Featured – Page 191

January 9, 2012April 12, 2014

Meritocracy or hypocrisy?

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A friend of mine just had a tragedy in the family—his grandmother passed away. It has been difficult for him, but the good news is that his grandmother lived a rich, full, and happy life and died surrounded by a large and loving family.

But talking to my friend really got me thinking about some of the major assumptions that inform public policy in this country, particularly the idea that America is a meritocracy. My friend’s grandmother was a very wealthy woman, and she left her grandchildren each with substantial trust funds (and by substantial, I mean substantial — as in as much money as I will ever make in my entire life if I continue in the non-profit/community organizing field).

We might think that a nation as deadset against “free handouts” as ours would try to restrict this most extravagant of free handouts. But the reality is quite the opposite — the United States greatly subsidizes these kinds of handouts by taxing capital gains and estates at a far lower rate than any other industrialized nation in the world. What we say in this country, in effect, is that it’s more important to ensure that a friend of mine on one end of the socioeconomic spectrum get wealth he did not actually work for than, for example, another harder-working friend of mine be provided with bus passes so that he can get to school every morning without having to walk nearly three miles through the winter chill.

It’s just hard for me to understand how folks can claim that legitimate social services designed to help those constrained by structures of inequality will create dependence and a lack of initiative, but the ability to live comfortably the rest of one’s life without doing a lick of work is alright as long as its restricted to those who are already greatly privileged. If anyone can explain to me how that can possibly make sense, I’m willing to listen. Until then, I will remain confused.

January 8, 2012January 8, 2012

Is Rhode Island Afraid of Young People?

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Not in the slightest – we keep electing them into office!

In the weeks since I’ve announced my candidacy for Providence’s State Representative District 8 (Federal Hill, Olneyville), I have fielded a lot of questions from friends, family and neighbors. One that keeps popping up, along with “are you nuts?” and “what do state reps even do?” is the one about my age: “aren’t you too young for that?”

Anyone who has worked with me knows I love a good spreadsheet. So I put one together on this question. I’m likely missing several examples of people under 35 elected to the RI General Assembly, but the list was more inclusive than I expected, and is certainly enough to prove a point – Rhode Island likes them young.

And at a glance, it even seems fairly representative of the larger General Assembly in terms of male/female and Providence/Northern RI/West Bay/East Bay.

I’d be interested to see someone else continue asking questions: are young people elected more or less often than their older peers? Who is the youngest person to successfully challenge an RI incumbent legislator? And of course, there’s all the data on the other end of the spectrum. In 2009 when I was around the State House a lot as a volunteer lobbyist for Fair Elections, Representative Peter Martin would joke with me that he was the oldest freshman that year, at 67 years old. What does the historical competition for that honor look like?

January 7, 2012January 19, 2012

Have You Seen the New Freedom From Religion Foundation Billboard?

The Madison, WI-based Freedom From Religion Foundation has put up a 14 by 48 foot billboard on Interstate 295 at Route 2 in Warwick. This is the first billboard by the organization in Rhode Island, but the 695th in 61 cities since 2007.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, Foundation co-president, said it’s fitting that the campaign has expanded to Rhode Island, which was founded by Roger Williams, a strong advocate of keeping religion out of government and vice versa.

“Although Williams was a religious man, he believed deeply that civil and sectarian authorities should not intrude on each other, for the good of both,” Gaylor said.

She noted Williams’ famous statement that “forced worship stinks in the nostrils of God.”

The billboard’s message is abundantly clear, based on a form of governance that seems to be continually distorted. The Founding Fathers may have been Deists, and most of them held some sort of belief in a god, in whatever way that was personally defined. Anything more than that, and in particular anything related to the national government’s support of a specific religion, was out of the question. The Founding Fathers were fearful of unrestrained government power, and particularly a government that would impose religion on its people.

Many clear examples exist that support this, including our very own Roger Williams, founder of the Providence Plantations colony in 1636, who was a “.” This was all due to him needing to flee Massachusetts by challenging the political and religious establishments, claiming government had no role in religion and that the Massachusetts Colony was not even legitimate since the land was stolen from Native Americans.

The Treaty of Tripoli, signed by John Adams in 1797 reads:

…the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…

In Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists (1802), he wrote:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. “

Another stellar example was James Madison’s response to Jasper Adams’ pamphlet (a graduate of Brown University), The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States, in which he wrote:

In the Papal System, Government and Religion are in a manner consolidated, & that is found to be the worst of Govts.

In most of the Govt of the old world, the legal establishment of a particular religion and without or with very little toleration of others makes a part of the Political and Civil organization and there are few of the most enlightened judges who will maintain that the system has been favorable either to Religion or to Govt.

To put this in perspective, we just have to look at the conspicuous moralism that often accompanies religious-based “discussions” in Rhode Island, such as those about a tree in the State House Rotunda, being pro-choice, or supporting marriage equality. As examples, in each of these cases, Bishop Tobin was compelled to express his displeasure, not as an individual, but as a representative of the Catholic Church. As that representative, he holds quite a bit of power over the shaping of political decisions, whether it be exacerbating an uproar over the name of a tree, excoriating former Representative Patrick Kennedy, hindering the expansion of health care coverage, and preventing full marriage equality (which is as clear of a case as I could imagine that creates a government-sponsored, special privilege for religion).

I do think having a discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of any policy are important. And arguments will be based on individuals’ worldviews. But there can often be overt religiosity that tries to pass itself for reasonable debate….

And that’s just not right.

January 6, 2012January 11, 2012

The Passing of Robert L. Carter, and School Desegregation in the Metropolitan North

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I was saddened to hear of the death of Judge Robert L. Carter yesterday, at the age of 94. The passing of this great generation of civil rights reformers (Fred Shuttlesworth and Derrick Bell are gone too) was of course inevitable — Dr. King would be in his 80s, if he were still with us. But studying their words and work, one is reminded of just how limited our visions of justice are these days.

