Tiverton High School recently made high school theater history by being the first group to perform HAIR: The American Tribal Lock Rock Musical. We had over 700 people attend with rave reviews.

This sent the former NBC10  “wingman” Justin Katz into a Twitter tizzy. Without seeing the show, he began to condemn it, me and the students and parents involved. He then went further and wrote an article – again, without seeing the show – on the Ocean State Current, referring to the production as “promoting child pornography”, “promoting the use of drugs” and encouraging children to use drugs.

For the record, Tams-Witmark allowed us permission to do the show with the creative challenges necessary to invite an audience in and not offend.  I was supported by the administration, the district and the many parents involved throughout the process.

To top off his always extreme behavior, he  allegedly sneaked into the Saturday evening performance – without paying, mind you! It is reported he then whipped out his laptop to secretly record the students. Did curiosity really get to Katz?? He took to Twitter again to brag he had finally seen the show…and still found it “inappropriate.” I have no idea what Mr. Katz intends to do with the images and video he allegedly recorded, but as a parent this concerns me greatly. [UPDATE: Katz says he did not sneak into the performance. He said watched the show at home via the internet.]

This is not the first time Katz has gone after me and the work I do in the community of Tiverton and throughout the state. Previously, he warned parents to keep their children away from me and my creative mind set! Mike Stenhouse, who runs the Ocean State Current has been formally warned in the past to keep Mr. Katz from slanderous attacks, which obviously is not working.

I am a single parent. I work with families who look towards the arts as a way to offer their children an outlet for arts enrichment and extended education. Katz has gone too far this time. His Koch brother funded “writings” will not save him. For someone who gives the Eucharist on Sundays, what the heck was he doing in a dark theater, recording students in the very show he was condemning and demanding be stopped!!??

Mr. Katz owes a formal apology to my students, to my administration, to my town.  Most importantly, he owes an apology  to the hundreds of parents I work with and trust me and my integrity. For that matter, Mike Stenhouse and Ocean State Current owe an apology as well. Can’t Stenhouse keep Katz in line??  It is one thing to have an opinion, it is quite another to think your opinion actually counts as the final word. It should be noted, I have been contacted by Mike Stenhouse after he got wind of my concerns and stated my concerns about Justin amounted to slander and he was “prepared to contact our attorneys.”  Perhaps Stenhouse would like to see the Twitter feeds Katz had with several students- all minors. In the article Mr. Katz wrote for The Current, he admitted he spent a summer memorizing  the album. Obviously things have changed, or perhaps he secretly wanted to be in the show? 

The lesson for my students extended far beyond the understanding of an era in history. My students were given an ideal situation to see how fear and loathing tried to get in the way of art unfolding.

Editor’s note: This post has been updated to allow Justin Katz to respond to the allegation that he sneaked into the play.

Reverend Bill Sterritt of the Amicable Congregational Church in Tiverton created one of the best Rhode Island holiday traditions.

He recast the story of the first Christmas in modern times. Baby Jesus is a girl named Hope, Mary is a teenage runaway from Connecticut and Joseph is an undocumented worker named Jose.

There are life-sized statues of Sterritt’s modern-day nativity characters in front of the church on Main Road in Tiverton – about halfway between Fall River and Little Compton along one of the prettier country roads in Rhode Island.

RI Future first reported this story in 2012 and it made some people really angry. Sterritt wrote a short story to accompany Michael Higgins’ chainsaw sculptures and RI Future serialized it, posting one installment a day in December, 2012.

Here it is again – this year in its entirety – if you’d like to spend some time over the holidays reading a Rhode Islander’s take on if the first Christmas happened in today’s world.

• Chapter 1 – Jose Crosses the Border
• Chapter 2 – Jose’s Union Sympathies
• Chapter 3 – A Child Bearing a Child
• Chapter 4 – A Miraculous Pregnancy
• Chapter 5 – A Hospital Turns Them Away
• Chapter 6 – Jose and Maura, Out In the Cold
• Chapter 7 – A Baby Is Born
• Chapter 8 – A Man Named Gabe
• Chapter 9 – A Baby Named Hope
• Chapter 10 – David Eagle Wing
• Chapter 11 – A Child To Die For
• Chapter 12 – Anna on the Nightshift
• Chapter 13 – The Long Journey West
• Chapter 14 – ‘We Are Joined for a Purpose’
• Chapter 15 – We Are Close
• Chapter 16 – The Arrival

And some pictures I took in 2012 of Michael Higgins’ chainsaw sculptures:

“This bridge should not have a toll on it, it’s that simple,”

John Vitkevich stood near the toll gantry on the bike path leading to the Sakonnet River Bridge, as more than 250 local residents assembled for the 5pm protest Sunday night, some waving flags, many carrying signs, and all receiving encouraging honks from the passing traffic on Route 24.

