Matt writes about it in this week's Phoenix:

Eight years after an effort began to remove the word “plantations” from Rhode Island’s official state name, a related bill has not made it out of committee. Yet during a House Fi-nance Committee hearing last week, the current legislation — sponsored by state Representative Joseph Almeida (D-Providence) and state Senator Harold Metts (D-Providence) — generated widespread support in the African-American community and among social justice groups.

Brother Everett Muhammad, of the Ministry of Justice for the Millions More Movement, argues, for example, that the legislation is important to “acknowledge the cruelty of the slave trade and Rhode Island’s involvement in it, as well as how slavery dehumanized millions of people and caused unspeakable crimes against men and women.”

The bill’s detractors argue that “plantations” is an agricultural term that described the farms of Rhode Island, and that linking the term with slavery and the plantations of the South is historically inaccurate.

Keith Stokes, the executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, is a vocal opponent of removing “plantations” from the state name. While Stokes acknowl-edges that the word brings to mind images of African slavery and oppression, he says it can also empower people of color: “Despite having ancestors who arrived in this country as forced settlers,” he notes, “they led remarkable lives highlighted by perseverance and determination to achieve, not only during slavery, but also over the hundreds of years of racial discrimination and exclusion.”

Stokes argues that “while it is an honorable intention to want to remove what might offend another person, the removal of a word will not remove the pain of racism, nor will it halt the progression of discrimination.” He adds, “Before we change names, why don’t we start by knowing our African-American heritage and investing resources in teaching our children this history.”

5/16/2008 2:23:00 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [1] |  

While immigration gets a lot more attention these days, it's worth remembering the civic organizing of Latinos in Rhode Island.

Tomas Avila was kind enough to copy me on an e-mail noting this important date in local history:

"Haciendo Historia" RILPAC

Thursday May 14, 1998

       

Back on Thursda May 14, 1998 after months of meeting and planning and Seinfeld finale episode was taking place, the founders of the Rhode Island Latino Political Action Committee (RILPAC) held the official organizing meeting at La Cabaña Night Club, holding election of officers and board of Directors with the following outcome.

 

      Board of Directors

      President:                                Pablo Rodriguez, MD

      Executive Vice President:       Alina Ocasio

      Vice President:                        Juan M. Pichardo

      Secretary:                                Michelle Torres

      Assistant Secretary:                Margarita Guedes

      Treasurer:                               Tomás Alberto Avila

      Assistant Treasurer:                Betty Bernal

 

       Alido Baldera

       Gladys Corvera-Baker, ACSW

       Victor F. Capellán

       Francisco Cruz

       José González, Ed.D.

       Ricardo Patiño

       Vidal Perez

       Tomás Ramirez

       Manuel Suarez, Esq

       Angel Taveras, Esq

I've reported on some of the subsequent progress, as with Ready to rumba, in 2003:

The growing appreciation for the Rhode Island Latino Political Action Fund (the fundraising arm of the civic fund) could be seen when almost every statewide candidate of note — and hundreds of other people from a variety of backgrounds — came out for RILPAC’s festive spring 2002 tribute to Dr. Pablo Rodriguez at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Warwick. Rodriguez, one of the state’s most veteran Latino activists, deliciously delivered on the palpable sense of a political coming-out; bringing the ballroom to a hush by saying he was about to make a very important announcement — triggering visions of an incipient campaign — he then vowed to be the best husband and father he could be.

All this marks a dramatic change from the time 15 years ago, when the since-deceased Juanita Sanchez and just a few other individuals advocated politically on behalf of Latinos. "It was very difficult in those days," recalls Rodriguez. "Now, there are a number of people who are working on issues, some together, some completely separately. I think that’s a sign of a healthy community. Some people feel there should be a single group or a single representative, and I think that’s inaccurate."

Indeed, the growing vibrancy of Rhode Island’s Latino community is evident in any number of ways. Flourishing small businesses — bakeries, groceries, travel agencies, hair stylists, and the like — fill formerly vacant storefronts on Broad Street and Elmwood Avenue in Providence. Activists like Nellie Gorbea, Gonzalo Cuervo, and Patricia Martinez have landed prominent posts, respectively, in the Brown, Cicilline, and Carcieri administrations. And the predominant Anglo culture is paying a growing amount of attention — as seen by the copious selection of Hispanic foods at the new Shaw’s Supermarket in Eagle Square, for example, or the issuance last week by Attorney General Patrick Lynch’s office of a Spanish-language version of Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care.

The seriousness with which some members of the extended community view their civic responsibility can be seen in how Victor Cuenca, a 37-year-old Bolivian native, has abstemiously avoiding making political endorsements since starting his Spanish-language newspaper, Providence En Espanol, about four years ago. Other Spanish papers have tended to be irregular or fiercely partisan, so Cuenca’s faced a struggle for credibility when he launched it with his wife from their North Providence home. Now, though, Providence En Espanol boasts a payroll of 12, free weekly circulation of 25,000 copies at hundreds of locations, an office at a Seekonk, Massachusetts, industrial park, and after attracting a raft of campaign ads last fall, it’s flush with news content and ads from Nordstrom, Ocean State Job Lot, and Showcase Cinemas. Cuenca now feels his paper has gained enough authority that he plans to start making endorsements after its fifth anniversary. Similarly, the Spanish-language radio station, Poder 1110, was a vital channel of political debate last year, arguably offering the most robust flowering of community-based radio in the Providence market.

5/14/2008 4:31:14 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [0] |  

While it would be nice to believe that we have arrived at a color-blind society, this is obviously not the case, particularly as it pertains to the criminal justice system. Two examples from last week, via the NYT.

