Poverty – Page 4 – RI Future

January 26, 2016January 26, 2016

Elorza confronted over ‘a disturbing pattern of discrimination’ against homeless

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In the rotunda of City Hall advocates for the homeless gathered to release a new study validating the harassment and discrimination being felt on the streets and to demand that Mayor Elorza immediately instruct the Providence Police to stop their practice of criminalizing homelessness and harassing homeless individuals.

Back in August 2015, advocates held a rally in front of City Hall protesting the treatment of those experiencing homelessness in the city. They had found that with increasing frequency, people experiencing homelessness were being subjected to judicial and extrajudicial arrest, harassment, and discrimination. Additionally, they contended that individuals who were homeless were being treated as criminals for engaging in activities necessary to survival, foremost among them resting and sleeping.

Soon after the rally, in September, Mayor Jorge Elorza met with the advocates and declared that the harassment and discrimination happening was not in line with his Administration’s policy. At that time advocates asked him to make a public statement expressing that and to focus on solutions to homelessness rather than criminalizing the homeless. Fast-forward to now, four months later, and nothing has come out of the Mayor’s office.

To make matters worse for the Mayor’s office, advocates released results of a public spaces survey which show a clear and disturbing pattern of discrimination against those experiencing homelessness in downtown Providence.

“As an outreach worker I have both heard, and personally witnessed this kind of conduct, and it disgusts and enrages me,” said Megan Smith of House of Hope CDC.

“Essentially, only homeless people and formerly homeless people are being arrested for these activities,” said Dr. Eric Hirsch. The activities include, sitting, panhandling, standing, sleeping and talking, all of which are perfectly legal.

Eileen Boarman was homeless in Providence on and off for over two years. She has personally witnessed and been the victim of police harassment and abuse. She talks of being beaten, spray with water hoses, and having her arm twisted. She was treated as having no value and no rights. Her experiences are impossible to justify.

Several years ago, Providence City Councillor Mary Kay Harris and others spearheaded the creation of the Providence External Review Authority (PERA), a civilian lead police oversight board. In light of Dr. Hirsch’s findings, the re-establishment of this board in a must.

We need, says House of Hope CDC outreach worker Kate Miechkowski, “to address the cause of people having nowhere to go and nowhere to sleep, rather than arresting and harassing those who suffer from the effects of our failed economic policies.”

In November, Providence College students conducted a public spaces survey of random pedestrians in the Kennedy Plaza/Burnside Park areas of downtown Providence. The results were striking. Just over half (52%) of those surveyed were homeless or formerly homeless, but 95% of the citations and 94% of the arrests were experienced by homeless and formerly homeless persons.

Answers to other questions on the survey such as whether law enforcement had asked them to “move on” or to leave a particular area, how often they were asked for identification; and how often law enforcement searched their belongings without their permission show the same pattern of disproportionate harassment of homeless and formerly homeless persons by police. Other potential reasons for such targeting such as race, ethnicity, or age were not found to be relevant.

“It was stunning to see the degree to which homeless Rhode Islanders are subject to harassment by the Providence Police Department,” stated Dr. Eric Hirsch, Professor of Sociology and author of the Public Spaces Survey. “It was the only factor relevant to why someone was ticketed or arrested for everyday activities such as sitting, lying down, etc.”

Kate Miechkowski, Outreach Worker for the House of Hope CDC confirmed the findings of the survey stating, “This past summer and fall I had the opportunity to interview dozens of people experiencing homelessness about their interactions with Providence police officers. I was horrified by their experiences of degradation, humiliation, and blatant profiling. There was almost no one I spoke to who had amiable experiences with police officers. I personally witnessed multiple incidents in which people were told that they had to move for doing nothing except occupying a public sidewalk.”

Advocates point to the fact that Rhode Island was the first state in the country to enact a “Homeless Bill of Rights” formally banning discrimination against Rhode Islanders experiencing homelessness and affirming their equal access to housing, employment and public services and believe the police’s targeting of people based on their housing status is illegal.

The Rhode Island law asserts that Rhode Islanders experiencing homelessness have the right to use public parks, public transportation and public buildings, “in the same manner as any other person and without discrimination on the basis of his or her housing status.”

In the original letter to the Mayor, advocates stated:

Criminalization is not a solution to homelessness. It is incredibly cruel to those experiencing homelessness, dehumanizing the individuals and making it harder to connect to advocates and services. It also costs the system more by spending taxpayer dollars on court costs and incarcerations rather than on housing, medical care, and other long-term solutions.

The group asked the Mayor to implement the following action steps to address the current situation:

1. Instruct the Providence Police Department that they may not order people to move from public property, nor threaten arrest for the failure to move, absent reasonable suspicion that they are committing a crime.

2. Ensure that this order is followed by:

a. Re-establishing the Providence External Review Authority (PERA);
b. Establishing a designated hotline to report harassment or illegal arrest and regularly reporting on calls received;
c. Adding content on Rhode Island’s Homeless Bill of Rights to the training police cadets receive at the Academy and incorporating this material into re-training of current officers.

3. Provide an appropriate location and budget for a day center in the City.

4. Publicly support the hundred million-dollar bond ask and ensure that the City’s programs to rehabilitate vacant homes (such as Every Home) results in apartments that are affordable to very low income renters.

Nationally, there is increasing recognition of the need for cities to shift away from criminalization and toward a right to housing. In its report No Safe Place, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty details the ways in which criminalizing ordinances are damaging both to individuals experiencing homelessness and to the cities that enact them. It also found that, despite a lack of affordable housing and shelter space, cities across the country are essentially making it illegal to be homeless with laws that outlaw life-sustaining acts, such as eating and sleeping, in public spaces.

Key findings/conclusions from the report are:

Homeless people are criminally punished for being in public even when they have no other alternatives;
The criminalization of homelessness is increasing across the country;
Criminalization laws violate the civil and human rights of homeless people;
Criminalization laws are costly to taxpayers;
Criminalization laws are ineffective; and
Criminalization laws should be replaced with constructive solutions to ending homelessness.

The Seattle University School of Law recently published a series of briefs exploring the monetary costs of criminalization and placing these laws squarely within the shameful tradition of Jim Crow, Anti-Okie, and Ugly laws. Earlier this summer, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a Statement of Interest arguing that it unconstitutionally punishes homelessness to make it a crime for people to sleep in public when there is insufficient shelter.

Rhode Island’s Homeless Bill of Rights stands in complete contrast to this trend causing advocates to be dismayed by the growing complaints from those experiencing homelessness that the police are not respecting their rights.

The Homeless Bill of Rights sets an important foundation for Opening Doors Rhode Island, the state’s plan to end homelessness, which states as a core value that “there are no ‘homeless people,’ but rather people who have lost their homes who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.”

Opening Doors Rhode Island outlines a plan that significantly transforms the provision of services to Rhode Islanders experiencing homelessness. Consistent with the new federal plan to end homelessness, the plan seeks to sharply decrease the numbers of people experiencing homelessness and the length of time people spend homeless.

“Rhode Island has the potential to be a model for how to end homelessness,” concluded Megan Smith, Outreach Worker for House of Hope CDC. “We can do this by collaborating to provide safe, affordable, permanent housing and engaging with and educating our community. It is not done by harassing and further marginalizing our city’s most vulnerable neighbors.”

Mayor Elorza was invited to speak at the rally, but declined. His office issued the following statement:

“The Mayor is committed to working with our service providers, advocates and community partners to address the social and economic challenges these resident face. We have spoken previously with the Chief of Police and he has directed his officers not to target those who are struggling with homelessness.”

[Portions of this are from a joint RICH and RIHAP press release]

January 25, 2016January 25, 2016

CFED Report: Rhode Islanders still struggling, especially with homeownership

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New data released today by CFED (the Corporation for Enterprise Development), a national partner of Rhode Island’s Economic Progress Institute, shows that too many Rhode Island families remain economically vulnerable. Smart public policies that create opportunities for families to save and make investments in their future prosperity pay huge dividends for all of us. The Assets and Opportunity Scorecard, now published annually, shows Rhode Island ranked 35^th overall in Outcomes, despite ranking 8^th overall in the Scorecard’s Policy measures.

