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About 40 people showed up before sunrise at Juan Noboa’s 23 Julian St. residence in the Olneyville section of Providence this morning to demand the payment of over $17,000 in back wages to six employees.
According to organizers, Noboa and his partner, Jose Bren, employed around 15 workers to help open Café Atlantic, a restaurant located at 1366 Chalkstone Ave. between August and September, 2014. Some employees worked up to 70 hours a week, but, according to organizers, “by September 28th, Noboa and Bren closed the restaurant just months after opening and walked away without paying workers their full wages.”
The workers have organized through Fuerza Laboral (Power of Workers) “a community organization that builds worker leadership to fight workplace exploitation.” They have filed complaints with the Rhode Island Department of Labor and have attempted many times to contact the owners with their concerns, but have received no response.
Juan Noboa was a volunteer for Buddy Cianci during his unsuccessful run for mayor last election. During the election Noboa reported Representative Scott Slater to the state police for possible voter fraud after taking video showing Slater, “leaving Kilmartin Plaza, a Providence high-rise for the elderly, with what looked like a ballot.” The police investigated and cleared Slater of any wrongdoing. Slater issued a statement saying that he recognized the man filming him “as someone who had threatened him in the past.”
According to the Providence Journal, Noboa “is a convicted felon and has been arrested 10 times dating back to March 2000.”
This morning’s action follows last month’s protest outside Gourmet Heaven on Westminster St. downtown. “We see a pattern of Providence-based food establishments intentionally cheating workers of their wages,” said Phoebe Gardener, Community Organizer with Fuerza Laboral.
“It makes me so angry that I am doing everything I can to provide for my family and do my job the best I can and Noboa doesn’t care about anything but making money for himself,” said Flor Salazar, former employee of Café Atlantic in a written statement, “Some of us are single mothers and are barely getting by.”
After chanting in Noboa’s driveway and pounding on his door for about fifteen minutes, the Providence police arrived and moved the protesters onto the sidewalk and into the street. Protesters handed out fliers to neighbors accusing Noboa of theft.
Noboa never came to the door or showed his face in the window.
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About 60 people gathered outside the Providence Journal offices in Providence Sunday to hold a vigil for those killed in last week’s Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in France in which fundamentalist Muslim gunmen indiscriminately murdered cartoonists and police officers. The vigil was organized by the Alliance Française de Providence, RI in cooperation with Muslim supporters and attended by many who have been touched by the tragedy, including local artists.
The Providence Journal was chosen as the site of the vigil because organizers saw the nearly 200 year old newspaper as a strong symbol for the freedom of the press, a value shared by France and the United States.
I spoke with Dominique Gregoire, president of the local Alliance Française about the attacks, the response both here and internationally and about Charlie Hebdo.
Gregoire put the event into perspective when he told me, “This is just as if a commando came onto the set of Saturday Night Live and killed Amy Poehler and people like that.”
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As they have for the past six years, about four dozen clergy representing a wide variety of faith traditions gathered at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church on Wednesday, put on their vestments and robes, and marched to the State House for the Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty Vigil. The purpose of the vigil is to “ask our elected officials to govern with wisdom and compassion, state our commitment that everyone in Rhode Island must have their basic needs met and offer the support of the Interfaith Community” towards achieving the goal of cutting “Rhode Island poverty in half by 2020.”
Governor Gina Raimondo, Senate President M. Teresa Paiva-Weed and Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello accepted the traditional invitation to speak at the vigil. They were introduced by Maxine Richman, Board Member of the Jewish Council of Public Affairs and co-chair of the Interfaith Coalition. Richman was direct with the public officials in her opening remarks, asking, “How can it be that Rhode Island, with a very large service sector and struggling middle class, has only a 10% earned income tax credit while our neighbors in Massachusetts earned income tax credit is 15% and Connecticut’s is 20%? And how can it be that 1,3000 people are on a waiting list for foundational workforce programs?”
After the politicians spoke Bishop W. Nicholas Knisely of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island addressed the issues confronting the poor from a Christian point of view. Knisely quoted the New Testament in which Jesus said, “the poor you will always have with you” to point out the continuing need for a robust social safety net.
The event concluded with the reading of the names of all state wide public office holders, all the members of the General Assembly and several prominent mayors. Very few elected officials attended the event.
The coalition is part of a national movement that includes the Jewish Council of Public Affairs, (JCPA) National Council of Churches, and Catholic Charities, as well as more than 40 other faith organizations.
