Charlestown Town Council Candidate Jill Fonnemann tells Patch what she stands for

Along with commitment to the environment, Fonnemann wants to focus on small business, fair taxes, affordable housing and the economy

By Will Collette

Endorsed Democrat Jill Fonnemann gave an extensive interview to Joseph Hosey, local Patch Staff. Without the CCA’s non-resident cash reserve to pay for glossy mailers, this was a welcome opportunity for Jill to tell us more about why she is the best candidate running in Charlestown’s December 2 special election to fill the Town Council seat vacated by the untimely death of CRU’s Rippy Serra.

Here are some key excerpts from Jill’s interview, edited for clarity.

Age: 42

Party affiliation: Democrat

Family: Mother-Christine Fonnemann, Father- Francis Fonnemann III, Brothers-Mark Fonnemann, Brian Fonnemann. I live with my beloved animals being my dog Zsa Zsa, Vega my cat, my bearded dragon Javier and my elderly adopted corn snake Raphaello who had a rough start in life.

Education: 2001 Westerly High School Graduate-Senior, Superlative-Class Individualist

Occupation: Beverage director at the Charlestown Rathskeller Tavern

Previous or Current Elected Office: Charlestown Parks and Recreation Commission, January 2023-Present, as well as The Parks and Recreation Office Subcommittee

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform. The most time sensitive issue facing our ward is the repair of the western wall of our breachway. This will avoid future damage to our aquatic life, estuaries, oyster farms and ecosystem.

The reconstruction of the breachway is imperative to the people of Charlestown and to the economic health of our town. We rely on summer vacationers to visit while supporting local restaurants, shops, beaches and all of our other adjacent businesses. This directly hits home given my work in the restaurant industry.

The other issues that also define my campaign platform are:

• Work to maintain Charlestown's low tax rate through fiscally responsible policies
• Support affordable housing initiatives that will allow Charlestown’s seniors and children to afford housing in our town
• Make our children a priority by supporting our schools, quality education, sports programs, and extracurricular activities.
• Continue to support our local businesses
• Work to protect our environment, open spaces and restoration of the Charlestown Breachway.
• I am a big supporter of our environment and dark skies. I am an avid hiker, camper and lover of the outdoors. I feel like I can actually breathe and be at complete peace when I am surrounded by nature.
• I will also promote rehabbing run down, vacant, eyesores of buildings in town.
• Preserve the historic aspect that the town encompasses. I live in one of the 10 oldest houses in town built in 1732

What are the critical differences between you and other candidates seeking this post? 

One example that sets me apart from the other candidates is that I am the only candidate that is known for organizing/executing large scale, well attended events that directly give back to our residents, more often than not, single handedly.

I realize that I don't have as much experience as the other two candidates possess, as they have been involved in commissions/councils and organizations much longer than I have. But I should say that one of the two candidates is 37 years older and the other 28 years older than I. I truly hope my past precedes me at my 42 years of age. I am a quick study and will delve into research to be well informed. I am not afraid of a challenge either.

I have a large presence in our community and am known for being kind and staying true to my word. I am a natural mediator/peacemaker, I will always fight for what I think is right

I refuse to join in on any nonsense that may rear its head in the next month. I am not intimidated and will refrain from fueling any upcoming negative tactics that may rear their ugly head in the next month. But I do know that if you give into being scared and freezing, you will never know how to learn and grow.

I feel like I have the ability to see different sides of a story by actually listening to people. These days everyone is shouting so loudly at each other, instead of hearing what people actually have to say. It costs nothing to be respectful of the fact that we are all different and people feel differently about things.

People know that they can continue to rely on me to lend a helping hand/shoulder to cry on/offer advice to anyone in need.

Nothing in life has ever been handed to me and I know what it is like to struggle. Everything I have achieved, I have earned myself through self teachings. I have to say that the person I have grown to be makes me proud. I strive to be the best version of myself that I can be, which of course is a lifelong practice.

I have the drive, motivation, creativity and unstoppable energy to put 100% into this endeavor. I am not afraid of a challenge, no matter how big or small and refused to be classified as a quitter. I am a quick study and will delve into researching a topic and educating myself. Working in the restaurant industry for over 28 years will teach you how to deal with every kind of person of all walks of life and grow the thickest skin.

