January 2016 – Page 5

January 11, 2016January 12, 2016

Bannister House workers demanding fair contract from Centers

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Workers at the Bannister House nursing home voted unanimously to reject Centers Health Care’s contract proposal and authorized a strike on December 28. Workers say that the nursing home chain is trying to drive down compensation for existing jobs. Today workers and allies held an informational picket outside Bannister House.

“These workers are fighting for a fair shake,” said Mike Araujo of RI Jobs With Justice, “not just for themselves but for everyone that cares for our family members when they need help.

Last year Bannister House workers helped save the historic nursing home from being closed down. Bannister House was founded in 1890 as a “Home for Aged Colored Women” in Fox Point to provide care for African-American women, many of them retired domestic servants.

Today workers are demanding a living wage and affordable benefits. The workers are unionized under SEIU 1199.

January 11, 2016

Songs of the Spanish Civil War: An Audio Documentary

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This year is the 80^th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, a conflict remembered in mythic terms by many on the Left. Called the “Good Fight”, it was the opportunity that the West failed to take to defeat Fascism in its tracks, leading to the vicious Second World War.

One element of the war remembered fondly by both members of the International Brigades and their comrades is the music. During this period, artists like Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Ernst Busch, and others recorded and performed songs in solidarity with the Second Republic. I recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Peter Glazer. He is a Professor of the University of California Berkley and has done a great deal of scholarship on this topic. His father performed on the original recordings featuring Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers created by Moses Asch and he has written a musical using these songs titled Heart of Spain and the book Radical Nostalgia: Spanish Civil War Commemoration in America.

There are two points worthy of discussion. First, one can find in these songs a type of radical lineage that has continued throughout the generations. These recordings were some of Pete Seeger’s earlier recordings and this chapter was particularly targeted by the McCarthyite witch hunts during the Cold War as an instance of subversion. The next generation, beginning with first the Beats and then Bob Dylan, embraced this heritage of radical politics in art. This continued on through the rise of punk rock and rap/hip-hop music. When one listens to Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, or Jedi Mind Tricks, in the background can be heard strains of Paul Robeson’s Die Moorsoldaten (The Peat Bog Soldiers). In between the lines of the lyrics of The Clash, it is possible to discern the socialist thrust of Pete Seeger singing Viva La Quince Brigada. This is a vital part of Left wing history and culture worthy of embrace.

Second, Dr. Glazer’s notion of “radical nostalgia” is one to be valued. Nostalgia today is being utilized to invoke reactionary notions. Yet there is a progressive thrust to nostalgia about the Spanish Civil War. This can be extended further in the timeline and utilized to counter the reaction. The late Howard Zinn understood this with his People’s History project, creating an honorable lineage that remembered the Left regardless of ideological constraint. When people talk about the “good old days” of the 1950’s, instead of replying with a negative about how it was the final decade of Jim Crow segregation, we should instead speak with pride about how a generation of men and women stood up against the onslaught of McCarthyism and refused to repudiate their anti-racist ideals despite the cowardice of a select few informers that named names. We must reclaim the past for the Left and honor it despite whatever flaws there may have been in the Communist movement. Only then will be be able to forge a brighter future.

This year will see a series of commemorative events throughout the country. The Berkley campus in particular will see events including an October staging of Dr. Glazer’s play Heart of Spain. For more information about events in Berkley, visit Dr. Glazer’s department website. The other source of information remains the always-helpful website of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

This program is approximately one hour and is available for download in a variety of formats at https://archive.org/details/SongsOfTheSpanishCivilWar. It is available for free and all permissions are granted to non-profit and educational organizations to use and broadcast.

January 11, 2016January 11, 2016

Tim DeChristopher: Prison taught me to believe in evil

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Tim DeChristopher spent 21 months in prison after disrupting a Bureau of Land Management oil and gas auction in 2008 by outbidding oil companies eager to snatch up pristine lands around national parks in Utah. Now he’s a divinity student at Harvard. When asked “How did prison change you?” DeChristopher offers a surprising answer:

“It taught me to believe in evil.”

DeChristopher delivered a sermon about his imprisonment and subsequent revelation at the First Unitarian Church of Providence Sunday morning. He began by telling a story about an incident that occurred about six months into his incarceration.

A man named Alejandro was serving time for drug smuggling. Like many inmates, Alejandro turned to crime because of lack of opportunity and a need to provide for his family. During visiting hours, Alejandro was met by his wife, infant child and four year old son. When it came time for visiting hours to end, Alejandro’s son did not understand why his father could not come home with him. He clung to his father and cried until a guard intervened and help Alejandro’s wife physically remove the boy.

“We were all fighting back tears,” said DeChristopher, “All were crying, except for the guard, his eyes were dry.”

The guard was merely inconvenienced.

The guard’s job is to literally tear families apart says DeChristopher, “To do this, you must see inmates as less than human.”

“Evil,” says DeChristopher, “is the denial of the inherent worth and dignity of other people. This is that nature of the prison system today.”

The evil is structural, not personal, and prisons are always evil, even if they are only the lesser of two evils.

The private prison company lobbyists who write the laws that help imprison people for nonviolent crimes don’t have to separate children from their mothers and fathers. Judges, lawyers and juries don’t have to pull children away either.

“Those most impacted [by the system] can do the least about it,” says DeChristopher.

A guard must suppress his conscience, “or find another job” if possible. Most of the guards that DeChristopher dealt with were former military: uneducated and sometimes dealing with mental illness, “practiced in the ways of dehumanization.”

The “suppression of humanity in others goes hand in hand with the suppression of one’s own humanity,” says DeChristopher. The constant belittling of prisoners seemed rote, like programming, and DeChristopher began to see the guards as machines. He told a fellow inmate, “Think about the guards as robots, so you don’t expect anything from them.”

Well after prison, DeChristopher realized, that like the guards, he had denied the basic humanity of those around him. For a Unitarian Universalist, respecting the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings is the first of seven principles. But rather than see his lapse as a failing, DeChristopher sees the principles as aspirational.

Structural Evil

“Structural evil requires a structural response,” says DeChristopher. He thinks people can push back against unjust laws and unjust systems by refusing to convict when we sit on juries if the law or the application of the law will result in injustice. Many courts will tell juries that they must not use their conscience, but only decide cases on the law. DeChristopher maintains that to do this only concentrates power in the hands of judges and prosecutors.

“We need more conscience, more compassion… laws that put non-violent offenders in prison for decades are largely out of line with our values,” says DeChristopher, “Society is alienated along class and race.”

To combat dehumanization, we must find our vulnerability, sacrifice our privilege, and see the inherent worth and dignity in others. There is, says DeChristopher, “a divine spark in each of us” that is “a powerful creative force for combating structural evil.”

But this isn’t easy to do. “Three years after my release, I still don’t think that I could have been strong enough to be vulnerable,” says DeChristopher.

You listen to DeChristopher’s sermon here.