No. 1:

More than two decades after President Ronald Reagan escalated the war on drugs, arrests for drug sales or, more often, drug possession are still rising. And despite public debate and limited efforts to reduce them, large disparities persist in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, even though the two races use illegal drugs at roughly equal rates.

Two new reports, issued Monday by the Sentencing Project in Washington and by Human Rights Watch in New York, both say the racial disparities reflect, in large part, an overwhelming focus of law enforcement on drug use in low-income urban areas, with arrests and incarceration the main weapon.

No. 2:

WASHINGTON — Secret Service supervisors shared crude sexual jokes and engaged in racially derogatory banter about blacks, and passed around an anecdote about a possible assassination of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, according to internal e-mail disclosed in a federal court filing on Friday by lawyers for black Secret Service agents.

The filing includes 10 e-mail messages that were among documents the agency recently turned over to lawyers for the black agents as part of an increasingly bitter discrimination lawsuit. The messages were written mainly from 2003 through 2005, and were sent to and from e-mail accounts of at least 20 Secret Service supervisors.

On a related note, Ariel has a piece in the current Phoenix about Justice or Just Us?, a festival that offers a critical look this week at criminal justice in America:

“Justice or Just Us?,” which Reilly describes as a “series of events designed to make us question the state of justice in our society” marks the realization of many of [Bruce Reilly's] dreams. Taking place from May 12 to 18 at Perishable Theatre and AS220 (95 and 115 Empire St., Providence), the festival offers 26 events, ranging from music, comedy, and slam poetry to film, theater, and a free discussion series sponsored by the RI Coun-cil for the Humanities.

Over the past several years, a complex debate on criminal-justice reform has been pushed to the surface by community-based organizations (the Family Life Center and Direct Action for Rights & Equality); legisla-tors (Providence Democratic Representatives David Segal and Joseph Almeida, and Senator Harold Metts), and activists such as Reilly. “Justice or Just Us?” offers an opportunity for Rhode Islanders to take part in advancing this dialogue.

The featured activists and speakers will include former prisoner and current Drug Policy Alliance fellow Tony Papa; former narcotics officer John Tommasi of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP); Brown University Professor Glenn Loury, Department of Corrections Director A.T. Wall; Segal, Almeida, and Metts; and filmmakers Dylan Avery and Korey Rowe, who will present their film Loose Change: Final Cut, a critique of the official narrative of the War on Terror.

Poets Jimmy Baca (Albuquerque) and Lemon (Def Poetry, NYC) will perform, as will the sketch comics of In House Freestyle. On the mic will be local artists Who Dem?, Fedd Hill, Chachi, the Low Anthem, and the What Cheer? Brigade, as well as the nationally celebrated Saigon (as seen on HBO’s hit show Entourage) and Immortal Technique. Theret will also be performances of the off-Broadway sensation The Exonerated, directed by Reilly and 1000 lbs Guerilla.

5/12/2008 12:38:54 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [0] |  

In hindsight, it would have been better to have done this some time ago (AP via Halperin)

"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday," Obama told reporters at a news conference.

After weeks of staying out of the public eye while critics lambasted his sermons, Wright made three public appearances in four days to defend himself. The former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has been combative, providing colorful commentary and feeding the story Obama had hoped was dying down.

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," Wright told the Washington media Monday. "It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. It is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition."

Obama told reporters Tuesday that Wright's comments do not accurately portray the perspective of the black church.

"The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," Obama said of the man who married him.

Wright criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the United States invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. "Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," he said.

Obama said he heard that Wright had given "a performance" and when he watched tapes, he realized that it more than just a case of the former pastor defending himself.

"What became clear to me was that he was presenting a world view that contradicts what I am and what I stand for," Obama said.

4/29/2008 3:30:24 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [1] |  

As critics and advocates continue to debate the economic effect of illegal immigration, Matt points to this data:

Now, the Immigration Policy Center - in light of the upcoming Tax Day - are issuing a forthcoming reportby Stephen Moore, Senior Economics Writer at the Wall Street Journal and former director of Fiscal Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and Richard Vedder, Distinguished Professor of Economics at Ohio University using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2005 Current Population Survey and other sources.

Moore and Vedder find that immigrants not only pay their own way in taxes, but play a hefty role in shoring up the teetering Social Security system, and provide a fiscal windfall to U.S. taxpayers by tending to come to the United States during their prime working years after the costs of their education and upbringing have been borne by their home countries.

Among the report's findings:

• Immigrant Households and Businesses Generate Billions: In 2005, immigrant households and businesses paid approximately $300 billion in federal, state, and local taxes: $165 billion in federal income taxes, $85 billion in state and local income taxes, and $50 billion in business taxes.
  
• Immigrants Pay More in Taxes Than They Use in Services Over Their Lifetimes: Depending on skills and level of education, each immigrant pays, on average, between $20,000 and $80,000 more in taxes than he or she consumes in public benefits.
  
• Immigrants' Relative Youth Contributes To Social Security's Health: Current levels of immigration will provide a net benefit to the Social Security system of nearly $450 billion in taxes paid over benefits received during the 2006-2030 period-and almost $4.4 trillion during the 2006-2080 period. This is because 75 percent of immigrants arrive in the United States when they are in their prime working years (age 18 to 65). But the share of native-born citizens in their prime working years now stands at only 60 percent, and will decline rapidly over the coming decades as the Baby Boomers retire.
  
• Immigrants Educated on Home Country's Tab: The roughly 26 million immigrants now in the United States who arrived when they were over the age of 18-after their upbringing and basic education were paid for in their home countries-represent a windfall to American taxpayers of roughly $2.8 trillion. The United States receives all of the tax payments made by these immigrants, while bearing almost none of the costs of raising and educating them.