Doug Hall, Director of Economic and Fiscal Policy at the Economic Progress Institute isn’t surprised by these findings: “We see the economic vulnerability of Rhode Island families in wage and income data (as shown in our recent State of Working Rhode Island: Workers of Color report). Until Rhode Islanders have good jobs that pay economy-boosting wages, they won’t be able to set aside savings or invest in homes or businesses.”

Across five main issue areas, Rhode Island fares in the middle of the pack in four issue areas (Financial Assets and Income, Businesses and Jobs, Education, and Health Care) but nearly dead last for Housing and Homeownership.

Rhode Island’s outcome indicators point to a number of areas where improvements need to be made to improve the financial security of Ocean State families. Rhode Island scores very poorly (40^th or worse) in 14 areas, including 8 indicators for housing/homeownership:

Income inequality (46^th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia)
Business value by race (44^th)
Underemployment Rate (40^th)
Homeownership rate (46^th)
Homeownership by race (50^th)
Homeownership by income (51^st)
Homeownership by family structure (50^th)
Delinquent mortgage loans (49^th)
Affordability of homes (43^rd)
Housing cost burden – homeowners (46^th)
Housing cost burden – renters (45^th)
Uninsured by race (45^th)
Uninsured by gender (49^th)
Average college student debt (46^th)

While Rhode Island’s poor performance on housing/homeownership outcomes in the Assets and Opportunities Scorecard is not new, it is striking. Jim Ryczek, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless responds:

“While Rhode Island clearly has much work to do to meet the state’s housing needs, we have significantly increased funding of programs to solve homelessness. We need to match that progress with investments that provide housing options for all Rhode Islanders.”

It is also noteworthy that Rhode Island falls in the bottom 11 rankings in three of the six outcome measures that look at disparities by race/ethnicity. National data show stark disparities in wealth based on race and ethnicity. We know that here in Rhode Island, racial disparities in wages and income are significant. The lack of good state-based data on wealth prevents us from fully understanding these disparities, which in turn prevents us from addressing the challenges with the necessary urgency. Another new report released last week by the Annie E Casey Foundation addresses the need for better data:

“To properly gauge the effects of policies and practices on families’ ability to build assets, we must have the right tools. Data on family assets are meager and difficult to access, particularly for various racial and ethnic groups. The federal government should explore better mechanisms to track that information, such as representative surveys for national and state use with questions on savings behavior and asset holdings or additional questions in the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.” Annie E Casey Foundation, Investing in Tomorrow: Helping Families Build Savings and Assets

CFED has been publishing the Asset and Opportunities Scorecard since 2002. It remains a key benchmark in tracking important policy and outcome measures, and highlighting best practices in state policies addressing these areas.

Key policies that Rhode Islanders can adopt to provide greater opportunities for Rhode Island families include:

Increasing the state Earned Income Tax Credit to 20 percent of the federal credit.
Further Increasing the minimum wage.
Providing protections from predatory lending such as payday loans.

These and other measures that boost family incomes will help families set aside savings while investing in assets such as a home.

[From a press release]

January 22, 2016

Mass incarceration creates a permanent underclass

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“The country’s poverty rate would
have been more than 20 percent
lower between 1980 and 2004
without mass incarceration.”
Villanova University study

Like most U.S. adults, I have violated the nation’s drug laws.

The year was 1971. A freshman at the University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus, I began smoking marijuana with two of my three roommates. As police did not arrest drug offenders on campus, I never worried about being jailed.

Not so for Clifford Runoalds, an African American who was arrested for failure to cooperate with prosecutors. They wanted him to testify against a defendant in the infamous Hearne, Texas “drug bust” of 2000. A rogue police task force arrested 28 residents on the word of only one informant, on drugs, who lied about his African-American neighbors.

Runoalds was innocent. The drug deals never happened. Still, he was jailed for a month before prosecutors released him. As Michelle Alexander explains in her extraordinary book, The New Jim Crow, Runoalds was technically free—but his life was decimated. Jail time resulted in the loss of his job, his car, his apartment and his furniture.

Moreover, Runoalds was grieving the death of his eighteen-month-old daughter. Handcuffed at her funeral, which was about to begin, police rejected his pleas to say goodbye to his daughter.

Runoalds is not alone. Systemic discrimination begins with traffic stops. National data indicates blacks and Latinos are three times more likely to be searched than whites. Pedestrian stop-and-frisk is far worse. The New York Police Department frisked 545,000 people in 2008: 85 percent were black; eight percent were white.

Prosecutors and judges amplify this discrimination. According to Human Rights Watch, at least fifteen states sentenced black drug offenders at 20 to 57 times the rate of white drug offenders. In addition, the U.S. Sentencing Commission documented that, from 2007 to 2011, blacks received sentences 19.5 percent longer than whites.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics projected that one in three black males born in 2001 would be sent to prison during their lifetimes; for Latinos, one in six; for whites, one in seventeen.

The War on Drugs is an excuse for mass incarceration of black and brown people. SWAT teams do not descend on college campuses. Police do not target the homes of white suburbanites. No, they target poor minority neighborhoods. But as Alexander’s extensive documentation indicates, “The notion that most illegal drug use and sales happens in the ghetto is pure fiction.”

Poor minorities are swept up into the criminal justice system in numbers whites will never face. Those arrested are often unable to pay bail. So they languish in a cage. Faced with many months or perhaps years in jail awaiting trial, even innocent people accept unjust plea bargains. Many serve long sentences on probation—just one misstep from prison.

In addition to 2.3 million incarcerated, more than 7 million people are currently on probation or parole, many for drug or other nonviolent offenses. The fact that minorities are vastly overrepresented in this system means, as Alexander emphasizes, they constitute a new caste, a permanent underclass.

Under Jim Crow, separate but “equal” treatment was legal. This systemic racism supposedly ended in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision. A new Jim Crow has arisen, however, with discriminatory effects even more powerful than the blatant racism of an earlier era.

Challenges to the system’s racism is now barred by court decisions. Alexander concludes, “The legal rules adopted by the Supreme Court guarantee that those who find themselves locked up and permanently locked out due to the drug war are overwhelmingly black and brown.”

Like many young white men, I smoked marijuana. Unlike massive numbers of young black men, few of us with white skin lost our freedom and our families. We did not lose our jobs, our apartments, our cars. Nor should we—but neither should drug users of color.

January 20, 2016January 21, 2016

EJLRI confronts the EPA in Boston

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Environmental justice leaders from frontline communities hardest-hit by climate change and pollution converged on all 10 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regional office headquarters yesterday, to mark the end of the final public comment period for the Obama Administration’s federal Clean Power Plan (CPP) to reduce power plant carbon emissions 32% by 2030.

Members of the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island (EJLRI) lead the efforts in Region 1, meeting with Curt Spalding, Administrator for the EPA’s New England Region, headquartered in Boston.

After their meeting with Spalding, I spoke to Dania Flores, EJLRI’s Executive Director and the coordinator of the action, and Julian Rodríguez-Drix, an EJLRI board member, in the hallway of the EPA offices.

“We’re part of the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), a national alliance of climate justice grassroots groups. We decided that no one has engaged on the side of the people on the CPP plan which is a power generation plan on how the states are going to clean up their act,” said Flores.

The CJA is a collaborative of over 35 community-based and movement support organizations uniting frontline communities to forge a scalable and socio-economically just transition away from unsustainable energy towards local living economies to address the root causes of climate change. They have developed an “environmental justice counterpoint to the Clean Power Plan” they call “Our Power Plan.”

“One the first things in our plan is to engage with the EPA in each region to try to convince them that no one has actually meaningfully engaged the people,” said Flores, “We’re asking the EPA to comply with the law. They have the power to ask state governments to engage in meaningful engagement with frontline communities.”

Under Obama’s CPP, states have “until August to come up with a plan [reduce power plant carbon emissions] or they can ask for an extension,” said Flores, “but we are asking the EPA to tell states that already have a plan, ‘No, we don’t believe that you have actually meaningfully engaged with [frontline] communities.’”

Flores says that states have until 2018 to present their plan and that the CJA wants the plans “to include exactly how states engaged in meaningful engagement [with frontline communities.]”

Rodríguez-Drix said, “Here in Region 1 the issue we see is that the transition away from coal and oil very much favors natural gas as a fuel source and we have a number of very strong reasons that we do not believe that’s [a viable solution].”

The EJLRI’s position is that “if there’s energy infrastructure being built it has to be true renewables,” not energy based on extraction and burning.

