hope – RI Future

March 11, 2015March 11, 2015

Dear Rhode Island, try Hope

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Is it possible to restore hope to Rhode Island?

The state’s economy is stagnant. The government is shadowed by reports of corruption. The physical landscape is only just showing signs of
what lies beneath the greying piles of snow and ice, and revealing an infrastructure pockmarked by craters in the roads and residual grit and slime from salt and sand trucks that dominate the narrow roads. Has the last year of blame and struggle and polarization and polar vortex broken the spirit of our small and weary state? Or does Rhode Island have what it takes to rekindle the dying embers of hope?

It is so much easier to be cynical than to be hopeful. Cynicism is immediately gratifying and triggers a feeling of superiority. It also hedges one’s emotional wager. If one proclaims expectations of only the worst, one is rarely disappointed. Rhode Islanders have become cynical. All too often, when sifting through the opinion section of a local news source, one reads a commentary on an instance of corruption, written with the air of “Expect nothing less in Rhode Island,” and “Of course so and so did such and such. That’s Rhode Island for you. And nothing will ever change.” It is not long before even those who have demonstrated intentions and actions that are altruistic, honest attempts at being good and true are labeled as foolish, false, and doomed.

This dark cloud is not without merit. The chicken and egg debate of cause versus symptom aside, Little Rhody has more than its share of stains on our white collar. Most recently, the light shed on Gordon Fox’s poor moral and legal decisions has forced the deep-rooted shoots of contempt to grow upward through the frozen ground and the mountains of snow blanketing the state. This comes on the heels of a state representative copping to tens of thousands of dollars in misappropriated campaign finances, a twice-convicted felon running for a third term as the capital city’s mayor, vicious primary and general election cycles, the timeline of the 38 Studios fiasco … the list goes on and on.

Some readers will remember the 1980s. The eighties were also a time of economic decline; of manufacturing abandoning the state for elsewhere and recession teetering on the brink of depression. In 1982, there was an ad that ran on television for Rhode Island: The Biggest Little State in the Union. Some may remember the jingle and the miniature hot-air balloons rising in front of the State House. It was a dedicated campaign to try and instill pride in Rhode Island. It was schlocky. It was self-contradictory. But it was hopeful. The most interesting feature of the ad campaign was that it only ran in Rhode Island. It was not a national tourism commercial. It was an attempt to remind Rhode Islanders how great Rhode Island is. Or, at the very least, remind them to laugh at themselves and spend some Rhode Island dollars in Rhode Island, on Rhode Island-made goods.

This is not to suggest a repeat of the ‘Biggest Little State’ campaign. However, even self-deprecating humor is more productive and less poisonous than angry contempt. Moreover, pure sneering negativity, of the sort spreading like a virus through the social media networks that connect people to sources of news, and subsequent spite, faster than ever before, passes down through generations and hurts the chances of anything ever changing. Repeating the idea that nothing ever changes in Rhode Island, reinforces the probability that nothing ever changes. It is the textbook example of the self-fulfilling prophesy. By passing down a misanthropic and forlorn image of Rhode Island through generations, cynicism is dooming the state.

The economy is not Rhode Island.

The government is not Rhode Island.

The potholes are not Rhode Island.

The people are Rhode Island.

The Rhode Island state flag does not bear the motto “money.” The license plates (nope, none of them) are embossed with the phrase “the know-a-guy state.” The Ocean State flies a flag with the state motto: Hope. Should the state change the flag, change the license plates, or should the state – the people of Rhode Island – change their prevailing sentiment from one of resignation to the worst case scenarios, to one that assumes the overwhelming power of the ocean and floods the population with hope?

A population filled with hope is a population that can attract success, retain success, and create success. While Rhode Islanders most certainly disagree on their definitions of success, most can agree that what Rhode Island is currently experiencing could be better. Yet, the rhetoric reported by so many says it simply cannot. A people who can hope are a people who can also dream, innovate, and change the course of their own history.