4/12/2008 11:40:39 AM by Not For Nothing | Comments [1] |  

Arizona's an interesting place. It's got beautiful cacti, a big city (Phoenix) with absolutely no sense of history or place, a small city (Tucson) with a lot of character, and since it's perched on the Mexican border, it's a hotbed of immigration politics.

An editorial in today's Times takes a look at what can happen when these two things intersect, with a local sheriff making energetic efforts in the name of homeland security.

For months now, Sheriff Joe [Arpaio] has been sending squads of officers through Latino neighborhoods, pulling cars over for broken taillights or turn-signal violations, checking drivers’ and passengers’ papers and arresting illegal immigrants by the dozen.

Because he sends out press releases beforehand, the sweeps are accompanied by TV crews and protesters — deport-’em-all hard-liners facing off against immigrant advocates. Being Arizona, many of those shouting and jeering are also packing guns. Sheriff Joe, seemingly addicted to the buzz, has been filmed marching down the street shaking hands with adoring Minutemen.

If this doesn’t look to you like a carefully regulated, federally supervised effort to catch dangerous criminals, that’s because it isn’t. It is a series of stunts focused mostly on day laborers, as Sheriff Joe bulldozes his way toward re-election.

The sheriff says he is keeping the peace, but it seems as if he is doing just the opposite — a useless, reckless churning of fear and unrest. Mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix has denounced him, saying the raids are interfering with undercover city police officers and federal agents. The mayor of Guadalupe implored him to leave her community alone. State and county officials have pointed out that Sheriff Joe has ignored tens of thousands of outstanding criminal warrants while chasing day laborers and headlines. They say he has grossly violated the terms of his 287(g) agreement — which calls for federal oversight of local police — and have called on Washington to rein him in.

4/9/2008 2:15:46 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [7] |  

Gee, why could anyone have immigration-related racial profiling concerns when Julie L. Myers, the top immigration enforcement official in the US, is found to have ordered the destruction of Halloween party pictures showing a white Immigration and Customs Enforcement employee dressed as a black employee, after realizing it was inappropriate?

From the NYT:

Kelly A. Nantel, an agency spokeswoman, confirmed Tuesday that Ms. Myers had ordered that the photographs be deleted, but said she had done so because she belatedly realized that the costume was inappropriate and that it would be offensive if the photos were included in any agency publications.

But Ms. Nantel said that Ms. Myers never tried to cover up that the event had occurred. In fact, Ms. Myers sent a message to all agency employees two days after the party acknowledging that “a few of the costumes were inappropriate.”

“To suggest she somehow coordinated a cover-up is absolutely false,” Ms. Nantel said. ....

Ms. Myers had been a judge at the Halloween contest. The staff member who won the “most original costume” prize wore a dreadlock wig, what looked like a prison jumpsuit and black face paint.

“I’m a Jamaican detainee from Krome — obviously, I’ve escaped,” the employee, referring to a detention center in Miami, announced to the judges, provoking laughter, according to the Congressional report.

Ms. Myers then posed for photographs with the employee — whose name was not released — smiling for the camera.

4/9/2008 1:13:00 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [1] |  

It's not a big surprise that the Providence FOP, as Buddy Cianci reports, is backing Governor Carcieri's executive order on immigration -- in direct contrast to the stance taken by Dean Esserman.

For his part, Cianci agrees with those who describe the focus on illegal immigration as misplaced. "People want an excuse," he said this morning. "They blame the illegal immigration," which, as Cianci noted, is a relatively small influence in Rhode Island's $450 million budget deficit.

4/9/2008 11:02:51 AM by Not For Nothing | Comments [0] |  

UPDATE: This just in from the gov's office:

Patricia Martinez, Director of the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), today issued the following statement regarding Governor Carcieri’s Executive Order on illegal immigration.

 

“This afternoon, I met with Governor Carcieri to discuss my recent public comments about his Executive Order on illegal immigration,” DCYF Director Patricia Martinez said.  “I explained to him that I was relaying what I was hearing in Rhode Island's immigrant community, and that those comments are separate from my personal position on the issue.”

     

“I apologize for any misperceptions my comments might have caused,” Martinez continued.  “In particular, I did not mean to imply that the Governor’s actions were spreading hatred.  Instead, I was trying to explain that immigration is a very sensitive and polarizing issue.”

 

“I support the Governor's Executive Order addressing illegal immigration,” Martinez concluded.  “I respect Governor Carcieri’s willingness to lead on this and many other important issues.  I believe it is an important step toward immigration reform.  In the coming weeks, I will work with the Governor to dispel public misconceptions about the Executive Order and to communicate its true intent.”

----

Things were getting unusually quiet yesterday on the immigration front. Fortunately, Patricia Martinez weighed in, keeping the story on its rightful place on the front page of the ProJo, and front and center on the airwaves.

Martinez, the director of the Department of Children, Youth and Families and a member of the governor’s Cabinet for the last three years, said Carcieri’s proposal, like a handful of bills proposed by the General Assembly, “is really slamming immigrants” by promoting racial profiling.

In related news,

-- The House Republican caucus has sent a letter to Governor Carcieri, expressing support for his executive order.

-- Justin finds evidence that the governor's executive order is working:

Governor Carcieri's executive order is already proving to be a success:

Rhode Island's decision to order State Police and other state agencies to help enforce federal immigration law is jarring border cities in Massachusetts, where illegal immigrants say they are now afraid to enter the Ocean State.

If they're that reluctant to cross a state border (with habitual experience of the ease of travel from state to state), imagine how much less likely they'd be to make a beeline to our state across a national border. Those who've opposed attempts to control illegal immigration on the grounds that it is impossible ought to take note.