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In 2014, there were at least 216 known deaths from accidental opiates overdose. Rhode Island is in the midst of an epidemic that has been somewhat mitigated by the availability of Narcan, an emergency medication that can keep someone overdosing on opiates alive long enough for them to get to a hospital. Those who have overdosed range in age from 15 to 65 and deaths have occurred in 30 different cities or towns in the state.
Opiate overdoses don’t discriminate.
RICARES, (Rhode Island Communities for Addiction Recovery Efforts) in an effort to push the General Assembly towards renewing the program that makes Narcan available, staged a “Die-In” outside the State House on the first day of the legislative session yesterday. The activists are also seeking to expand the “Good Samaritan” law so that a person on parole or probation who calls for medical assistance in the event of a friends overdose will not be at risk of going back to prison. Activists are also looking for more funding for addiction recovery programs.
I was fortunate to be able to talk to Janina LeVasseur, a board member at RICARES, about overdoses, Narcan and addiction recovery. All the research and reading I did ahead of this event did not come close to providing me with the insight and understanding I got in this short conversation.
More than 100 people who committed to this action by laying on the ground in the freezing cold and snow demonstrated determination and fortitude. Many were there in memory of a loved one lost to an overdose.
As LeVasseur said in our interview, this is a social justice issue, and one that should be easy for us all to get behind.
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A vigil in memory of the students murdered by Taliban forces in Peshawar, Pakistan was held Friday evening in front of the Brown Bookstore on Thayer Street in Providence.
Of course our world is small enough for there to be a local connection.
Dr. Saira Hussein, a physician at Kent Hospital here in Rhode Island, called her mother in Pakistan after the attack and learned that she had attended kindergarten at that school as a child. She was one of the organizers of the vigil.
When I got to the site of the vigil I heard another organizer, Dr. Karim Khanbhai, telling a group of high school students that the tragedy in Peshawar was, “like Sandy Hook, times ten.”
The most moving and chilling statements came from Syed “Ozzy” Shehroz, a 21 year old student attending Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). he told his story in simple, haunting sentences, at times becoming choked with emotion, but he always pushed through. Shehroz lived all his life in Peshawar, “the City of Flowers and the land of hospitality” but now, he says, it’s called the “city of coffins, coffins full of flowers so light a single man can pick them up.”
Shehroz says that official estimates of the number of dead are low. Instead of 140, Shehroz has heard “whispers and rumors” that put the death toll at over 200. He spoke of the principal of the school, a friend of his mother, who went into the school to help her students after the massacre started, only to be shot in the back of the head. He spoke of children being tortured before they were executed. It was impossible to listen and not be moved.
“We have picked up enough coffins of our loved ones,” said Shehroz, “and this black armband is a sign that this is enough. Enough is enough.”
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Protesters took to the streets of Providence Friday night in an entirely peaceful #ThisStopsToday march through downtown. Here are some photos from the event.
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The Providence firefighter who raised his fist in solidarity with protesters who burned an American flag outside the Providence Public Safety Complex is Khari O’Connor, who also works as a DJ for WBRU on Sundays under the name DJ Knockout.
Though O’Connor’s name has been being bandied about on various comment blogs, Marissa Lee, a Media Relations Coordinator/ Consultant working for O’Connor confirmed the firefighter’s identity in an email and subsequent phone call with RI Future.
O’Connor was sworn in as a firefighter in early 2014, and was listed as being 26 years old at the time.
“Dj Knockout (Khari O’Connor) is being wrongfully prosecuted for his beliefs while being a civil servant(Providence Firefighter)! We need your help!! Please Share!”
Marissa Lee has confirmed that an exclusive interview has been promised to a television station she would not name.
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I don’t know the firefighter who stood in the window, fist raised in solidarity with the protesters rallying outside the Providence Public Safety Complex a week ago. I don’t think anyone could tell who the figure was or what occupation the person might be employed in. All I could see was a silhouette, a literal shadow of humanity, demonstrating commonality with the protesters as a human being with emotions, thoughts and concerns.
What could I know about the figure in the window? I couldn’t be sure of the figure’s race or ethnicity. Medium build. Average height. Might be a man but in truth, until Commissioner Paré used identifying pronouns, I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure of gender.
All I could see was a human being, making contact, sharing the same pain and concern as those assembled below. I could have made up a thousand stories about the figure in the window, guessing at his or her reason for choosing to raise a fist in solidarity, but somehow, I never doubted the intentions of the act. Somehow the simple gesture of raising a fist in shadow communicated both solidarity and sincerity.