January 11, 2016January 23, 2016

Potential Disasters: dangerous facility in a high risk area

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The Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island (EJLRI) has created a brilliant position paper, “National Grid’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Liquefaction Facility: Toxic Hazards in the Port Providence: Proposals for a Just Transition” that eviscerates National Grid‘s plans to build a new liquefaction facility for fracked LNG at Fields Point in South Providence. Over the next few days RI Future will be presenting the EJLRI’s position paper in its entirety.

Potential Disasters: dangerous facility in a high risk area

EJLRI02
Despite what the gas industry says, LNG is a dangerous substance. Developing additional large scale LNG infrastructure in densely populated urban areas, and particularly at Fields Point in the Port of Providence, poses a number of risks for potential disasters. This following section is an abbreviated summary of some of the risks and potentially dangerous scenarios. The gas industry is quick to state that LNG isn’t flammable or explosive, and that it isn’t stored under pressure. This is somewhat true, but it’s a dangerous half truth. LNG is stored at very cold temperatures (under 260°F), in double shelled containers without any air present. In these conditions, LNG is in stable liquid form and without air it is not flammable.

The potential dangers with LNG occur if something goes wrong and it leaves these conditions. At any temperature over 260°F it begins to boil and convert to methane gas, which causes it to expand by 600 times. At these temperatures, any sealed container would become rapidly pressurized. If LNG spills and begins mixing with air, it does become flammable between concentrations of 5 – 15 percent gas to air. For comparison, propane is flammable at concentrations of 2.1 – 9.5 percent, gasoline is flammable at 1.3 – 7.1 percent. As leaking or spilled LNG boils and expands, at first it presents hazards of cryogenic freezing (due it’s very cold temperature) and asphyxiation (due to it being heavier than air, displacing oxygen). If the expanding LNG cloud comes across an ignition source with enough air mixed in, it would become a pool of fire that can ignite back to the source of the spill. If the spilled LNG is pressurized (for example during the re-vaporization process, when LNG is converted back to gas to re-inject in to the grid), it can cause a jet fire. If a vapor cloud of boiling and expanding LNG occurs within a confined structure, and catches fire, it can become over pressured and potentially explosive. Ignition of pressurized liquids can cause a BLEVE: Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion. (See here and here)

Relevant Past LNG Disasters

Washington State: March 31st, 2014

A rupture in one of the “pressure vessels” next to an LNG storage tank was cited as the cause of an explosion that injured 5 workers, sent 250 pound fragments of steel shrapnel flying over 300 yards, punctured a double shell LNG storage tank, and caused an evacuation of people within two miles from the LNG storage facility. “Benton County sheriff’s Deputy Joe Lusignan said Wednesday that it was ‘a little bit of a miracle’ that no one was killed. ‘It was an extremely powerful explosion, the initial explosion,’ he said. ‘Fortunately, we didn’t have any subsequent ones after that.’” The blast caused an evacuation within a 2 mile radius, far larger than the half mile area that National Grid is considering for impacts in Providence. Luckily, the area in Washington was sparsely populated, with only 1000 residents and agricultural workers evacuated, whereas a 2 mile radius from the LNG tank in Providence has a population of close to 80,000 people, which doesn’t include additional people at work, school, or in RI Hospital and trauma center. According the Reuters, the LNG blast in Washington “could focus attention on the risk of storing massive gas supplies near population centers.”

Skikda Algeria, January 2004

The port city of Skikda, Algeria suffered an explosion and deadly incident at an LNG Liquefaction Facility. A steam boiler exploded “after it probably drew flammable vapors from a hydrocarbon refrigerant leak into its air intake. This triggered a secondary, more massive vapor cloud explosion destroying a large portion of the plant. The incident killed 27 people, injured 74, and created an $800 million loss.” In the U.S, the 2004 incident spurred increasing opposition to LNG import facilities being proposed at the time. In response, “energy industry executives and regulatory officials have pointed out that the explosion in Skikda [was] attributed to a boiler that is not expected to be part of LNG terminals in the United States, which are to be used for warming liquefied gas back into a vapor, then storing it. The Skikda plant did the opposite, chilling natural gas until it condensed into a liquid.” National Grid’s proposed Liquefaction Facility in Providence would perform the same function as the Skikda plant in Algeria.

LNG Facility in Providence Denied in 2005 due to safety risks

In 2005, FERC denied an application from Keyspan (now National Grid) to expand the existing Fields Point LNG storage tank into an LNG import facility. FERC Commissioner Nora Brownell stated that the proposal was turned down because of safety risks and the “very real concerns made by the residents in communities and all of the towns nearby.” The “Commission staff concluded that the KeySpan LNG conversion project would not meet current federal safety standards… [and] identified 75 specific environmental mitigation measures that must be met by KeySpan LNG and its accompanying pipeline project [CP04223, CP04193].

A report by former White House anti-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke concluded that “urban import terminals, such as Fields Point LNG, would be vulnerable to “catastrophic” terrorist attacks, and also make “extremely attractive” terrorist targets.” In the detailed 159 page report, Clarke details multiple scenarios in which an attack on the LNG facility in Fields Point Providence results in an LNG pool fire and catastrophic mass casualties. The comprehensive report detailed neighboring industrial and chemical facilities that would be impacted by a LNG fire, but said that further study would be needed to assess the additional risks posed.

High Risk Neighbor: Univar Chemical Facility 

The proposed LNG Liquefaction facility neighbors a chemical facility owned by Univar, a multinational chemical corporation that also happens to manufacture chemicals for hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). Fracking is a controversial process used in extracting natural gas from shale and other unconventional formations; the process has been banned in New York State due to public health concerns raised by the NY Department of Health. While it is unknown whether Univar’s facility in Providence has a direct link with fracking, the facility is listed on EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory due to onsite release 1,275 pounds of toxic chemicals in 2013. Chemicals listed on the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory database for the Univar site in Fields Point include but are not limited to:

1,1,1TRICHLOROETHANE, ACETONE, AMMONIA, CHLORINE, CHLOROBENZENE, DI(2ETHYLHEXYL) PHTHALATE, DIBUTYL PHTHALATE, ETHYLENE GLYCOL, FORMALDEHYDE, FREON 113, METHANOL, N,NDIMETHYLFORMAMIDE, PHOSPHORIC ACID, SODIUM HYDROXIDE, STYRENE, TETRACHLOROETHYLENE, TOLUENE, TRICHLOROETHYLENE and TRIETHYLAMINE.

Former White House Anti-Terrorism official Richard Clarke wrote in his 2005 report on LNG in Fields Point that,

In the event of a [LNG] pool fire, temperatures would be high enough to compromise chemical storage tanks. Univar workers handle such chemicals as chlorine, sodium hydroxide, hydrogen peroxide, and potassium hydroxide at the site. Chlorine leaks can be lethal. For example, a recent chlorine gas leak in South Carolina killed nine people and required evacuations for up to one mile from the site. We do not know all the effects of gas leaks on all these chemicals, or the potential consequences of explosion of these chemicals caused by high heat from an LNG pool fire. Additional research into the safety of this chemical facility is needed in assessing the risks posed.”