Personally, I find the part about verifying the status of state workers and contract employees to be reasonable, at least on the surface. It's interesting, though, that the folks who seem to think that the government can't get anything right are willing to put their faith in eVerify. It also strikes me as unsurprising that the executive order would foster fears of racial profiling. More to the point, the issue is worsening polarization, and taking attention away from more serious issues in the state.

The immigration issue has developed over decades, with the tacit support of the federal government and big business. It should be addressed at the federal level.

In terms of the vox populi, two letters recently published in the ProJo stood out in expressing different sides of the issue.

Here's one:

In his March 30 column, M. Charles Bakst questions Governor Carcieri for his efforts to bring order to the illegal-alien problem here in Rhode Island. Why do apologists purposely gloss over the word “illegal” before the word immigrant?

Rhode Islanders understand fully the difference but Bakst appears to be challenged by the word. The governor, who is required to uphold the rule of law, is roundly criticized by Bakst for doing exactly that. Is there a vendetta in the works? Congress and the president have been disgustingly AWOL on achieving a just solution to this problem but the politics of special-interest groups and Congress’s own chicanery have caused them to not only throw the taxpayers under the bus but the illegal immigrants as well. Bakst has his own liberal philosophy, including ignoring the law, but most Rhode Islanders do not share it.

Rhode Island may be a “blue state” but the people are not fooled by that sort of clumsy commentary by confused writers.

SAM PARENTE

Cranston

And another:

I am the grandson of immigrants who came to Rhode Island in the early 1900s to work in textile mills. All that was required to enter the country then was a birth certificate showing country of origin. Even those who lacked the proper documentation were admitted, although their entry visa was stamped WOP, meaning without papers. Since so many Italians lacked papers and were so noted, the slur “wop” adhered to “illegal” Italian immigrants. It would be interesting to know if Governor Carcieri’s grandparents were legal immigrants, or if they were labeled WOP.

PAUL LeBON

Highland Village, Texas

4/8/2008 4:57:37 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [4] |  

While Governor Carcieri and his critics continue to square off on immigration, Amy Littlefield has a profile in this week's Phoenix of Stella Carrera, coordinator of immigration and advocacy services for the Diocese of Providence, a piece that tells us something about the stories behind the debate.

Carrera knows better than most how complicated the US immigration system can be. She came here, from Colombia, with a visitor’s visa in 1973 and overstayed her visit.
 
She moved to New York to be with her older brother and sister, and worked in a cosmetics factory, filling nail polish and mascara bottles, for minimum wage with no benefits. Carrera says someone from a local union heard about the mistreatment of the workers and he came around with some fliers. The owner caught wind of it and called immigration authorities.
 
When Carrera went outside for a cigarette and a coffee that day, she saw the cars and the officers. Immigration authorities shut the doors, herded everyone into a room, and asked them, one by one, for their paperwork.
 
Carrera remembers helping a woman who was several months pregnant, and who began to hyperventilate. Another woman curled up inside a cardboard box for two hours, praying to God she wouldn’t sneeze, while authorities combed through the factory. There were probably 10 cars, Carrera says. They probably took away 100 people that day.
 
At least 300 workers were detained after a similar raid last march in New Bedford, Massachusetts. History repeats itself, Carrera says. “Nothing changes.”

Littlefield also reports from Mexico on some of the factors that influence immigration to the US:

Miguel Pickard, who works for a social-research organization in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, says that the mainstream US media often overlooks how neo-liberal policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have contributed dramatically to the rise in Mexican immigration. Following NAFTA’s implementation in 1994, subsidized US agricultural products flooded the Mexican markets, and Mexican farmers couldn’t compete with the cheap imports.
 
Immigration to the US became a “survival strategy,” Pickard says, for campesinos that could no longer make money selling corn and other agricultural products, as they had for many years. As a result, immigration to the US from Mexico tripled after 1994, leading “millions” of people to make the trip, he says.
 
NAFTA’s impact illuminates how the source of the Latino immigration “problem” is sometimes closer to home than we are willing to admit.

4/3/2008 10:26:20 AM by Not For Nothing | Comments [1] |  

In "Ready to rumba," my comprehensive 2003 story on increasing political activity by Latinos in Rhode Island, I looked at how the national GOP was trying to make inroads among Hispanics, and what it meant locally:

A popular East Providence politician once told Dan Garza that being a Republican in Rhode Island is like trying to pee up a rope. And as Garza knows, trying to cultivate Latino Republicans is even more difficult. Even with the chairman’s steady work and articulate manner, the Rhode Island chapter of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly has only about five members. But Garza, a pithy Ohio native and former Democrat who traces his heritage to Texas and Mexico, believes the GOP message of family, church, and self-reliance still has a lot of resonance for Latinos in the US.

Now, however, while Governor Carcieri's recent executive order on immigration has ginned up his support among critics of illegal immigration, Matt has the story of how it could erode backing for the GOP in Rhode Island:

Former Republican candidate for the RI House in District 73 and current chairman of the RI Hispanic Republican Assembly, David A. Quiroa has penned a scathing letter announcing his resignation from the RI Republican Party:

Adios RI GOP 

It is with great pain and sadness that I write this public announcement to state that I officially resign from my affiliation to the RI GOP and any other RI Republican committee, subcommittee, and appointments that I hold.

Effective on April 2, 2008 I become an unaffiliated voter thus seeking “Political Asylum” in the independent column. As an American citizen of Hispanic heritage I cannot remain as a member of a party where the leadership lacks vision for an integral inclusion of points of view – the tent is small and empty.

The Immigration Issue is an important issue for me, my family, my church, my friends and my brothers and sisters of the immigrant community. Not because I want open borders or want the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations to become a sanctuary State, but rather because I want the American spirit to be free of political correctness and opportunism – We need solutions.