It was a meaningful, touching gesture.
Even those who believe that the firefighter’s actions were completely unwarranted and somehow a betrayal of his duty do not doubt the sincerity of the action. This was obviously not an act of mockery but an act of solidarity, and this came through even though the figure was only a silhouette, a shadow in the window, visually more symbol than human. The humanity of the act was palpable, almost psychic.
Commissioner Paré recognized the humanity of the action immediately. It was the sincerity of the gesture and the humanity expressed that made a silhouette with raised fist so dangerous. For the system to work, one side must be strong, powerful and monolithic and the other side must be weak, compliant and diverse. When the strong show tenderness and tolerance or the weak demonstrate strength and solidarity, the system strains to breaking, and punishments must be meted out.
I feel sad that my footage has caused the firefighter censure and official punishment. Commissioner Paré says the firefighter should have remained neutral, but were the disdainful looks or dismissive chuckles of other figures in the windows neutral? Dismissive attitudes also lack neutrality, yet it never occurred to me or the protesters to note such attitudes, because they are common. It seems neutrality is only neutral when it serves those in power.
If in the future I film police officers at protests laughing or taking a dismissive attitude towards the activists, will Commissioner Paré take them to task for their lack of neutrality? Perhaps the police should wear helmets to hide their emotions and mask their humanity. No one can see the tears of a stormtrooper as the trigger is squeezed.
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More than 300 people (a conservative estimate, I think) marched in Providence Wednesday night to protest the verdict in Ferguson, MS that exonerated the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man. Last night I photographed an emotional crowd filled with righteous anger, but it was a crowd that was, to my eyes, entirely nonviolent. Sure they were loud, they occupied space and they were confrontational, but they were peaceful.
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This is my take. I was there, this is what I heard and saw, but there were hundreds of perspectives at last night’s Ferguson Rally in Providence, so don’t think of mine as definitive. I’ll do more than one piece on this, but I think it makes sense to start near the end, with the protesters jumping over the fence and descending onto the highway, Route 95, where the protesters blocked southbound traffic for about twenty minutes.
After a long march, we found ourselves at the Providence Public Safety Complex, where police officers blocked the entrance, and the protesters proceeded to demonstrate outside. After doing chalk outlines on the pavement like those drawn around murder victims, and after burning an American Flag, (which would surely have been the most controversial moment of the night, had the protesters not taken the highway) there was a small moment of silence as the protesters tried to reach consensus as to what to do next.
Someone said, “We could block the highway.” It sounded like an afterthought.
The statement electrified the crowd.
Almost immediately the crowd dispersed, and a significant number of them, between 100 and 150 by my count, crossed the street towards the highway, jumped the fence, and descended onto the highway en masse.
I might have followed, but I was burdened with a backpack, a video camera on a tripod, and a still camera around my neck. Also, I wasn’t entirely sure I could climb back.
I saw the protesters successfully block southbound traffic, and watched as they attempted to block northbound traffic as well. A state police car appeared almost immediately, and as more and more troopers arrived, they managed to keep the north bound lane clear. I watched from a patch of grass that runs along the outside of the fenced highway, about the width of a sidewalk.
A police officer unsuccessfully tried to tell those on the legal side of the fence that they had to move away, but I held my place, because I was trying to get the incident on video. I was warned several times that I would be arrested if I stayed where I was, but I was breaking no laws. (and was not arrested.)
Down below, on the highway, the protesters were confronting the police. I was told the following by a person who was down there, a white male:
“It was crazy. There were like five of us, three white guys and two black guys. The police, when they came at us, went right after the black guys. They weren’t interested in me at all, and I was right there.”
The police started to make arrests. I’m not sure what the criteria for who was arrested and who was not. I saw at least two people being arrested, but I was constantly being jostled by fence hoppers (now passing both ways) and being pushed from behind by police officers attempting to clear the fence, so I apologize for the shaky footage.
Soon the police corralled the protesters off the highway and then shouted and yelled for them to get on the other side of the fence or be arrested. The police officers were either very angry or pretending to be. There was only a certain speed at which that many people could hop over a fence, and screams and threats were not going to make it go any faster.
After the highway was cleared, I learned that six people had been arrested – four by state troopers and two by Providence police. One young man wearing a white hoodie, was pointed out by the police, who proceeded to surround and restrain him, over the protests of the crowd. The officers put the young man into the back of a police cruiser, but the opposite window of the cruiser was rolled down, so the man jumped through the window and made a run for it.
