A groundbreaking was held early Monday for the Wexford Innovation Complex being constructed on former I-195 land in the heart of Providence‘s new Innovation and Design District. The project is projected to generate approximately $100 million in additional state revenues over the next 20 years.
The Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) (63,000 square feet), Brown University’s School of Professional Studies (50,000 square feet), and Johnson & Johnson (31,000 square feet) will be tenants in the nearly 195,000-square-foot Innovation Building. Construction is expected to take approximately two years.
In addition, CIC is also planning to locate an 8,000-square-foot Innovation Hall and Venture Cafe-dedicated civic spaces that are modeled after CIC’s highly successful District Hall in the Seaport District of Boston, where the innovation community can gather and exchange ideas.
Groundbreaking ceremonies are little rituals. Politicians and business people don hard hats and grab shovels in pantomime of laborers, to toss dirt in the air. But in today’s new era of desperate capitalism, these rituals seem to have been transformed from ritualized photo-ops to full fledged religious celebrations hearkening back to ancient and medieval times.
In the late middle ages massive Catholic cathedrals were financed by bishops who drew upon “every imaginable source of funds they could identify.” Gifts from secular rulers such as kings and tithes levied against parish churches were just two of many funding sources. This was a time when tax dollars and church donations were essentially the same, when church building was the business of the government, because the government was the church and vice versa.
Cathedrals were extremely profitable for the church. The bishops that oversaw them often led lavish lifestyles and expropriated a great amount of wealth from the poorest of parishioners.
Thanks to the First Amendment, Americans no longer pay taxes to or are required to tithe to churches they may or may not support. We have separated church and state. But through the use of sophisticated business funding schemes called public-private partnerships (PPPs), Americans pay taxes that are used by corporations to fund their profit centers, and these centers are often spoken of in overtly religious and classist ways.
Stefan Pryor
Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo‘s Commerce Secretary Stefan Pryor evoked religion (and class) when he spoke about the governor. He called Raimondo’s words, spoken ahead of the Wexford Innovation Complex groundbreaking, “poetry.”
“You heard the poetry that accompanies the pushing, the prodding, the advocating, the leading that has led to this project,” said Pryor.
“This past week was the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, in the Jewish faith community,” he continued. “I was at Temple Beth-El and they use a prayer book called Mishkan HaNefesh and I was reminded of he governor. In the prayer book thee is a comment from Rabbi Yehuda who says: ‘Torah study is good together with an occupation, and to our sages who toil, from those who chop wood to those who raise cattle, from the storekeeper to the cobbler to the one who sold salt, to the doctors and scribes, let us give thanks to the tradition that sanctifies work. Let us honor those who toil and sustain the world in both noble and humble ways.'”
Turning to the Governor, Pryor continued, “Governor, thanks for producing a project that will generate jobs at every level… [and] to those who work in noble and humble ways, we honor all involved with this project.” [italics mine]
Gina Raimondo
Like cathedrals of old, the Wexford Innovation Complex will be more than a mere building. Where cathedrals stretched to the sky invoking the promises of both heavenly and earthly reward, serving as symbols of piousness to all, the complex to be built in Providence is, as Governor Raimondo puts it, “a symbol to the rest of the world that Rhode island has momentum in this 21st century innovation economy…
“One of the things I love about this project is that it’s going to create jobs at every level. It’s going to create nearly a thousand jobs just building it… Then, when we’re in the building there’s going to be jobs like lab techs, assistants, folks that clean the building, all the way up to PhD engineers, executives and every level of entrepreneur in-between.”
Or as Pryor might say, putting it into class terms that hearken back to the medieval: There will be jobs for both the noble and the humble alike.
Tim Rowe
Pryor introduced Tim Rowe, founder and CEO of the Cambridge Innovation Center, by noting the “transformative power” of Rowe’s previous work. Pryor also described Rowe as a “visionary.” This use of religious metaphor may be hyperbolic, but it is not accidental. Pryor is announcing the construction, after all, of a modern cathedral.
Rowe took the mic and almost immediately confirmed Pryor’s intimations of the divine, saying, “The Gods are smiling on this project, giving us this kind of weather.”
Rowe preaches the gospel of innovation, which allows economies to prosper. But innovation is a mysterious force. “What we know less about is this process of innovation, what actually causes it to happen,” said Rowe. “None of us knows exactly what happens, but it seems to start with the universities…”
Today, capitalism is the new Catholicism, venture capitalists are the new bishops, PPPs are the new cathedrals and the poor…
The poor are the same as they ever were: Struggling to survive as they fund hugely profitable buildings that at best will provide them “humble” jobs.
Amen.
The palpable intoxication of Capitalism really could only go in this direction. From the tired usage of the lazy label of “worshiping” money, be it used to categorize individuals, corporations, institutions, or visionaries, we come to this curious moment of synchronicity where some have truly gone “One toke over the line sweet Jesus.”