These are times that need leadership. We need leadership with a foundation of solid political valor not political demagogy or speeches full with hypocrisy or cries of change that hide behind political correctness.

The current actions of the RI GOP have set the party back 50 years in the eyes of minorities. I make this statement as a proud American who has lived firsthand the unfortunate effects of discrimination. As such, I can tell you that racial profiling is REAL and it does take place everyday. Making our local and state police departments ICE venues does, at the subconscious level, put duress on our good and brave officers to engage in racial profiling. This added burden on our officers does not bring any solutions but rather complicates matters for the worse – Public safety will suffer.

I will remain active in civic public service, as I believe it is my duty as an American to better my country. However, I say Adios to the RI Republican Party and enter the independent field riding my brown elephant into the fields of independence.

4/2/2008 9:42:22 AM by Not For Nothing | Comments [2] |  

Friday will mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. On that sad April day, numerous American cities erupted into riots, but not Boston -- where James Brown, the legendary soul performer, helped to calm the frayed emotions of an entire city.

A new documentary on the subject, The Night James Brown Saved Boston, is due to be broadcast this Saturday, at 9 pm, by VH1:

April 5, 1968 -- the morning after one of the most catastrophic moments in American history: the assassination of Martin Luther King. The night before, America's inner cities began going up in flames. The night before, there was trouble in Roxbury, Boston's ghetto. Word on the street is that it's about to get worse. A lot worse.

At Boston's City Hall, Mayor Kevin White is trying to figure out what he can do to keep the fragile peace. Reportedly, he's about to cancel that day's biggest gathering -- a long-scheduled James Brown concert at the Boston Garden. Then, a call from one of Boston's most influential R&B DJs to the lone black city councilman points out the danger of that decision. Simply, he says, if the concert is cancelled, Boston might have the biggest uprising since the Boston Tea Party. And so, faced with the grim reality of making the wrong decision, the mayor and his team turn it around. Rather than cancel the show, they ask "Is there something James Brown can do to help?"

Up until this moment, James Brown has been an unsung civil rights hero. Being black in the music business, especially in the mid-1950s when James first hit his stride, made him a pioneering artist in a still-segregated business. "Crossing-over" wasn't easy, and he knew all too well what it meant to be "colored.". But James Brown doesn't just "feel the pain" of being black in America. Despite all of his success, he's still living it. And in songs like 1967's "Don't Be A Dropout," he's begun to speak out, saying what he believes down to his bones is true. In 1968, he will sing about America as his home, and he's also on the verge of his seminal social statement, "Say It Loud-I'm black and I'm proud."

4/1/2008 10:57:22 AM by Not For Nothing | Comments [0] |  

Immigration is fast becoming the latest incarnation of the casino story -- the kind of thing that's going to wind up on the front of the ProJo more days than not.

Speaking today while taping Newsmakers, Joe Trillo said Governor Carcieri's immigration crackdown could save the state a lot of money. Guest panelist Jen Lawless disagreed, contending that the state shouldn't tackle a complicated situation that has, thus far, eluded a new federal approach. 

RI Democrats have put out a release ripping the governor:

Sadly, the governor has been in office for five years and he has yet to grasp how to solve complicated problems. No matter the issue, you begin by bringing people together from diverse backgrounds to discuss the issues and how they can be solved. Instead, once again we witnessed another meaningless media orchestration by the Carcieri administration that was closer to a hate rally than a press conference,” said Tim Grilo, a first-generation American, whose parents emigrated from Portugal. Grilo serves as executive director of the Rhode Island Democratic Party.

 “Doesn’t the governor understand that hundreds of thousand of immigrants have legally come to Rhode Island’s borders for the past two centuries and have greatly contributed to our society? The tone Governor Carcieri set yesterday was deplorable. Instead of hosting a meeting and inviting respected leaders of the minority community to the table, he chose the low road and took another cheap political shot,” Grilo said. “Given his plummeting public approval numbers, this looks like little more than a desperate attempt to throw a little red meat to his withering right-wing base.”

 

“There are ramifications to Governor Carcieri’s actions that he clearly does not understand. His spiteful tone not only encourages racial profiling but it encourages outright discrimination against legal citizens of our state. I think it might be time to remind Governor Carcieri that he represents all Rhode Islanders, not just those that share his narrow points of view,” said State Representative Grace Diaz (D-Dist. 11), vice chair of the Rhode Island Democratic Party.

3/28/2008 3:20:21 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [7] |  

From the Jewish Federation of RI:

PROVIDENCE – A car on loan to a young Israeli spending a year in the U.S. on a community service mission was vandalized Thursday night while the woman was participating in a celebration of the Jewish holiday of Purim in Providence’s East Side neighborhood. Nothing was taken from the car, and the damage was limited to a broken window.

 

The incident is the third in less than a week involving Jewish targets in Providence, leading Jewish leaders to urge caution and stepped up security among synagogues, Jewish day schools and agencies.

 

“At this point, we do not know if these incidents are related,” said Marty Cooper, director of community relations and security coordinator for the Jewish Federation of Rhode Island. “But taken together, they are a reminder to our community that we must be vigilant about security and we must look out for one another.”

 

Last Saturday, two firebombs were thrown at the apartment of an Israeli working at the Brown University/Rhode Island School of Design Hillel, and on Wednesday three youths were arrested in connection with a firebombing at a vacant synagogue on Broad Street. The Providence Police Department is investigating both incidents, but has said they do not appear to be related.

 

In Thursday’s incident, Hadas Naki, 18, discovered the damage to her car when she left a Purim celebration at the Providence Hebrew Day School. Naki, who is in the U.S. for a year under the auspices of the Jewish Agency for Israel, works for the Rhode Island Bureau of Jewish Education and lives with a host family in Providence.

