The city has been extremely transparent and open, taking the public’s input into consideration while drafting their design for the future of the 6/10 Connector. It is reassuring to know that the mayor and the planning department are actively listening to the needs and wants of the community. By taking a bottom-up approach, the City of Providence is conveying that its interests align with that of its communities, and appreciates the ideas and solutions that its residents bring to the table. Who else knows what’s best for the City of Providence other than the residents that live, work, and thrive here.
On Monday, October 3, the City released their draft plans for the future of the 6/10 Corridor at a public forum held at the Doorley Jr. Municipal Building in downtown Providence. While the City’s plans do not call for a surface boulevard that I and other community members would have liked to see presented, I can tolerate the parkway design. The parkway concept addresses the concerns of both sides about the looming question, “What should the future of the 6/10 Connector look like?” The plan addresses the need to fast-track the reconstruction of the structurally deficient Huntington Viaduct, out of concern that the structure might collapse. The plan appeases auto-interests as well as those citizens who want to see a concept that is more pedestrian and bike friendly, although we would much prefer a pure boulevard instead of a parkway.
The proposed parkway plan frees up land for development (approximately 50 acres), expands the footprint of DePasquale Square, adds two new off-street bike paths, creates a new exit to West Exchange Street, adds additional connections to the existing street grid, and reconnects parts of Olneyville to the urban fabric of Providence, among other things as well. The proposed “halo” elevated rotary where Route 6 merges with Route 10 allows for the potential to incorporate boulevard elements into sections of the route further down the line. While the entire length of the 6/10 Connector isn’t the pure boulevard that many of us had envisioned, the two-phased parkway plan allows the City and State to revisit the compelling arguments made in favor of an intermodal boulevard.
The most important aspect of the plan isn’t the plan itself. Rather, it is culmination of everything that has led to the plan being drafted in the first place. It is the countless hours spent by engaged citizens, who took it upon themselves to get involved, speak out, and voice their opinions about the project; citizens who persevered even when things weren’t going their way because they knew that this is a critical, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn the 6/10 Connector into something truly special. Without vocal citizens and lots of vigorous discussions, RIDOT would probably have elected to refurbish the highway a long time ago, and that wouldn’t have worked for motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, and city residents alike.
The future of the 6/10 Connector will single-handedly change the physical, social, and economic makeup of the city for generations to come. It is up to us as citizens to decide whether or not we want to make Providence a more livable community for our children, our children’s children, and ourselves. Or, if we want to sit idle, content with the current economic conditions in our Capital City. The choice is ours. RIDOT has the final say about the project’s design, and I strongly encourage my fellow Rhode Islanders to continue to be actively involved in the process, and vocal about the future we envision for a livable, thriving city for decades to come.
]]>Providence College students and faculty plan to leaflet campus tomorrow to draw attention to the school’s continued relationship with the Renaissance Hotel, one of the downtown hotels engaged in a bitter labor dispute with employees trying to unionize and win better wages.
“Consistent with our social values, the group wants PC to refrain from doing business with the Renaissance Hotel until management grants workers a fair process to decide on unionization,” said a press release from PC sociology professor Cedric de Leon. “This means removing the Renaissance from the list of discounted hotels advertised on the PC website for Reunion Weekend, May 29-31, and telling alums why.”
de Leon has led an effort at the Providence College to stop doing business with the hotel because owner The Procaccianti Group “has a track record of mistreating Renaissance workers in a manner inconsistent with Catholic social teaching,” said the press release. “In 2007, U.S. Catholic Bishops wrote, ‘Catholic social teaching supports the right of workers to choose whether to organize, join a union, and bargain collectively, and to exercise these rights without reprisal.'”
In a subsequent interview, de Leon said, “We’re going to turn up the heat on the administration.” It’s unjust that Providence College boycotts sweatshop labor abroad but endorses poor labor relations in its host city, he said. “We won’t sell sweat shop clothing but the Renaissance Hotel is, for some reason sacred.”
Last year more than 200 faculty and students signed a letter expressing their desire to not do business with the Renaissance Hotel, but school administration declined to act upon the request, de Leon said.
Not only will the group leaflet campus on Wednesday, but they also plan on asking Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, a liberation theologist, about PC’s support of a hotel mired in a labor dispute with employees when he visits campus on Monday to receive an honorary degree.
A Providence College press release describes Gutiérrez: “A native of Peru, he is best known for his 1971 book, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, which advocated for supporting the poor in protests against poverty and in attempts to be liberated from exploitation.” The Economist describes liberation theology as “an ideological movement that emerged in Latin America in the 1970s and sought to combine Catholicism with revolutionary socialism.”