“We knew this in 2002,” Vitkevich told RI Future. Because of significant public opposition at that time, he said, tolling had been eliminated from consideration by RIDOT and the Federal Highway Administration. “Wouldn’t you think that the opposition from 2012 and 2013 was louder, stronger, and more organized than we were ten years ago?”

Apparently so, if last night’s event was any guide. Vitkevich, with his friend Alan Silvia, rallied the crowd through a portable generator and speakers, and the protesters   responded with cheers and applause for nearly an hour as speaker after speaker hammered on themes of double-dealing at the general assembly and anger that the East Bay was being unfairly targeted.

“This bridge was free from a toll for 55 years,” Vitkevich told the crowd. “Because it was not maintained, they want us to pay for the new bridge.”

And on this, the toll opponents have a point. The original Sakonnet River Bridge opened on Sept 12, 1956 (at a cost of just $9M). But early in the new century, deterioration began overtake maintenance and by 2007, weight limits were put in place and progressively lowered, while a series of emergency fixes kept the span operational. The new $160M structure opened to traffic late last year, and while construction was managed by RIDOT, operation and maintenance was turned over to the RI Turnpike and Bridge Authority, and that’s where the tolls come in.

“Five million, 176 thousand dollars is what the RI Turnpike and Bridge Authority wants to charge to maintain a brand new bridge,” he said. “Why does Mr. Darlington and Mr. Croft and the RI Turnpike and Bridge Authority need to charge five million dollars? Because they can.”

Not if those assembled had any say about it. In addition to the approaches described on the DontToll.com web site (refuse to use your EZ-Pass, make RITBA send you a bill, and pay with a check) Viktevich also suggested the power of the phone call. “Contact them on Tuesday, contact them on Wednesday, get their number and put it in your speed dial. Harass them. They need to be harassed. Keep harassing them.”

Vitkevich advocated “financial disobedience in a civil way,” but he took care to distance himself from the arsonists who had targeted the toll infrastructure the previous night. “Anything I can do to cost the RITBA legally and ethically, I will do. But I’m not running around with gasoline and matches.”

Only one the East Bay’s representatives was spotted in the crowd, Ray Gallison  (D-69 Bristol, Portsmouth). “I agree with everyone that there should not be tolls here” Gallison told RI Future. “The I-Way bridge is maintained by taxpayers, Henderson bridge is being maintained by taxpayers, all of the other bridges all over the state.”

About a dozen attendees took turns at the mic to at attack RITBA, the Governor, and the 11th hour reversal of the toll decision at the general assembly. On June 26, the budget, including a toll deferral and the first-years’s bond payments for 38 Studios, squeaked through the House, supported by votes of East Bay legislators. Then, on July 2nd, just before recess, a rider was introduced that reversed course and instituted the ten-cent toll as a placeholder pending the recommendation of a study commission. Opinion in the crowd was that local legislators had been duped.  “Once the 38 Studios vote came in I said, whoops, that’s it, slippery slope, we’re done,” Portsmouth resident Kathy Melvin told RI Future. “I’m amazed that the legislators didn’t know they were cooked.”

Listening in the crowd, carrying hand-made signs, Tiverton residents Rosemary DeMello and Denise Lach had walked over the bridge to join to protest. “This is not right,” DeMello said. “This has never been a toll bridge, and now they’re going to put a toll on it to pay for the other bridges in Rhode Island,”

“Local people should certainly be exempt from the tolls,” said Lach. “I travel to the Island a lot. We’re always over there.”

As protestors began to drift off and the organizers were wrapping cables and packing up speakers, Vitkevich evaluated the impact of the event. “What happened here today,” said Vitkevich, “was the start of taking this down.”

While many of the commenters agreed with my assessment that Katz is too committed to Christian dogma to be a healthy addition to the Tiverton School Committee, that isn’t why I am posting more about it. I’m posting more about it to clear up some erroneous statements Katz made about me, my post and RI Future.

First off my post had nothing to do with Katz’s intolerance towards organized labor. While he and I may differ on this issue, it’s simply not the reason I think he would be a bad school committee member. I think he would be a bad school committee member because of his intolerance on issues having to do with the separation of church and state. There’s no shortage of evidence in the RI Future archives that documents this is an important editorial issue to us.

Secondly, Katz asserts that RI Future has a “financial relationship” with the teachers’ union. This is true. The NEA-RI has purchased one ad on RI Future since I’ve owned it. While I very much appreciate their business, and hope they advertise again in the future, I believe everyone at the NEA understands they purchased some temporary real estate on RI Future, and nothing more.

(I should note, that I think it’s pretty ironic that Katz would call into question my financial relationships … ask him who funds his blog and he won’t tell you, but other conservatives familiar with the operation say the money likely comes from big tobacco and big oil companies, the Heritage Foundation, the Koch Brothers and other ALEC-worshiping members of the 1 percent.)

