It might be time for Democratic Party official Joseph Delorenzo to resign, according to female lawmakers from across Rhode Island reacting to controversial remarks the Second Vice Chair made about the progressive wing of the party.
“The RI Democratic Party believes in equality, values diversity, and is working to ensure economic security for all Rhode Islanders,” said an open letter signed by 12 female state legislators, one male state legislator, and five city or town councilors from four different municipalities and other various party officials from Barrington to Central Falls.
Delorenzo, a former state representative from Cranston, said at a state Democratic Party meeting this weekend, according to Providence Journal reporting:
“..the Democratic Party has moved so far to the left, right now, it is frightening.”
“I see what’s going on in the country. … I see us attacking Christopher Columbus. … I see what’s going on in the National Football League. I see everything that’s happening nationally.
“Two years ago they took out [then-Rhode Island House Majority Leader] John DeSimone with a very progressive candidate. … I just don’t like where we are going.”
DeLorenzo recalled a recent conversation with a fellow Democrat, who told him: “If I didn’t have a job, I would abandon the Democratic Party.” (Presumably he meant a patronage job.)
“I hear this everywhere,” he said. “All these left-wing whack jobs.”
“If Mr. Delorenzo finds these views ‘frightening,’ it is time he resign his position as 2nd Vice Chair,” the letter said, calling his comments, “divisive, offensive and insulting.”
Delorenzo declined to elaborate on his comments, when reached by RI Future. “Exactly what I said in the paper,” he said. “That’s all I’ve got to say.”
Party Chairman Joe McNamara, a state representative from Warwick, said in a statement: “I find these comments to be unfortunate, and not in the spirit of the meeting on Sunday, nor the Democratic Party itself. As a Party, we must commit ourselves to inclusion and tolerance whenever we can. We will continue to focus on a strong economy that allows everyone who wants a job in our state to get one, ensuring that everyone in our state continues to have access to quality and affordable healthcare, and other substantive issues that Rhode Islanders care about rather than allowing these comments to distract us from the hard work of building a Democratic Party that can continue to rise, organize, and build a stronger future for our state in 2018 and beyond.”
A Change.org petition was also created calling for Delorenzo to resign.
Wrote Lauren Neidel about Delorenzo’s comments, “Most Democrats believe in women’s reproductive freedom, a single-payer healthcare system, $15.00 as a minimum (barely-livable) minimum wage, voting rights vs. voter ID, a clean environment (that does not include a 1 billion dollar fracked gas power plant), housing that is affordable, criminal justice reform, and eliminating corporate welfare. Maybe it’s the Party that needs to embrace these left wing Democratic socialist initiatives to really unite Democrats and like-minded independents, rather than rubber stamping the status quo.”
This post will be updated.
Fuck yeah.
I’m curious. What does Delorenzo have to say about “death taxes”? Is it any different than what Alan Hassenfeld has said? It was the money Hassenfeld took back to Florida to avoid “death taxes” here that the ProgDems used to defeat DeSimone and the three others.
Progressives here, there and everywhere also seem to be dependent on developer money coming from people like John Rosenthal, or money from multi, multi billionaires like Michael Bloomberg . . . or, this real estate investment trust which was able to buy the mayor of Somerville:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/20580/separating-progressives-from-the-poseurs
Looks like the “Prog” Dems got chickenfeed from Hassenfeld compared to the 10+ million Curatone got.
Where do you stand on the proposed Woonasquatucket Greenway Tax Increment District, I wonder. In Chicago those kinds of districts have to reserve revenues obtained in such districts strictly for investment in those districts. In other words, any tax revenues earned in Chicago TIF districts cannot be distributed for expenses outside those districts, e. g., schools, infrastructure, public safety. Will similar rules apply to the future stomping grounds of Rhode Island’s newly transplanted Trustifarians?
The local yokels, here, lack sophistication, for sure. Will neoliberal colonialism usher in a new era? I wonder and worry.
For the record, I mistakenly thought this piece was written by a representative of the so called Progressive Democrats. I missed the story by Phil West favorite, Katherine Gregg, that appeared in the Journal two days before this post and touched off the whole chain of events that ensued. I don’t listen to talk radio, either, especially John DePetro. I’m sorry, I don’t get the Journal anymore. I refuse to buy into their brand of “anti-corruption”, which, during the days following the RISDC crisis was more about restoring Brahmin power that had been lost in the Bloodless Revolution. If things have changed at the Journal, it’s only by degree, toward the worse. Most of that energy has moved over to RINPR which has now taken over the airwaves so at the lower end of the radio dial there is practically no independent non commercial radio. Between R I and Boston there must be somewhere around 8 radio stations that have locked almost everyone else out.
I can’t help but notice how Tom Perez’s actions as DNC chair have unfolded the past couple of days. It appears some local Dems have a Keith Ellison problem. Bruce Dixon used to say Bernie was a sheepdog candidate. I like Bernie but I believe, locally, that could be true. If you yearn for the days when Lila Sapinsly was the toast of the Republican Party here, when Councilman Thomas Pearlman was shutting down the Private Parts show at RISD and John Chafee was Richard Nixon’s Secretary of the Navy, then maybe you consider politicians and progressive organizations bankrolled by billionaires and toy manufacturer heirs “progress”. The last wave of “progressivism” got rid of Joe Bevilaqua and Thomas Fay and gave us Robert Flanders in their place and that’s entertainment, if it isn’t exactly progress, I guess. Who will the Democrats replace Joe Delorenzo with, I wonder. Ken Block?
[…] a group of mostly female Democrats called on former state Representative Joe Delorenzo to resign from his post as Second Vice Chair of the state Democratic Party yesterday, Delorenzo took to the […]
[…] the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in comments to the Providence Journal, which provoked a letter suggesting he resign from a mostly female group of state and local lawmakers and party […]