Here are my photos:
***
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At a November 14th rally in support of library workers at Brown, University President Christina Paxson emerged from an event in the newly renovated Rockefeller Library and told a crowd of protesters demanding fair wages and a good contract for union workers, “Thank you for supporting our library workers.”
Paxon’s words of thanks, says Brown student and activist Stoni Tomson, “is an attempt to co-opt our movement and our struggle… this is the tactic of some of the most insidious and abusive elements on this earth.”
Despite Paxon’s appearance of support, so far the University has failed to agree to a contract with library workers. It seems as though Paxon is fond of the counter-cultural reputation this kind of student/worker activism garners Brown, but actually following through on the ideals the protesters represent are another thing altogether.
As Brown graduate and library worker Mark Baumer says, “all [the university] is offering us is takeaways.” Workers are expected to accept cuts to their contracts every time they are up for discussion. “They keep chipping away a little bit with every contract, and eventually that will be a lot.”
As part of the protest demonstrators delivered a petition to President Paxon’s office, as well as several Thanksgiving themed holiday cards, with sentiments such as “Don’t Gobble Union Jobs” and “Don’t Squash Benefits.”
According to the protesters, “For workers, understaffing and lack of training/advancement opportunities remain key issues. While the University and workers remain in a deadlock, key administrators including the head of the library and members of the Organizational Planning Group are not even present at the bargaining table.”
There were many speakers at the event, but attendance was lower than normal because of the Thanksgiving break.
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Just in case anyone forgot, the hotel workers at the Providence Renaissance are still working for fair wages, decent treatment and a union. The Procaccianti Group still refuses to negotiate with the workers and conditions at the hotel have not improved one bit.
Let’s also not forget that when the Providence City Council moved to allow voters in Providence to democratically decide whether or not to raise the minimum wage for hotel workers to $15, the General Assembly and especially the House of Representatives under the leadership of Speaker Mattiello, passed a budget amendment to prevent cities and towns from determining their own minimum wages.
Business and government conspired to keep working mothers poor. Yet the hotel workers keep fighting and marching the picket line every Wednesday, demonstrating more character and humanity in two hours a week than the General Assembly musters all year.
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Yesterday I marched with 400,000 people in New York to demand that government take strong action to save the earth from the catastrophic results of climate change.
We were a united humanity taking a stand for everything that is truly important: our lives, our world and our future.
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Thirteen fast food workers were arrested during a civil disobedience action in Hartford yesterday, seven of them were from Rhode Island. Here’s my story:
“Do you have any sharp items in your pocket?” asked the police officer.
“No,” said Charles, a forty year old black man wearing his Burger King uniform. Charles, who I had met long before he was involved with the fight to secure a living wage for fast food workers, is always polite.
“Do you have any medical issues?”
“No.”
“Okay. I’m placing you under arrest.”
Charles stood up, placed his hands behind his back and, after the plastic cuffs were fastened, was escorted to the waiting police van. With that, the Fight for a $15 minimum wage officially entered it’s civil disobedience phase.
Some variation of this routine played out 12 more times around noon on Thursday in front of a McDonald’s restaurant in Hartford. More than half of those arrested were from Rhode Island. Six of the Rhode Islanders work in the same Wendy’s in Warwick. The rest were from Hartford, and at least two of them worked in the same McDonalds they were protesting.
“I’ve never seen security guards at that McDonalds before,” said a worker at the discussion held after the action was over, “they were wearing black suits and sunglasses and everything.” I had to agree. They looked more like the Men in Black than mall-level rent-a-cops.
“Shows that they have money…” said someone.
“…and they don’t know how to spend it,” laughed another.
McDonalds left the actual arresting of the protesters to the Hartford cops, not private security. One by one the thirteen fast food workers were loaded into a hot and stuffy police van. Despite not having any medical issues of which he was aware, Stacey, a twenty something black man and Providence native in a Wendys uniform, started having a seizure. By the time the police van arrived at the makeshift booking site a couple blocks away, Stacey needed an ambulance, and was taken to the hospital.
—
The Fight for a $15 minimum wage has been slowly gaining traction and scoring significant victories over the last year. Seattle recently passed a $15 minimum wage and San Francisco and Chicago may soon follow. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that the McDonalds Corporation is a “joint employer” with its franchisees, making the restaurant corporation responsible for “illegally firing, threatening or otherwise penalizing workers for their pro-labor activities,” according to the New York Times, a decision that may make unionizing fast food workers easier.