 

“We are thankful that Hadas was not hurt and that the Providence Police Department is investigating this vandalism seriously, particularly in light of the previous incidents this week,” said Cooper.

3/21/2008 1:27:35 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [2] |  

The New York Times today reports on how the Clinton campaign is trying to use the Jeremiah Wright issue to convince superdelegates that it could foul the Democratic Party's chances in November.

That argument could be Mrs. Clinton’s last hope for winning this contest.

Writing in the Nation, Bill Greider has plaudits for Obama:

His words should discourage the media frenzy of fear-driven gotcha. His speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday may also make the Clintons re-think their unsubtle exploitation of racial tension. But nobody knows the depth or strength of the commonplace fears streaming through the underground of public feelings. No one can be sure of what people will hear in Obama's confident embrace, beckoning Americans in all their differences, leaving out no one, to a better understanding of themselves.

 

The essence of the blues, as I learned to understand, is what Barack Obama accomplished in that speech -- the beautiful and hopeful wrapped in pain and sacrifice, the despairing truths about the black experience in America that mysteriously exalt the human spirit when we hear the music. We don't need to understand why or define the meaning. In this case, Obama himself is the expression of what we are feeling. His speech will live on as a complex, exalting memory, whatever happens, because what he said about us is true.

 

Remember, this is a very shrewd politician, not just highly intelligent and worldly, but wise about himself. He must have understood fully the nature of what he was doing in this speech because all of his life he has coped successfully with the dangerous cross-currents of race. In that speech, Obama was taking all the risks onto himself, going where no one had dared to go before in politics with awareness he might personally pay a price. That is what leaders do, isn't it?

Yet it would be naive to think that the Wright issue isn't going to linger or be simplistically resurrected down the road.

 

As Dan Kennedy notes:

The point is that it's all too easy to imagine some "independent" Republican group making a devastating ad out of the Obama-Wright connection this fall.

Continuing his Presidential Tote Board column, Steven Stark, writing in this week's Phoenix, sees promise and peril for Obama:

And being part of an historic movement that could well elect the first black president gives many voters (both black and white) an enormous sense of community. When Obama proclaims, “Yes we can,” what he’s implicitly saying is, if this nation can take the historic step of electing a black president, anything is possible (including putting aside partisanship, setting up national health insurance, etc.).

The media, too, have been caught up by these emotions. Yes, the press has fallen for many a charismatic candidate before, from Teddy Roosevelt to JFK and beyond. But when Obama receives similar adulatory treatment, the suspicion among some traditional Democrats is that it’s due to race.

Fortunately for Obama, he has time to deal with these impressions. What he needs to do, really, is use his rhetorical skills to construct a new narrative for himself, one that quietly places his story and ideals in a setting and motif that better resonates with working-class whites. His stump speech is brilliant in its appeal to some Independents and the young, and he did well Tuesday dealing with the issue of race in Philadelphia. But it’s only a start, and his large crowds and pulpit style reminiscent of protest rallies may now be alienating many voters that he has to reach to win.

The truth is, to get where he is today, Obama — in Winston Churchill’s words — has had to expend a lot of blood, toil, tears, and sweat. But unless voters can picture that very traditional American struggle for themselves, he will have a terrible time trying to get elected.

3/20/2008 10:53:40 AM by Not For Nothing | Comments [0] |  

Isn't there something a bit striking in how Obama's minister problem has come to a head at the same time as the fifth anniversary of the Iraq?

I mean, yes, some of Jeremiah Wright's statements are not the kind of thing to which you want to hitch your cart when you are running for president of the United States. And for those inclined to view this stuff in the dimmest possible light, it won't make a whit of difference that making fiery pronouncements fits squarely in the tradition of a particular style of preaching in the black church.

But say you want to have an elective war, with a tab in the trillions, tens of thousands dead, US troops being sent into battle without proper equipment, veterans getting shabby treatment, America's global standing seriously diminished, terrorists strengthened, and no end in sight?

No problem!

3/19/2008 8:17:53 AM by Not For Nothing | Comments [0] |  

Obama man Bill Bradley and US Representative Nita Lowey of New York, a Clinton supporter, offered more of the arguments to which we've already become accustomed in talking up their respective candidates this morning on Meet the Press.

For a more incisive look at the state of the Democratic contest, read a Matt Bai piece in today's New York Times Magazine, entitled What's the Real Racial Divide? 

Here's the heart of it:

It is also possible, however, that the disparity between Obama’s performance in urban primaries and rural caucuses tells us something larger — and counterintuitive — about race in America.

The assumption has always been that a black candidate should perform worse among white voters in states with less racial diversity because those voters are supposedly less enlightened. In fact, the reverse has been true for Obama: in the overwhelmingly white states of Wisconsin and Vermont, for instance, he carried 54 and 60 percent of the white voters respectively, according to exit polls, while in New Jersey he won 31 percent and in Tennessee he won 26 percent. As some bloggers have shrewdly pointed out, Obama does best in areas that have either a large concentration of African-American voters or hardly any at all, but he struggles in places where the population is decidedly mixed.

What this suggests, perhaps, is that living in close proximity to other races — sharing industries and schools and sports arenas — actually makes Americans less sanguine about racial harmony rather than more so. The growing counties an hour’s drive from Cleveland and St. Louis are filled with white voters whose parents fled the industrial cities of their youth before a wave of African-Americans and for whom social friction and economic competition, especially in an age of declining opportunity, are as much a part of daily life as traffic and mortgage payments. As Erica Goode wrote in these pages last year, Robert Putnam and other sociologists have, in fact, found that people living in more diverse areas evince less trust for others — no matter what their race. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise us that while white Democrats in rural states are apparently willing to accept the notion of a racially transcendent candidate, those living in the shadow of postindustrial atrophy seem to have a harder time detaching from enduring stereotypes, and they may be less optimistic that the country as a whole would actually elect a black candidate.