“another tradition to politics, a tradition (of politics) that stretched from the days of the country’s founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done.” Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Rhode Islanders have a right to be upset with politics, the economy, the weather, and each other. But so too do citizens have a choice to either wallow in self-indulgent blame and acceptance of powerlessness, or seize hold of a collective hope for an environment in which generations to come can thrive and proudly call home. Whether one supports the President or detests him, his point in the quoted passage with regard to having a stake in one another is what can give Rhode Islanders hope. What binds us together as citizens of this smallest of states is greater than what drives us apart. There will always be strife, disagreement, crime, and disappointment in Rhode Island. Yet, just as the state’s collective history has built its character, it is how people react to such adversity that reveals character.

Let our character be bound together not by defeatism, but by hope.

June 15, 2014

Historian laureate misleads on Rhode Island Flag history

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Rhode Island historian laureate Patrick Conley’s June 14th op-ed is written with the purpose of misleading rather than edifying the public about the origins and meanings of Rhode Island’s state flag. Conley is intent on casting the flag as a “prayer banner,” borrowing that term from the not-so-recent court case involving my niece Jessica Ahlquist and an actual prayer affixed to the wall of her Cranston public high school. The use of such a loaded term should be our first hint that Conley is more interested in polemics than history.

Rhode Island’s state flag is not a prayer banner and trying to present it as one is foolish. The flag is inscribed with one word “Hope” which as a prayer seems rather short and inadequate. Conley also makes much of the fact that our flag has an anchor on it, another word found in the Bible. Conley is correct that the words “Hope” and “Anchor” are found in the Bible, along with a slew of other words in common usage, such as love, gold and jackass, which perhaps for space limitations were omitted from the state flag.

That the women and men who founded Rhode Island were religious and Christian is not in dispute. That they named the city they founded “Providence” and adopted mottoes such as “Hope” and symbols such as anchors that can be found in the Bible should not be surprising. (Besides Providence, other place names in Rhode Island derived from the Bible are the islands, such as Prudence, Patience, Hope and Despair.) What is surprising is that these same very religious and committed people were uninterested in forcing others to believe as they did. They were uninterested in forcing violent or oppressive confrontations with those who did not believe as they did, or in establishing a law that respected their views more than others.

Instead, these very pious Christians established a government that separated church and state. Then they chose an anchor for a symbol, not a cross. They chose a motto, “Hope” that anyone, religious or not, could find meaning in. They did not choose the word “Jesus” or “God” or “Prayer.” They chose the word Hope, perhaps because that is how they lived. They hoped that their little experiment in tolerance and acceptance would work, and three hundred and fifty years later, it seems that their hope was realized.

Some people, however, would see the hopes for our state dashed. They would erect actual prayer banners in our public schools, with an eye towards indoctrination of the impious and special treatment for those with the proper beliefs. Even today, some people, like the historian laureate, write lines that seek to divide along religious lines rather than to unite.

In language only slightly elevated from a schoolyard taunt, Conley writes, “I should hope that this revelation (another biblical word) will not incite secularists, humanists, atheists and the irreligious to petition the General Assembly to devise a new and neutered state emblem.”

Of course, to incite is exactly what Conley wants. Conley adventures through history like Nicholas Cage in National Treasure, ferreting out the secrets that our state’s founders embedded as secret codes to modern day Catholics assuring them that despite our pretensions to separation of church and state, in truth, some are more equal than others.

Of course, these fantasies are all beside the point. Our state flag was formally adopted in 1897, not 1663 as Conley implies. The word “Hope” and the anchor symbol were on the Rhode Island state seal and incorporated into the flag over two centuries later. As Howard M. Chapin wrote in “Illustrations of the Seals, Arms and Flags of Rhode Island,” the motto, “Hope” is “likely” inspired by the verse in Hebrews, but there is no definitive evidence to that effect. (Personally I believe it was inspired by the verse, but I would never state it as definitively as Conley does, and he’s the professional historian, not me.)

