New Year’s resolutions tend to be short-lived. We usually make them after weeks of holiday binging, comforting ourselves with the thought that the damage can be undone through will power alone. So what if we’ve made the same resolutions two years in a row? Third time’s the charm! Whose bright idea was this? Surprisingly, we […]
I am not optimistic in the short term, but I am in the long term. I’ve watched the country go through terrible upheavals, back to the Vietnam War and the election of Richard Nixon as president, which in combination normalized cynicism about whether society is trying to help or hurt ordinary people. The leaked Pentagon […]
Over 30 Rhode Island organizations, court workers, and politicians, including the Providence City Council, penned an open letter calling on Governor Daniel McKee, Chief Justice Paul Suttell, and the RI Judiciary to immediately implement virtual court hearings in response to the brutal kidnappings of immigrants by ICE at RI courthouses. These organizations and individuals have […]
The atmosphere in the room is teemantalizing with excitement. People whisper to their seat neighbors as the lights dim. It’s 30 minutes after 2 pm, the scheduled time of the event’s start, and they’re *still* letting people in as the line curved around the block. I should know, I had to pass through it twice […]
Reporting by Steve Ahlquist and Sabrina Ruiz On October 18, at least 15,000 people gathered outside the Rhode Island State House in Providence, joining countless other cities and towns across the United States to condemn President Trump’s fascist overreach and to declare that America has no kings, and the power belongs to the people. Here […]
Our Republic was designed around independence to prevent any one person, institution, or corporation from taking too much power over neighboring communities, organizations, or government branches. The Constitutional laws, courts and Congress that reflect most Americans’ virtues enforce the checks and balances on executive power and partake in a social contract in which Trump has […]
Mayor-elect of New York City Zohran Mamdani is a self-avowed “democratic socialist,” and his policy proposals include free public transit, free child care, city-run grocery stores, and free everything else, all funded by increasing taxes on corporations and wealthy city residents. Mamdani has based his suddenly rocketing popularity on telling people what they want to […]
I live in North Kingstown, and a friend of mine, a retired police officer, rented the downstairs half of a house down the street from me. At least he did until last year when his landlord told him the rent wasn’t nearly as high as the market would bear, and raised it again. When my […]
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been increasingly scary and threatening under the Trump administration. A few days ago, armed and masked agents converged on a Chicago apartment house, some even rappelling onto the roof from military helicopters. They forced men, women, and children outside, even naked, restraining them with zip-tie handcuffs. Most of […]
Political violence is a bad thing from any perspective, but there is a long tradition of it. In the classic 1970 collection of over one hundred primary source documents American Violence, the earliest account is Pilgrims versus Puritans from 1634 and the most recent, two years before the book was published, are the Chicago Riots […]