Not bad for a nascent movement that has so far relied on one day strikes and picket lines to get its message across, but corporate interests are starting to hit back. The deep-pocketed McDonalds Corporation, a longtime opponent of unions, claims the NLRB ruling goes against “decades of established law” and is expected to appeal the ruling all the way to the Supreme Court, if need be. Meanwhile, several states, including Oklahoma and Rhode Island, have passed measures preventing cities from setting their own minimum wage ordinances.
Recognizing that the battleground is shifting, the largest gathering of fast food workers to date met outside Chicago in late July, and unanimously decided “to conduct a wave of civil disobedience actions.” Sponsored by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the driving theme of the meeting was that the Fight for $15 was the latest in a long line of civil rights battles that prioritized economic justice. Representative Keith Ellison, (D-MN), no stranger to civil rights battles as the first Muslim American in Congress, explicitly spelled this out when he said to the crowd, “What you are doing right now is the most important workers’ movement in America today.”
“‘We talked a lot about civil disobedience,’ Samuel Velez, a McDonalds employee from Hartford, said. “What we’re doing; fighting for our rights is really important. It was very good that a whole bunch of workers came together as one and spoke about what we’re going to do next, and that we got feedback about how we’re doing.’”
—-
The drive from Providence to Hartford is nearly silent. There are seven fast food workers in the rental van with me and the mood is contemplative. In addition to Charles and Stacey, I’m driving with Jo Ann, Staria, Reggie, Kenya and Corey.
“Everybody’s so quiet,” says Jo Ann, a Wendys worker.
“Maybe people are nervous about being arrested,” I suggest. I also suspect that the group is being less boisterous in the presence of media.
“Maybe,” says Jo Ann, “but most of us just finished a full day of work and we’re just tired.”
Jo Ann has the heart of an activist, and she’s a natural leader. She became involved in this effort because at her job, everyone received a ten cents per hour raise, “whether they deserved it or not. Good worker or bad, you got ten cents. It wasn’t fair, and it meant hard work was meaningless.” Then, shortly after the raise, and adding injury to insult, the employees all had their hours cut by a third. Jo Ann went from just over thirty hours a week to just over twenty. The cut in hours obliterated the paltry pay increase.
Unhappy with the treatment she and her fellow fast food workers were receiving Jo Ann went online and started to look up her rights as a fast food employee living in Rhode Island. She quickly learned that the laws in Rhode Island had almost nothing to say about her right to be treated fairly by her employer. At this point she began searching the internet for alternatives. This is how she discovered the nascent Fight for $15 movement and the SEIU. It wasn’t long before Jo Ann was talking about fair treatment and fair pay to her co-workers, and not long after that she found herself walking the picket line.
Early on, Jo Ann could have left her job at Wendys. “I was looking around, and found a job as a manager at a McDonald’s. I was offered the job over the phone, but I turned it down, because even though it meant more pay and more hours, I would have been leaving behind all the friends I had made at my Wendys.”
Jo Ann likes her job. She likes meeting people, likes her co-workers and likes serving food to hungry customers, but she isn’t being paid enough to live on, and as tough as the low pay is for her, it can be much worse for her co-workers. Jo Ann stays because she feels a sense of responsibility to her co-workers, and its obvious that her co-workers think a lot of her. “How could anyone not like Jo Ann,” says Staria, a young black woman and co-worker, “she’s like the nicest person ever.”
Charles often has to decide between buying medicine or paying his rent. This despite the fact that Charles has a job, albeit one that doesn’t pay him enough to live on. “I’ve been working at Burger King for ten years, and I’m still making minimum,” says Charles. Meanwhile, some of the managers, claims Charles, make $25 an hour plus benefits. Charles is one of the nicest people you could meet. I ask him if he’s nervous about being arrested. He’s not.
“When it happens it happens,” says Charles.
—
The fast food workers will get some training in nonviolence and civil disobedience before the first action, scheduled for 10:30 at a nearby Burger King. They will learn how to be arrested in a way that will prevent them from getting hurt or incurring charges of resisting arrest as they are (hopefully) booked and released. During their training the workers will be encouraged to express themselves freely, without fear of judgement.
“I’ve been getting arrested every month since 1972,” jokes Steve, who will be training the workers on how to get arrested. When asked about the cops, Steve is reassuring, “These guys here in Hartford are very cool. They have a lot of experience and they don’t mess with us.”
