Month: August 2021

Cancel Cancel Culture: WaterFire Eye-to-Eye speaker encouraged her audience to consider a different route to change

WaterFire recently hosted the latest in their Eye-to-Eye series of public lectures intended to inspire thoughtful conversations around timely social topics. The event was co-sponsored by Leadership Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Foundation and featured Loretta Ross, a professor from Smith College who came to discuss the topic of cancel culture. Her ]premise is […]

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Happy Days Are Here Again: The return of the Newport Folk Festival

After a year off for something obscure called COVID, the Newport Folk Festival returned to Fort Adams to rage again. The festival started inauspiciously Friday, as I could see lightning flashing in the horizon driving in. There was a shelter-in-place warning in effect when I arrived, which is odd when there is no place to shelter. […]

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Eviction moratorium extended to Oct 3: Covers 90% US population

UPDATE: This extension of the eviction moratorium was ended by the US Supreme Court on Aug 26. See our follow-up: motifri.com/eviction-october-2 With an estimated six million Americans behind on their rent due to the pandemic, the expiration of the federal eviction moratorium on July 30 set off alarms about the possibility of a major economic […]

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RI Unemployment Insurance website fixed: Was blocking weekly reporting

Required weekly recertification for unemployment insurance was failing on the RI Department of Labor and Training (DLT) website, according to hundreds of reports on Twitter. DLT advised Motif at 9:41am the problem had been fixed, and users could now certify. Motif broke this story today just before 5am — twitter.com/MotifMagRI/status/1421757112884121601 — asking for reports as […]

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