The only thing Conley’s incomplete and self-serving flag day piece will incite in “secularists, humanists, atheists and the irreligious” is despair: Despair in Rhode Island ever finding a historian laureate more interested in history than his own laurels.

May 19, 2014May 19, 2014

Debating RI’s future: Moving away from knee jerk negativity

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If you’re like some key local pundits and bloggers, you believe that Rhode Island is a hopeless economic and political basket case that can’t seem to do anything right.

At Grow Smart RI, we think this conclusion is as off base and dangerous as the notion that Rhode Island is performing up to its potential—to the point where no major public policy changes or new investments are needed to improve our economic performance.

Why “Hopeless” Rhode Island is a Myth

Let’s pretend for a moment that the Ocean State is actually a total economic and political basket case. The following would not be a reality:

Attracting the world‘s largest distributor of organic foods (UNFI)
Emerging as a national center for world-class brain research
Gaining a national reputation for facilitating business startups
Attracting national acclaim for coastal resiliency planning
Moving rivers, railroad tracks, and highways to revitalize and visually enhance our major city
Our capital city of Providence having a vibrant food and music scene, which contributed to its recent distinction as #1 on Architectural Digest’s “Best Small City” list.

You would agree that—while this list is not exhaustive by any means—all of these indicators validate and radiate what our state motto claims: there has, and always will be, hope in Rhode Island.

Playing to Our Strengths

Despite these and other signs of progress and competence, Rhode Island today, with its relatively high unemployment and underemployment rate, is a major economic underachiever that has tremendous untapped economic and social potential.

Among the assets that we can leverage and capitalize on much more systematically and aggressively are:

Our outstanding collection of historic buildings and neighborhoods
Our well positioned deep water ports and harbors
Our good fortune to have more college students per capita than almost any other state in the country; with highly ranked design, research, culinary, oceanography, and business schools, as part of the vibrant local mix
Our compact size and development patterns
Our easy access to diverse natural resources and beauty
Our strategic geographic location within a day’s drive of more than 40 million people and
Our distinctive urban rural balance as the 2^nd most urbanized and 16^th most forested of the 50 states

Our 2014 Power of Place Summit: Positioning Rhode Island for an Economic Renaissance

Grow Smart RI is convening a broad cross section of more than 500 Rhode Islanders on Friday, May 23^rd at the RI Convention Center to learn from one another how to play more effectively to these and other strengths.

By doing so, we’re challenging ourselves to go beyond the negative headlines and the superficial whining that dominates too much of life in the Ocean State today.

We will learn from each other: exploring successful smart growth policies, partnerships, and projects that are already working to move our state forward, as well discussing those that have the potential to do the same.

And we will be sending a clear message regarding our economic woes: that while a sense of urgency is warranted and can serve as a catalyst for solutions—one of hopelessness and desperation is unwarranted and counterproductive.

The dialogue about Rhode Island’s future needs more balance, and more connection to reality vs. knee jerk negativity. We intend to push the dialogue in this direction, even if it requires confusing some people with the facts.

If you’re willing to move beyond stewing to doing, join us on May 23^rd at our 2014 Power of Place Summit. [REGISTER HERE]. We look forward to seeing you there.

December 15, 2012December 15, 2012

A Eulogy for #Occupy

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If you’re busy, don’t read much further. Wait until you have a lunch break or are home or something. Because Quinn Norton’s “A Eulogy for #Occupy” is that good.

Contained within is all the hope, the pain, and the ultimate end of the Occupy Movement as we knew it. You find things like this about hostility to media:

…I witnessed people at Occupy Oakland body-tackle and subdue a screaming, running woman. I took a picture.