Here’s the full press release from de Leon:
What: Leafleting urging Providence College (PC) to boycott the Renaissance Hotel
Who: Concerned students and faculty at PC
When: Wednesday, April 22, 12:30pm
Where: Starts at Harkins Hall (Main Entrance)
Why: Anti-worker practices by Renaissance Hotel
On Wednesday, April 22 at 12:30pm, students and faculty at Providence College will leaflet four major stops on the visitor tour circuit: Harkins Hall (the main administration building), Phillips Memorial Library, Raymond Hall (the main dining hall), and Slavin (the student center).
PC continues to do business with the Renaissance Hotel even though the hotel’s owner, The Procaccianti Group (TPG), has a track record of mistreating Renaissance workers in a manner inconsistent with Catholic social teaching. In 2007, U.S. Catholic Bishops wrote, “Catholic social teaching supports the right of workers to choose whether to organize, join a union, and bargain collectively, and to exercise these rights without reprisal.”
TPG, however, has been the subject of two federal enforcement actions at the Renaissance in the past two years: first, by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), for unsafe working conditions; and second, by the National Labor Relations Board, for workplace intimidation.
On March 26, 2013, a majority of Renaissance workers presented the hotel manager with a petition requesting a fair process to decide on unionization. Instead of granting workers a fair process, TPG has responded with an aggressive and illegal anti-union campaign, involving what the federal government itself has called “interrogating employees about their union activities.”
Despite all this, the administration has resisted joining the boycott. When Renaissance workers came to PC, asking to suspend business with the hotel, the administration had them escorted off campus. Later, when PC students and faculty presented administration with 200+ signatures urging the College to boycott the hotel, they said there was “no compelling interest for Providence College to advise the families of our students and our alumni to avoid using the hotel.”
Consistent with our social values, the group wants PC to refrain from doing business with the Renaissance Hotel until management grants workers a fair process to decide on unionization. This means removing the Renaissance from the list of discounted hotels advertised on the PC website for Reunion Weekend, May 29-31, and telling alums why. Brown University and other organizations have already taken this principled step.
The group is also asking those concerned to email President Fr. Brian Shanley at bshanley@providence.edu to say that there are plenty of Providence hotels for our alumni to choose from and that the Renaissance should not be one of them.
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I really wanted to write a satire, but I just can’t get any more absurd than entire tax-payer-subsidy of a baseball stadium downtown.
A bunch of rich white guys bought some baseball cards… er baseball slaves… er a baseball team… and they want us to cover their costs so they can take their clients and grandkids to a game.
Let’s just look at the facts behind a few assertions.
“We shouldn’t be taxed on something we put the money into,”
— James Skeffington owner of the In-Our-PocketSox
Really, James? Why not? Isn’t risk what private ownership is all about? You’re not taking any risk. You want…
What risk are you taking? Fronting the money knowing that you’re going to get paid? I’ll tell you what… You promise to pay me $4 million a year, and I’ll give you $2 million a year. I promise!
Bye bye. Good luck. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
]]>Earlier this month more than 100 RISD students and community members gathered at the Canal St. Auditorium for a panel discussion on institutional racism and police violence.
The panelists represented a variety of local organizations. The Providence NAACP was represented by chapter president James Vincent. Panelists (and RISD alumnus) Jess X Chen and Jonathan Key co-founded the Artists Against Police Violence collective. Steven Roberts (a RIC alumnus) helped to create End Police Brutality PVD (which organized the Nov. 25th #IndictAmerica and the Dec. 5th #ThisEndsToday marches). Finally, Yelitsa Jean-Charles (a student) and Normand Gamache (director of public safety) represented RISD.
Opening Remarks were presented by RISD Director of Residential Life Kevin Forti and RISD President Rosanne Somerson. Forti’s introduction provided a brief history of Black and White race relations in America, connecting the killings (and subsequent non-indictments) of Michael Brown and Eric Garner with the advances and setbacks faced by the Black community following the end of the Civil Rights movement. Forti contrasted the election of President Barack Obama with Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” laws, the repeal of sections of the Voting Rights Act, and the pronounced economic inequality resulting in high rates of poverty and unemployment in the Black community.
President Somerson recognized the historical importance of artists in defining revolutions and movements. She recognized that visual art has the capability to express concepts that may be difficult to articulate otherwise. Somerson’s remarks reminded the audience that RISD values social justice, and implored the audience to be proactive agents of change.
The panel discussion began by relating key issues specific to the Ferguson case with larger social trends. Providence NAACP chapter president James Vincent was the first to answer, describing the racial disparity between the Black community and a mostly White police force. Michael Brown’s representation as a “thug” was used to justify the use of lethal force against an unarmed man. The use of “thug” to describe Brown is particularly dangerous, as it is based upon racial profiling of Black men as dangerous, and is used to justify officer-involved shootings of unarmed suspects. Normand Gamache drew upon his experience in law enforcement to state that the Ferguson police department was not acting properly as it failed to properly engage the community.