Ben, the SEIU organizer running the action in Hartford, doesn’t want me at the training, because the workers should be free to express their concerns with some measure of privacy. I’m cool with that, but I also get the impression that he doesn’t trust the press. “We’ve been attacked from the left,” says Ben, confirming my hunch. I don’t argue for access, I’m sure I’ll have plenty to write about.
Appearing at the Comfort Inn breakfast buffet, where the Providence contingent is gathered, Ben enthuses, “Today is going to be fucking awesome!” He has just heard from his people in Rhode Island that a strike notice has been delivered through the drive thru window of the Warwick Wendys to the manager on duty. Upon hearing what that it was a strike notice, the manager reportedly refused to touch the paper. Pretty much the entire lunch crew is in Hartford, leaving Wendys in Warwick with no workers for the afternoon.
The two most important things these workers need for today’s actions are their uniforms, which will instantly mark them as fast food workers, and their identification cards, to make it easier for the police to process them after their arrest.
Getting arrested is the plan. One day strikes have had the impact they’re going to have, and it’s time to take the Fight for $15 to the next level, goes the logic. There’s no reason for the police to be angry or agitated. This should be a simple book and release, but of course the ongoing scandal of Ferguson is all over the news, and good number of the fast food workers involved in these actions are people of color.
“The majority of people in Hartford are black or Puerto Rican,” says Steve, explaining that the cops are wary of coming off like Ferguson. Hartford has its own police brutality controversy currently making its way through the courts in the tasering of teenager Luis Anglero. Police across the country know that the world will be watching them during these civil disobedience actions. There are reportedly 150 cities involved today and it will be covered by all the news channels, so the cops will be on their best behavior.
As if to confirm the attention being focused on today’s actions, the Today Show runs a short piece as the workers make there way to their training.
—
At 10am about thirty fast food workers and supporters march inside the Burger King next door to the Comfort Inn, chanting and waving signs. The manager on duty says, “if you come in here I’m calling the police,” but she is ignored. The protesters ask the staff of the restaurant to join them in their chants, but none do. Mostly they look nervous as they try to fill customer orders.
A few customers evidence annoyance at the protest, but most seemed pleased by the show. At least one customer joined in with the chants. The protesters quieted only long enough to catch the tail end of a CNN report about today’s planned civil disobedience actions. There was laughter at this. The protesters exited the restaurant chanting, “We’ll be back!” As the vans pulled out of the Burger King parking lot, the police arrived.
Unlike the contemplative ride from Providence the night before, the atmosphere in the van as we traveled from the Burger King near the hotel to the McDonalds in Hartford was electric. The first taste of protest had energized the group and they were ready for more. I found out that Jo Ann had attended the big meeting in Chicago where fast food workers had decided to engage in civil disobedience. Today’s actions are the first since she helped to decide on the direction this cause is going to take in the future. Staria is sorry to have missed the Chicago meet. She enjoys the unity and community this drive for fair wages has provided her..
—
As we pulled into the parking lot that would serve as the staging area for the march to the McDonalds, everyone noticed that the cops were already out in force. Across the street were about seven cops, huddled together in conversation. More joined them. Local community leaders, labor leaders and labor friendly politicians had announced the fast food workers’ intentions to the police, and the cops were there to direct traffic ahead of the march.
Speeches were given and there were rallying cries for solidarity. The best speeches, as usual, came from the workers themselves.
“I’m fighting for 15 for my son but not only for my son but for everyone else who is scared to come out and fight with us,” said Samuel Velez to the crowd.
Salvador Lopez spoke of being fired for his unionization efforts, and getting his job back with the help of union representatives. Both Samuel and Salvador work at the McDonalds they are planning to protest.
I followed the quarter mile march and was pleased to see the positive reaction from many on the street. Many people joined the march, including a young mother pushing a baby stroller. There were drummers and chants lead by the Reverend A.J. Johnson, who seemed to be giving a crash course in how to energize a crowd. The man was tireless and his energy was infectious.
When we arrived at the McDonalds, the chanting crowd pushed its way into the restaurant, taking over the space for a good amount of time before moving outside, marching around the building and finally stopping at the front of the store, where the thirteen brave volunteers sat down to be arrested in an act of civil disobedience.
The officer in charge listened to the chanting crowd, and then asked the seated protesters to get out of the street. Politely, the protesters refused. The crowd cheered the arrestees on in various call and respond chants. Twice more the officer in charge asked the volunteer arrestees to get out of the street. Twice more they refused.