I had the great privilege of spending a week with Carter a few years ago, as a participant in an NEH seminar on civil rights up at Harvard. He was sharp, passionate and inspiring, as he regaled us with story after story about his legal work with Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and walked us through his informative memoir, “A Matter of Law.” If I remember correctly, I was a bit combative in some of our exchanges. Carter insisted on the transformative potential of school desegregation cases in the urban North, which he constantly pushed from within the NAACP in the mid/late 60s. I argued that the real issue was metropolitan housing segregation, and that a focus on the cities alone would achieve nothing more than tokenism, resistance, and white flight. He countered by emphasizing, rightly, the value of setting legal precedents. This was, after all, how the Brown decision was achieved in 1954: a long, slow walk through the court system. It was particularly important to get the courts to focus on impact, not intent, in the application of constitutional doctrine to segregation in the North. Once that was achieved, things could open up in much more transformative ways.

As background for my home ownership book, I’ve been doing some research on civil rights, the law and housing policy from the mid-60s to the mid-70s, and I’m in a much better position now to make sense of what Carter was trying to tell me — and of his legacy. During this all-too-brief period, there was a possibility (albeit a thin one) that the nation might finally confront the pattern of metropolitan inequality and segregation (by race and class) that had emerged in the wake of World War II. Real discussions of the necessity of ‘opening up the suburbs’ were taking place, not only within the civil rights and fair housing movements, but also within the Johnson administration, the courts, and even in the early days of Nixon’s first term (George Romney, Secretary of HUD, characterized suburbia as a ‘white noose’ around the neck of urban America). Most parties to this discussion recognized that both access to employment and to quality public education hinged on whether American metropolitan areas could be restructured. In other words, the future of the American opportunity structure was at stake — but time was of the essence. The nation was on the cusp of a massive expansion in suburban development (and of home ownership), but the shape which our social geography would take was still somewhat plastic. The intellectual, judicial and policy tools were there to trace direct connections between social geography and opportunity, and to expand civil rights jurisprudence beyond the limited individualistic ontology that had previously defined it.

And Carter was right there, at the forefront. Unfortunately for all of us, this brief window of opportunity to unwind metropolitan inequality had slammed shut by the mid-70s. There were small victories and experiments at the local and state level, here and there; the Mount Laurel decision, by the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1975, for example. But my argument about the ‘window’ is mostly aimed at the federal level.

Nixon gets some of the blame, as much because of his racial demagoguery as his urban and housing policies. His Supreme Court appointments get a lot of it, too. The San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973) and Milliken v. Bradley (1974) decisions carved a direct path to the urban school crisis we presently confront. Despite occasional exceptions at the state level, federal courts also continued to limit the reach of constitutional claims against exclusionary zoning, rendering fair housing law a dead letter in much of the country. Suburban white America captured the lion’s share of the responsibility, and retains it today. While the Republican Party has become the unapologetic champion of white suburban privilege (see this recent piece by Daniel Denvir, on urban issues in today’s GOP), the Democrats refuse to see what even George Romney (let alone Robert L. Carter) saw 40 years ago: that racial and class segregation is a recipe for disaster for the country.

Thanks, Mr. Carter, and rest in peace. That window is still closed, sadly. But it is surely cracked. And that, as Leonard Cohen once wrote, is how the light gets in.

Originally posted on Chants Democratic.

January 4, 2012January 11, 2012

Finland Finland Finland, the country where I quite want to teach

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As it turns out, Monty Python was right: Finland isn’t just a great place for snack lunch in the hall…

It really does have it all: social democracy, smoked fish, and a public school system that American reformers are beginning to notice. Too bad they are noticing the wrong thing.

As many of you know, Finland is all the rage in education reform circles these days, particularly among those who don’t think that teacher unions and school governance are the primary problems facing American public schools. Finnish school children have done very well on international tests in recent years (far better than the middling U.S.), prompting a wave of visits to Scandinavia by American politicians and educators, and speaking tours by Finns here.

Most of the discussion has revolved around their model for the professionalization of teachers — kind of like Denver’s experiment on steroids — and on their lack of emphasis on standardized high-stakes testing and rote learning. All teachers in Finland must earn masters’ degrees from competitive graduate programs, are paid like professionals, and given responsibilities for curriculum and assessment that vastly exceed those of American teachers in the post-NCLB era.

The curriculum, meanwhile, de-emphasizes competition and tracking, and tends to be much more focused on creative play and vocational preparation than one generally finds in American schools (particularly urban ones). According to a recent article by Samuel Abrams in The New Republic, Finnish schools provide students with far more recess than their American counterparts — 75 minutes a day at the elementary level, compared to an average of 27 minutes in the U.S. They also mandate lots of arts and crafts, and more learning by doing.

American school reformers seem to see what they want to see in the Finnish success story. Liberals (if I can use that word in this context) point to their investment in early childhood education and parental leave policies, as well as the teacher autonomy discussed above. Conservatives point to the ability of Finnish schools to get high achievement out of students despite large class sizes, and regardless of background. If they can do it, they argue, why can’t our teachers? Of course, the ‘blame-the-teachers’ mantra is somewhat undermined by the fact that Finnish teachers are unionized at even higher levels than American teachers are, and also have tenure.

It is also undermined by the fact that levels of inequality and child poverty in the U.S. vastly exceed Finland’s — a critical point.

Anu Partanan, a Finnish journalist, published a thoughtful short piece in the Atlantic Monthly in late December 2011 on K-12 education in her country. The takeaway: most American observers have really missed (ignored) what’s at the core of Finnish school reform — equity.

Dissatisfied with the quality of Finnish public education at the end of the 1960s, in 1971 a government commission concluded that economic modernization could only take place if schools were improved. According to Abrams, Finland committed to reducing class size, boosting teacher pay, and requiring much more rigorous training for teachers.

While the US has focused primarily on ‘excellence’ since 1980 (based in part on the mistaken assumption that we had veered too far in the direction of equity since the mid-50s), Finland launched a concentrated effort to use public education to counteract inequality. It did this, based on the belief that equity would lead to excellence, and enable resource-poor Finland to compete in an increasingly globalized and post-industrial economy. This effort was supported by relevant social policies too.

Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education’s Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?, told Partanan that the “main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.” At its core, Sahlberg says, this means that “schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.”

While Partanan may not be an experienced observer of American politics and society, she is almost certainly correct that the way that American ‘reformers’ are viewing Finland’s success — ignoring the equity goals that are at the heart of it — demonstrates a kind of willful blindness to what is fundamentally wrong with the opportunity structure in the US, and how it undermines both the quality and distribution of public education.