While I often support organized labor in general and the teachers’ unions in particular again, there is ample evidence in RI Future’s archives to illustrate that I do not do their bidding. In fact, my friends at the NEA are often critical of my editorial judgement, just as my friends in the education reform/deform movement are as well. Specific issues that come to mind include their endorsement of state Senator Michael McCaffrey over Laura Pisaturo and Gov. Chafee’s municipal aid package to struggling cities and towns.

Katz offers as evidence of my “ties” to teachers’ unions that a former RI Future owner Pat Crowley works for the NEA. While I like Crowley and his politics (if not always his tactics) he’s got no special influence over me or my web site. In fact, we may just disagree on RI Future more often than we agree!

The assertion that I found the most disingenuous was when Katz wrote in a comment on Tiverton Patch that “suggested that Jesus is ‘creepy.'” This is simply false. I wrote that a passage Katz cited attributed to Jesus was creepy. Katz, on the other hand, called it profound.

Here’s the comment in it entirety, so you can judge for yourself:

I believe Jesus said, “Let the children come to me.” He also said that, where two are three are gathered in His name, He is there. I’m no theologian, either, but it’s awfully curious that the rector supports the boys one by one, but not by twos and threes.

The passage about children is miraculously relevant, here (Matthew 19:13). Jesus had just finished explaining why Old Testament rules allowing divorce should not apply to His followers, and the disciples said that the impossibility of divorce meant it would be “better not to marry.” He then likens men who cannot abide by such rules to eunuchs.

That’s when the children come forward and the disciples attempt to stop them. “The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

It’s a profound passage.

And here is what I wrote about it:

Hmm, I’d say it’s more of a creepy and weird passage than a profound one … but either way, I’m pretty sure Tiverton parents don’t want someone on their school committee who thinks a parable about Jesus likening would-be divorcees to eunuchs is profound.

I believe Katz understands the difference and was being intellectually dishonest as a way to discredit me. But either way – if he was being intellectually dishonest or if he just doesn’t understand the difference between thinking a statement is creepy and a person – it’s just more evidence that he doesn’t belong in public office.

In fact, Katz is radically conservative on social issues and his religious convictions frequently trumps his regard for the Constitution, students and their rights.

Case in point: on Monday I retweeted a high school student’s tweet about a teacher who was forcing her students to pray to Jesus. Katz belittled the situation and the high school student’s initial tweet with this sarcastic reply: “My goodness. Are the kids OK?”

After this pretty obnoxious reply, the rebuttals to Katz came fast and furious. I captured some of them here in this Storify of twitter conversation.

Tiverton parents don’t want a school committee member who reacts this way to a teacher violating student rights. They probably don’t even want a member of their school committee to think that is a funny joke!

What if Katz were elected to the school committee and he had to choose between defending students’ rights and his own religion? Anyone who has ever endured a Justin Katz diatribe on why marriage equality would lead to the degradation of families everywhere, or why gay people should be banned from Boy Scouts would have a hard time believing he would even make a veiled attempt at pretending to put any set of beliefs above his Christianity.

Here’s an example of what he posted to EG Patch when a local church decided not to let the Cub Scouts meet there because of the Boy Scouts prohibition against gay people:

I believe Jesus said, “Let the children come to me.” He also said that, where two are three are gathered in His name, He is there. I’m no theologian, either, but it’s awfully curious that the rector supports the boys one by one, but not by twos and threes.

The passage about children is miraculously relevant, here (Matthew 19:13). Jesus had just finished explaining why Old Testament rules allowing divorce should not apply to His followers, and the disciples said that the impossibility of divorce meant it would be “better not to marry.” He then likens men who cannot abide by such rules to eunuchs.

That’s when the children come forward and the disciples attempt to stop them. “The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

It’s a profound passage.

Hmm, I’d say it’s more of a creepy and weird passage than a profound one … but either way, I’m pretty sure Tiverton parents don’t want someone on their school committee who thinks a parable about Jesus likening would-be divorcees to eunuchs is profound.

Full disclosure: I am a progressive blogger. So perhaps I’m prone to viewing a fiscal libertarian and social conservative such as Katz as being outside of the political mainstream. So take this for what you think it is worth, and I firmly encourage the local media in Tiverton to do their own due diligence on the matter.

In fact, they already have. Both Tiverton Patch and East Bay Newspapers recently covered inappropriate tweet from Katz about how the Sandywoods Farm development – which combines affordable housing, with live/work spaces for artists and a farm – was perhaps a “good way to subsidize the ‘right’ kind of poor people.” (Tiverton Patch even put together this super cool Storify on the Twitter exchange between Katz and RI Future founder Matt Jerzyk)

But they should do some more. Katz’s adamant belief in far-out Christian dogma is not what the average parent in Tiverton wants from school committee members, and it is up to Tiverton Patch and East Bay Newspapers to at the very least let their readers know that this is what they’d be getting if they voted for Justin Katz.