14 mile hazard radius: 110,000 schoolchildren at risk

In 2014, the Center for Effective Government released a report titled “Kids in Danger Zones: One in Three U.S. Schoolchildren at Risk from Chemical Catastrophes” which investigated schools being located within the hazard radius of chemical facilities. Appendix III of the report shows the percentage of students in vulnerability zones, by state. With 67 percent of students at risk from a chemical incident, Rhode Island is ranked 2nd highest nationwide, ranking above both Texas and Louisiana which are both known for welcoming petrochemical facilities in busy Gulf of Mexico ports. RI’s high chemical risk ranking is due almost entirely to the Univar chemical facility in Providence, adjacent to the proposed LNG Liquefaction Facility. Within the 14 mile hazard radius of the facility there are 311 schools with approximately 110,000 children.

Major Fuel Terminals and Fuel Transportation 

The Port of Providence is the largest fuel port in Southern New England, and supplies oil products (gasoline, diesel, ethanol, jet fuel, etc) to all of Rhode Island, Eastern Connecticut, and Worcester County and South Coast Massachusetts. The fuels are transported in and out of South Providence by international tanker ships, heavy truck traffic, and and a railway line that travels between I95 and Roger Williams Park and Zoo before connecting with the Amtrak and MBTA Commuter Train tracks in South Elmwood. Port of Providence has terminals operated by Sprague Energy, Global Partners LP, Enterprise Products (subsidiary of Duke Energy), New England Petroleum, and Motiva (a joint venture between Shell Oil and Saudi Arabia’s Aramco). National Grid’s LNG storage tank and proposed liquefaction facility is bordered by the Motiva terminal to the West and Northwest, and next to Global’s terminal to the South and Southeast.

Given the close proximity of highly flammable and potentially explosive substances, an incident at one facility could trigger a secondary incident at a neighboring facility. An incident, whether caused by natural disaster, human error, equipment malfunction, or terrorism, could quickly spread and cause much larger incidents. The presence of pipelines, tanker ships, fuel trucks, storage tanks, and ethanol trains each pose individual risks, their concentration in close proximity multiplies the potential scenarios in which an incident could occur. The Thurbers Ave exit is one of the busiest set of highway ramps in Rhode Island, with sharp turns and confusing cross traffic patterns. This is the exit that the majority of truck traffic into and out of the port uses, including the LNG tanker trucks carrying “methane refrigerated liquid.” Any potential accident, and the resulting disaster scenario, must be taken into consideration with National Grid’s proposed Liquefaction Facility.

Ethanol “bomb” trains

Ethanol trains docking at the Motiva terminal are within the half mile hazard radius of the proposed Liquefaction Facility, and are directly adjacent to the sharp turn on I95 by the Thurbers Ave exit. It is not unfathomable to conceive of a potential disaster involving a traffic accident with a fuel tanker or train car containing explosive ethanol or toxic chemicals traveling into or out of the port. In preparation for a potential incident, RI Department of Environmental Management and the City of Providence hosted a TriState HAZMAT FullScale Response Exercise on September 10th, 2011 focusing on a scenario of an ethanol train derailment at the Motiva terminal in Port of Providence, requiring both landbased and marine response teams.

According to the joint press release,“Ethanol is a highly volatile, flammable, colorless clear liquid and unlike gasoline, is completely soluble in water rendering containment boom and absorbent boom virtually useless during a release. More than two million gallons of denatured ethanol move through the Port of Providence area by rail, barge, and tractor trailer every week.” In 2014, community groups in Boston organized against ethanol trains coming through densely populated neighborhoods and sharing tracks with MBTA and commuter rail trains. Alternatives for Communities & Environment(ACE), Chelsea Collaborative, and Chelsea Creek Action Collaborative successfully won a statewide legislative moratorium against the dangerous ethanol “bomb”trains. (See here and here)

Dangerous incidents occurring in the Port of Providence

The following are not just hypothetical scenarios to study, they have occurred in the past. Luckily, previous incidents have been contained and have not escalated to worst case scenarios, but that potential exists.

Lightning Strike

On July 19, 2006 lightning struck an oil tanker that was about to dock at the Motiva facility adjacent to National Grid’s LNG tank. Associated Press reported that it resulted in a four alarm fire and that “every firefighter in Providence was on the scene.” A truck driver parked nearby said he“saw a bolt of lightning, followed by an explosion and a large fireball. [He] said he could feel the heat from the initial explosion several hundred feet away in a nearby parking lot. ”I’ve never seen anything in the world like this,” he said.” EPA responded by setting up air quality monitors nearby to check for toxic releases of airborne pollutants.

Earthquake

On July 22, 2015 there was a 2.3 magnitude earthquake in Rhode Island which was felt in Johnston RI, and Bristol RI, and Fall River, MA. The epicenter was determined to be in the Port of Providence at Fields Point, the exact location of the existing LNG storage tank and proposed Liquefaction Facility. According to R.J. Heim, reporting for WJAR/NBC10, “the earthquake leaves many people wondering if it compromised infrastructure at the busy port or shake a cluster of fuel tanks located nearby.” National Grid reported that their facility was not compromised, but questions remain as to whether the outcome would have been different if the Liquefaction Facility were in operation at the time, or if a stronger earthquake were to hit along the same fault line.

Hurricane

Hurricane Sandy was devastating for New York City and parts of the southern coast of Rhode Island, but luckily was not a direct hit on Providence. The Port of Providence is at sea level, and is on the wrong side of the Hurricane Barrier. A significant storm surge coming up Narragansett Bay would be blocked at the Hurricane Barrier, protecting downtown Providence that would cause additional surge and impacting the port. Of three major tidally influenced rivers that flow into Narragansett Bay in Providence, the Hurricane Barrier would block a storm surge from entering the Woonasquatucket or Moshassuck Rivers, displacing that excess water into the Blackstone River and the narrow top of the bay, where this heavy industrial port is located. A joint research project by University of Rhode Island, the RI Department of Transportation, and the Federal Highway Administration recognizes that “hurricanes pose a significant threat” and is undertaking a vulnerability assessment of infrastructure at the Port of Providence. However, most studies of storm impacts on the Port of Providence only consider the economic impact and how to make infrastructure more resilient; the impact on the communities of South Providence and Washington Park is often ignored.

Emergency Preparedness and Response

There are many potential disasters waiting to happen with the existing industries in Port of Providence, let alone with the proposed $100 million liquefaction facility. While there has been at least one disaster response exercise focused on the port, and a large quantity of specialized foam was purchased following the lightning induced fire at the Motiva terminal, neither of these initiatives relate to the specialized disaster response scenarios required in the event of an LNG or a secondary Univar chemical facility incident. Given the high concentration of facilities in the Port that store toxic materials, discharge pollutants, and/or require a chemical risk management plan, there are major questions remaining about what the overall disaster response plan is, who would be able to respond, and whether those responders would have the proper training and equipment required.