The money quote:

“It is possible to create equality. And perhaps even more important — as a challenge to the American way of thinking about education reform — Finland’s experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.

The problem facing education in America isn’t the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.”

It is unfortunate that so many of the moderates and liberals who formerly served as voices for equality of opportunity in public schools in the U.S. have fairly tripped over themselves — and others — to leap onto the bandwagon of ‘reform’ as its presently understood.

Originally posted on Chants Democratic blog.

November 22, 2011January 10, 2012

Rhode Island, Humanism and the Death Penalty

Recently, Humanist and philosopher John Shook said it very simply, and I have to agree with him: Humanism cannot support the death penalty. His full article is linked and I would suggest that everybody with an interest in justice read it, but one part bears repeating here: Humanism stands for valuing the lives of all, individual human rights, justice for everyone, and governments that defend all of their people. These grounds alone are sufficient for abolishing the death penalty.

As a member of Humanists of Rhode Island, I am proud to live in a state that saw this simple truth over a century and a half ago, when, in 1852, Rhode Island became the second state (after Michigan) to abolish the death penalty. Though proponents, to our shame, re-established the death penalty in 1872 and later in 1973, in 1984 the death penalty was once more off the books. Since then proponents have made several attempts to reintroduce this penalty, but so far to no effect. The Rhode Island Secretary of State has a great little article on the history of the death penalty in Rhode Island. Rhode Island took such a forward looking because of a tragic mistake. The state executed John Gordon, an innocent man. Though there is no way to undo such a wrong, on June 6, 2011, Governor Lincoln Chafee signed a pardon that officially admitted that Rhode Island had not given John Gordon a fair trial, and probably executed an innocent man. Upon signing the pardon, Chafee said:

John Gordon was put to death after a highly questionable judicial process and based on no concrete evidence. There is no question he was not given a fair trial. Today we are trying to right that injustice. John Gordon’s wrongful execution was a major factor in Rhode Island’s abolition of and longstanding opposition to the death penalty. Today, as we pardon John Gordon, we also recognize and uphold that commitment.

In addition to Rhode Island’s proud tradition of religious and philosophical tolerance, which guarantees a persons right to freedom of and from religion, there is another Humanist current we can take justifiable pride in: Our commitment to the value of human rights. Be proud of this tradition and feel free boldly proclaim your opposition to the death penalty as both a Humanist espousing reason and compassion, and as a Rhode Islander, valuing a tradition steeped in human rights and fairness.

November 22, 2011January 3, 2012

Public Risk for Private Profit

PBN reports this week on the high cost to the city of the recent sale of Promet Marine Services to the newest member of Providence’s polluting waterfront, Sims Metal Management. Six years before it was part of a $16.8 million sale to an international metal recycler, the Promet Marine Services pier on Allens Avenue was nearly sold to the city of Providence for a more modest price of just over $1 million.

But that deal was struck down by the R.I. Supreme Court in a decision that supporters of waterfront development point to with dismay as a key reversal that helped stymie proposals to rezone the area and open it up for nonindustrial uses.

“The city got screwed,” said Providence Ward 10 City Councilor Luis Aponte, the most vocal advocate for waterfront rezoning on the council… “I think now it is clear why the Cohens fought any changes down on Allens Avenue,” Aponte said about the amount Sims paid for the property. At issue for the court was this section of the purchase agreement with Promet: Not withstanding anything contained herein to the contrary, this Contract is conditional upon the City of Providence waiving its right to purchase this property under the same terms and conditions contained herein in accordance with R.I. General Laws Section 37-7-3. Said required notice to City was made by certified mail on May 18, 2005. If the City of Providence chooses to exercise its rights as provided in R.I. General Laws Section 37-7-3, then this contract will terminate and be deemed null and void.Sounds reasonable enough. After all, state taxpayers had maintained the property since the site was condemned in 1911 and quite obviously had an interest in ensuring the next use of that property be in the best interests of the people of the City of Providence. Again from the PBN:In Superior Court, the sale to the city was upheld, but after the Cohens appealed, the state Supreme Court in 2008 struck down the sale on the grounds that the Providence Redevelopment Authority was only authorized to buy “blighted” land, which the pier was not.I guess blight is in the eye of the beholder. Promet was never exactly an environmental poster child, but that’s not the standard applied. What the ruling says to me is that with enough money and the right attorneys, corporations can void whatever sections they no longer like of contracts signed with the people of the state. The result? You guessed it, a nice payout for the corporate interests and their attorneys and even more environmental harm for residents.

There is some good news. The next time the city has a chance to buy the property, the case for declaring the property blighted will be a lot easier.

November 15, 2011January 3, 2012

An Update From The Internet — Before Crony Capitalism Shuts It Down

Demand Progress delivered 500k signatures in opposition to the Internet Blacklist Bill today — at a press conference alongside Congresmembers Zoe Lofgren and Darrell Issa. (That’s our David Moon to the left of the podium.)The legislation gets heard tomorrow, and there’s an unprecedented avalanche of opposition snowballing among online advocacy groups tech companies, and rank-and-file Internet users.Opponents object to provisions that would allow the government to block users’ access to websites accused of copyright infringement, jail users for uploading streamed content, and require social media sites and blogs to go to new lengths to police users’ contributions — threatening the very existence of sites like YouTube and Twitter.

You can still email your lawmakers and ask them to oppose the legislation by clicking here.

November 12, 2011January 5, 2012

An Interview With Joey “Quits” DeFrancesco

That’s right, RIFuture knew Joey before he was famous. (You can check out the viral YouTube video here.) Everybody should go see him and the What Cheer Brigade next Saturday, November 19, 2011 at Firehouse 13 (fh13.com) 8:00pm. More details at bottom.

DS: From what I’ve seen of the press you’ve gotten, people are really psyched about your quitting the way you did, because it was indeed awesome. But they’re treating it like you guys made a cameo in a Dilbert cartoon: “Work sucks, so it’s sweet that you told your boss to shove it. Period.” But there’s a much more interesting political underpinning to what you did.