Right now, to satisfy a requirement to invest in weatherization and renewables, National Grid tacks on a surcharge to all energy customers, “but the fund is mostly used for solar panels in the suburbs,” says Rodríguez-Drix. This means that poor communities are helping to subsidize the energy conversions of their richer neighbors.

“It benefits white homeowners, primarily,” says Rodríguez-Drix, “We need to look at the whole system and the economics behind it so that the system benefits frontline communities, not just in terms of jobs installing solar panels, but in terms of generating energy that is owned by people of color.”

This problem is exasperated by another issue primarily faced by poorer communities of color. “Slum lords aren’t the ones paying [energy] bills and they don’t care about [weatherization and energy efficiency]. [The communities we represent] have a lot of housing insecurity. We need incentives and investments that will put people of color to work installing and benefiting from increased weatherization and energy efficiency.”

“I had the sense that Spalding was sympathetic to what we had to say,” said Rodriguez-Drix.

“A lot of the conversation revolves around what the translation of certain words in the law is,” said Flores, “What it means to them and what it means to us. When we talk about community engagement, what does it mean to be meaningful? We think we are going to be engaged and be part of the conversation. When they talk about engagement it means they are going to leaflet someplace and schedule two meetings.

“Real meaningful engagement is a lot more work than they have been doing.”

Though this was a nationwide effort, not every EPA office allowed for this level of engagement from CJA aligned groups. “In some EPA offices, meetings like this did not occur,” said Flores, “In some offices an activist would hand over written material to a secretary.”

“EPA welcomes public input from all parties on the Clean Power Plan,” said Spalding when asked for a comment, “We are pleased that stakeholders and communities are actively engaging in the public comment process because robust public participation leads to better outcomes for our health and environment. It is important that environmental justice communities provide EPA with their unique perspective on proposals like the Clean Power Plan.

“EPA is committed to ensuring meaningful public involvement throughout implementation of the Clean Power Plan, so that all communities benefit equally from this vital step to address climate change and protect our health and environment. EPA will consider the input we have received before taking final action.”

Flores, the EJLRI and the CJA see this contact as the beginning of a series of conversations. “We’re going to up the ante as this develops. If the EPA doesn’t push states to wait until 2018 to submit plans, after meaningfully engaging with frontline groups, we will be pushing towards a national gathering in the Summer,” said Flores.

12400573_1009301082459381_7511060132359889040_n — Photo (c)2016 EJLRI

January 19, 2016January 20, 2016

A tale of two Brookings reports

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On Friday, the Brookings Metropolitan program released a report, City and metropolitan inequality on the rise, driven by declining incomes in which Rhode Island’s largest and capital city, Providence, emerges as the city with the 5th highest level of income inequality in the nation. A principal cause of this high rating is the erosion of wages (and hence income) for low income workers in Rhode Island, a situation likely exacerbated in Providence. Too many Rhode Island workers continue to feel the ongoing pain of the Great Recession that began more than eight years ago, and (at least officially) ended more than six years ago, experiencing levels of long-term unemployment, and underemployment that erode their financial well-being. The Rhode Island economy isn’t working for these people. Among those currently in the slow lane on the “Rhode to Prosperity” workers of color comprise a disproportionate share, as recently documented in The State of Working Rhode Island: Workers of Color.

On Tuesday, the Brookings Metropolitan program released a report, Rhode Island Innovates: A Competitive Strategy for the Ocean State¸ a report that expertly assesses the Rhode Island economy, using complex sector-based analyses to identify its comparative areas of strength, and some of the challenges that may prevent businesses from choosing the Ocean State as their home. The Brookings study presents several strategies to improve the business climate, noting that “Rhode Island is poised to emerge as a leader on business environment re-engineering.”

To Brookings’ credit, they point in Rhode Island Innovates to the importance of sustaining “good jobs” (which they define as those that “offer livable wages with benefits for full-time workers who have less than a four-year degree”), and they correctly note that the old mantra of “jobs, jobs, jobs” is no longer adequate or appropriate to today’s economic realities. Yet it feels very much like the two Brookings reports each exist in their own spheres. What Rhode Island (and arguably every other state in the nation) needs is an approach to the economy that integrates the needs of its workforce with the needs of the business community. Innovation and growth are important, but unless such growth advances the well-being of Rhode Islanders regardless of age, race and ethnicity, we will remain diminished as a state.

January 19, 2016

First look at ‘Rhode Island Innovates: A Competitive Strategy for the Ocean State’

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Brookings Institute‘s new report, “Rhode Island Innovates: A Competitive Strategy for the Ocean State,” was formally presented to Governor Gina Raimondo and other government leaders this morning at the Rhode Island Foundation downtown.

The report can be accessed here.

The executive summary can be read here.

Perhaps the biggest surprise comes early on, when the report declares that Rhode Island’s economy is “less dire than middling.” To hear many people say it, Rhode Island is steps away from economic implosion. The Brookings report is more optimistic.

In the report Brookings offers a package of “initiatives and action steps” … that are “intended as a comprehensive package” of reforms. They see the culmination of these ideas as requiring “a new degree of partnership across the public, private, civic, and philanthropic sectors.”

There’s a lot to digest here in a two hundred page report, but some quick thoughts:

The word “poverty” occurs three times in the report, and two of those times in exactly the same context: merely noting its existence. In a state with over 14 percent poverty and nearly 1 in 5 children living in poverty, you’d think a report on creating a better economic climate might address the subject more forthrightly.
Brookings defines “good jobs” as jobs that “offer livable wages with benefits for full-time workers who have less than a four-year degree.” Nowhere in the report is the idea of raising the minimum wage mentioned, yet many of the sectors that Brookings see as having growth potential such as hospitality or shipping create the kind of low paying jobs you might see at a fast food restaurant or a warehouse fulfillment center.
Taxes: “it is important to keep in mind,” says the report, “that low taxes alone do not spur economic growth.” Yet the report then cites the fact that “Rhode Island ranks 45th in the nation in the Tax Foundation’s 2016 State Business Tax Climate Index.” Yet as economist Peter Fisher ably demonstrates, “Combining more than 115 features of state tax law into a single index number produces a state ranking that turns out to bear very little relationship to what businesses actually pay in one state versus another.” The Brookings Institute’s reliance on the Tax Foundation, which “represents the corporate view of tax policy” calls into question the supposed neutrality of this report.

As I get into the report more and have a chance to hear from others I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this report. In the meantime, I present it here for everyone to get their eyes on the page and contribute to the public discussion.

Here’s the slideshow off the Brookings site:

January 16, 2016January 19, 2016

Raimondo in Davos: The promise of capitalist salvation

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Apotheosis of the Medici by Luca Giordano (1672)

When Governor Gina Raimondo attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland for four days this week, she’ll be one of many political leaders having private, off-the-record meetings “with high-ranking representatives of the world’s leading corporations.” Putting aside that many of the corporations that fund WEF and set the forum’s agendas “have criminal records, are under investigation for potential criminal activity (e.g., bribery), are mired in significant legal/ethical issues, or have blatant conflicts of interest,” there is the question of what, if anything, actually gets done there.

WEF attendees talk a lot about the problems of the world, such as Climate Change and Economic Inequality, (This year they plan to talk about “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution” for instance) but the tools participants have at their disposal to deal with these problems, economic and political power, are not the tools that will effect real solutions.

“The governor’s top priority is creating jobs and turning around our economy so everyone has the opportunity to make it in Rhode Island,” said Raimondo spokesperson Marie Aberger, “An important part of her job is selling Rhode Island to attract new businesses and opportunities to our state.”

Sure, some billionaire may move a few jobs towards Rhode Island if Raimondo can catch the right ear, but this does nothing to address the systemic issues mentioned above.

Failed tax policies and wasteful investments in fossil fuel infrastructure can be dealt with through smart policy adjustments without having to travel to Davos. In a recent Brookings Institute report on inequality where Providence fared especially poorly, the authors suggested that, “Housing is an area where local officials—mayors, city councilors, county executives and commissioners—have somewhat greater scope to address needs, at least by influencing the supply side of the market.” This is something Raimondo could help begin to address from her State House office, no trip to Switzerland required.

But there is another reasons to make the pilgrimage to Davos.

WEF has been criticized for being populated with corporate “transnationalists” who “have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations.”