Richard Clarke’s 2005 report LNG Facilities in Urban Areas details many possible disaster scenarios that the state is ill equipped the handle. While scenarios involving LNG import tankers no longer apply due to FERC’s rejection of the previous 2005 proposal, the existing LNG incidents around the world have all been with Liquefaction Facilities, Peak Shaving storage tanks, or tanker trucks all of which are or will be present in Port of Providence.

What would happen if an incident compromised the I95 corridor near Thurbers Ave, or if an event impacted the state’s only trauma center? How would a two mile radius evacuation of a densely populated area occur, with RI Hospital, Hasbro Children’s Hospital, and Women and Infants all being within the two miles? What plans are in place to protect the children who attend schools within the hazard radius? Do any existing plans for disaster preparation and response take into account the high level of linguistic diversity within the community?

Place an Ad in RIFuture’s Progressively Romantic Valentine’s Gift Guide

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Then look no further than RIFuture’s Progressively Romantic Valentine’s Gift Guide. For a low rate you can either submit your own work or ask RIFuture’s advertising staff to develop one for you. Whether you are a business trying to get your name better-known or a piece-by-piece vendor that looks toward these seasonal sales, we are going to work alongside you to make sure it is worth your while.

Feel free to contact Andrew Stewart at Andrew.James.Stewart.Rhode.Island@gmail.com (please include RIFUTURE Valentines Day Guide Ad in the Subject line). We are still going to have the same advertising rates for our traditional sidebar/banner/mailing list customers, but we will be open to discussions that work for all parties involved. So give it some thought and remember, we reach 70,000 unique visitors per month and our popular email newsletter is sent to 6,500 politically-engaged Rhode Islanders. The organization and its writers have more than 6,000 followers on Twitter and some 3,000 on friends and fans on Facebook.

January 10, 2016January 10, 2016

EP City Council members receive mysterious health insurance benefits

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In 2012, East Providence’s state appointed budget commission voted to end the City Council’s health benefits. At the time East Providence was one of only 9 cities in R.I. that offered health insurance to its City Council members. However, in October of 2015, it became clear that some members of the City Council had started to receive health benefits once again.

During the City Council meeting on October 5th, resident and taxpayer Izilda Teves questioned the council as to how the benefits were restored. Mayor Tommy Rose first claimed that it, “was done in a resolution… a while back,” and that Paul Lemont, Acting City Manager, had restored the benefits. Teves then asked if there was a public hearing, and Rose said there was not.

Three Council members opted for health benefits when the rules changed, Tommy Rose, Helder Cunha, and Timothy Conley, the same three that addressed Teves’ questions.

This month a version of the resolution Rose mentioned began circulating on social media. The resolution seems to grant the City Manager the ability to restore health benefits and reads, “Now, therefore, be it resolved that the City Council of the City of East Providence authorize the City Manager, at his discretion, to restore any departmental cost reductions or nonunion, non ordinance based benefit reductions, including City Council health care benefits that the Budget Commission resolved.”

However, the version of this resolution at City Hall does not include the language granting the City Manager the ability to restore health care benefits, nor does the version that appears in the meeting minutes, the Resolution Book seen here.

Resolution 9 was approved during a City Council meeting on June 16th, during which the City Council members opted to suspend the reading of the resolution. All City Council members voted in favor of the resolution.

For a sitting City Council and/or the City Manager to grant benefits to themselves is a dubious practice. According to the City Charter, Council compensation is supposed to be changed by ordinance and take effect for the following term. Spending almost $50,000 on benefits for Council members should be a matter of public debate.

Some East Providence residents on the East Providence – Townie Civic Discussion Facebook group say this incident once again raises red flags regarding the city’s management of personnel issues. Recent allegations of racially biased city hiring practices, the poor decisions that lead to the almost hiring of the Dancing Cop and the problematic hiring of a new Town Manager without the qualifications mandated by the City Charter all contribute to an air of incompetence if not illegality.

Before trust in the City Council erodes completely, a proper investigation into the source of these new health benefits must be conducted.

January 10, 2016January 10, 2016

Transgender oral history project in RI

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Earlier this year, Frank V. Toti, Jr. previewed his play TRANS*, based on the oral histories taken from trans* people by Steven Pennell at the Paff Auditorium at the URI Downtown Campus. That performance, featuring Pennell, Cynthia Glinick and Cody Suzuki was a fantastic showcase of some of what this community faces on a regular basis.

See a work-in-progress performance of ‘Trans’ at URI Providence

Now Pennell has put out an appeal to the community looking for more oral histories.

The plan is to gather more interviews from people in the local Trans Community. The stories shared with me will be audio recorded. The information can be open or kept anonymous (if the individual wishes it to be), they will be transcribed and become an available resource for education and understanding. I will then create a performance work…to share some of these stores at the URI Providence Campus where I curate exhibits and create performances on topics of diversity social justice. It is my hope to have members of the Trans community present the stories in performance, and potentially to tour the play into the community to increase awareness and understanding.

This is the tenth such project that the author has conducted over the past two decades, including work with survivors of the Nazi holocaust and the wider LGBTQQI community. Those who are interested in participating can reach Pennell at uri.artsandculture@gmail.com.

January 10, 2016January 23, 2016

Flawed Proposal: Background info on National Grid’s liquefaction proposal

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The Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island (EJLRI) has created a position paper, “National Grid’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Liquefaction Facility: Toxic Hazards in the Port Providence: Proposals for a Just Transition” that eviscerates National Grid‘s plans to build a new liquefaction facility for fracked LNG at Field’s Point in South Providence. Over the next few days RI Future will be presenting EJLRI’s paper in its entirety.

Introduction

This document is a detailed response to the many reasons to oppose National Grid’s proposal to build a $100 million Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) production plant in the Port of Providence. This project (also known as the “Fields Point Liquefaction Facility”) is costly and dangerous, and it is being planned for an area with many existing environmental justice concerns.

Beyond the obvious problem of having ratepayers (all of us) pay the bill for National Grid to benefit their own bottom line, there many specific concerns about the project. This report groups these concerns into the following major categories:

● Flawed Proposal: Background info on National Grid’s unnecessary project

● Potential Disasters: dangerous facility in a high risk area

● Environmental Racism: ongoing and underlying environmental justice issues

● Climate Change: it causes climate change and is at risk from climate impacts

● Public Health: health disparities and impacts on health care institutions

● Economic Inequality: high cost project that will cause economic damage

● Alternatives and Solutions: Strategies for Climate Justice & a Just Transition

The goal of this report is to make the case for organizations, businesses, residents, agencies, and public officials to join us in rejecting National Grid’s proposal, and supporting the alternatives and solutions highlighted at the end of the report.

Background on National Grid’s proposal

According to National Grid, their proposal to build a Liquefied Natural Gas production facility in South Providence in necessary, safe, clean, and will have no major negative impact. We disagree on all these counts, and explain why throughout the remainder of this report.

