For its 9th Annual Festival PRONK! partnered with the STEP UP Coalition to support to the Community Safety Act (CSA). The goal of the collaboration was “to use music, dance and art to bring attention to injustices and inequalities in our city and encourage people across Providence to stand behind the legislation.”

The STEP UP Coalition is made up of the Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Olneyville Neighborhood Association (ONA) and various other activist groups in Providence. The CSA is a citizen-proposed ordinance that would address racial profiling and other abuses of power by police. Mayor Jorge Elorza recently said the CSA could pass before the end of the year.

This is the ninth year for PRONK! (Providence HONK!) which takes place every Indigenous People’s Day. It is not a Columbus Day parade. Local bands, such as the Extraordinary Rendition Band, What Cheer? Brigade, and Kickin’ Brass participated, as well as bands from around the country. Organizers describe PRONK! as “a cacophonous street celebration with out of town brass bands! We are a street intervention like no other, with outfits and misfits from Rhode Island and beyond – musicians, artists, activists, makers – taking over the streets as part of the Providence HONK Parade.”

Organizers go on to say that PRONK! “spawned from the original HONK! Festival in Somerville, MA that has “grown into a new type of street band movement—throughout the country and across the globe—outrageous and inclusive, brass and brash, percussive and persuasive, reclaiming public space with a sound that is in your face and out of this world.”

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.

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?”

Here’s the Step-Up press conference held just before the forum:

Here’s the full forum , up until shortly after Mayor Elorza left the building.