Yelitsa Jean-Charles described the lack of accountability for police departments. Part of the lack of accountability includes recognition of implicit biases, which are split-second, subconscious judgments made without conscious input. Implicit racial bias, historically measured by a race-specific version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), could explain the increased rate of officer-involved shootings of unarmed Black victims. Administration of the IAT to officers could gather more information on implicit biases present in the active duty police force.
Finally, Steven Roberts described the historical role of police forces in anti-Black violence. Roberts mentioned the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required law enforcement officers across the country to re-capture anyone suspected of being a slave. Captured individuals would be returned to the alleged owner without a jury trial, with a sworn statement of ownership being sufficient proof in some cases. Officers were legally obligated to return any suspected fugitive slaves, setting the ground for a system of racial profiling by law enforcement officers.
The next set of questions related the topics of institutional racism to the art world, and RISD students’ future role as image-makers. Key and Chen both described the problems they encountered as artists of color. Chen described the difficulties showing works in a White-dominated environment – the majority of her peers could not relate to the experiences that the piece described, and she did not feel comfortable sharing in this environment. Key described how artwork from the perspective of people of color, or artwork that addressed White supremacy was not taken seriously. White art directors would ask him if he could do art that “wasn’t about race”, which devalued his voice as a Black artist.
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The Narragansett Indians called it Clths Slaaag, which Rhode Islands founder Roger Williams translated as The Old One.
Roger Williams joked about it in his diary journal.
After a sparse meal of fish and corn, Cannonicus, the Sachem, warned me not to build my home on the hill. He said that was where The Old One, a horrific monster, lived and fed. His vivid description reminded me of the demonic stories told by Popish priests to cow the superstitious. Most probably a rabid bear.”
Roger Williams was wrong. Seventeen years later, his second son, Elijah mysteriously vanished and was discovered three days later at the mouth of a cave concealed by a fallen apple tree. The boy’s hair and skin had turned white. Three fingers on his left hand were gone, as if they had been gnawed off. Elijah had lost his mind and never spoke again.
Roger Williams heart was broken. He spent much of the rest of his life abroad in England. A scrap of paper with a crude drawing of an anchor
In 1860 when his bones were dug from the family plot to be re-interred beneath his statue in Prospect Park, the popular story was that an apple tree had eaten through his corpse, and the roots had taken the shape of his leg bones. The truth was much darker.
In his diary, Stephen Randall, a witness wrote,
The stench that emitted from the opened grave was beyond imagining. There lay Roger Williams, looking as well-preserved as the day he was interred. Yet his eyes were open, his mouth peeled back baring his teeth in a rictus of horror. When Elder Brown bent down to close the poor man’s eyes, the body disintegrated into thousands of wriggling worms. Those who were present fled, and when we returned all that remained were the roots of the apple tree, looking strangely like a leg bone.
Moses Brown discovered the mangled corpse of a slave girl in the basement of his East Side Home in 1773. No one knew who she was or how she had died,
Brown wrote,
The corpse’s condition was appalling. Her back was scarred with lines that John said betrayed the excessive use of a lash, but reminded me of both the jagged tares rendered by an animals claw and the infected ruin of a child caught in a wave of jellyfish tentacles.
A short time later, Moses Brown freed his slaves and began working for abolition.
Edgar Allen Poe, the author, was the next to write of the thing that lived beneath the Hill. In the margin of the original manuscript for the famous poem, The Raven
Poe wrote in a crabbed hand,
Only in the form of a black bird I can indicate the monstrosity. I have tried again and again to describe the Old One, but language fails me, and the words I use seem unnatural and unreal.
Following his failed courtship of Sarah Helen Power (Whitman), Poe spent weeks wandering up and down Benefit Street in a laudanum-induced haze. Many say that he never recovered.
The most direct references to the creature came from Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who is still famous for his horrific tales of the Necronomicon and The Great Old Ones with unpronounceable names. Lovecraft lived most of his life on Providences East Side, at the tip of a triangle between the land near where Elijah Williams was discovered, and the basement of Mosess Browns house.
“ that cellar in our childhood house was my constant nightmare,” Lovecraft wrote to his brother Peter near the end of his life. “While you and Emily laughed and played, I peered into the darkness. I fear that soul-destroying blackness corrupted me somehow.
More recently, on May 1, 1993, a party thrown by a group of Rhode Island School of Design Students in an abandoned train tunnel ended in horror.