Calmly, one by one, the thirteen protesters were told that they were under arrest, asked to stand, and taken to the waiting police van. When the van was full the last three of the thirteen were taken away by police cars. The action over, the crowd dispersed.
I went to the staging area a few blocks away where the police were booking and releasing the protesters. Most of them were already free, a few were still receiving their tickets for “disorderly conduct.” It was when I got there that I learned about Stacey, and that he had suffered a seizure in the police van. Kenya had accompanied him to the hospital.
I learned later that Stacey was suffering from dehydration. The entire event had been outside in the hot sun, and in truth none of us had taken the time to eat much of anything since breakfast. Being locked inside the hot and stuffy police van was enough to send Stacey over the edge, but ultimately he was fine and the hospital released him that afternoon.
—
In the aftermath of the day’s events, the workers and the organizers gathered to review their efforts. On the TV, Fox News reads a statement from the National Restaurant Association, (the other NRA) which declares that the nationwide protests are “a national, multi-million dollar campaign engineered, organized and funded by national labor groups. The activities have proven to be orchestrated union PR events where the vast majority of participants are activists and paid demonstrators.”
There were certainly allies and organizers at the events Hartford, but the majority were clearly fast food workers. I look at Jo Ann, who found this movement on the Internet while working at a tiny fast food joint in Warwick, Rhode Island. She isn’t a paid activist, she’s someone committed to fighting for fair wages and a decent working environment for everyone. To everyone in the room, the NRA statement is obvious baloney.
The workers, those who were arrested and those who cheered them on, enjoyed the air conditioning and the pizza as they listened to reports coming in from bigger actions in Chicago and Detroit. Over 100 protesters were arrested in Detroit. Rumor has it that the police ran out of handcuffs.
This was a big action, and the publicity and the exposure, plus the positive experiences of the participants, has everyone eager to do more. Future actions are being planned, and the contingent from Rhode Island is eager to be involved. They don’t want to just fight for $15, they want to win it.
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“I want to speak on respectability politics,” said one of the speakers at the #HowManyMore rally held in Burnside Park last night.
“Which,” he continued, “is basically telling a black or brown poor kid to pull our pants up, turn our hats the right way, wear a suit and we’ll get ahead, Alright? Fuck that, alright? Martin Luther King had a suit and tie on when he was shot. Malcolm X had a suit and tie on when he was shot. Medgar Evers had a suit and tie on when he was shot. This is my suit and tie. This is the uniform of the hip-hop generation, my sagged pants and my cocked hat.”
The event was billed as an event to “Demand justice for all victims of anti-black violence, state terror and police impunity.” Many of the over 120 people present, especially people of color, had stories to tell of being stopped by the police and being treated as criminals because they “fit the description. The event was held under the watchful eye of the Providence Police, who hovered at the edge of the park. Ironically, just as Alex, one of the event organizers, took the microphone to address the crowd, the police swooped in on the other side of the fountain to arrest a homeless man for reasons unknown.
“I think it’s really important to understand that police violence, anti-blackness and white supremacy all plays out in our society in a variety of ways,” said Andrea, one of the organizers, “Some of this violence is actually physical violence that leads to death, that leads to imprisonment, etc., but some violence is not so physical. We can have emotional violence, we can have spiritual violence, and that’s constantly happening to us…”
The killing of Mike Brown, an unarmed black man in Ferguson MS, has sent reverberations throughout our country, and young people, like those who held this rally, are beginning to explore ways in which to stand up against racial profiling, police militarization and the corporatization of law enforcement, including the prison-industrial complex.
The conversation is shifting.
Watching citizens and activists peacefully organize around the ideas of inclusivity and respect for human rights fills me with hope for the future.
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It took too long, but eventually, after the election of FDR, the United States got around to actually doing something about the Great Depression. The Works Progress (or Work Projects) Administration (W.P.A.) started putting Americans back to work, Keynesian style, in 1935. Economists may argue about the efficacy of stimulus programs, but one benefit cannot be argued:
The W.P.A. built sidewalks, parks and public buildings that I, and countless others, still use everyday. I enjoy the safety of not walking in the street and a weekly farmer’s market at a nearby park because from 1935 to 1941, the United States did not just pay people to work, it invested in our infrastructure.
Most of the work done by the W.P.A. is adorned with simple and elegant plaques. The plaques were built to endure, and they have. These beautifully designed monuments to a time when the United States was smarter and less beholden to crank economic theories based on greed and the punishment of the poor are all around us, 80 years later. We all reap the benefits of this investment. I foresee enjoying these parks, walkways and other amenities long into my senior dotage, thanks to investments made 30 years before I was born.