JD: There’s a big history to the video. You can sense in the manager’s face that we’ve had a rough relationship for a long time. I started work at the Renaissance in 2008 and quickly learned how bad it was there. Many people ask, “Why did you stay there if it was so bad?” Well, I had to. I was paying for school and this was at the bottom point of the recession–there were no other jobs in Providence.

Since I had to stay, I decided to fight to make the place better. My co-workers and I fought managers informally, confronting them with groups if they were doing something terrible or simply sticking up for ourselves in meetings. We also fought more formally, though, by organizing a union.

We went public with the union in January 2010, presenting the hotel with about 85% of workers signed up on union cards. The union had a card-check agreement with the hotel so we expected to quickly enter into negotiations. We did immediately win many concessions from the hotel–they were so scared of us having a formal union that they tried to appease us. Suddenly hey had all this money to go around they always denied they had! We got raises across the board, new uniforms, many of the worst managers were fired, and so on.

But they also began a vicious anti-union campaign. They quickly began giving me fewer shifts and less lucrative shifts. They held large captive-audience meetings where they spread lies about the union. Managers held private conversations with employees where they made statements like, “If the union comes in, we’ll have to fire half of the workers here.” The hotel even targeted and fired pro-union workers for fabricated reasons. My good friend, a strongly pro-union bartender who had worked at the place since it opened, was fired for supposedly giving away a shot for free. There were no witnesses, the security cameras were conveniently turned off that night, and they provided zero evidence other than the word of a single manager.

This is still going on. The hotel refuses to negotiate and they continue their anti-union campaign.

I was one of the leaders of the union campaign, and so these managers really didn’t like me. I knew that if I was going to give them the pleasure of me quitting that I would have to go out in a big way, and I did.

DS: Do you have a sense of what effects “Joey Quits” is having on your former colleagues? Is morale up? Are the bosses on edge — and does that make them meaner or nicer?

JD: I’ve spoken with a lot of workers who are still at the hotel and a lot of workers who were fired or left the hotel. All my friends who were fired for made up reasons–often directly by the manager in the video–are obviously thrilled about the whole thing. We all agree we’ve gotten back at them 3 million times over.

From everything I hear, the video is a big hit with workers still at the hotel. It became so popular that the hotel had to ban youtube from the hotel’s computers and they’ve had to instruct the phone operators to reject any media inquiries. I think it’s helped to instill a general attitude of rejecting the authority of the managers. I’ve heard the manager in the video has been extremely nice as of late, expect for one or two epic outbursts.

Several people have told me that the hotel has started telling workers that they should hate me for taking business away from the hotel. I don’t think I need to explain why that’s ridiculous–and it doesn’t seem anyone there is buying it. I’m sure in the long run that all this public attention has shame the hotel–and hopefully Marriott as a whole just a little bit–into treating their workers better.

DS: Did you guys have any allies in management?

JD: Some. It is important to note that low-level managers in the service industry often get exploited more than anyone. They are made to work 60 hours a week and kiss-ass all day for maybe a $30000 salary. I know that’s better than what a lot of people are pulling, but it still isn’t glamorous. We actually have an amazing post of our website from a former housekeeping manager at the Renaissance. He always respected the workers and stood up for people, and he was fired for it. His story is great though because he got to see all the disgusting stuff managers said about workers behind closed-doors.

DS: Do you think the conditions at the Renaissance are endemic to hotel work, or does it vary shop by shop? Is having a union vs not having a union the big difference?

JD: The conditions at the Renaissance are typical of hotels in the US. I’d actually say many hotels are worse because they haven’t scared the company with a union. There are cities where working conditions are decent because there is such a high density of unionized hotels. New York, for example, has something like 85% union density, and the workers at those hotels generally get treated very well. And there are unionized hotels all over where things are much better than at the Renaissance. Right down the street at the Biltmore and the Westin workers have all sorts of protections that they don’t have at the Renaissance. It’s not perfect there, but it’s much better.

DS: My sense is that the foreign press gets the labor organizing angle more. Is that your sense too? Why do you think it’s that way?

JD: Some domestic press gets the labor angle. The Huffington Post, for example, wrote a really amazing article. Our local Channel 10 did a good story, too. In general, though, the foreign press is much more interested into the labor angle. I did an interview for a big German paper and all we talked about was the US labor movement. The US is unique in the first world in it’s harsh anti-labor attitude. You could see that come over most viciously in the fights in Wisconsin and elsewhere over the past year. You can see it in our pathetic labor laws. And you can see it in the fact that we have the starkest inequality in the first world. The domestic press’ indifference to labor issues is just a reflection of the larger problem in the US. And I think the international press is so interested because they’re excited to see that there are people fighting for workers rights here.

DS: What do you want to do with all the attention and acclaim that’s followed from this?

JD: I’m trying to channel it all into the fight for hotel workers’ rights. We’ve just launched a website, www.joeyquits.com, where hotel workers from all over the country can post their stories of being mistreated in the hotel industry. I know my video has deterred my managers and maybe even Marriott as a whole from exploiting workers. As we collect stories from workers in hotels everywhere, we can hold the entire industry accountable. We already have a bunch of amazing posts and there will be more put up everyday. Visitors will be able to search by hotel name or city, so they can look up working conditions in the city they’re in or a city they’re visiting. There’s also a resources page that directs workers to organizations fighting for workers’ rights and tells non-workers how they can assist in the fight.

DS: Highlights and lowlights from the tour so far? There are rumors you got offered a pilot — are they true?

JD: I’ve really just been very busy–trying to get word out about the issues and setting up this website. It has been great getting to see all these shows, but there hasn’t been any of the celebrity fun you imagine would just appear. No pilot yet. Maybe the pilots’ union will get behind me though.

DS: Why have you already sold out? I mean, you wore a “f*** Nazi skinheads” shirt the last time What Cheer played one of my fundraisers, but you’re so prim and proper when you appear on GMA and Access Hollywood. What gives?

JD: Do you think that hurt your campaign? I’d like to sell out more–no real money from any of this! The band actually got in a lot of trouble on Good Morning America. We got yelled at multiple times for being too loud backstage and they even threatened to cut our segment to get us to shut up and stay in our room. I also got to say “union” of Access Hollywood. So don’t worry, we’re still keeping it real.