Part of the last sentence -- "the shadow of postindustrial atrophy" -- sounds like a ringer for Rhode Island, where, despite high hopes among some Obama supporters, Hillary cleaned his clock, by 12 18 points.

Could Obama have done better here, and by extension, in other states where Hillary has won? I think so. For starters, his campaign didn't seem to tailor a specific effort to target the older voters who abound in Rhode Island.

Ultimately, the implications are existential for Obama's presidential hopes, particularly as he is likely to face more heat over his minister problem.

As Bai writes, in closing out his piece:

Obama holds himself out as the candidate whose own life and lineage embody the nation’s new racial complexities. The question is whether he can win the sprawling states that embody them too.

3/16/2008 6:44:49 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [1] |  

I refined my previous post into a brief for this week's Phoenix. Here's the bottom line:

This is what the Democratic presidential contest has come to. Factcheck.org concluded, in contrast to some Obama supporters, that the Clinton campaign did not darken her rival’s skin color in a campaign commercial. Yet there’s little doubt that a “kitchen sink” strategy, in which Clinton threw anything and everything at Obama, is what helped her to climb back into the Democratic fight.

 

Considering this, her surrogates can be counted upon to continue their use of a variety of shady tactics.

 

Whether these efforts enable Clinton to snatch the nomination from Obama remains to be seen. If they do, however, it could be a Pyrrhic victory, since many of Obama’s supporters will have been so alienated that there’s no way they’d vote for Clinton in November.

3/12/2008 9:15:08 AM by Not For Nothing | Comments [1] |  

To this day, the Willie Horton commercial, a bit of political theater conjured up by George H.W. Bush's presidential campaign against Michael Dukakis in 1988, stands as a leading example of exploiting racial fears in the name of political gain.

Many Democrats, it seems safe to say, never expected that a Democrat, let alone Hillary Clinton, would use a similar tactic. Yet Geraldine Ferraro, a member of Clinton's finance committee, and the party's historic 1984 VP candidate, appears to be taking part in a calculated effort to exploit the undercurrent of racial prejudice in American life.

Let's look at her orginal remarks:

"I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against," she said. "For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Ferraro does not buy the notion of Obama as the great reconciler.

In an interview with Fox News, Ferraro basically reiterated her main talking point, disingenuously asserting that she is not a surrogate for the Clinton campaign, and playing to misplaced white resentment about Obama and sub rosa issues such as affirmative action.

" 'Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,' Ferraro said. 'Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?'...

I think Obama strategist David Axelrod is on the money here (h/t the Page):

"When you wink and nod at offensive statements, you're really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes."

3/11/2008 8:01:14 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [2] |  

A report that her campaign is prepared to face the end (knocked down here) and the jumping of her superdelegates to Barack Obama notwithstanding, Hillary Clinton is making a stepped-up effort to win Rhode Island's March 4 primary. Case in point: an additional campaign event tomorrow, in addition to a fundraiser at the home of US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and her afternoon speaking appearance at Rhode Island College:

Senator Clinton will discuss with patients, nurses, and doctors their struggles with the health care system and her plan for bringing health care to every Rhode Islander. The roundtable discussion will take place at 5:00 p.m., with doors opening at 3:30 p.m. Due to limited space, this event is not open to the public.

Sunday, February 24

Doors Open: 3:30 p.m. EST
Event Begins: 5:00 p.m. EST
Hillary Clinton Hosts a Health Care Roundtable
El Paisa Restaurant
598 Dexter Street
Central Falls, RI

This event is a three-fer for Clinton: 1) It allows her to be empathetic and to focus on her strong knowledge of health-care issues; 2) Staging the event in predominantly Latino Central Falls, at a Latino restaurant, is a not-so-subtle effort to win Rhode Island's coveted Latino vote; 3) In addition to points 1 and 2, the event is meant to gin up her support among working-class Rhode Islanders, some of whom have a sharp dislike for Obama.

Obviously, if Clinton can win Ohio and Rhode Island on March 4, winning two out of four would be much better than one out of four, and it would allow her to claim a tie coming out of the day. Texas is a dead heat at the moment, Clinton leads in Ohio, and Vermont is leaning for Obama.

While a poll cited on this blog earlier today showed Clinton to be holding an eight-point lead over Obama, there is no guarantee that this will hold up. Obama has broad support in this one-time bastion of Clinton support, so Hillary is wise to leave no stone unturned during her visit tomorrow.

2/23/2008 4:45:03 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [0] |  

It's no surprise that Bill Lynch, chair of the RI Democratic Party, and a Clinton supporter would make a pro-Hillary pick for a vacant superdelegate spot, but his selection of state Representative Grace Diaz as party vice chairwoman is extremely smart.

While I've theorized that Providence's influential Latino community could break for Obama, the two highest-profile Dominican-American elected officials in RI -- Diaz and state Senator Juan Pichardo -- are Clinton supporters. They are no doubt busily working to cultivate more support from their friends and neighbors for the senator from New York.

Meanwhile, besides Scott MacKay's report today on Diaz's selection, the ProJo notes that the Providence office for Clinton's campaign will have an open house at 5:30 tonight.

Lynch said Diaz is the first Latina-American to serve in such a high-ranking Democratic Party position. “I’m proud to be Democrat because this party has always represented the best interests of the working men and women of Rhode Island,” said Diaz. “I look forward to joining chairman Lynch and our state committee in continuing to advance an agenda that will make health care accessible and more affordable, bring good paying jobs to our communities and make sure our kids receive the benefits of a 21st-century education.”