Has anything of similar value come out of our recent Great Recession? Where are the new bridges and bike paths, green energy systems and smart grids, refurbished parks and improved public facilities? Where is the legislation to prevent future catastrophes? Where are the criminal prosecutions for economic malfeasance?
They don’t exist. Not only did we learn nothing from the Great Recession, we’ve forgotten everything we learned from the Great Depression.
Below is a collection of W.P.A. plaques I’ve photographed in and around Providence. I hesitate to say exactly where I found these plaques, because of the picture above, taken in Roger Williams Park, where many of the roads, bridges and sidewalks were built by the W.P.A. from 1935-1940. The picture shows a piece of sidewalk in the park where a W.P.A. plaque has been forcibly removed, most likely stolen by someone hoping to make a few dollars from a scrap metal dealer.
That our most vulnerable populations finance themselves through the theft and sale of scrap metal serves as a demonstration that our nation not only continues failing to properly invest in the future, we don’t even bother investing in the present. As a result we have begun the process of cannibalizing our infrastructure for petty cash.
Is it too late to turn this all around?
We can invest in our future by investing in the present. The W.P.A. shows one means by which investing in exciting projects today translates into real payoffs for the future. The interstate highway system, the moon landing and the Internet are more examples of investments that continue to pay dividends. If we were willing to, large investments in education, clean energy and financial regulation would reap enormous rewards for our children, and put parents to work today, on projects they can be proud of.
Not only can we can do it again, we can do it better.
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One of the few bright spots on the Rhode Island economic landscape is tourism, but should our economic successes be built on the backs of women scraping by on minimum wage?
Some hotels downtown pay fair wages and are willing to negotiate with their employees about working conditions. The Providence Renaissance Hotel next to the State House and the Providence Hilton next to the Convention Center do not. The practices at these hotels have been shameful. And to a casual observer, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the management at these hotels are specifically targeting young mothers for harassment and termination. (See the pieces I wrote in collaboration with Krystle Martin and Adrienne Jones.)
In response, the hotel workers and Unite Here! 217 have planned an ongoing series of pickets at both hotels, called Working Women Wednesday. Each week a team of protesters will be raising a ruckus at each hotel. Attention will be called to the fact that the profits of the Providence Renaissance Hotel and the Providence Hilton Hotel made by treating working mothers as disposable commodities.
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Today is a state holiday in Rhode Island. It’s a day some of us have off and some of us don’t, depending on whether or not we work in Boston, or at some retail job, or for an instate union or government employer. We used to call it VJ Day, for Victory over Japan, but now we call it Victory Day, if we call it anything at all. Many of us are sheepish when it comes to talking about this holiday, embarrassed that we have a holiday to celebrate the apocalyptic conclusion to a terrible world war.
Our Victory over Japan was accomplished via the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, making the United States the only country to ever use the most horrific and destructive weapon of war ever developed. One bomb killed half the population of Hiroshima. Another killed half the population of Nagasaki.
This isn’t something Americans feel proud of.
On Friday night members and friends of AFSC-SENE gathered in downtown Providence, where the rivers meet near Steeple St, to silently reflect on the events of that day sixty-nine years ago, and to listen to Joyce Katzberg sing about the possibilities of a world without war and nuclear bombs.
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Unfortunately, it seems the Rhode Island Division of Sheriffs did not get the memo. Last Friday the Sheriffs detained Gustavo Torres at the courthouse after a judge ordered his release. Gustavo has been in this country for 15 years and is married to Amanda Torres with whom he has three children. He now runs the risk of being deported.
On Thursday the Olneyville Neighborhood Association, in collaboration with the We Are Arizona Coalition, held a rally at the State House which culminated in an emotional meeting between Kenny Alston, Governor Chafee’s chief of staff, and Gustavo’s wife, Amanda Torres. With Torres were her three children. Though there was no immediate resolution to the crisis, Alston did assure the thirty people at the rally and Gustavo’s wife that the Governor’s office was doing everything it could to bring this situation to a just and speedy resolution.
And watch Chafee chief of staff Kenny Alston address the group in this video:
Representatives from groups such as Jobs with Justice, English for Action, Fuerza Laboral, SEIU, Immigrants in Action Committee, American Friends Service Committee, Providence Youth Student Movement, Unitarian Universalist Association, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church and the Brown Student Labor Alliance were also in attendance.
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