And, the details on next Saturday’s show:Saturday, November 19, 2011
Firehouse 13 (fh13.com)
8:00pm
$7
All Ages

Presenting:
What Cheer? Brigade – Providence’s own 19-piece brass mayhem party.
whatcheerbrigade.com

Brunt Of It – Evil sounding punk and ska from RI and Boston.
facebook.com/bruntofit

DJ Schleifdog spinning hip-hop, 80’s, booty bass and the most
tastefully selected out-of-leftfield pop hits.

PLUS a special guest, to be announced the day before the show!

October 29, 2011January 2, 2012

A Statement from Mayor Angel Taveras on Occupy Providence

All citizens have a right to have their voices heard, and I, like the Occupy movement, am concerned about the causes and impacts of the most serious economic downturn in decades. This movement is important because our city, our state, our nation need to do much more to address the jobs and foreclosure crises which are crushing hope and opportunity for the 99% of us.

Here in Providence, the protesters who have camped in Burnside Park since October 15 have conducted themselves peacefully, and the city has had ongoing and respectful dialogue with the group. I commend Occupy Providence for its commitment to nonviolence, and I thank Occupy Providence for publicly recognizing the city’s efforts to ensure their right to assemble and demonstrate.

Unlike many other American cities, Providence is taking a nonviolent approach to the occupation of Burnside Park that has resulted in no arrests and the continued freedom to protest with the full support and cooperation of public safety. Continue reading “A Statement from Mayor Angel Taveras on Occupy Providence”

October 28, 2011January 2, 2012

Ward 9 Residents Face Saturday Deadline

Secretary of State Mollis is reminding residents of Providence’s Ward 9 that this Saturday is the deadline to register to vote in the special election to fill the late Miguel Luna’s City Council seat.

Residents are scheduled to go to the polls Nov. 29. State law requires voters to be registered at least 30 days before an election in order to be eligible to cast a ballot.

In order to register and vote in the special election, you must be at least 18 years old, a U.S. citizen and a resident of Ward 9. In addition, state law requires registered voters who have recently changed their names or moved into Ward 9 to re-register.

“If you are not sure whether you are registered to vote or whether your voter-registration information is up to date, check for yourself using our Voter Information Center.”

Even though the deadline falls on a Saturday, Providence officials will open City Hall from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. for residents to register or update their voter registration at the last minute.

Carmen Castillo, who won last Tuesday’s Democratic primary, will face off again Republican Christian Chirino. Castillo’s name will appear first on the ballot thanks to winning the public lottery we held.

There are two more upcoming milestones in the Nov. 29 election calendar.

Nov. 8 is the deadline to request a mail ballot. The Providence Board of Canvassers must receive applications by 4 p.m. on the 8th.

After the deadline for requesting a mail ballot passes, voters who unexpectedly find that they will be unable to vote at their polling place can go to city hall during normal business hours through Nov. 28 and request an Emergency Ballot.

October 26, 2011January 2, 2012

Carmen Castillo Wins in Ward 9

Carmen Castillo has won the Democratic primary for City Council in Providence’s Ward 9. Castillo now faces Republican Christian Chirino, a Tea Party type libertarian, in the Nov. 29th general election. The winner steps into the seat formerly held by progressive champion, Miguel Luna. Continue reading

October 25, 2011January 2, 2012

Whose City? Our City!

We learn this week that the ostensibly progressive Mayor Taveras is seeking legal action to forcibly evict Occupy Providence protestors from Burnside Park “in next few days.” One has to wonder which constituency he’s serving in taking action (hmm, are their initials BOA?). For their part, the protestors have expressed their intent to continue to peaceably assemble and petition for a governmental redress of grievances. There is also a petition urging Taveras and Paré to let the protestors remain in the park. Continue reading “Whose City? Our City!”

October 24, 2011January 2, 2012

AT&T/T-Mobile Merger is about jobs. What’s wrong with that?

Last week, the pretend defenders of private sector unions on Fountain Street bought the line that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger was a bad idea. Typical double speak. Here is a good counter argument from the Communication Workers of America:

If you repeat a made-up falsehood over and over again, will reasonable people start to believe it?

That’s what the critics of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger are hoping. They’ve manufactured a fact, claiming that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will lead to 20,000 layoffs of T-Mobile workers. The problem is: they are just plain wrong. The proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger is good for workers and good for job creation.

Certainly, with unemployment hovering at a stubborn 9 percent, the impact of the proposed merger on jobs today and in the future should be a top concern of policymakers.

Let’s look at the so-called evidence the critics put forward.

Continue reading “AT&T/T-Mobile Merger is about jobs. What’s wrong with that?”

October 11, 2011January 2, 2012

TOMORROW: Teach-in on the Occupy Movement

Join Professors from the Departments of History, Africana Studies, Economics, Sociology, Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Modern Culture and Media, and American Studies, Community Activists, and members of Occupy Providence for

Thinking Crisis:

Thinking Change

Teach-in on the

#Occupy Movement

Wednesday, October 12

DeCiccio Auditorium,

Salomon 101

5:00-7:00 PM

Wondering what all the hype is on Wall Street? What about all the meetings happening at Burnside Park?

Join Come THINKING CRISIS: THINKING CHANGE to learn more about the history of social movements, the American financial system, and the movement that has sprung up in more than 1000 cities over the last month!

Speakers will include Professors Naoko Shibusawa, Tony Bogues, Mark Blyth, Ross Levine, Vazira Zamindar, Francoise Hamlin, Robert Self, Patrick Heller, Michael Kennedy, Lynne Joyrich, Eng-Beng Lim, Corey Walker as well as students Kevin Barry, Sujaya Desai, and members of Occupy Providence

For more information, visit the Facebook event page, http://on.fb.me/occupy-teach-in, the Occupy Providence page, http://on.fb.me/occupy-providence, and the Occupy College Hill page, http://on.fb.me/occupy-college-hill.