National Grid’s case for the project is available on their website. National Grid needs to get approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and all of the documents submitted by National Grid and comments from any other stakeholder are available on FERC’s website under Docket # PF1528 (Search at https://elibrary.ferc.gov/) . Since National Grid’s perspective is detailed on websites, media stories taken directly from company press releases, and in hundreds of pages sent to FERC, we won’t use much space here describing their project proposal.

The main points are:

● Instead of delivering LNG to the storage facility in Providence via truck, National Grid wants to build a $100 million facility to produce LNG directly from a Spectra Energy pipeline that delivers gas from Marcellus Shale (Pennsylvania) to Providence.

● LNG is produced by cooling natural gas (methane) to 260 degrees, which reduces its volume by 600 times and puts it into liquid form

● LNG is currently only needed in RI for up to 9 days each year

● National Grid would then use LNG tanker trucks to export the LNG produced in  Providence to other locations in Rhode Island and Massachusetts

● The production facility would require a gas compressor station and an electrical cooling  system that would use 15 Megawatts. (for reference, this is half of the 30 megawatts that Deepwater Wind will generate off the coast of Block Island)

There is no justified need for the project.

According to National Grid’s own information, the existing LNG storage is only used up to 9 days each year, and is less than half of the gas used even on the coldest days with the highest demand. National Grid says the requests to increase the supply of LNG come from two storage customers: Narragansett Electric Company and Boston Gas Company. Both of these companies are subsidiaries of National Grid.

National Grid’s “Public Participation Plan” is incredibly flawed.

In the document submitted to FERC, there are no actual community groups on their listing of Environmental, Community, and Neighborhood Stakeholders. The only two groups included, the South Providence Neighborhood Association and the Washington Park Neighborhood Association, don’t actually exist. When questioned about this, National Grid’s spokesperson David Graves responded that “The stakeholder list was first developed when both of these groups were active in the  neighborhood” which is also false, since neither group has ever existed. David Graves also stated that National Grid “[has] not been successful in locating any other neighborhood groups in the area that have an organized board of directors or a published list of officers and, to my knowledge, we have not been contacted by any neighborhood groups asking to be included in the list of stakeholders.” This is despite the fact that there are many thriving organizations in Providence, including three local groups that came to National Grid’s Open House on August 13, 2015 to speak out against the project (PrYSM: Providence Student Youth Movement, PSU: Providence Student Union, and EJLRI: Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island).

There were numerous articles written about the protest at the open house. (See: here, here and here.)

National Grid’s internal review and list of impacted stakeholders is flawed and limited in multiple ways. Most of their documents only refer to a 1⁄2 mile radius from the project, at some points only a 1⁄4 mile. Within this range are mostly other industrial projects and businesses, with only a few residential buildings considered. National Grid suppressed the addresses of who they have contacted, but stated they sent letters to affected landowners within 1⁄2 mile, which would only include industrial businesses and some landlords (not rental tenants). The required public Open House, held on August 13th 2015, was not well advertised. The time and date were printed once in the Providence Journal in July as part of the initial press release, but the time and date were not listed on National Grid’s project website, which just listed the Open House as being “in August” and required emailing National Grid to ask for time and date.

At the time of the Open House, the website and all materials were only in English, despite the fact that Spanish is a predominant language in the community where the facility is being proposed. It appears that National Grid has not made any effort to actually engage the community. Those community members who did participate in the poorly promoted Open House were racially profiled and threatened by an excessive police presence and were ignored by National Grid in later correspondences with FERC and media inquiry.

In order to understand the impact of the project on the neighboring community, the analysis must use a radius of at least 1 mile from the proposed site. Cumulative impacts and evacuation plans for potential disasters must consider at least a 2 mile radius. Given the demographics of the community and the concentration of other industrial activity at the location, a full analysis of the cumulative impacts must be included, and issues such as public health, climate change, and environmental justice concerns need to be analyzed in depth.

Next: Potential Disasters: dangerous facility in a high risk area

January 9, 2016

Wingmen talk Trump and Sanders

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RI Future’s Bob Plain was on Wingmen discussing the Presidential race with John Brien and Bill Rappleye.

Plain says Donald Trump sounds like a fourth grader and that if everyone who likes Bernie Sanders‘ message but won’t vote for him because “he can’t win” just voted for Sanders, then Sanders would win, and by a “landslide” in the primary and the general.

John Brien feels that Trump suffers from a lack of nuance and that as a free market supporter he just can’t get past the socialist label and support Sanders.

Nobody talked about Hilary Clinton all that much.

January 9, 2016March 20, 2016

Glen Ford on the corporate charter school education deform effort

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Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report is one of my favorite analysts and journalists, a man whose reportage has been compared to the work of Frederick Douglass by Prof. Tony Monteiro. His mind is sharp and brilliant in ways that make me honored to have corresponded with him. Here, Ford explains the way that the Democratic Party has been infiltrated by the neoliberal anti-teacher union charter school lobby and what to expect from hucksters like Sen. Cory Booker, a right wing Republican in Democratic Party clothing. As the neoliberal agenda continues to be made manifest in our communities, be mindful of the patterns Ford discusses here and which were discussed in the previous post on this topic in Chicago.

January 8, 2016

Progressive Dems urge Raimondo to issue executive order on driver’s licenses

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During the 2014 gubernatorial race, Gina Raimondo made a campaign promise to the Immigrants in Action Committee that she would sign an executive order within her first year, issuing licenses to undocumented immigrants within Rhode Island. Raimondo further made her support clear in an ACLU questionnaire, that asked: “Do you support providing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants?”, to which Raimondo responded: “YES. I was the first candidate in the gubernatorial race to explicitly call for driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. This is an issue of fairness and public safety.” However, January 6 has gone by, marking the end of Raimondo’s first year as Governor, and instead of issuing an executive order, Raimondo has responded with inaction.

Speaker Mattiello encouraged the Governor to bring up the issue “legislatively,” so that public comment could be heard, and that legislators could then form a position on the issue. However, it is very unlikely that the General Assembly will act on this issue. In 2014, for instance, H 7262 was referred to the House Judiciary, and the hearing on it was postponed at the request of the bill sponsor. In the Senate, a similar fate befell its version of the bill: S 2241 was sent to the Judiciary Committee, and was simply not heard. In 2013, S 422 was referred to the Judiciary Committee, and sent to “further study” – effectively killing the bill. Thus, judging by these prior attempts, Raimondo’s choice to pursue the legislative route to address this “issue of fairness and public safety” is unlikely to result in meaningful legislative action, especially when the Judiciary Committees and Speaker Nicholas Mattiello remain determined to obstruct any opportunity of passing legislation to correct this longstanding wrong in the State of Rhode Island.

The Rhode Island Progressive Democrats continues to urge Governor Raimondo to issue an executive order, as she promised Rhode Island’s voters and the immigrant community during her campaign.