A journey to Davos, then, could be wasted on a gamble to court the favor of the criminal corporate elite and to beg financial indulgences from the masters of the universe, or the journey could be one of neoliberal salvation, a chance to transcend petty human concerns and perhaps join the ranks of the those who live far above the law and make decisions not based on compassion or human rights but on the basis of profit and power.

This is the apotheosis…

…transcendence though capitalism.

This is the true promise of Davos.

January 15, 2016April 30, 2016

The Estate Tax is a solution, not a problem

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At the 2016 Rhode Island Small Business Economic Summit (Summit), Grafton H. “Cap” Wiley IV told Governor Gina Raimondo, House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and a room full of government officials and small business owners that “it would be great if we had enough revenue to get rid of the estate tax” or if we don’t have enough revenue, “look at an increase in the exemption.”

“That’s something I’ve got my eye on,” said Mattiello, offering to collaborate with the business community to do something about it.

The idea of reforming the estate tax came out of a previous Summit, said Wiley, and the important thing, he continued, looking towards Raimondo and Mattiello, is that, “you guys are listening.”

“Rhode Island ends up at the bottom of a lot of the ratings of taxes and business climate,” said Wiley, and though he did not specify to what ratings he was referring, two annual business climate rankings, the SBEC (Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council)’s Small Business Policy Index and ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council)’s Rich States, Poor States, include the mere existence of a state level estate tax as a negative in their questionable formulas for determining a state’s ranking.

The problem, says economist Peter Fisher, is that “the estate tax – which is paid only by the ultra-wealthy – doesn’t affect economic growth.”

Fisher says that Rich States, Poor States author Arthur Laffer, “and his co-authors devote an entire chapter to estate and inheritance taxes, incorrectly tagging them as ‘job killers’ that ‘strangle economic growth.’”

Laffer and company assert that states with an estate tax are losing ‘enormous amounts of accumulated wealth,’ and that this wealth would have created jobs, alleviated poverty, and increased tax revenue, but they fail to explain how this would happen. The wealth held by retirees typically is not the kind of capital normally used in job creation. The wealth that drives prosperity consists of real assets: natural resources, plant and equipment, public infrastructure, human capital, technological knowledge. By contrast, large estates typically consist of real estate, stocks and bonds, mutual funds, and other financial assets which could be located anywhere in the world. The future use of those assets is unaffected by where the person who owned them died.”

So why would Mattiello be so eager to look at an idea that amounts to both failed tax policy and a giveaway to the mega rich? As Bob Plain showed, the last time RI messed with the estate tax, the burden of public services and infrastructure was shifted onto poor and middle class Rhode Islanders, allowing the rich and the mega rich to become richer still. These policies contribute to our ever increasing wealth inequality and pervert our democracy, tilting us ever faster towards an oligarchy represented by the likes of “Cap” Wiley, if we aren’t there already.

Citing an Economic Progress Institute (EPI) fact sheet, Plain wrote, “The clear winners are a small number of wealthy taxpayers whose estates will pay less in taxes and in many cases, nothing at all starting next year. The clear losers are tens of thousands of low- and modest-income Rhode Islanders who will pay more in taxes next year. Unemployed homeowners and renters are among the biggest losers, because they will no longer qualify for property tax assistance and are not eligible for the earned income tax credit (EITC). Many of the lowest-wage workers will also be negatively impacted by the loss of the property tax refund, even with an eventual boost in the EITC.”

“SBEC’s stated mission, says Fisher, “is to ‘encourage entrepreneurship and small business growth,'” but “its lobbying activities reveal a very conservative, anti-government agenda.” ALEC, “is a mechanism by which corporations pay substantial sums of money to draft legislation benefiting them.” Neither group has the interests of state economies or average citizens in mind when they advance their agendas under the guise of “economic research.” These groups are made up entirely of the oligarchic prosperous and their servile, deluded sycophants.

Our gullible state leaders are not searching for real economic solutions to our state’s budgeting issues, they are instead looking for the excuses they need to pass the legislation their corporate masters demand.

To truly help our economy and budget, instead of eliminating the estate tax we should be increasing it.

Also, do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with Peter Fisher’s website:

January 15, 2016January 23, 2016

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

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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.

Solutions and Alternatives

The information presented in the previous posts show that in addition to not being necessary, National Grid’s proposed LNG Liquefaction Facility would be dangerous and would contribute to existing environmental racism. LNG Liquefaction is not needed in Rhode Island in general, and it certainly should not be placed in the most toxic and most impoverished part of the state.

The immediate solution is to stop this facility from being built. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) needs to deny National Grid LNG LLC’s application, and the RI Department of Environmental Management (RI DEM) and RI Coastal Resources Management Council (RI CRMC) need to deny the state level permits.

That being said, the proposed liquefaction facility is not the only problem outlined in this position paper. Even without the added significant risks of the liquefaction facility, the existing LNG storage tank, the Motiva oil terminal, the Univar chemical plant, the Enterprise LPG terminal, and other facilities in the area all pose significant environmental health hazards, and create the overall context of environmental racism. Toxic and hazardous facilities are dangerous for communities and dangerous for workers. Yet families are dependent on them for jobs, municipalities are dependent on them for tax income, and the way our socioeconomic system is set up we are all collectively dependent on the products they produce. Regardless of our dependency, the reality of climate science is that the fossil fuel / petrochemical industry is rapidly pushing our planet past its limits, producing present and future catastrophic impacts, and making people sick, especially front-line communities of color and indigenous communities. Our dependency on these industries is literally killing us.

As an organization, the EJ League is interested in big picture, long term, real solutions to interlocking crises that impact communities of color, marginalized communities, and planetary ecosystems. We are members of three national coalitions of grassroots, membership based organizations: Right to the City, Grassroots Global Justice, and Climate Justice Alliance. Together, and lead by our members and our communities, we are developing and sharing solutions that address these intersecting crises from the grassroots. These community based solutions are in opposition to the corporate top down false solutions that pretend to address a single symptom while reinforcing the underlying root causes of the problems.

True solutions are rooted in the work of grassroots internationalism, and using the framework of a “Just Transition”. We are collectively building a different context and a different system, an economy for people and the planet. The Just Transition framework emerged from partnerships between environmental justice and labor organizations. In the words of the Just Transition Alliance, “together with front-line workers, and community members who live along the fence line of polluting industries, we create healthy workplaces and communities. We focus on contaminated sites that should be cleaned up, and on the transition to clean production and sustainable economies.”

As part of the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) Our Power Campaign, we are part of a collaborative that is:

uniting front-line communities to forge a scalable, and socioeconomically just transition away from unsustainable energy towards local living economies to address the root causes of climate change.

“We are rooted in rooted in Indigenous, African American, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander, and working class white communities throughout the U.S. We are applying the power of deep grassroots organizing to win local, regional, statewide, and national shifts. These communities comprise more than 100 million people, often living near toxic, climate polluting energy infrastructure or other facilities. As racially oppressed and/or economically marginalized groups, these communities have suffered disproportionately from the impacts of pollution and the ecological crisis, and share deep histories of struggle in every arena, including organizing, mass direct action, electoral work, cultural revival, and policy advocacy.

“Together we are strengthening relationships between community based organizations, environmentalists, labor unions, food sovereignty/sustainable agriculture groups and other sectors of society.

“As CJA we are coalescing our power to reshape the economy and governance in the coming decades we are communities united for a just transition.”

CJA’s Our Power Campaign has the long term goals to: 1) End the Era of Extreme Energy, and 2) Implement a Just Transition to Local Living Economies. This will be achieved by:

Building Local Living Economies with a model that that centers on: Zero Waste, Regional Food Systems, Public Transportation, Clean Community Energy, Efficient Affordable and Durable Housing, and Ecosystem Restoration and Stewardship
Building Community Resilience: Creating climate jobs that will build stronger, resilient, and more equitable communities through Grassroots Economies (ex. worker owned cooperatives) and Rights to Land, Water, and Food Sovereignty.