Cathedrals indeed. Does anything that is not directly tied to money matter anymore?
Provocative reporting Mr. Ahlquist.
Wow, this is kind of funny except for the fact it’s so sad. Another H. L. Menken, P T Barnum moment, I guess.
And the analysis? Is it Guy Fawkes Day or something? Funny, I don’t remember Spiro Kostof’s account, in A History of Architecture – Ritual and Settings, where he writes of the construction of Chartres Cathedral, quite matching your account. Another funny thing is how you don’t mention The First Baptist Church in America. What do you think paid for that??? There was more than one John Brown, you know, and one of them never traveled to Harper’s Ferry. Who wants to be bothered with details, though.
Hooh, boy . . . Da Crater Class . . . we’re on a role now. Green Zone and “restructuring of state enterprises” here we come! A new huge hole to throw our money down somewhere along the 9th Circle of Hell where everything is plated in gold . . . and tax free! except for the people who actually live here. Who needs Trump when you’ve got pols like these shoveling it.
I put in this link:
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/455088
as a reference to how cathedrals were funded.
Interesting. I wonder how the Parthenon was funded, or the Hagia Sophia, which was a Byzantine Christian Church until appropriated by the Ottomans who installed the minarets, or Angkor Wat.
According to Kostof, Chartres housed the tunic of the Virgin Mary at the nativity, a gift from Charles the Bald. He goes on to say, Chartres had become the center of Mariolatry in France by 1100. He then goes on to say Mary was extolled as the Seat of Wisdom, the Christian counterpart of Athena, the wise virgin of Classical antiquity. This seems pretty accurate to me. Virgin worship goes way back before Christianity which was, essentially, co-opted by the Romans. “Virgin worship”, has society really given up on the idea? Doesn’t seem so to me. I think there are a lot of problems there.
What really caught my eye, years ago, when I read Kostof’s account was this:
“What is presented is a rational and full commentary on the manifestation of the divine, free of obsessive Doomsday fears of Romanesque portals”.
Kostof says, “The money came from the grain trade, the silver mines of the bishops of Chartres, and the real property of the chapter, and the city’s own revenues from the production of textiles, weapons and harnesses”. One should keep in mind this all happened around the time of the Crusades, which carries a lot of implications. Kostof, overall, paints a picture where the townspeople found the cathedral a source of pride and a community center. I wonder.
Someone named Richard Cassaro has a blog post titled, The Heresy of Chartres and goes on about pagan influences at Chartres, which are well known, then gets bogged down in dualism, which seems a stifling ideology to me. Reminds me of the Christian concept of male/female “complementarity” which seems to run rampant in the LGBQ community in an almost monastic way. It’s a very romantic concept but I digress.
I find the Golden Age of Greece an interesting period where most everyone lived in modest houses and saved the lavishness for public works projects like the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, etc. . . The Wexford, though, that’s a private building built for private non-profits so I don’t see the comparison to structures built for public usage. Maybe I just don’t get it. There are Wexfords all over the country, though. It was portrayed as a unique project to the unsuspecting public. It isn’t.
No one seemed to do any in depth reporting on that fact or the outcomes when it was being hyped as the anchor to the so called Knowledge District. Wexford is headquartered in Baltimore, Freddie Gray’s hometown. Wexford bills itself as a “Science and Technology Company”, which seems to be a lie to me. They’re a real estate company, aren’t they? You got the innovation claptrap correct but where was everyone during the planning stages of this boondoggle for the privileged and wealthy?
Growing up Catholic and having survived the experience leaves one with mixed feelings. I have had an intimate relationship with Catholicism and so recognize the oppressive nature of Catholic dogma and hypocrisy those without the experience wouldn’t be able to, but at the same time I’ve found myself looked down upon because of my background. What the right wingers have to say about how the bigotry reserved for Catholics would never be tolerated when directed toward any other religion is correct I think. In places like R I there is an ethnic aspect to being Catholic that cannot be simply renounced. I bristle when I hear or see unbalanced focus on the problems w/ Catholicism. Consider the Rohingya in Myanmar, currently.
For the record:
” I’ve been reading about it in Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, The Slave Trade, and the American Revolution by Charles Rappleye (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006). The Brown brothers Nicholas, Joseph, John and Moses played important roles both in moving the (then) Baptist college from Warren, R.I. to Providence (now Brown University), and in the effort to build the stately new church.”
https://onerhodeislandfamily.com/2015/08/13/first-baptist-church-in-america/
By the way, two of those shovelers, “our” Senators, in the picture above, voted to table the proposal to repeal the open-ended 2001 AUMF, along with the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq. As in Trump’s appointment of Michael Flynn, it makes me wonder if this was another “. . . great thing for Rhode Island.” Ew. Vive la résistance!
I’m glad you provided the artist’s rendering for the building being put up by this Real Estate Investment Trust which dresses itself up as a “Science and Technology” company. It doesn’t look anything like a cathedral. In fact, it will be built in a mere two years, according the the press.