Diaz represents District 11 on Providence’s South Side, a neighborhood that has been a magnet to waves of immigrants. Since the 18th century, the neighborhood has been home to native Protestants, and Scottish, Swedish, Irish, Jewish and Italian immigrants. In the 20th century, the neighborhood became the center of the city’s African-American community and in recent years it has served newer populations of Southeast Asians, Hispanics and Liberians.

As the party’s vice chairwomen, Diaz will lead the Democrats in Lynch’s absence. She will help to identify political positions as a member of the state party’s platform committee and be a voice for the state’s minority community, which in recent elections has overwhelmingly supported Democrats.

I reported on Diaz's compelling personal story in 2005:

Beyond epitomizing the opportunity that America still holds for immigrants, Diaz offers a striking example of how Latinas of modest means can engage and win local elections, even when faced with significant odds. The election of Diaz, who last year ousted incumbent representative Leon Tejada, a fellow Dominican, was noteworthy considering the male-dominated nature of Rhode Island’s Latino political establishment. As a leader in the organizing drive by home-based day care workers, Diaz also showed an ability to work simultaneously at several levels of the political process.

2/19/2008 9:13:46 AM by Not For Nothing | Comments [1] |  

So says Bob Moser, writing in the Nation.

With Obama being the first viable black presidential candidate, this is a fascinating element of the 2008 race.

When Barack Obama came a-cropper in New Hampshire after looking sweet in the polls, suspicions were immediately stirred that the dreaded "Bradley effect" had kicked in. Named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who lost a big edge for California governor in 1982 on the final day, the "effect" is said to kick in for white voters who tell pollsters they plan to vote for black candidates--and then suffer a kind of racial panic when they're actually hoisting their ballot-punchers on Election Day. ...

Exit polls eventually quelled the "Bradley effect" rumors in New Hampshire; Obama ended up with more of the white working-class vote on primary day than he'd gotten in the polls. And in the Southern primaries on Tsunami Tuesday, the "effect" was even more emphatically absent. Adding to his landslide in South Carolina, Obama trounced Hillary Clinton in Georgia and Alabama, and appears to have very narrowly won the border state of Missouri, the ultimate "purple state," where Clinton led in recent weeks by healthy margins.

The Alabama victory was unexpected, particularly because the state's most powerful black political organization had endorsed Clinton months ago. But Artur Davis, the state's own rising "post-racial" member of Congress, bucked them and got behind Obama early, spurring a surge of enthusiasm among black voters similar to Obama's overtaking of Clinton in South Carolina.   Clinton split the South on Tuesday, winning her semi-home state of Arkansas, along with Tennessee and Oklahoma. But in every case except Tennessee, where he lost by the expected 13 points, Obama's Southern vote was higher than his standing in the polls--inverting the Bradley effect. He scored 15 percent better than predicted in Alabama; seven percent higher than Missouri polls were showing; eleven points better than he'd polled in Georgia. In Georgia, Obama won 43 percent of white votes--almost double the share he captured in South Carolina.   That certainly doesn't mean that white Southerners--or the rest of white Americans--have somehow gone colorblind overnight. (If only.) The ultimate test of white voters' ability to look past race might come next November, when Obama--if he's the nominee--is likely to make a run at states like Georgia, where Clinton would almost certainly not even attempt to campaign. But Obama's Southern support--coupled with his impressive white vote in red states in the Midwest and Interior West--does indicate that one longtime manifestation of racialized voting just might be disappearing. And it's one more reason to believe that, unlikely as it once would have seemed, Barack Obama is the Democrat with the best chance to break through in Middle America and win the White House with a genuine mandate. Maybe we'll someday call that the Obama Effect.

2/6/2008 2:12:29 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [0] |  

The most striking thing in Charlie Bakst's recent column on what the governor and his wife are thinking as the budget battle is joined had to be this exchange involving Sue Carcieri:

Soon she turned the conversation to a protest last month against the governor’s layoff of three Southeast Asian interpreters. At a news conference, a 15-year-old Cambodian girl said, among other things, “The governor is sending a clear message to my community that we are not valued or welcome.” And a 16-year-old Vietnamese boy called his actions “racist.”

I wrote that if I were governor, I wouldn’t rest until I reached out to those two teens and others in the Southeast Asian community.

Now, on Tuesday night, Sue Carcieri suggested that if he were to meet with the teens it would be “rewarding bad behavior.”

She said, “First of all, I think they have mentors who are much older than them who are training them up. You know — how those terrorists have kids blow up, you know, Benazir Bhutto and so forth? You think the kids thought of it? I don’t think so.”

Now, the Providence Youth Student Movement (PRYSM) sends word that it will be holding a Wednesday afternoon news conference. The group says it will ask Sue Carcieri for an apology, and will invite the first lady and the governor to take part in a meeting to discuss the layoffs and related issues.

2/4/2008 11:13:54 AM by Not For Nothing | Comments [4] |  

Matt Bai has an astute read on the once-unimaginable way in which race has upended the Democratic presidential competition. Read the whole thing, but here's the nut:

Mr. Obama has always seen himself, near as we can tell, as a man who transcends ordinary conventions about race, who isn’t really a “black politician.” And yet here he is being compared to Jesse Jackson and depending heavily on his connection with black voters to forge the kind of coalition he needs. Now race is his firewall, not Mrs. Clinton’s — the main thing that makes him, at this late date, such a formidable insurgent. One can imagine that it’s not easy for Mr. Obama to get his head around that.

The post-South Carolina reality has to be even more disconcerting, though, for Senator Clinton. This is a woman, don’t forget, who came into politics during the civil rights era and who has, at every opportunity in her public life, dedicated herself, along with her husband, to the idea of racial equality. And now she wakes up to find—in fact, she probably understood it weeks ago, when she decided to g