Providence Community Safety Act

A discussion of Black Lives Matter and the importance of this movement in terms of criminal justice reform, prison abolition and the next phase of Civil Rights in our state was held at the First Unitarian Church of Providence. The mostly white, middle and upper middle class church members were interested in what they could do as a congregation to ally with and support this important movement. Much of what was presented was in line with the liberal values of those in attendance, but when speaker Marco McWilliams, director of Black Studies at Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE) spoke about prison abolition and the dismantling of capitalism (admittedly long term goals) some in the audience showed visible reservations.

It was a radical message different from the one that Jim Vincent, President of the NAACP Providence Branch gave. Vincent wanted to convey the immediacy of the problem. Police are killing black people “under the most questionable circumstance imaginable,” said Vincent, and he then proceeded to relate a long list of stories of police killing unarmed black people, ending only because of time constraints and asserting that he could have easily continued for hours in this way. These stories, coupled with startling statistics about the disproportionate rates of black arrests and black incarceration act as a call to action.

Pilar McCloud, assistant secretary of the NAACP Providence Branch, put the larger structure of systemic racism into a personal context. Despite her college education, as a black woman she is often treated as someone who is uneducated, regarded with suspicion or, as in one story she told, served as almost an after thought at the Starbucks located in the Providence Place Mall. A paying customer, her coffee was delivered long after she ordered, the man behind the counter actually prioritized the coffee of a white woman who ordered after her before preparing Pilar’s drink. McCloud asked for her money back and retrieved her tip from the tip jar.

McCloud also talked about the differences in the conditions of the schools in Providence. Nathaniel Greene located in a neighborhood populated mostly by people of color, is falling apart. Nathan Bishop, on the East Side of Providence, is in immaculate condition. It seems that some students, says McCloud, “…don’t deserve well lit auditoriums or brand new books, and brand new computers, and well shined floors.”

The first speaker of the evening was Susan Leslie, Congregational Advocacy and Witness Director for the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) in Boston. She set the tenor of the meeting, stressing the importance of events like these and the involvement of UUA churches in the struggles for civil rights. The UUA, said Leslie, “was slow to respond” to the Black Lives Matter movement, but congregations across the country are beginning to take action. Sixty UUA churches have hung “Black Lives Matter” banners outside their churches. These churches are active as allies (or what McWilliams called “accomplices”) in marches, on corrective legislation such as the Providence Community Safety Act and in calling on their leaders to take action on the abuses of the criminal justice system towards people of color.

The members of the First Unitarian Church of Providence are beginning the process of deciding on whether or not to display a “Black Lives Matter” banner in front of their church. About a third of the banners displayed across the country have been vandalized or stolen, said Leslie, but these churches have held “really powerful rededication ceremonies” and “recommitted in the face of that.” This provides imporatnat opportunities for community engagement and bridge building.

Below are the full videos of all the speakers and the robust Q&A that concluded the evening.

When the Step-Up Coalition decided to attend Mayor Jorge Elorza’s second meeting with East Side citizens concerning what Commissioner Steven Paré called “a slight uptick” in crime, a certain amount of friction was to be expected. Members of the Step-Up Coalition, which includes DARE, PrYSM, the American Friends Service Committee and the Olneyville Neighborhood Association, have been clamoring for a meeting with Elorza for months, but Elorza has continually declined the coalition even as he met with the wealthier, whiter and more politically powerful East Side residents twice.

Coalition members and supporters arrived early and held a press conference outside Nathan Bishop Middle School, where they accused the mayor “of showing preferential treatment to one neighborhood at the expense of the rest of the city.” Once inside, members of the coalition attempted several times to steer the forum towards their concerns, but moderator Cheryl Simmons, who provides an email list for residents to report crimes and receive alerts on the College Hill Neighborhood Association webpage, refused to allow the program to go off track.

At one point Simmons told the South Side residents in attendance that if they wanted to meet with the Mayor they should do the work of arranging their own meeting, to which they loudly replied, “We did!”

Though the Step-Up Coalition held signs and occasionally interrupted the proceedings, it wasn’t until Simmons had exhausted the questions submitted through her East Side crime list serve and decided to take questions from the audience that the coalition finally got to ask Elorza their question.

The floor now open to questions, Vanessa Flores-Maldonado, a PrYSM organizer, walked to the front of the auditorium with her arm raised.

“Can I ask a question or will I be denied because I’m a person of color?” asked Flores-Maldonado.

Simmons was quick to say that questions were open only to East Side residents. Flores-Maldonado replied that she was an East Side resident and that her question was crime related.

“If its related to crime, go for it,” said Simmons.

Flores-Maldonado reminded Elorza that as a candidate for Mayor he had promised, at the People’s Forum on October 22nd, that he would support 10 out of the 12 points in the Providence Community Safety Act (CSA), a proposed municipal ordinance aimed at creating new police accountability policies in the City of Providence. Since being elected Mayor, Elorza has backed away from his promises.

Elorza took the microphone, but he didn’t answer Flores-Maldonado’s question.

2015-11-16 Elorza East Side CSA 013 — Elorza enters

Elorza misinterpreted her question to be about the Comprehensive Community – Police Relationship Act of 2015, a bill passed by the General Assembly earlier this year and signed into law by Governor Gina Raimondo in July. This law requires all police departments in Rhode Island to collect racial data during traffic stops for an annual report to the Department of Transportation’s Office of Highway Safety, prohibits consent searches of minors, and contains other measures aimed at protecting citizens from police overreach.

The bill Elorza talked about is not the Community Safety Act. (Here’s a copy of the Act, marked up by Elorza and submitted to organizers ahead of the People’s Forum a year ago.) When the Step-Up Coalition members realized what Elorza was doing, they called him on his act at once. They shouted that he wasn’t talking about the right bill. Elorza smiled, and kept on talking about a state level bill as if he was answering the question about the city level ordinance.

Flores-Maldonado was not allowed a chance to follow up, but was told by moderator Simmons that the question was asked and answered. The next question was from an East Side resident. You can watch Elorza’s entire, baffling and embarrassing performance on this question here:

Afterwards, I spoke to people from both the Step-Up Coalition and the East Side neighborhood. Everyone I talked to was stunned by the Mayor’s outrageous behavior.

One woman, a long time East Side resident, told me, “I was really disappointed by the Mayor’s response to her question. It made me think that he might have been lying about other things he said tonight. I mean, how can I trust anything he said?”