October 11, 2011January 2, 2012

Occupy Providence begins @ 5pm on Oct 15: Burnside Park

Date: Saturday, October 15th
Event: Gathering/Rally & March Against Corporate Greed/Assembly/Occupation
Time: 5pm to (indefinitely)

On Saturday, October 15th, at 5pm, Rhode Islanders will gather together in Burnside Park (Downtown Providence) to express a feeling of mass injustice and stand in solidarity with those occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square. This will be done as part of an international day of action in conjunction with the occupation of dozens of other cities around the country and the world. I am writing because I want all Rhode Islanders who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world to know that I believe that the members of the Occupy Providence General Assembly (OPGA) are your allies. Members of the OP General Assembly have been meeting in Burnside Park everyday since Oct 1st, and it is a movement committed to non-violence, to maintaining a safe, alchohol free, drug free, harassment/discrimination free space, and it does not endorse any political candidate or party in any way.

Continue reading “Occupy Providence begins @ 5pm on Oct 15: Burnside Park”

October 3, 2011May 26, 2014

Occupy Providence: A Rallying Call

Yesterday I attended the Occupy Providence meeting in Burnside Park. And I was really impressed. Somewhere between seventy and eighty people turned out, just for a planning meeting. But what makes that really striking is that nobody did any sort of turnout work, other than the last-minute creation of a Facebook event. For fellow progressive organizers out there, can you remember the last time you saw that kind of mobilization without a large number of hours working the phones and email lists? Continue reading

September 8, 2011January 2, 2012

Labor Day Address

labor day address

1934 was a tumultuous year for the Labor Movement in the United States, as the country continued to struggle its way out of the Great Depression. The Labor battles that raged in 1934 were preceded a year earlier with a sense of hope and promise for workers struggling for the necessities of survival against brutal oppressive employers. Following the Depression in the first year of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, a series of economic programs were implemented to aid in the recovery of our country. In June of 1933, Congress passed the “National Industrial Recovery Act”, which was the first actual Bill to guarantee and protect Collective Bargaining rights for workers in the United States.

Immediately, large scale organizing campaigns began in earnest up and down the industrialized east coast and other industrialized centers in the country. Yet, enforcement of the Act by those very individuals charged with its administration was woefully inept and met with stiff resistance from business leaders. Frustrated Union organizers fought with little success for the Collective Bargaining promised by the NIRA.

Once again, the stark reality became clear to the workers and the unions.

Once again, the government’s empty promises were not kept.

Once again, workers would be forced to win Democracy in their work placed – the hard way.

THE BATTLES LINES WERE DRAWN

In 1933 and 1934 workers organized across the length and breathe our Country. Fed up with speed-ups, oppressive, unsafe working conditions, child labor and company control of too many aspect of their lives. In those truly epic years workers in the United States fought for dignity and respect in their workplace by using the only weapon they had in their arsenal. In 1934 workers hit the bricks and held fifteen major strikes. Most notably were four strikes which labor historians agree were the most important strikes in the United States history.

The “Toledo Auto Lite Strike” in 1934, which pitted 6,000 automotive workers in a five day running battle with 1300 armed members of the Ohio National Guard. Known as the “Battle of Toledo” the clash left two strikers dead and over 200 wounded, the victory led to wide spread unionization in Toledo and was the beginning of the United Auto Workers rise to prominence in organizing the automobile manufacturing industry.
The Minneapolis Teamsters Strike in 1934 which changed the city of Minneapolis. The strike paved the way for mass organization of the over-the-road drivers throughout the Midwest and opened the doors of union membership to thousands of Minneapolis workers in other industries.
The 1934 West Coast Longshoreman’s Strike lasted 83 days; triggered by sailors and culminating in a four-day general strike in San Francisco which crippled the local economy and broke the back of the open-shop company unions and led to the unionization of all of the West coast ports of the United States.
The fourth and largest strike was the 1934 General Textile Strike which was the largest strike in United States History; involving over 400,000 textile workers from Alabama to Maine. The strike began over fair wages and working condition in an industry awash with unfairness, abuse, child labor, dangerous working conditions, and minimal pay.

In September of 1934 in Rhode Island, the Great Textile Strike engulfed the primary industry in the Ocean State and required the calling out of the National Guard for riot duty. By the second week of the strike, tensions between workers and owners erupted into open conflict centered in Saylesville, now Central Falls, where we stand today and in Woonsocket. On September 10^th, the continued misuse of force by deputy sheriffs, closely allied with the owners of the huge Sayles Textile Complex, provoked large scale rioting in and around the Sayles Bleachery and streaming out along Lonsdale Avenue and into this very cemetery where workers fled from guards and sheriffs armed with rifles and machine guns. The workers used the headstones to block themselves from the incessant volley of bullets trained on them.

Gravestones tell the story of those who rest below them. And in this cemetery some of the gravestones tell another story. Some of them carry the scars of machine gun bullets, as did so many of the workers who were wounded in that massacre and two who would not leave the cemetery alive.

The ultimate sacrifices born by workers in the strikes of 1934 and perpetuated upon them by guardsman, vigilantes and company thugs are unparalled in labor history even to this day.

Those workers earned and deserve our respect and recognition for paying the ultimate price of martyrdom so that others might be free from worker exploitation.

In 1934, thirty-three workers became martyrs in the Labor Movement:

In Florida – Frank Norman, an organizer kidnapped & murdered.

In George – textile workers Leon Carroll, Reuben Saunders and

V. Blalock were shot and killed.

In Texas – Charles Shapiro murdered on a picket line.

In Alabama – coal miners Edward Woolens, H.C. Collins and Ed Higgins were killed.

In Louisiana – longshoreman Murphy Humphrey murdered by sheriff’s deputy.

In Kentucky – miner Pezzy Adkins – ambushed and murdered by vigilante.

In South Carolina – textile workers John Blackborough, Lee Crawford, E.M. Knight, Ira Davis, Claude Cannon, C.L. Ricker and Maxie Peterson – ALL murdered by guards at the Chiguola Mills

In North Carolina – Ernest Riley killed on a picket line.

In Chicago – bakery worker Joseph Piskondwicz killed on a picket line.

In Wisconsin – Leo Wakefield and Henry Engleman were shot down by deputy sheriffs.

In Minnesota – teamsters Henry Ness and John Belor were killed by police.

In Washington – Shelby Daffron and Otto Heland, both longshoremen, lost their lives

In California – Longshoremen Howard Sperry, Nick Bordois, Richard Parker and John Knudsen killed during the Longshoremen Strike.

And in September 1934, textile workers in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Jude Courtemanche & Leo Rovette fell from tyranny’s bullets as did Charles Gorzynski and William Black on this very hallowed ground in Central Falls where we stand on this Labor Day 2011.