[From an RIPDA press release]

January 8, 2016

General Assembly highs and lows

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The first week of the 2016 legislative session of the RI General Assembly was filled with high aspirations and low comedy. Here are some of the “Highs and Lows.” From passing the Good Samaritan Act to the fawning flattery of courtiers, we ran the gamut this week. Plus, a frying pan to the head for a prominent Trump supporter.

The high point came from the Senate, where on the second day in session, they passed the Good Samaritan Act, nearly unanimously. Only Senator Frank A. Ciccone, III (D District 7, Providence, North Providence) voted against. Attending the session was former East Side Senator Rhoda Perry, whose son, Alexander, recently passed away after a long battle with addiction. Perry was instrumental in passing the Good Samaritan Act when she was a Senator, and it is fitting that she should be in attendance. Senator Gayle L. Goldin (D District 3, Providence) fittingly submitted a resolution honoring Alexander Perry.

The low point was in the House of Representatives, where Rep. Joseph M. McNamara (D District 19 Warwick, Cranston) competed with House Majority Leader John J. DeSimone (D District 5 Providence) in obsequiously slathering House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello with oleaginous praise over his being awarded “Man of the Year” by GoLocalProv. The House rose to give Speaker Mattiello a standing ovation as we all grabbed our air sickness bags.

The opening minutes of the House of Reps this year were marked by Speaker Mattiello studiously ignoring the protesters demanding Licenses for All outside the House chamber. As Mattiello calls for order, the voice of community organizer Juan Garcia can be heard shouting the Speaker’s name over and over again. Mattiello said recently that he is unmoved by protests, and he seems intent on proving that.

The ever classy ProJo‘s reaction to this event was to publish a letter from the kind-hearted James P Hosey in which he says, “Were I governor, I would have called out the National Guard to deal with these hooligans.”

The best moment in unintentional meta-comedy came from Rep. Joseph A. Trillo (R District 24 Warwick). Trillo, who has just been named honorary chairman of the RI Trump for President campaign, introduced his wife, Marilyn Cocozza Trillo, and said that she’s his “key political adviser.” Trillo made a joke that his wife sometimes uses a “frying pan to hit me in the head to get the advice through,” leaving us all to wonder whether it’s her bad advice or concussive brain damage that’s brought Trillo to publicly espouse his support for the racist, fascist and deceptive Donald Trump.

And lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the General Assembly engaged in two minutes, 48 seconds of public, legislative prayer. The prayers were all Christian in nature and mostly Catholic. The prayers are in no way reflective of our state’s diversity and are in no way respectful of our state’s history of separation of church and state or freedom of conscience.

Roger Williams would not approve.

January 8, 2016

David Sirota goes after Raimondo on hedge funds with new allegations

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It’s a new year, so there’s a new piece by International Business Times‘ senior editor for investigations, David Sirota, taking on Gina Raimondo‘s dismal record in pension reform. This piece isn’t getting a lot of attention locally, which is a shame because it actually explains the pension reform/hedge fund situation quite nicely. The accepted story among the most politicians is that pension reform was necessary. As Gina Raimondo said in the Wall St Journal (quoted in Sirota’s piece) “Don’t be mad at me. Be mad at people who made promises that were unaffordable.”

However that may be, we certainly didn’t need pensions locked into hedge funds that have, notes Sirota, “generated big revenues for Wall Street firms, but only middling returns for a $7.6 billion pension fund on which more than 58,000 current and future retirees rely.”

When retiree Diane Bucci and others began to dig into the poor performance of the hedge funds, “they learned of a federal review showing that roughly half of all private equity firms are charging hidden fees, and they saw a hedge fund industry whose returns have failed to keep pace with the stock market. When they dug deeper, they stumbled onto an even more disturbing revelation. What they found, they say, is evidence that some investors can obtain special rights that may let them secretly siphon money from the state pensioners’ retirement savings.”

Here’s the link to the full story, well worth a read:

Wall Street Fine Print: Retirees Want FBI Probe Of Pension Investment Deals

January 8, 2016January 8, 2016

Classical student shares photo of moldy lunch from Sodexo

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Leslie Ann Ortiz fears that she may have eaten moldy food in the school cafeteria after her friend showed her the mold on the bottom of her sandwich, the same kind of sandwich Ortiz had just finished. Ortiz is is a Junior at Classical High School in Providence.

“Yesterday at lunch my friend and I got sandwiches and I ate mine and [my friend] yelled, disgusted. [She] showed me the mold and I went to tell a teacher and they did nothing,” Ortiz told me. She took the picture of her friend’s moldy sandwich and shared it on social media.

“I didn’t look at my sandwich so it’s gross, you know?” Ortiz said.

In the comments of her Facebook post, Ortiz wrote, “I’ve also found mushed green gooey rotten red apples, a juice dated to 2001 and grilled cheese sandwiches where they just rubbed cheese on it and took it off.”

Lunches in Providence schools are contracted out to Sodexo. Sodexo’s page on the Providence Schools website says that the company, “delivers healthy and delicious school meals based on the USDA’s nutrition guidelines so that students are engaged and ready to learn in school. All meals include a variety of fresh fruit and vegetable choices, and a variety of chilled non-fat or low-fat milk.”

Sodexo did not return my calls in time for this story. Calls have also been placed to Classical High School and the office of Mayor Jorge Elorza.

After seeing the photo online, lawyer and community activist Shannah Kurland quipped, “Wtf?!! Sodexo IS the school to prison pipeline!”

“I was trying to show everyone in my school this so they can watch out,” said Ortiz, “the quality [of the food] is just horrible and that’s why me and a lot of students would rather starve then eat that stuff.”

January 8, 2016

Business leaders decide issues elected officials will pursue at economic summit

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“Today is about you putting your issues on the table and [about] how you can influence the decision making process that we have in this great state,” Mark Hayward, District Director of the Rhode Island Small Business Association (SBA) told an eager gathering of business owners, lobbyists and politicians, “Your participation at this Summit will essentially decide… the direction of [economic and business] issues that are going to be critical to you over the next year.”

The 2016 Rhode Island Small Business Economic Summit (Summit) is held at Bryant University and sponsored by the SBA and the Center for Women and Enterprise. A long list of state senators, representatives and gubernatorial staff come out to this event every year. Big names include Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, General Treasurer Seth Magaziner and Governor Gina Raimondo. It took Hayward two minutes to list the the government reps appearing, and he didn’t get them all. It’s the kind of political access social justice groups cannot imagine.

The point, says Hayward, “is to provide an opportunity for members of the small business community to have a discussion with members of the General Assembly and the [Governor’s] administration and,” he says, “over the years, we have succeeded because many of the issues that are being taken up today, derive from the Summit.”

2016-01-08 Economic Summit — The sold old Summit

Hayward introduced speaker Stefan Pryor, Rhode Island’s Secretary of Commerce. Pryor painted a rosy picture of Rhode Island’s economic future, saying, “We’re beginning to see the optimism lift, we’re beginning to see the unemployment drop, we are starting to see the new projects start, and we are starting to see the pessimism dissipate.”

