Below is our full 16 minute talk on the TPP. Tune in tomorrow to find out who Loomis is backing for president and why. Yesterday, we focused on his new book.