My brothers and sisters, since we stood here on Labor Day one year ago to commemorate the Rhode Island martyrs of the Great Textile Strike of 1934 by erecting this memorial on this spot in the Moshassuck Cemetery to the martyrs of the Saylesville Massacre the renewed attack on the Labor Movement here in Rhode Island and nationally, strongly mirrors the oppressive treatment of workers so long ago.

Nationally, the Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 decision in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, made it possible to allow unlimited amounts of corporate money into the United States political system. This played a heavy hand in the election of new anti-worker elected officials and the attacks that followed. – and this madness is what followed in 2011:

Since the November 2010 election, the Big Business/Anti-worker agenda across the United States has introduced Right to Work legislation in fifteen states.

In several states, legislators have attempted to eliminate automatic dues deductions.

In Minnesota – legislators have attempted to take away whistle blower protections for meat packing workers, and over-time pay away from construction workers.

In Maine – Republican Governor Paul LePage removed a mural honoring workers and Maine’s’ labor history from the state’s Department of Labor Building. He followed that with a Right to Work Law.

Republicans in New Hampshire pushed Right to Work.

In Missouri, in what can only be described as a Tea Party “side- show”, – Republican legislators tried to roll back child labor laws.

In Oklahoma – the Republican controlled legislature passed a law that requires a parent’s consent for teenagers working in a grocery store to be part of the Union.

Republican legislators in Tennessee want to make union rallies and picket lines a crime!

In Pennsylvania – the Republican Governor wants to privatize the state-run liquor stores, jeopardizing more than 500 million in revenue and threatening the wages & benefits of Union members who work in those stores.

In Ohio, the first state to legalize public sector collective bargaining – the Republican super-majority meant that the legislature passed and Governor Kasich signed into Law SB-5 – stripping Ohio’s public employees of the right to bargain collectively with their employers.

And in Wisconsin – the legislature passed and Governor Walker signed a budget that denies teachers, fire fighters and state workers the fundamental right to bargain collectively.

RHODE ISLAND SINCE LAST LABOR DAY

The Westin Hotel in Providence where workers are represented by UNITE/HERE Local 217, attempted to impose a 20% pay reduction, an increase in health insurance costs, and an outsourcing of the jobs of many union workers.

In Providence, the labor movement was once again under attack and used as a scapegoat for the economic woes of the states and municipalities when the School Boards voted to fire all 1,926 teachers on February 4^th.

After months of bargaining in good faith, Laborer’s Local 1322, Cranston Bus Drivers were faced with a bleak future when the city council recommended the privatization of the town’s school bus service.

At Amica Insurance in Lincoln, the company eliminated the jobs of 55 maintenance workers by privatizing their department to a contractor with a history of NLRB violations.

IBEW members at Local 2323 were forced out on strike when Verizon officials attempted to take back 50 years of contract negotiations by eliminating job security, slashing pays and benefits, and sending jobs overseas.

And RIGHT HERE in Central Falls, the site of the riots of 1934, the Rhode Island Department of Education waged war on the public school teachers halfway into a three-year contract. On February 23^rd, the Central Falls Board of Trustees voted to issue termination notices to all Central Falls High School teachers. The Board read each name in a crowded auditorium.

Like the textile strike 77 years ago, the labor strife in Central Falls was once again national news.

AND WHAT DID LABOR DO?

We fought back as we always do.

We stopped the right wing’s agenda to legislate Right to Work Laws in all fifteen attempts this year.

We stopped them from repealing the Minnesota Whistle Blower Act of 1987.

Governor Guy LePage of Maine lost his bid to turn Maine into a Right to Work State.

In New Hampshire, Governor Lynch vetoed the Tea Party’s Right to Work Law the moment it hit his desk.

In Missouri, the anti-union state Senate would not have its way. We soundly defeated their attempts to eliminate child-labor laws.

Pennsylvania will not be privatizing their liquors stores thanks to an extensive lobbying and education campaign by organized labor.

In Ohio, Governor Kasich’s approval numbers are in the 30’s and his anti-union Collective Bargaining Bill will be on the November 8ballot where the latest poll number show 56 – 32 to repeal.

In Wisconsin, Governor Walker’s numbers are worse than Governor Kasich’s’ after stripping public unions of collective bargaining rights. And two safe Republican Senators lost their recall election and were replaced by pro-worker candidates.

AND WE FOUGHT BACK IN RHODE ISLAND TOO!

THE STATE HOUSE MASSACRE OF 2010

In November the members of Rhode Island unions sent a message to the State House… “If you’re going to run as a Democrat, than you damn well better VOTE like one!” The members proved it by working hard to defeat six incumbent democrats hostile to working families and replaced them with worker friendly democrats.

Westin workers, members of UNITE/HERE Local 217, ratified an agreement after a successful boycott with significant gains to their contract and no privatization of union members’ jobs.

The Providence Teachers Union reached a new three-year Agreement; with all termination notices rescinded.

After intense pressure from organized labor and the general public, the Cranston School Committee decided to end their fool-hardy quest to privatize the ninety bus drivers, members of Laborer’s Union, Local 1322.

IBEW, Local 2323 workers are back to work after being forced out by Verizon three weeks ago after the Company agreed to streamline negotiations and bargain in good faith.

And last week, the Rhode Island Board of Regents voted 7 to 1 to reject charter schools in Cranston.

They can knock us down, but they can’t lick us – this IS Labor Day – in the state which held the first Labor Day Parade in the United States.

And every working man and woman in this state owes a great debt of gratitude to those who were knocked down and got up before and to all of us who continue to fight back today. We ARE the Labor Movement!

And we say to ALL of you workers – whether you are union or not –

YOU’RE WELCOME!

You’re welcome for: Eight-hour day

You’re welcome for: Forty-hour workweek

You’re welcome for: Child labor laws

You’re welcome for: Health insurance & Pension benefits

You’re welcome for: Paid vacations & paid sick days

And you’re welcome for this Labor Day Weekend and every other weekend of the year – because…..

WE ARE THE UNION AND DAMN PROUD OF IT!