There was, however, a great deal of religious fervor and dogma involved in the building of this boondoggle for those w/ legacy, privilege and wealth – newfound wealth and old. It’s the new religion. It’s name was coined by conservatives – Scientism.
“Ever since its coining by conservatives, “scientism” has been used pejoratively, most commonly by the same people who deny evolution and climate change. Consequently, leftists have historically renounced the word, signaling that that they fall on the side of scientific truth and not religion or spirituality.
This is a false dichotomy. One can value scientific inquiry without viewing the natural sciences as unimpeachable truth. And one can assail purported scientific progress without assailing science itself.”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/the-new-scientism/
GoLoco is engaging in a post mortem re: the Wexford giveaways. They want to see Raimondo gone. Chafee is waiting in the wings. The Mac Farmer wing of the former Chafee/Rockefeller Republicans would be more comfortable with him as I am sure R I Future would, even if the folks at GoLoco would probably prefer Ken Block. Left and Right today exist on a spectrum that’s pretty far right of what used to be center.
Anyway, GoLoco has at least raised questions about Johnson and Johnson’s moves coming up and how much it is going to cost us for 75 jobs. We’re going to give them millions and millions and millions. Everybody, I guess, has forgotten how much Johnson and Johnson gave Harvard Medical School, or was it just to Dr. Joseph Biederman? It amounted to 10 million over the same length of time we’ve committed our donations to the same company which bribes researchers at the foremost medical research center in the world. Ah, science! In case anyone doesn’t get it – we give to Johnson and Johnson. Johnson and Johnson gives in order to corrupt Ivy League School administrators and to add more insult to injury, we give to the local Ivy which just seems to get and get and get.
The private, elite universities take and take and give nothing back in return. There will be no peace in this country until these universities and their assets are nationalized, maybe in a way similar to how Trinity College in Dublin, founded by Queen Elizabeth I was:
“Behind its high iron railings the Victorian university had become something of a self-contained community, out of sympathy with the increasingly nationalist city and focused on an expanding British empire for opportunities for its graduates. During the sixty-year war of attrition between British governments and the Catholic hierarchy over higher education policy in Ireland, Trinity struggled to accommodate itself to what was a changing Ireland. Between 1873 and 1908 a variety of schemes were proposed that would have made the College a member of a federated Irish (or Dublin) university; these were strenuously and effectively resisted as threats to its independence. As part of this, the College gradually re-positioned itself to become a non-denominational institution: in 1873 all religious tests (except those connected with the Divinity School) were abolished. However despite this, the fractious struggle to retain the College’s separate identity meant that when the battle over Irish higher education was finally resolved in 1908 with the creation of the federal National University, it left a difficult legacy for the defenders of the older institution.”
from: the Trinity College website’s About page – History
People like Brian Moynihan and Steve Cohen, the heirs to Alfred Taubman, Moe Annenberg, Thomas Watson, etc. use the university to effect the public policy they so desire. Democratically elected government here merely exists to rubber stamp the latest directives that come down from College Hill. Everybody knows, as Leonard Cohen would say.
cailin rua!
yo!
Fiftieth year high school reunion tonight!!
Isn’t that exciting?!
Rubber chicken. Facebook.
What?
What?
“Rubber chicken”, ah, those Golden Years. Was it a progressive chicken, I wonder.
C’est la vie and happy anniversary!
thank you.
it was fun.
and…on a more political note,
as more trumpets sound ’round these parts,
i’ve just been reading about the violence in Spain.
The Left and the Right seem to having their own 70th year reunion.
So, “politically motivated ingrates” that we are,
i reach across the Void to you, my dear.
Looks like our voices and our witnesses
are still needed at home.
to the three people (-1) who read me:
the “reunion” in Spain is taking place after approximately eighty years.
The great advantage of being spare parts is
that you can do stuff like this
and still care
and not be unhappy
and hang out there
and wonder if and when you’ll
learn to silkscreen.
Read a great piece in the Sunday Times.
The wonderful essayist, quoting Lenny Bruce,
mentioned that baton twirling isn’t Jewish.
I’d like to add that it isn’t necessarily Jewish,
but it certainly could be.
Right, Lynette Cohen?
The cosmos is so much bigger.
(walking off with Larry David’s poltergeist) Did I tell you I saw Neil De Grasse Tyson
at Olga’s. No? Well, remind me.
But now, I want to talk about Van
at the Palace Concert Theater,
November, 1973.
Nothing was working.
We gave cathedrals a try.
And made a three floor econobox
stretch to sky.
The pols were there
to wish us well.
We handled a shovel.
Gee, that was swell.
Then, we went home
and continued to make
All those calls
that we just have to take.
Hey, that’s OK.
We’re making a dent.
By the way, Tofu Meister.
How you paying’ the rent?