Economic strategies around Just Transition require strong partnerships between environmental justice community advocates and the labor movement. Too often the corporate 1 percent strategy of divide and conquer is successful, but Just Transition pushes us to build powerful working class alliances to overturn the economic and political power structures that simultaneously harm workers, create widespread economic inequality and poverty, and destroy the planet’s ability to sustain life. There is a growing international movement to change this, and the following reports outline some of the strategies to build strong labor/environmental alliances around energy systems and a Just Transition:

Just Transition in Port of Providence

Working with our national alliances and using these strategic frameworks, EJ League will continue to convene local and regional coalitions to develop and implement Just Transition strategies in Rhode Island, focusing on the Port of Providence as an urgent need. Our goal is to develop concrete strategies and tactics to leverage a rapid transition away from natural gas and all fossil fuels, with democratic front-line community ownership over the development of the sectors for truly renewable energy and energy efficiency work. Through workshops, teach-ins, and hosting a Just Transition Assembly with Grassroots Global Justice in late summer / early fall, we will be doing the collective work of developing local solutions to massive social and planetary problems. We will share our joint understandings and perspectives on the problems, learn about the frameworks and strategies that are effective elsewhere, and will forge pathways to transform our oppressive realities.

There are too many solutions and alternatives to list, and most solutions will be built collectively through praxis and not through theory. As a starting point, one could easily envision how the $100 million price tag for the proposed liquefaction facility could be better spent in ways that would address energy needs, create jobs in the economically marginalized and oppressed front-line communities next to the Port, support renewable energy and energy efficiency, and build greater community health instead of increased toxic risk. With the high percentage of old housing stock and rental units in low income communities, there is a large need to improve housing quality with weatherization, energy efficiency, and improvements in indoor air quality, lead abatement, and other healthy housing requirements. This investment would reduce the need for heating fuels, improve health outcomes, and would be able to employ many people from the community.

Job training programs around weatherization and housing work are already in place, and are focused on people of color, youth, and people with records who are excluded from many other sectors of the dominant economy. EJ League has a Board Member who is a weatherization job training specialist, energy auditor, and is working on seeking investors to build a production facility for cellulose to be used in blown-in insulations and home weatherizations. Worker owned cooperative enterprises in the industries of energy efficiency would transform economic power dynamics, bring democratic control into the workplace, and build wealth at the local level. These types of economic developments would be community owned, community led, would employ community members, and would support true community wealth development in stark contrast with the corporate fossil fuel and petrochemical model developments that poison, displace, and extract wealth at the expense of community wellbeing.

In addition to worker owned businesses for energy efficiency, we need community owned renewable energy development. National Grid is required to make a bare minimum level of investment into renewables, and is allowed to add a surcharge to all consumer bills to cover this. Despite the fact that everyone is paying for this, National Grid’s limited investments into renewables have been in affluent white suburban communities. Front-line communities, which have been sacrifice zones for hazardous energy developments for generations, need massive investments in renewable energy. But these investments cannot operate like most investments in the dominant capitalist economy, which come in from outside with disregard for residents, take advantage of poverty conditions, lead to gentrification and displacement, and extract wealth for the investor’s return on investment. We are also not asking for charity or handouts that would support public relations campaigns for polluting industries. We are demanding reparations.

We are exploring mechanisms to make it possible for renewable energy to benefit our communities, given that current capitalist market mechanisms favor larger corporations, municipalities with surplus budgets and strong tax bases, and families that are homeowners who can afford upfront costs in order to get the return on their solar/renewable energy investments. We are determined to make renewable energy a working reality that benefits low income communities of color in multiple ways, from reduced toxic hazards, lowered bills, better jobs, and shifting away from energy sources that are literally killing us. We know this will not happen overnight, and it will be a massive cross sector effort to manifest this vision. But we also know that we cannot afford to wait, and nothing is more urgent. We invite you to join us.

● 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

January 14, 2016January 23, 2016

Economic Inequality: high cost project that will cause economic damage

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Economic Inequality

The Fields Point Liquefaction Facility project takes advantage of, and will increase problems with economic inequality and economic injustice related to energy. First and foremost, the massive $100 million price tag for construction will be passed onto consumers as an added charge. National Grid tries to hide this fact by saying “the cost of the natural gas commodity on a customer’s bill is a pass through cost. This project will allow National Grid and other companies who use the Fields Point facility to supply domestic LNG at a more stable cost.” But “pass through cost” means they pass that cost through to us, and there is no guarantee that prices of domestic fracked gas will be any more stable than prices of internationally sourced LNG. If anything, the international prices of LNG have been steadily declining while domestic fracked gas prices are at historic lows and likely to increase as the industry builds LNG export terminals and fracked gas power plants that increase demand and lead to rising prices. There are existing plans and proposals to connect the Spectra Pipeline (the source of the fracked gas for this facility) (See: here and here) to an LNG export facility in Canada and to build a massive 900 MW power plant in Burrillville, RI that would be powered by gas from Spectra’s “Algonquin” pipeline.

Despite the industry’s claims of needing to build these projects to lower prices, with power plants and other major purchasers getting preferential treatment with locked in prices in long term contracts, individual consumers in Rhode Island will see rising gas prices for home heating and cooking. The $100 million construction costs for the liquefaction facility will be added on top of the price of gas, and collectively we are the ones who will end up paying the bill. On a purely economic level, the proposed facility does not make sense and will be locking us into further dependency on fracked gas.

Income and wealth inequality in Rhode Island means increasing gas prices won’t impact everyone equally. There are only four municipalities in RI that qualify as high poverty “core cities”, with childhood poverty rates over 25 percent – Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls, and Woonsocket. Providence as a whole has a 27.7 percent poverty rate, almost twice the national average of 12.8 percent, and the front-line communities close to the Port includes the census tracts with the greatest concentrations of poverty in the state, specifically census tracts 5, 7, and 12. Five of the twelve census tracts in the adjacent neighborhoods are within the top 10 poorest tracts in Rhode Island, ranking 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th and 10th. The median family income is $31,800 with the poorest tracts having median family income as low as $14,067. On average, 35 percent of people in the community live below the poverty line and 63 percent are below the 200 percent poverty line. In the poorest census tracts, 64 percent live below the poverty line and 83 percent are below the 200 percent poverty line. EJLRI Position Paper_Page_27

The Providence unemployment rate of 12.4 percent is much higher than the statewide average of 7.7 percent , while the highest unemployment levels were found in Wards 8, 9, 10, and 11 (South Providence and Washington Park), where unemployment rates range from 15.3 percent to 40.5 percent . Ward 10, directly adjacent to the Port, has the highest unemployment levels including Census Tract 5 which is the highest at 40.5 percent.

Given this data, it is clearly a myth that expanding operations at the Port will create jobs to solve economic issues such as unemployment. There is no public data available on the workforce in the Port, but based on personal accounts and parallels with other comparable sectors, the jobs for work in Providence are not given to residents of Providence, let alone residents of the neighborhoods that are directly impacted. With the limited number of temporary jobs promised with the proposed LNG Liquefaction facility, the high paying jobs requiring specialized skills will be going to Kiewit, a multinational corporation that has also worked on the Keystone XL pipeline.

The increased costs of home gas prices will have a devastating impact in Washington Park and South Providence, where families living in poverty are already dealing with the frequent impacts of National Grid terminating utility service. This is especially true in rental units which are often less energy efficient: because tenants pay utility costs, landlords have no incentive to invest in weatherization or energy efficiency, making heating costs higher. In violation of state and federal law, National Grid routinely shuts off utilities for low income medically vulnerable people who are dependent on heat and/or electricity for medical needs. The RI Center for Justice filed a class action lawsuit against National Grid and the RI Division of Public Utilities and Carriers to stop these utility terminations.

The press release for the suit included the following:

“In my work on behalf of medically vulnerable children and families, I have witnessed National Grid’s routine disregard for health and safety considerations,” says attorney Jeannine Casselman, legal program director of the RI Medical Legal Partnership at Hasbro Children’s Hospital. “Even in cases involving children with severe illnesses and disabilities, we see utility shut offs happening on a regular basis. In some instances, this can lead to loss of housing altogether. Rather than provide a reasonable repayment plan for struggling families, National Grid too often shuts off services, causing further disarray and trauma to low income households.”

In collaboration with the George Wiley Center’s Lifeline Project, this effort is working to protect the health and welfare of families that are put in danger by National Grid’s reckless and greedy energy policies. The EJ League endorses the George Wiley Center’s campaign and the full demands described in the letter from health care professionals and delivered to the RI PUC:

1. A one-year moratorium on termination for all accounts that are coded as ‘medical’.

2. The engagement of an independent third party monitor to review the Division of Public Utility’s approval of petitions for permission to terminate for all accounts coded as medical. The monitor will be selected by a joint committee composed of members of the George Wiley Center, the medical community, the Department of Health and the Public Utilities Commission.

