east side – RI Future

For the second time in several months, racist flyers have been distributed in mostly white neighborhoods in Rhode Island. The first was in East Greenwich, the most recent on the East Side of Providence. In some ways it is not surprising that as the country grapples with institutional racism in the frequent killing of unarmed people of color by the police and subsequent Black Lives Matter Movement, that people who feel threatened by that effort will push back, sometimes in pretty intense ways. These flyers, with their reference to the Ku Klux Klan, call up profound racist/anti-Semitic/terrorist actions from the past and plunk them down in our midst today. This act of white supremacist violence is not acceptable in our community.

Late night racist literature drop blights East Side of Providence

The killing of nine people in the church in Charleston South Carolina was perhaps the most virulent face of the racism that lurks barely beneath the surface, a legacy of our history in the U.S., but there are many smaller ways it is expressed every single day. The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that works to address the root causes of violence and oppression in communities worldwide, works to help communities face that legacy and to address the many faces of hate and fear.

Arresting the people who are pushing their agenda of hate and fear will arrest a person, but not the problem. We will make no progress as a society if we believe that justice is done simply by punishing one or more white supremacists. Racism is not just a historic problem or the work of a few individual “bad apples.” Racism – whether by direct intent or deeply entrenched structural factors – is a problem in all aspects of American life, including economics, housing, health care, criminal justice, policing, education, media coverage, among others.

We are living in a moment when many people in this country and abroad are seeing our nation’s addictions to racism and violence for what they are: social ills woven deeply into the tapestry of our society. This is a vital social challenge for all of us, and one that white people have particular responsibility to address. None of us will be truly secure until our systems are built to protect the wellbeing of all people.

Whether facing the actions of a gunman propelled by racist philosophies and a culture of violence that our society as a whole is accountable for, or the distribution of flyers drawing on the imagery of the Ku Klux Klan, each of us must recommit to ending these evils at their root. Acknowledging the effects of generations of racism and violence on our current condition is a first step. Taking concrete actions to transform our society, institutions, and relationships to end racism and violence is the next. We each have a part to play. And white people in particular need to step up, break the silence that can be understood to be complicity, stand with our neighbors who have been targeted, and say “no, this is not ok. Not in my neighborhood. Not in my state.”

As I watch news of Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza’s administration, I see more and more of what many feared during the campaign: an Elorza–Brett Smiley led administration, beholden to the moneyed, white interests of the East Side, at the expense of the rest of the city. Today in the Providence Journal, there was front-page coverage of a meeting at Nathan Bishop Middle School on the East Side, where residents expressed “alarm” at an alleged wave of home break-ins in their neighborhood.

Certainly break-ins are never a good thing, on any side of town. But the mayor said “One Providence,” not two.

The swift response from the mayor, police, and media to these mostly white, relatively affluent city dwellers highlights the opposite experience of Southside community organizations, residents, and organizers seeking the mayor’s audience for their issues. At the sounds of alarm raised by those on the East Side, Mayor Elorza rushed to a community meeting and brought along high-ranking police officials. All this despite police statistics (cited in the Projo article) demonstrating a decrease in reported break-ins on the East Side since last year. The Providence Journal followed close behind and gave the meeting front-page coverage! This comes a day after I received an email from the administration, announcing the new “Center for City Services,” based on the pledge that “everyone who lives, works, owns a business, and goes to school in Providence deserves the highest quality city services.” “Everyone,” not just the politically palatable or otherwise privileged.

The Tenant and Homeowner Association (THA), a group of working-class homeowners and renters from across Providence, predominantly people of color, who are organized to prevent foreclosure, evictions, and the abandonment of their neighborhoods, have been raising the “alarm” about the city’s hundreds of abandoned properties for months, and have yet to receive face time with the mayor.

In fact, a formal request for a meeting was met with months of silence, and only after further prodding finally received the answer from a staffer that the mayor was simply “too busy,” to meet on this issue. Yet, these East Side residents, alarmed at break-ins that have not, in fact, increased, receive the mayor’s immediate presence in their neighborhood, along with city resources in the form of eager police commanders. While break-ins appear a bit of a straw man, abandoned properties, by the mayor’s own admission, are a serious problem for the city, though not on the East Side. Hundreds of properties sit empty, inviting arson, blighting neighborhoods, and dragging down property values for those homeowners, predominantly people of color, who have managed to hang on to their homes amidst foreclosures and structural unemployment.

The mayor’s reluctance to meet with a group of affected residents, who have actually been organizing themselves around an issue for years (the last six of which were spent changing state law to protect vulnerable renters from eviction), is unacceptable. Suspicions about his priorities and the sincerity of “One Providence,” are legitimized by his earnest response to East Side residents, who are unorganized and whose “alarm” is rooted in race and class-based fear.

Instead of assuaging the fears of East Siders, perhaps the mayor should prioritize the basic needs of the many residents in the rest of Providence, whose resistance to never-ending poverty, divestment, blight, and disenfranchisement are rooted in real problems, like abandoned properties, to which the mayor himself offered lip service in the pursuit of votes.

Tag: east side

Arresting hate throughout our culture

Elorza’s priorities: alarmed East Siders or the housing crisis