Three people came over from the tackle and menaced me, a few inches from my face. I stood and stared at them. I told them they should tell me why they tackled her. They just told me to get out or else, and I waited for them to do something to me. While the woman screamed in the background, a very large man took me aside and said that in the recent arrests some protesters’ psych meds were taken away and not returned. He explained that the woman was one of them. The camp had tried to get the meds back from police, but were ignored. They were doing the best they could to take care of the mentally ill as they lapsed back into their diseases.

On the importance of libraries:

The libraries in every camp were treated as sacred, and they were. They were all open and well-stocked with how-to and educational books, political tracts across the spectrum, novels and literature.

They were true libraries, trusting and trusted places. They were well-lit and quiet, kept as warm as possible through the fall and into winter. You could feel in the air how much the people loved the libraries. In Toronto, when the eviction came, they chained themselves around the library. In DC during the eviction, the librarians accepted being locked in for hours without food or water or bathrooms just to protect their library.

On the failure of the General Assembly:

Because the GA had no way to reject force, over time it fell to force. Proposals won by intimidation; bullies carried the day. What began as a way to let people reform and remake themselves had no mechanism for dealing with them when they didn’t. It had no way to deal with parasites and predators. It became a diseased process, pushing out the weak and quiet it had meant to enfranchise until it finally collapsed when nothing was left but predators trying to rip out each other’s throats.

On the inability to critique itself:

There was no critique in Occupy, no accountability. At first it didn’t matter, but as life grew messy and complicated, its absence became terrible. There wasn’t even a way to conceive of critique, as if the language had no words to describe the movement’s faults to itself. There was at times explicit gagging of Occupy’s media teams by the camp GA, to prevent anything that could be used to damage the movement from reaching the wider media. Self-censorship plagued those who weren’t gagged, because everyone was afraid of retaliation. No one talked about the systemic and growing abuses in the camps, or the increasingly poisonous GAs.

On how the police felt:

The police would quietly tell stories of their own to me. Never attributable, never usable in the normal course of journalism. They were the terrible things that go on in dark places in America, the things that hurt them, that turned their assumptions about other people so dark. They talked of picking up the same junkies again and again, of returning beaten girls to their tormentors, powerless to stop the sickening cycle of violence. One told me he’d covered up a disturbing sex crime. I looked at him questioningly, and he explained that the powerlessness of the victim meant the best he could do was let them escape into the night. We were both distressed, but him with a gun, and me with a pen, were both powerless. On TV, police were supposed to have near-magical technology, able to fix all the problems of society in an hour with room for commercial breaks. The media also represented their culture to them as one of torturers: sadistic men doing whatever to get the job done, whether it was via 24 or the news out of Gitmo. In real life, they often felt frustrated and angry. Many, though never all, had forgotten the role of mercy within power.

On where it goes next:

We don’t read about Occupy a lot in the wider media anymore. The pain from within the camps, and even more, the destruction from outside gutted much of the movement we called Occupy Wall Street. But the spirit is still stirring. In dozens of foreclosure defenses across the country, in the Rolling Jubilee, and in the ongoing story of Occupy Sandy, where many of those who had practiced in the parks managed to outperform the infrastructure of disaster. Organizations like FEMA, the National Guard, and the Red Cross failed to help a lot of people in New York in the wake of the hurricane. In many cases, it was the occupiers who got food and clothes to those who needed them, doctors to victims in the field, who comforted the lost, wounded, and broke, just as they always had.

I’m of two minds about Occupy. On one hand, I’ll never forget feeling that its anarchic bureaucracy was just as alienating as any bureaucracy I’ve seen in the corporate or government worlds. The inability to take criticism is especially hard for me, which is what led me to write things like this about the movement. On the other hand, what stung about that alienation was that I was involved in Occupy Providence’s early moments, however cautiously. The questioning of traditional/established institutions that Occupy engaged it, the critiques of power, the reaching out for each other, and the hope for a better world… I sincerely doubt I could’ve written anything like this without Occupy.

The danger of Occupy is that it may have left many bitter at its failures. The victory of Occupy is that those people are devoted to winning success.