Pryor did not mention the cruel poverty that affects nearly 1 in 5 children in our state, but he did mention that the state is “still suffering from unemployment. We still compete for the worst unemployment rate in New England.”

Pryor did not draw a connection between the high unemployment, high poverty and what he called a “favorable tax climate” for business. “We have the lowest corporate tax rate in the northeast, a hard-earned distinction at 7 percent. In the recent session we completely eliminated the sales tax on energy, the Business Energy Tax. It’s not an easy tax to eliminate a tax entirely but it’s gone. Gone forever.”

Pryor assured those in attendance that Rhode Island will not be raising taxes on business owners. “We have not raised a major tax, corporate, income or sales, in twenty years,” said the Secretary with pride, “Think about that relative to tax stability and at the same time we’re axing taxes.

“Why do we think we can maintain that kind of stability going forward? In this past session we put the final touches on and solidified pension reform that then General Treasurer Raimondo had begun. With all your help, Medicaid reform, in a substantial way, was undertaken.

“These structural reforms will save Rhode Islanders over $4 billion dollars over the next 20 years” and “this will ensure future retirement security and future budgetary stability, said Pryor, “That’s the platform we’re building. The hybrid of generations of discipline and not raising taxes, even when times were tough.

“These are the signs of responsible budgeting and sensible fiscal stewardship.”

You can watch all of Pryor’s remark Here:

January 8, 2016January 8, 2016

Improved Medicare For All: A talk with Oliver Fein, MD

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A single payer system could save the country over $400 billion a year says Dr. Oliver Fein, but he would prefer we call it “Improved Medicare For All.” Fein says that a system based on private insurance programs, like the one we have now, will not lead to universal coverage and will not create affordable coverage, whereas a Medicare for All system can lead to universal comprehensive coverage without costing more money.

In concert with Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP-RI), gave a talk to a class of med students at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence.

Bernie Sanders has been a strong advocate for a Medicare for All approach to our health care, including the idea among his campaign issues. “The United States is the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as a right to its people,” Sanders said. “Meanwhile, we spend far more per capita on health care with worse results than other countries. It is time that we bring about a fundamental transformation of the American health care system.”

What Fein does in the lecture below is explain how our present healthcare system fails us, how a Medicare for All system will improve health care outcomes, and outline a possible path from our present system to universal health care for everyone.

[Adam Miner provided additional reporting, video and photographs.]

January 7, 2016

Religious Coalition for a Violence-Free RI on Obama’s Town Hall

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Religious Coalition for a Violence-Free Rhode Island 01 — Religious Coalition for a Violence-Free Rhode Island

We applaud President Obama for engaging in serious, reasonable conversation about gun violence. He is doing this on the heels of issuing an Executive Order to expand background checks for gun sales, something that Americans overwhelmingly support. However, his Executive Order only goes so far and there is more that needs to be done. The next steps require soul searching and honest conversation.

The President’s “Town Hall” meeting approach opens up the conversation in needed ways. Clearly, no one is advocating that the rights of Americans to possess a firearm be rescinded. Indeed, not all concerns will be solved with regulation. Smart gun or smart lock technology might be a better way to keep guns safely away from children. However, restricting access to guns for people with mental health issues and for criminals requires regulation.

Religious Coalition for a Violence-Free Rhode Island 02 — Rev. Eugene T. Dyszlewski

Most Rhode Islanders are not gun owners and many of us do not know some of the nuances of gun ownership and gun safety. For example, we may not know that 82 percent of teenage suicide by firearms involve guns left poorly secured or foolishly unprotected by members of their own families. On average someone being shot by a child, often a toddler, occurs twice weekly in America. Reasonable people believe that there is a solution to this problem.

As religious leaders, we know the carnage and the heartbreak that accompanies gun violence. We do the funerals. We provide the pastoral care to families during their moments of anguish. We want this needless and senseless violence to stop. We know of no religious tradition that defines freedom as unfettered license to do as one pleases. We join with the President and call upon all people of good will, particularly gun owners, to engage in serious, sensible conversation about gun safety.

January 7, 2016

STEP fights corporate welfare at City Hall with a carnival atmosphere

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A petition signed by nearly 400 Providence residents was delivered to City Hall Thursday night by STEP (Stop Tax Evasion in Providence) calling on Mayor Jorge Elorza and the City Council to reject four ordinances that would authorize $3 million in tax breaks to connected developers.

Details on Elorza’s tax breaks for existing properties

Mayor Elorza offering tax breaks Candidate Elorza opposed

The Extraordinary Rendition Band played outside City Hall in support of the protest and then lead a march inside, up the stairs and eventually into the City Council chambers. Seven police officers were on the scene.

At the same time the protesters arrived, people were arriving for the Bike the Night with Mayor Elorza event. The STEP protesters were eager to engage with the Mayor about the proposed tax breaks, but Mayor Elorza did not make it to the bike event that bore his name, citing a conflict.

City Council President Luis Aponte told me that the Council is “taking a real hard look” at the proposed tax breaks, noting that there is some affordable housing in the mix of properties under discussion, and these may need to be subsidized. Aponte also said that he’s “not sure” if the tax breaks amount to $3 million, assuring me that the actual number will come out as the City Council examines the proposals.

Sam Bell, executive director of the RI Progressive Democrats of America and STEP member called the proposed tax breaks “corporate welfare.” The tax breaks are to be awarded to a bunch of very well-off people who don’t want to pay their fair share in taxes, says Bell. These properties have already had over a decade of tax breaks, he said, and if they can’t get the numbers to work, they need to go to the banks and refinance. Otherwise, these tax breaks amount to a “bank bailout.”

John Jacobson, who organized the petition delivery, arrived in a Santa suit and called the proposed deal corporate welfare and “crony capitalism.”

“We shouldn’t live in a city where if you have the right last name or are connected you don’t have to pay taxes,” said Jacobson. He spoke to the crowd gathered outside the Counicl chambers for some time, explaining the background of the tax breaks connected developers have come to expect in the city.

The STEP coalition also includes Unite Here Local 217 and organizers Jenna Karlin and Heather Nichols-Haining attended the protest.

Candidate Elorza told the RIPDA that he was opposed to granting tax breaks to developers that didn’t generate positive revenue for the city. Mayor Elorza has yet to explain why he changed his mind on this issue.

January 7, 2016January 7, 2016

Invenergy fails to gag activists on power plant intervention

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During the last two days activists filed rebuttals with the Energy Facility Siting Board as they contest Invenergy’s attempt to suppress public input on its proposal to build a fracked-gas power plant proposal.

In a press release late last month Fossil Free Rhode Island cited as reasons for filing a motion for intervention with the Board:

The construction of the proposed power plant —part of the energy policy of team Raimondo— would slow down the transition to renewable energy.