August 30, 2011January 6, 2012

Remember Saylesville: The Long Memory is the most radical idea in America

“The long memory is the memory radical idea in the country.” — Utah Phillips

On Monday, September 5 there will be a Labor Day rally at the Saylesville Massacre Monument at 11:00 AM. Jim Riley, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 328, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the RI AFL-CIO’s largest organization, will speak about our history and the current state of affairs.

The monument is located in Moshassuck Cemetery, 978 Lonsdale Avenue in Central Falls, still the scene of Labor-Management strife. Come and commemorate the martyred activists from the 1934 textile strike, hear blistering talk, and show the world we haven’t forgotten our roots and we’re not going away.

From prior posts

Celebrate Labor Day this year by remembering the Great Textile Strike of 1934 and the Battle of the Gravestones .

Join the Rhode Island Labor History Society this Monday at the Moshassuck Cemetery in Central Falls, 978 Lonsdale Ave, at 11:00 AM for a ceremony remembering the valiant battle waged by the workers against the power of the State and corporate exploitation.

On Labor Day, 1934, a national textile strike began in Rhode Island and spread to southern cloth mills in an attempt to raise wages and improve working conditions during the Great Depression.

The event turned ugly when local management ask for protection at the non-union Sayles Finishing Company. National Guardsmen, with fixed bayonets, confronted hundreds of unarmed strikers and chased them into the Moshassuck Cemetery. Ironically, union picketers too cover behind headstones in the graveyard. The bullet holes remain dozens of stones to this day. Strife there lasted almost three weeks resulting in the injury and wounding of hundreds of protesters and the deaths of several others. The strike would erupt in violence in Woonsocket as well.

In this period of the Great Recession, let’s remember the struggle of our ancestors and learn the lessons of the past. Pay homage to those who made sacrifices so long ago so that we, their grand children, could have a better life. And in doing, we must learn to mobilize in a very different world to maintain the food life that our families fought and died for.

***

Original Post

This year is the 75th anniversary of The Uprising of ’34. The “Uprising” was a national textile workers strike that saw some intense street fighting in the Saylesville neighborhood of Lincoln. Check out this VIDEO. Anyway, while researching the strike for a project with the Rhode Island Labor History Society, I came across this section of text is an issue of Time Magazine. Governor TF Green, after declaring that there was no strike, but “It is a Communist insurrection,” he faced the following situation:

Jitters, Lawyer, banker, scholar, Fellow of Brown University, 66-year-old Governor Green belongs by birth to Rhode Island’s Republican mill-owning class but has cast his lot with plebeian Democrats. Last week he was an old man badly frightened when he asked his State Assembly for: 1) $100,000 to up the State police force from 51 to 1,000 during the emergency; 2) $100,000 more to put 1,000 War veterans under arms; 3) power to close any or all textile mills in the State; 4) power to call in Federal troops, which he said President Roosevelt had promised him.
Republicans lined up behind the Governor, his own partymen against him. The Republican leader of the Senate said he had received the following message from Brig.-General Herbert R. Dean, commander of the State’s National Guard: “I think I can control the situation but for God’s sake tell the Legislature to do something. We need Federal troops!”
Answered the Democratic leader of the Senate: “Don’t call in the regular army! Don’t militarize Rhode Island for the sake of the selfish interests of a small group of mill-owners! If you want to stop the trouble, stop it at its source, the mills, which are a cancer in this body politic.”

When the shouting died that night the Assembly had granted none of the Governor’s requests. Voluntarily mills at Woonsocket, Saylesville and four other trouble spots closed and the Governor started a Communist round-up on his own authority. Though Federal troops were reported mobilizing in New York and New England, President Roosevelt at Hyde Park appeared to be in no rush to send them to Rhode Island.

August 26, 2011January 6, 2012

RIFuture, I still love you- but…

Y’all might have noticed me not posting so much, as if nothing is going on in the criminal justice realm like the California hearing on Solitary Confinement, or Bloomberg editorializing that companies should Ban the Box (and cited a DOJ report regarding 30% of Americans having a criminal record *Hint, hint, ProJo “Pants On Fire”). And maybe you noticed I began the post with “Y’all.”

In New Orleans, “Y’all” is proper speech used by teachers, judges, and Fortune 500 companies (the latter I’m just guessing). And this is my new home, where I’m going to one of America’s top law schools, where (hopefully) they too will learn to deal with my big mouth. NOLA is the most incarcerated city in the most incarcerated state in the most incarcerated nation in the world, and people down here don’t have the luxury of ignoring this, nor can they ignore racism and corruption.

Last week, five cops were convicted of shooting six people (killing two) on Danziger Bridge. Their cover-up (trying to frame the victims) and “Katrina Defense” (it was a war zone, shit happens) both dramatically failed… yet this partially filmed shooting still took six years to see a trial. It was not the attorney general who led the way, but community activists and the families hammering away and telling the story in the face of death threats. Ultimately five other cops pled guilty and testified against these five, and the FBI proved the challenge of any police department investigating themselves.

But I have books to re-read on rules of procedure and whatnot, so I’ll miss a few things. I’m researching the disenfranchisement laws, looking at Prison-Based Gerrymandering, marijuana possession, and Ban the Box. And perhaps some artsy activities might occur on occasion. Sound familiar?

I’ll be paying attention to Rhode Island too, for obvious reasons, and am still available to a limited degree. For example, just before Amigo de la Gente Miguel passed, he was bemoaning the City’s ruling that the owner of “So Fresh and So Clean” car wash was having their previously awarded bid denied: the owner’s past criminal record kept the company from washing police cars. Miguel was going to send me paperwork on it, he wanted to know what we can do, and I wanted to know who was deciding it, and on what policy was this based. My hope is that this discriminatory decision is in good hands.

I hope to see some of y’all at Direct Action for Rights & Equality’s 25th Anniversary Gala on October 14th. I’ll be trying to keep up with national criminal justice issues on www.Unprison.com, and will continue to weigh in on the Wyatt For-Profit Prison saga in Central Falls (insiders keep me posted!)

I want to extend special thanks to Matt Jerzyk and Brian Hull for encouraging me to write on RIFuture, and for all the people who found it useful information. 300,000 hits later on this site and I can see people are hungry for diverse points of view. Stay hungry, my friends.

P.S. Good luck with your hurricane!

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