3. The Public Utilities Commission immediately begin requiring data submissions from National Grid that are consistent with those requirements placed on the company in Massachusetts, as per the George Wiley Center’s formal request from March of 2015.

4. The Public Utilities Commission immediately begin accepting and thoroughly reviewing petitions for emergency restoration and providing timely responses to each request.

There is no publicly available address specific data that shows geographic distribution of utility shut offs. Regardless, the concentration of extreme poverty and high levels of chronic disease and health problems in the front line communities next to the Port make it highly likely that these neighborhoods are disproportionately impacted by utility terminations. Testimonials for grassroots membership based organizations in the community confirms that utility termination is a major problem for many families living in front-line communities next to the fossil fuel energy complexes in Port of Providence which provide energy for the entire region. This is yet another sign of environmental injustice and systemic injustice that is built into the normal business operations of the fossil fuel industry.

● 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

January 14, 2016January 14, 2016

State leaders demonstrate their priorities, and it’s not you

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Our state leaders seem to care more about a handful of dead millionaires than they do about over a thousand living seniors and disabled people. Here’s a video, “Dueling Concerns,” that I think best illustrates the priorities of our elected leaders in state government.

The first person you will see in the video is Grafton H. “Cap” Wiley IV, speaking at the eighth Rhode Island Small Business Economic Summit last Friday. Our state leaders were there, on stage or in the audience, to listen attentively and take notes. One of the many tax policy ideas Wiley suggested was to eliminate the Estate Tax, the tax that only dead millionaires pay. House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, responding to Wiley’s idea later in the program, promises that he will take a serious look at this idea.

The next person in the video below is Maxine Richman, co-chair of the Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition, speaking at the eighth Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty vigil at the State House, held two days earlier. This event has been occurring at the State House for about the same amount of time that the Small Business Summit has been taking place at Bryant University. Richman also has a series of proposals for government leaders, including funding the free bus fare system for seniors and disabled riders. In response to Richman’s ideas, Governor Gina Raimondo shrugs her shoulders and asks, “That sounds great, but where will we get the money?”

Richman was advocating on behalf of some of the poorest people in the state. Instead of promising to really grapple with these ideas, Raimondo and Mattiello essentially said, “Sorry, the cupboards are bare.”

But in truth, this has nothing to do with how much money the State of Rhode Island has to spend, it has to do with government priorities. Dead millionaires count for something in the eyes of our leaders; the poor, the elderly and the disabled do not.

For years now, for instance, the Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty has asked that the General Assembly do something to reign in the usurious PayDay Loan companies, all to no avail. Mattiello dismisses the harm such companies do to our communities as ideological in nature without irony, unable to see that it’s his own ideological fixations that are responsible for enormous suffering in our state. The PayDay loan companies fund a powerful lobbyist who happens to be a close friend and mentor to Mattiello.

Lowering or eliminating the taxes on dead millionaires is a policy that flows naturally from an ideology that Mattiello and Raimondo embrace. This ideology, that has no basis in economic reality, says that lowering taxes on the moneyed classes will “trickle down” to the rest of us, and magically fund RIPTA and increase the fixed wages of the poor and elderly. The fact that it doesn’t work this way, never has and never will, threatens the deeply held beliefs, ideologies, of our government leaders and those they are beholden to, who were aptly represented at the Small Business Summit.

At one point in his presentation “Cap” Wiley told the crowd of small business owners and politicians that “businesses don’t vote,” implying that such a state of affairs denies business people political power.

That’s a crock of self-serving shit.

Businesses don’t need to vote as long as they are able to buy the attention and loyalty of elected officials.

Here’s my suggestion: Raise the estate tax. Use the money to not only fund the free bus fare system, but to also raise the earned income tax credit for low income families to 30 percent. That will do more to get our economy cooking than lower taxes for dead millionaires ever could.

Here are some of the unedited videos.

Previous coverage of the 2016 RI Small Business Economic Summit:

Business leaders decide issues elected officials will pursue at economic summit

Previous coverage of the Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty:

Interfaith Vigil at State House proposes ambitious poverty agenda

January 13, 2016January 23, 2016

Public Health: health disparities and impacts on health care institutions

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Public Health

All of the above issues discussed in this position paper are also public health issues. In looking at the social and environmental determinants of health, public health paints a picture that helps explain why particular populations are more likely to be sick. Issues of potential disasters, environmental racism, climate change impacts, and economic inequality are all public health issues. The EJ League is the backbone organization for COHEP (Community Organizing for Health Equity in Providence), a collaborative effort with DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equity), PrYSM (Providence Youth Student Movement), and the RI Doula Collective. COHEP is funded through the RI Department of Health’s “Health Equity Zones” (HEZ). As a place based initiative that works to develop collective impact strategies to address health problems and health disparities, COHEP’s HEZ work focuses on a few neighborhoods in South Providence including Washington Park, a front-line community to Port of Providence. Research and GIS mapping conducted as part of the HEZ community assessment show that Washington Park has largest concentration by far of chemical exposures in Providence, and also has the highest concentration of leaking underground storage tanks:

EJLRI Position Paper_Page_24 At hearings and public events about the proposed liquefaction facility, multiple community members have spoken out about issues of high asthma rates in the community being a major concern. Public health data backs up this concern, and shows that the area is one of the state’s largest asthma hot spots. While most of the state has asthma rates of 04.4 percent or 4.56.2 percent, most of Providence has asthma rates of 8 – 10.3 percent and the neighborhood next to I95 and the Port has the highest levels in the state at 10.4 – 15.4 percent. (link)

On top of the high level of children with asthma, the front-line community and asthma hot spot next to the port also has some of the highest levels in the state for Emergency Department visits or Hospitalizations due to asthma. Among children with asthma living next to the Port of Providence, 15.5 – 24.1 percent have had an Emergency Department visit, compared to rates of 03.3 percent for more affluent neighborhoods in Providence. Similarly with asthma related hospitalizations, for front-line neighborhoods adjacent to the Port or Providence, children with asthma had inpatient hospitalizations at a rate of 5.1 – 8.3 percent compared to the rate of 00.7 percent in the more affluent neighborhoods in Providence.

In addition to the many health problems and health disparities impacting the neighborhoods of South Providence and Washington Park, there are also public health impacts relating to healthcare facilities in these communities. The Lifespan and RI Hospital complex is the largest and most visible concern, containing the state’s only level 1 trauma center, Rhode Island Hospital, Women and Infants Hospital, and Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

In addition to this major hospital complex, there are many other healthcare facilities within a close radius (1 to 2 miles) from the proposed liquefaction facility and close to the other hazardous facilities in Port of Providence. These include but are not limited to:

Hasbro’s Medicine Pediatrics Primary Care (245 Chapman St) this facility offers primary care for children, and also offers specialty services for chronic conditions including asthma, diabetes, and hypertension, which exist at very elevated levels in this neighborhood. The facility also offers gender and sexual health services. It falls within the one mile radius of the proposed liquefaction facility.

Providence Community Health Centers (375 Allens Ave) PCHC serves approximately 50,000 patients in Providence, many of whom are low income, uninsured or under insured, and suffering from health problems impacted by social determinants of health. This location has their administrative building for all 9 health centers in Providence, as well as the Chaffee Health Center which serves patients. It is located within the half mile radius of the proposed liquefaction facility.

Providence Community Health Centers Prairie Avenue complex (369 Prairie Ave) this health center location also includes the asthma and allergy specialty clinic for the entire PCHC health center system across Providence.

Fertility Solutions (758 Eddy St) specializes in fertility treatments and in vitro fertilization and other related services

New Beginnings (717 Allens Ave) offers perinatal and ultrasound care

It is clear from this limited list, that any cumulative or emergency related impacts from the proposed liquefaction facility would not only impact the whole state’s health care system, but would particularly impact health care services related to maternal and child care, reproductive care, chronic disease care, and emergency response services. Ongoing background pollution and risks in this area should be seen as a public health crisis. Any potential future disaster impacting the port could cause a public health emergency of unimaginable proportions.