As a recent report of the PERI Institute of UMass in Amherst states: “New investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy will generate more jobs for a given amount of spending than maintaining or expanding each country’s existing fossil fuel sectors.”

“Natural” gas has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than coal and oil. Clearly, team Raimondo is wrong on all counts: physics, economics and morality.

In response to Invenergy’s objections to their Motions for Intervention Sister Mary Pendergast, Occupy Providence and Fossil Free Rhode Island argue that the company misconstrues the rules according to which the Board operates.

The activists also take Invenergy to task on its claim that they lack sufficient interest to justify intervention. They remind the company of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), which declared that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act. They also remind Invenergy of the Endangerment Finding of 2009 of the Environmental Protection Agency that determined that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations.

In a landmark environmental case (Payne & Buttler v. Providence Gas Co., 1910) the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled that citizens can sue corporations for damages caused by “deleterious and poisonous substances.”

If these facts, rulings and liabilities do not constitute a direct interest, nothing will.

Occupy Providence, in its rebuttal, said:

Invenergy cannot credibly argue that Occupy Providence lacks sufficient interests to justify intervention in spite of the fact that “the proposed plant will produce greenhouse gases highly injurious to the 99% for the purpose of producing profits which will go almost entirely and certainly disproportionately to the 1%.”

Sister Mary Pendergast echoed the same sentiment and quoted from Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’:

26. Many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms, simply making efforts to reduce some of the negative impacts of climate change. However, many of these symptoms indicate that such effects will continue to worsen if we continue with current models of production and consumption. There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy. Worldwide there is minimal access to clean and renewable energy.”

Two members of the Board serve at the pleasure of Governor Raimondo. That does not bode well for the impartiality of the Board. This is very troubling when it is clear that the Raimondo administration fails to understand the moral imperative to act on climate change.

Is there any ethical system under the Sun that holds that near-term profit is the ultimate standard? It is certainly not what is meant by the Affirmation of Humanism that proclaims:

We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.

Nor is it consistent with, as the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change puts it:

Re-focus their concerns from unethical profit from the environment, to that of preserving it and elevating the condition of the world’s poor.

Citizens of Rhode Island understand that intervention is fully justified and, in spite of Invenergys’ claim to the contrary, that the public interest is not adequately represented by a state government and its corporate allies who willfully act in violation of Article 1, Section 17 of the Rhode Island Constitution, the supreme law of the State which establishes the duty to provide for the conservation of the State’s air, water and land.

Note added after original post: Also the RI Democrats of America (RIPDA) have filed a reply to Invenergy’s objection to their motion for intervention. In their conclusion they write:

Invenergy’s desire to block RIPDA’s involvement should concern both the Board and the general public, as it suggests that Invenergy wishes to limit the discourse on this topic and stack the deck in its favor.

January 6, 2016

Interfaith Vigil at State House proposes ambitious poverty agenda

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2016-01-06 Interfaith Poverty Vigil 02 — Bishop Herson Gonzalez

For the eighth year the Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty held a vigil at the State House near the beginning of the legislative season to, in the words of House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, “remind all of us in the General Assembly of how important it is to keep the issues related to poverty at the forefront of our agenda.”

The vigil was attended by representatives from a multitude of faiths. Governor Gina Raimondo, Speaker Mattiello and Senate President M Teresa Paiva-Weed all spoke briefly to the crowd. The keynote was delivered by Bishop Herson Gonzalez of the Calvary Worship Center in Woonsocket.

Maxine Richman, co-chair of the RI Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty (Coalition) spoke first, outlining the 2016 Advocacy Platform for the group. She began with a sobering statistic. 14.3 percent of Rhode Islanders live in poverty. That rate climbs to 19.8 percent when we talk about children specifically.

“A 14.3 percent poverty rate is the story for this year,” said Richman, “but it need not be the story for next year.”

The coalition believes that all Rhode Islanders are entitled to affordable housing, nutritious food, accessible healthcare, equitable education and work with decent wages.

Though the General Assembly raised the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) last session, something both Paiva-Weed and Mattiello touted as a great success in their opening remarks Tuesday, RI’s present 12.5 percent rate is a far cry from Connecticut’s EITC of 27.5 percent or Massachusetts’ 23 percent. The Coalition is asking the General Assembly raise the RI EITC to 20 percent.

2016-01-06 Interfaith Poverty Vigil 20 — Governor Raimondo

Channeling yesterday’s loud rally, and on the day that Governor Raimondo has officially broken her campaign promise to issue an executive order allowing undocumented workers to obtain driver’s licenses, the Coalition asked state leaders to take this important step.

Right now low and no income Rhode Island families with children are eligible to receive cash assistance for a maximum of up to 24 months within a five year window. A mother with two children is eligible to receive $554 a month for up to 24 months. When the 24 months are done, the family is cut off, leaving children to live in crushing poverty. The coalition would like to end the 24 month limit.

Also, as they have asked nearly every year and to no avail, the Coalition would like the General Assembly to take action to reform PayDay loans. This is unlikely as long as Speaker Mattiello continues to pretend that “arguments against PayDay lending tend to be ideological in nature.”

The coalition would also like to see an expansion of Child Care Assistance and Early Childhood Education. as of Fall, 2014, for instance, only 34 percent of eligible children were enrolled in Head Start, “with many centers maintaining long waiting lists.”

The Coalition further wants to reduce out-of-school detentions which predominantly target students of color and feed the school-to-prison pipeline. They would also like to expand opportunities for workforce foundational skills and occupational training.

The RI Coalition for the Homeless (RICH) needs adequate funding to implement Opening Doors RI, and would like state leaders to seek a $100 million affordable housing bond.

The Coalition also backs efforts to prevent domestic abusers from accessing guns, a bill that died in committee last year to the consternation of supporters and the embarrassment of the General Assembly.

The Coalition would like to see adequate funding for Senior Centers and lastly, the Coalition wants the General Assembly to maintain the current RIPTA Senior/Disbabled Fare Program, recognizing that balancing the budget of public transit of the backs of the most vulnerable is simply cruel. Paiva-Weed was the only state leader to state that she would work to make this happen. Raimondo vowed to make RIPTA “affordable” which is apparently a number other than free.

“These all sound good, but where do we find the money?” asked Raimondo.

“I am very concerned about imposing a fee on elderly and disabled RIPTA passengers,” said Paiva-Weed, “and I am committed to looking at alternative funding.”

Attempting to explain his statement at last years Interfaith Poverty Vigil where he said that he wants to eliminate the social safety net, Speaker Mattiello spun a vision of a Utopian future world. “When we get the economy to a point where everybody’s thriving,” said the Speaker, “every single family has a wage earner that is successfully feeding the family, and everybody is doing well and is well fed… families are happy… that will be the day we don’t need a safety net. And at that time our safety net will justifiably be smaller.”

Here’s Bishop Herson Gonzalez’s keynote address.

Note: I was fortunate today to get permission from Rachel Simon to run her pictures of the event. So all these pictures are under her 2016 copyright.

And here’s the full vigil.

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