Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty

2016-02-04 Prayer Breakfast003 — Bishop Knisely

When Representative Robert Lancia (R District 16, Cranston) announced that he was hosting the first House National Prayer Breakfast on the floor of the House and thanked Speaker Nicholas Mattiello for his support in making it happen, I knew I had to attend.

Prayer and religion are very important to many Americans and their elected representatives, but our country and Rhode Island in particular was founded on a secular vision of governance that allows each person to bring their convictions to the discussion, but not impose those convictions on anyone else. An official House of Representatives sponsored event blurs the lines between church and state, even when the event being held strives mightily to be “interfaith,” inclusive and welcoming to all.

Lancia said that he sees the prayer breakfast as an opportunity to network, a chance to bring together the political and religious community. He hopes this will be the first of many such events.

Guest speaker Bishop Nicholas Knisely of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island concurred with Lancia. He also hopes that this event might be the first of a series of such breakfasts, a chance to bring legislators together not as government officials, “but as people who have a commitment to a spiritual life.” Such connections, said Knisely, “maybe cannot be made in any other way.”

Yet I was there when business leaders directly petitioned government leaders in January at the 2016 Rhode Island Small Business Economic Summit held at Bryant University, and I was at the Convention Center the day before the prayer breakfast, with Rep Lancia and dozens of other legislators at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce luncheon. This year’s legislative agenda was shaped by these events where the business community told the legislature what it expects to happen this year.

I was at the State House when the Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty presented their legislative ideas to Governor Gina Raimondo, Speaker Mattiello and Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed. The fact that the business community will get most of what they ask for and that the religious community will not tells us a lot about the way religion is used by our government, and why we should be wary of mixing church and state.

This year I have watched every session of the House and Senate and every session begins with a prayer. So far this year the legislature has prayed for nearly 15 minutes, loudly and publicly, even as they largely ignore the ideas of the Interfaith Poverty Coalition when drafting and passing their legislation.

At one point during his prayer breakfast talk Bishop Knisely pointed out that the Pilgrims left England to get away from the religious tradition he represents. (And I’ll note here that Roger Williams founded Rhode Island to get away from the Pilgrims, who were no better in respecting religious differences.) Knisely talked about the ways in which “religious and language differences were used by the mill owners [of New England] to make sure mill workers did not organize.” This is the danger of religion and state becoming too close: spirituality becomes a weapon against the underclass.

When religion is used to provide a sheen of morality to the exploits of government officials and business leaders, people do not prosper, they are instead righteously exploited. The prayers that begin each legislative session may mean something to the legislators bowing their heads, but the deeper purpose is propagandist. They are invoking the name of God to justify their power, not the will of the people, and doing so in defiance of democracy.

To those who value their religion, the prayer breakfast may seem like an innocuous idea, but to those who do not pray, or to those who find little of value in the ideas of faith, spirituality and God, these events are exclusionary and even a little frightening.

I don’t want my government engaged in prayer, and really, no religious person should want that either. Every religious tradition has multiple stories of being persecuted by governments under the sway of a rival religion. Today we might be praying to the Gods and enacting the religious codes you believe in, but tomorrow may bring strange Gods that don’t have your best interests in mind.

Best to keep church and state separate.

2016-02-04 Prayer Breakfast002 — Rep Michael Chippendale

2016-01-06 Interfaith Poverty Vigil 02 — Bishop Herson Gonzalez

For the eighth year the Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty held a vigil at the State House near the beginning of the legislative season to, in the words of House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, “remind all of us in the General Assembly of how important it is to keep the issues related to poverty at the forefront of our agenda.”

The vigil was attended by representatives from a multitude of faiths. Governor Gina Raimondo, Speaker Mattiello and Senate President M Teresa Paiva-Weed all spoke briefly to the crowd. The keynote was delivered by Bishop Herson Gonzalez of the Calvary Worship Center in Woonsocket.

Maxine Richman, co-chair of the RI Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty (Coalition) spoke first, outlining the 2016 Advocacy Platform for the group. She began with a sobering statistic. 14.3 percent of Rhode Islanders live in poverty. That rate climbs to 19.8 percent when we talk about children specifically.

“A 14.3 percent poverty rate is the story for this year,” said Richman, “but it need not be the story for next year.”

The coalition believes that all Rhode Islanders are entitled to affordable housing, nutritious food, accessible healthcare, equitable education and work with decent wages.

Though the General Assembly raised the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) last session, something both Paiva-Weed and Mattiello touted as a great success in their opening remarks Tuesday, RI’s present 12.5 percent rate is a far cry from Connecticut’s EITC of 27.5 percent or Massachusetts’ 23 percent. The Coalition is asking the General Assembly raise the RI EITC to 20 percent.

2016-01-06 Interfaith Poverty Vigil 20 — Governor Raimondo

Channeling yesterday’s loud rally, and on the day that Governor Raimondo has officially broken her campaign promise to issue an executive order allowing undocumented workers to obtain driver’s licenses, the Coalition asked state leaders to take this important step.

Right now low and no income Rhode Island families with children are eligible to receive cash assistance for a maximum of up to 24 months within a five year window. A mother with two children is eligible to receive $554 a month for up to 24 months. When the 24 months are done, the family is cut off, leaving children to live in crushing poverty. The coalition would like to end the 24 month limit.

Also, as they have asked nearly every year and to no avail, the Coalition would like the General Assembly to take action to reform PayDay loans. This is unlikely as long as Speaker Mattiello continues to pretend that “arguments against PayDay lending tend to be ideological in nature.”

The coalition would also like to see an expansion of Child Care Assistance and Early Childhood Education. as of Fall, 2014, for instance, only 34 percent of eligible children were enrolled in Head Start, “with many centers maintaining long waiting lists.”

The Coalition further wants to reduce out-of-school detentions which predominantly target students of color and feed the school-to-prison pipeline. They would also like to expand opportunities for workforce foundational skills and occupational training.

The RI Coalition for the Homeless (RICH) needs adequate funding to implement Opening Doors RI, and would like state leaders to seek a $100 million affordable housing bond.

The Coalition also backs efforts to prevent domestic abusers from accessing guns, a bill that died in committee last year to the consternation of supporters and the embarrassment of the General Assembly.

The Coalition would like to see adequate funding for Senior Centers and lastly, the Coalition wants the General Assembly to maintain the current RIPTA Senior/Disbabled Fare Program, recognizing that balancing the budget of public transit of the backs of the most vulnerable is simply cruel. Paiva-Weed was the only state leader to state that she would work to make this happen. Raimondo vowed to make RIPTA “affordable” which is apparently a number other than free.

“These all sound good, but where do we find the money?” asked Raimondo.

“I am very concerned about imposing a fee on elderly and disabled RIPTA passengers,” said Paiva-Weed, “and I am committed to looking at alternative funding.”

Attempting to explain his statement at last years Interfaith Poverty Vigil where he said that he wants to eliminate the social safety net, Speaker Mattiello spun a vision of a Utopian future world. “When we get the economy to a point where everybody’s thriving,” said the Speaker, “every single family has a wage earner that is successfully feeding the family, and everybody is doing well and is well fed… families are happy… that will be the day we don’t need a safety net. And at that time our safety net will justifiably be smaller.”

Here’s Bishop Herson Gonzalez’s keynote address.

Note: I was fortunate today to get permission from Rachel Simon to run her pictures of the event. So all these pictures are under her 2016 copyright.