● 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

January 12, 2016January 23, 2016

Climate Change: LNG plant causes climate change and is at risk from climate impacts

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Climate Change

As a new fossil fuel facility involving methane, a potent greenhouse gas, the Fields Point Liquefaction Facility will create emissions that contribute to climate change. The source of the methane that would be liquefied is the Spectra Energy pipeline, which carries gas produced by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) from the Marcellus Shale into New England. As a result, the emissions and climate change impacts of the fracked gas life cycle must be taken into account, from drilling to consumption. While the oil and gas industry and their supporters like to present “natural” gas as a “cleaner” alternative or a “bridge fuel” towards a renewable future, in reality gas produced by fracking is worse for the climate than coal.

The proposed liquefaction facility is part of a much larger regional strategy to massively expand fracked gas infrastructure across the region, coordinated by the “Access Northeast” project linking Spectra Energy, National Grid, and Eversource Energy. In order to take climate science seriously and hopefully avert devastating runaway climate change, fossil fuel use must be rapidly scaled back not expanded. This is especially true for natural gas, given the much higher potency of methane as a greenhouse gas. Instead of investing in the build out of new fracked gas infrastructure, massive investments need to be made in energy efficiency and truly renewable energy.

National Grid’s proposed facility would contribute to climate change emissions

National Grid will need a compressor station to take the incoming gas from the pipeline and bring it up to the needed pressure for liquefaction. This compressor would be powered by gas from the pipeline, contributing in addition to methane leaks throughout the natural gas pipeline, storage, and delivery system.

Running the liquefaction facility requires a large amount of energy and will use 15 Megawatts of electricity to liquefy the gas. For comparison sake, the Deepwater Wind offshore wind farm project will be generating 30 Megawatts of electricity, which means National Grid’s proposal would essentially cut the benefits of this groundbreaking renewable energy development in half. In general, 98 percent of Rhode Island’s electricity is generated from natural gas.

Climate Adaptation?

In addition to contributing to climate change, the proposed facility and the Port of Providence in general is at high risk from climate related impacts and severe weather events. It, along with the rest of the Port, is at sea level and is at risk from climate change amplified hurricanes as well as from future sea level rise. In both projected scenarios, as well as in other major flood events, the proposed liquefaction facility would be underwater, along with the adjacent facilities storing hazardous, flammable and/or explosive substances. National Grid claims the facility will be built to withstand a 500 year flood yet it also claims to have done outreach with community organizations that have never existed, which brings their trustworthiness into doubt. In recent years, multiple 1000 year floods have occurred, supercharged by the overheated climate. While it may be poetic justice or karmic effect to have the major producers of climate change emissions be impacted by the effects of climate change, once again it would be the neighboring front-line communities that would be hurt most by any climate related disaster.

● 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

January 12, 2016January 23, 2016

Environmental Racism: ongoing and underlying environmental justice issues

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Environmental Racism

Beyond the potential disaster scenarios described in the previous section, there are many ongoing disasters that daily impact the front-line communities living next to Port of Providence. Business as usual under the current economic system is a state of disaster for marginalized communities, with concentrated poverty, mass incarceration, substandard housing conditions, and health disparities.

Environmental racism t?akes many forms, but is simply defined as the concentration of environmentally hazardous conditions in communities of color. A legal definition states:

“Environmental racism refers to intentional or unintentional targeting of minority communities or the exclusion of minority groups from public and private boards, commissions, and regulatory bodies. It is the racial discrimination in the enactment or enforcement of any policy, practice, or regulation that negatively affects the environment of low income and/or racially homogeneous communities at a disparate rate than affluent communities.”

The Supreme Court’s recent decision upheld the Federal Housing Act’s assertion that racism in housing policy does not need to be individually intentional if it can be shown as a systemic outcome of racial disparities.

Similarly, environmental racism is evidence as the result of sets of institutional policies and practices, regardless of whether the intent to discriminate is apparent. As described by Charles Ellison in an article titled Racism in the Air You Breathe, “?w?here you live—down to your exact zip code—can determine how fast you get sick and how soon you die.”? The following section will take a detailed look at the front-line communities of Southside (upper and lower South Providence) and Washington Park, which are right next to the Port of Providence.

EJLRI Position Paper_Page_13

Demographics and the Waterfront?

This map shows the “percentage nonwhite” (based on 2010 census data) in a block by block geography. The approximate area of the industrial Port of Providence is highlighted in red. The line between Providence and Cranston (south of Fields Point and Roger Williams Park) shows a dramatic shift in demographics from people of color to predominately white.

The front-line communities adjacent to the Port of Providence are a corporate sacrifice zone; areas of concentrated poverty and marginalization where polluting industries are allowed to be sited and conduct hazardous operations with little regard for health or environmental impacts on the neighborhoods. This comparison of waterfront areas paints a clear picture of apartheid and de facto environmental racism. Downtown, Fox Point, and East Side / Blackstone neighborhoods in Providence, as well as Pawtuxet Village in Cranston and along the East Bay Bike Path in East Providence all have beautiful waterfront access with parks, biking, yachts, boating, sport fields, and festivals in relatively affluent and predominately white neighborhoods. Meanwhile South Providence, with concentrated poverty and communities of color, has little to no waterfront access in an area zoned for heavy industrial use with multiple polluting and hazardous facilities.

Environmental Justice Analysis?

Environmental Justice involves looking at the intersection of environmental hazards and their health impacts, demographics, and social inequalities, and forges strategies to erase inequities and ensure that everyone has a healthy environment to live, work, pray and play. Due to deeply entrenched institutional racism and societal inequalities areas of concentrated and racialized poverty are often also pollution hot spots filled with refineries, landfills, lead paint, highways, etc and lacking in benefits such as green space, waterfront access, healthy food, and clean air. Public transportation travels more frequently through poorer communities. Rhode Island Public Transportation Authority (RIPTA) terminal is also located in this community. In fact, South Providence is one of the largest “environmental justice” communities where all of these factors are concentrated statewide. Several tools from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) make it possible to use hard data to tell the story of Environmental Justice concerns in the areas around the Port of Providence. The tools used to generate the following analyses include the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) and the EJSCREEN tools, the open source data mapping project JusticeMap.org and the Center for Effective Government’s national mapping tool for schools and high risk chemical facilities. The area of analysis is primarily local, at the neighborhood level (Upper and Lower South Providence, Washington Park), zip code level (02905, 02907), and facility specific (one mile radius from proposed facility). It should be noted that while the one mile radius is used for the initial Environmental Justice impact analysis, a greater radius of two miles or more should be used to analyze cumulative and secondary impacts of the proposal.

The one mile radius around the proposed Liquefaction Facility, including a section of East Providence across the Bay which is more affluent and more white, has a combined demographic risk score calculated by EPA that is in the 90th percentile for Rhode Island, and 94th percentile for EPA Region 1 (New England). In other words, there are more at risk demographics in this radius than in 90 percent of the rest of RI, and more than 94 percent of the rest of New England. That combined profile consists of the following: 75 percent “minority population” (in 91st percentile for RI; 93rd percentile for EPA region 1) 56 percent low income (in 85th percentile for RI; 91st percentile for Region)17 percent linguistically isolated (in 88th percentile for RI; 92nd percentile for Region)31 percent with less than high school education (86th percentile for RI; 93rd percentile region) EJLRI Position Paper_Page_15a

EPA Toxic Release Inventory?

This EPA database catalogues releases of toxic chemicals. All 11 polluters listed for City of Providence are included in zip code 02905, which contains a greater number of polluting facilities than any other city or town in Providence County. All 11 of the polluters listed are within the one mile radius of the proposed Liquefaction Facility, both within the industrial area in the Port of Providence and but also in the neighborhood area between Eddy St. and Allens Ave in Washington Park.

EJLRI Position Paper_Page_15b

According to EPA the industry that contributes most to onsite toxic releases in the 02905 zip code are Petroleum Bulk Terminals. The TRI facilities listed include many of the risks described in the previous section, such the Motiva fuel terminal (Petroleum Bulk Terminals) and Univar USA Inc (Chemical Wholesalers), as well as facilities located even closer within residential communities: Monarch Metal Finishing Co (Fabricated Metals), SafetyKleen Systems, Inc (Hazardous Waste/Solvent Recovery) and Mahr Federal, Inc. (Computers/Electronics Products).

Schools at Risk

A?s described earlier, the Univar chemical facility has a 14 mile hazard radius, pictured below as the large red circle. There are 311 schools within this zone, which are attended by approximately 110,000 children. The table below shows the national rankings of the percent of children within vulnerability zones. RI’s high ranking is due almost entirely to the Univar facility in Port of Providence, adjacent to the proposed Liquefaction Facility.