November 1, 2012November 1, 2012

I Endorse Rhode Island

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Political polemical cartoon in support of the imprisoned Thomas Dorr

I feel unjustified endorsing any particular candidate. But I will endorse a set of principles.

I endorse the principle that the primary notion of government is to carry out tasks that people cannot accomplish on their own. That government success should be measured by the number of people it assists to success (whatever that may be for a specific individual), not the number of people it prevents from participating in its services. The candidates who should be elected to office should be committed to government success, not invested in hampering its effectiveness.

I endorse the principle that holding hostage legislation which would improve the lives of countless thousands to enforce votes on unrelated issues is an ill and a reprehensible evil; not merely hardball parliamentary tactics. As the great Dr. King said, “the time is always right to do what’s right.”

The candidates who should be elected to office should be committed to the abolition of demonstrations of power that endanger our citizens’ well-being and the economic health of our state, and committed instead to the swift legislation of what is right.

I endorse the principle that there can be no liberty without equality, and no equality without liberty. They are inextricably linked, in the battle cries of revolutions across the centuries, from those long past to our own to those of the present day. To deny the one is to deny the other. The candidates who should be elected should be committed to improving both, together, not choosing to anoint one over the other.

I endorse the principle that just because we cannot achieve perfection does not mean we should not try. Our government should always strive to be more open, more participatory, more ethical. The General Assembly may never please everyone, but they will not please anyone if what happens inside the State House’s halls remains clouded and cloaked in rumor.

I endorse the principle that every eligible citizen should be able to be elected to government, regardless of their station in life. Government officials should be paid enough to take care of themselves and their families in a prudent manner and they should be undivided in their attention to the work of governing. Likewise all candidates should not fear economic ruin for taking up the civic duty of contesting elections. The health of our democracy is directly related to its openness to all without care of circumstance. Stifle the ability to participate, and you stifle democracy itself.

I endorse the principle that those who make decisions should be held held accountable for the consequences of their actions. If you believe that the resignation of almost all of the Economic Development Council members, the financial ruin of Curt Schilling, and the layoffs of the workers of 38 Studios has rendered all those responsible for the 38 Studios debacle accountable, then so be it. But if you believe there are those who as of yet have not suffered consequences for the results of their actions, then do everything in your power to hold them accountable. We should elect candidates who not only hold our leaders accountable, but also themselves accountable. When they realize they’ve done wrong, politicians should find the fortitude and strength to publicly admit to it and apologize.

I endorse the principle that Rhode Island’s best days are not yet behind it. I endorse the principle that those who take pleasure in our state’s failing are committed to its failure. Those who have no faith in the people of Rhode Island’s collective abilities to succeed are dead weight preventing the rest of us from succeeding. I endorse throwing aside the opinions of such fair-weather residents to unburden the strength of our dedicated citizenry. We are better than the worst of us.

I endorse the principle that no policy or program is sacred or cannot be criticized. All that we do should be reviewed and measured and debated about to ensure we are doing what we intend to do, and not merely living with the status quo because we don’t know if it’s working or not. I endorse electing candidates that value introspection and constructive criticism, especially that of themselves.

I endorse the principle that political participation is a privilege that took centuries to be won for all. It does not end on November 7th. Your phone does not stop working, email does not stop being sent, you do not lose your voice. Politics is not a bloodsport for a few spectators who understand the rules, it is a struggle that encompasses everyone regardless of their comprehension of its tactics or their willingness to participate. You may not be a “happy warrior”, you may be weary of the fight, but your weariness does not make the fight less important. To try and fail is better than never having tried at all.

Virtually everyone who reads this was born with feet. They can be used to bring you face to face with you problems, to apply swift kicks to asses, and to march and demonstrate when all else fails. Never forget, when you get enough feet in a single place, you can move mountains. This, to me, is the spirit of Rhode Island. Relentless optimism in the face of despair, bravery when one should cower in fear, and hope when all is hopeless. I endorse that.