The Providence Journal reported that, After the tear gas and pepper spray cleared, police found thirteen naked students, their backs bleeding as if they had been struck with a whip. One girl was dead. Police have no suspects, but report the probability of drug abuse.”
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Side_Railroad_Tunnel)
In 2003, when more than 30 house cats were reported missing, the Providence Journal attributed the disappearances to a coyote roaming the neighborhood, yet suggested that small pets and children remain inside after dark. In 2009, three homeless men who had been reportedly sleeping under a nearby bridge were also declared missing, by the police, but “presumed to have left the state.:
An article in an alternative The Agenda suggested in 2006 that the changing landscape of the City was bringing the horror to the surface.
“The rivers have been uncovered, a highway is shifting, and a billion dollar project has dug underground sewage overflow tanks beneath the hills where Roger Williams once planted his crops. What else have the construction crews dug up?”
The Agenda
Shortly afterwards, the sidewalk behind the First Baptist Church in America on Benefit Street began to disintegrate and cave in. It took several years to effect the repairs on the sidewalk and fence behind the First Baptist Church.
A city contractor reported in a brief memo that has since gone missing, “ every time we tried to fill it, the sinkhole beneath Benefit Street would fill with slimy brown ichor. We finally had to lay in rebar and cement in layers going down fifteen feet. It is possible that the missing day worker fell in and wasn’t noticed, but I doubt it.”
Even now, week after week, at WaterFire in Providence bonfires are lit in the river and haunting music is played while tens of thousands of people wander through the smoke as an ancient ceremony is reborn and recreated.
Less than six months ago, the mutilated body of a missing Brown University student was found in at the site of an old Narragansett burial ground. The details were hushed up, photographs of his corpse were deleted and television cameras were kept far from the scene.
When asked to comment bout the rumors that these and the other events documented in this article were the work of the Old One, the Mayor refused to answer. This was clearly the work of a sick human being,” he said. “We have far more pressing problems in this city in terms of education and infrastructure. Dont bother me about this nonsense.
Have the shifting lands disturbed the creature? Are the fires and the people drawing the monster closer, bringing it nearer and nearer to the surface?
It is hard to tell with all the noise. But if you listen carefully, as you wander the darkened streets of Providence late at night, perhaps you will hear a sound, a soft and slurping sound, as if a moistened finger was caressing the cartilage next to your ear.
If you hear this sound, do not stop. Do not turn around. Do not scream. It feeds on fear and despair.
Enjoy your breath. It may be your last.
———————–
Mark Binder’s latest books are works of fiction: Cinderella Spinderella – an illustrated ebook for families coming September 2013, and The Brothers Schlemiel
]]>Sam;
Publishing the contents of the OP discussion list serve on -line with links at RI Future blog is a violation of our safety/security policies.
Of course, anyone is free to criticize OP, publicly or on the list itself, but exposing the discussion list to the public is not acceptable.
Unfortunately, this is seen by OP as a serious infraction.of our rules for the list. We have had to ask members of the press to leave the list for that exact reason – they wouldn’t respect OP confidentially on its’ list..
We’re requesting that you remove yourself from the OP discussion list.
solidarity;
[Name Redacted]
Well, I’m a good sport, so I fired back this:
I’m sorry, I thought Occupy was committed to a higher level of openness and communication; you know, that the 99% should be able to see the 99%’s list. I’m sorry that’s not the case. Go ahead and remove me.
Sincerely,Sam
Sam; I hope this is just a misunderstanding. When people post to the OP discussion list, they have to have a certain level of trust that their posts will not be published in the [public] media (certainly not without their prior permission). That’s just common sense. In the past, people have been targeted by the government, employers (lost jobs), and been the subject of harassment for belonging to social protest movements like Occupy. For instance: there’s currently a war on public education, a war on women, and a war on the middle class, designed, engineered and promulgated by both parties – a broad austerity and state security agenda that we’re opposed to. We have teachers, students, and working people in our movement – people who could be targeted and hurt from exposure. In case you haven’t noticed, the US is not really a ‘free’ society anymore. Publishing the contents of emails from the OP list is wrong on so many levels and has nothing to do with any perceived ‘higher openness’. That’s not the same thing as publicly criticizing OP’s tactics or ideas. The right wing does that all the time and we’re perfectly capable of publicly defending our ideas and tactics, but we draw the line at intentionally opening up our people to potential harassment, intimidation, and reprisals. We don’t really want you to leave the list, but do need your promise that you will not publish or publicly expose posts, discussions, threads, etc.from the OP list. If you will make that commitment and agree not to in the future, we’re perfectly happy to have you stay on the list and participate in OP activity. If you feel that you can’t agree to this, then we will have to agree to disagree and you will be removed.