EJLRI Position Paper_Page_16

EPA’s EJ SCREEN Tool

This new interactive mapping tool is a way to analyze the intersection of demographic risk profiles alongside environmental indicators such as air quality (particulate matter and ozone levels), lead paint, and proximity to traffic or facilities that require a chemical risk management plan, that store and process toxic materials, or that are water discharge polluters. The results can be mapped out and compared to the rest of the state, the rest of the EPA region, or nationally. In all of the following maps, the national percentile is displayed with the 95th100th percentile in red and 90th95th percentile in orange.

Proximity to Facilities Requiring a Chemical Risk Management Plan

The following map shows the Greater Providence area and highlights the areas that have close proximity to a large chemical facilities that require having a chemical Risk Management Plan (RMP). The area adjacent to the port is highlighted in red, meaning that it is in the 95th – 99th percentile nationwide in a combined measure of chemical risk proximity and demographic risk.

EJLRI Position Paper_Page_17

The one mile radius around the proposed Liquefaction Facility ranks in the 97th percentile for the state, the 98th percentile for EPA Region 1 (New England), and 95th percentile nationally. This is an Environmental Justice community that is at high risk for exposure in a chemical incident.

Proximity to Water Discharger Facility

The following map for the combined EJ indicator for proximity to Major Direct Water Discharger Facilities and demographic risk. Again, the areas in Providence closest to the port are in the highest percentiles nationwide. In state, regional, and national comparisons, the one mile radius from the proposed facility is in the 97th percentile for this risk factor.

EJLRI Position Paper_Page_18a

Traffic Proximity

The following map shows the EJ SCREEN risk status for Traffic Proximity and Volume. The one mile buffer from the site is in the 96th percentile for both state and national comparisons, and in the 98th percentile compared to the rest of EPA Region 1.

EJLRI Position Paper_Page_18b

Traffic proximity and volume is an issue that requires careful attention for the proposed liquefaction facility. The I95 corridor is a major interstate roadway with heavy vehicle traffic. The Thurbers Ave exit, Eddy St. exit, and residential streets along Eddy St. and Allens Ave. carry most traffic in and out of the Port of Providence, and are located in some of the largest asthma hot spots in the state. This asthma hot spot has a high concentration of people with asthma (impacting Black and Latino families most) and some of the highest rates of emergency room visits and hospitalizations due to asthma. Air pollution in the form of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM), ultra-fine particles, and black carbon are connected with heavy vehicle traffic and especially truck traffic. These air pollutants are known asthma triggers and are also linked to other respiratory health issues, certain cancers, and developmental disabilities. This is an existing burden that severely impacts Southside and Washington Park neighborhoods. The construction and operation of the liquefaction facility will be additional cumulative impacts in an area that is already overburdened. The proposed export of LNG via tanker trucks is a large concern: why should these communities now bear the burden of supplying the rest of RI and MA with LNG? National Grid says that there won’t be a net change in truck traffic, with 16 tankers per day currently delivering LNG and an estimated 16 tankers per day exporting LNG once the facility is built. However, there are no binding guarantees this wouldn’t increase later. National Grid’s partners in Access Northeast are proposing major new LNG storage tanks near New Bedford, if these tanks are built would they be supplied with LNG from Fields Point? FERC should analyze the production capacity of this facility and determine if the supply produced would require additional tanker traffic to distribute. In either case, the two years of construction will have a significant impact on additional traffic in the community.

Toxic Storage and Discharge Facilities

Toxic materials are a major issue in these neighborhoods, and are some of the highest ranking EJ Indexes placing all of South Providence and West End above the 95th percentile.

EJLRI Position Paper_Page_19

For proximity to Toxic Storage and Disposal Facilities, communities in the one mile radius surrounding the proposed facility are in the 98th percentile for the state and the 99th percentile for EPA Region 1 and National comparisons.

Environmental Justice: working towards equitable healthy environments

In simplistic terms, environmental justice means guaranteeing equitable access for all people to have healthy environments where they live, work, play and pray. For a more detailed description of environmental justice, please read the EJ Principles. The environmental justice movement has exposed the reality of the extent to which this equitable world does not exist. Because of ongoing legacies of racism, economic inequality, segregation, redlining, and other systemic injustices, someone’s zip code is the greatest factor in their health and life expectancy. Unfortunately, the front-line communities next to the Port of Providence, which are densely populated and filled with schools, day cares, home, and healthcare facilities, are a prime example of an area suffering from a concentration of pollution and a lack of environmental benefits such as parks, healthy food, and safe recreational areas. Many of the numerous schools in the community are crumbling and don’t have funding to deal with issues such asbestos, lead paint, mold, and poor indoor air quality. At home, many residents are faced with substandard housing quality. The high percentage of older homes means that many are energy inefficient, have lead paint, and are likely to have mold, mildew, and other air quality issues. Homeowners in the community were and continue to be hard hit by the foreclosure crisis, and the high percentage of rental apartments means that many residents are dependent on landlords to improve housing quality and make home more energy efficient. For homes that aren’t owner occupied, there is no financial incentive for the owner to make these upgrades, and the tenants are the ones who suffer from high energy costs and negative health impacts.

? 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

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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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?

● 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

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 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 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.

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.

January 6, 2016

Saxophonist Manny Pombo settles suit, may play without interference

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The City of Providence can no longer stop musician Manuel Pombo from performing or soliciting donations on city streets as part of a settlement reached today in a First Amendment lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island.

See: ACLU sues Providence for violating street musician’s free speech rights

The ACLU of Rhode Island filed a federal lawsuit in July on behalf of Pombo, a 62-year-old saxophonist, who had been arrested once, and threatened with arrest on numerous other occasions, while playing his saxophone on sidewalks and street corners in Providence. His “permission to perform” license issued by the city also prohibited Pombo from soliciting donations for his performances, and it allowed him to perform solely at the unbridled discretion of police officers. The ACLU argued this violated Pombo’s free speech and due process rights.

As a result of today’s settlement, filed in U.S. District Court, the City of Providence can no longer order Pombo to stop performing on public property or require him to obtain a permit to perform on public property absent violation of any other valid ordinances. The settlement agreement further stipulates that “because soliciting donations is protected speech under the First Amendment,” the City cannot stop Pombo from soliciting or accepting donations for his performances. The City also agreed to pay compensatory damages.

The lawsuit was filed by ACLU of RI volunteer attorneys Shannah Kurland and John W. Dineen.

Kurland said today: “We appreciate that the City was able to work with us to acknowledge Mr. Pombo’s right to make music in public spaces. Let’s hope that going forward municipal government will respect the Constitution without people having to sue our own city.”

Attorney Dineen added: “Ben Franklin, who was a busker in his early days, will be glad to see that the First Amendment still has some life in it, although it takes a street saxophonist and the ACLU to keep it going.”

This is the third lawsuit in five years that the ACLU of Rhode Island has filed against the City of Providence for interfering with the exercise of free speech rights on City public property. Two years ago, a federal judge agreed with the ACLU that Providence police violated the free speech rights of a local resident when she was barred from peacefully leafleting on a public sidewalk in front of a building where then-Mayor David Cicilline was speaking. In 2014, the ACLU sued the Providence Police Department for violating the free speech rights of protesters at a fundraiser in Roger Williams Park for then-Gubernatorial candidate Gina Raimondo. That case is ongoing.

A copy of the settlement is available here: http://riaclu.org/images/uploads/Pombo_Settlement.pdf

Other documents related to the case are available here: http://riaclu.org/court-cases/case-details/pombo-v.-city-of-providence

[From a press release]

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Solutions and Alternatives

Economic Inequality

Public Health

Climate Change

Environmental Racism

EPA Toxic Release Inventory?­

Schools at Risk

EPA’s EJ SCREEN Tool

Proximity to Facilities Requiring a Chemical Risk Management Plan

Proximity to Water Discharger Facility

Traffic Proximity

Toxic Storage and Discharge Facilities

Environmental Justice: working towards equitable healthy environments

Structural Evil

Potential Disasters: dangerous facility in a high risk area

Relevant Past LNG Disasters

Dangerous incidents occurring in the Port of Providence

Introduction

Background on National Grid’s proposal

EPA Toxic Release Inventory?