I can talk to, relate, listen and create an instant rapport with most people. I am constantly putting out small fires through rational thinking, strategy, empathy and grace. I work well in high stress/hectic situations and thrive in that environment. I am a natural leader, my own person and dance, (not walk,) to the beat of my own drum. I have never been one to fold or conform to what social society teaches us to be if I don't agree with it. My high school superlative was class individualist and I haven't lost any momentum since.

Long story short, I truly hope to add to the existing positive momentum that we have seen with the Town Council for the past two years. I aim and very much look forward to working for the people in our town and working cooperatively with the Charlestown Town Council and the State of Rhode Island. If given the chance to be elected, I vow that I will ensure that all of this happens.

The Election has already begun

Early voting, in person at Town Hall, began on November 12. Mail ballots will soon be arriving for those who requested them. Mine arrived on Saturday, meaning Cathy and I will proudly vote for Jill.

Special elections like this rarely draw many voters – I’d be surprised if more than 1000 ballots get cast. Those of you who pay attention to town politics, such as most Progressive Charlestown readers, will make the difference.

While the Charlestown Residents United (CRU) will continue to hold at least four of the five Town Council seats, adding Jill will give Charlestown an excellent shot of new blood. As I’ve made plain HERE and HERE and HERE, returning CCA spokesperson Bonnita Van Slyke to the Council would be a terrible mistake.

While I am 76 and not dead yet, I often do feel my age and recognize that though Charlestown has a rapidly aging population, we need younger leaders. Jill has that youthful enthusiasm and drive to serve that are, for me at least, a distant memory.

I’m glad Jill brought up the issue of age. Typically, no one ever does in Charlestown elections given that, with some exceptions, most candidates are Boomers like me. Age cost Joe Biden the 2024 election and age is currently causing mayhem and chaos in our nation. It’s an issue that can’t be ignored.

I’m voting for Jill and for Charlestown’s future. Hope you will, too.

Thank you for your attention to this matter

Good and evil

Want to make America healthy again? Stop fueling climate change

Bobby Kennedy Jr. used to believe in climate change, but his master King Donald doesn't

Jonathan Levy, Boston University; Howard Frumkin, University of Washington; Jonathan Patz, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Vijay Limaye, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Bobby's co-authored book is still on Amazon but
he's out of the climate fight

If you’ve been following recent debates about health, you’ve been hearing a lot about vaccines, diet, measles, Medicaid cuts and health insurance costs – but much less about one of the greatest threats to global public health: climate change.

Anybody who’s fallen ill during a heat wave, struggled while breathing wildfire smoke or been injured cleaning up from a hurricane knows that climate change can threaten human health. Studies show that heat, air pollution, disease spread and food insecurity linked to climate change are worsening and costing millions of lives around the world each year.

The U.S. government formally recognized these risks in 2009 when it determined that climate change endangers public health and welfare.

However, the Trump administration is now moving to rescind that 2009 endangerment finding so it can reverse U.S. climate progress and help boost fossil fuel industries, including lifting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and power plants. The administration’s arguments for doing so are not only factually wrong, they’re deeply dangerous to Americans’ health and safety.

Health risks and outcomes related to climate change. World Health Organization

As physicians, epidemiologists and environmental health scientists who study these effects, we’ve seen growing evidence of the connections between climate change and harm to people’s health. More importantly, we see ways humanity can improve health by tackling climate change.

Here’s a look at the risks and some of the steps individuals and governments can take to reduce them.

Study challenges advice to avoid coffee for those with atrial fibrillation

Coffee may help protect against A-Fib

by University of California, San Francisco

Edited by Andrew Zinin

Drinking coffee can protect against atrial fibrillation (A-Fib), a common heart rhythm disorder that causes rapid, irregular heartbeat and can lead to stroke and heart failure.

Doctors typically recommend that people with heart issues like A-Fib avoid caffeine out of fear that it will trigger symptoms. But a study by UC San Francisco and the University of Adelaide has concluded that drinking a cup of caffeinated coffee a day reduced A-Fib by 39%.

"Coffee increases physical activity which is known to reduce atrial fibrillation," said Gregory M. Marcus, MD, MAS, who holds the Endowed Professorship in Atrial Fibrillation Research and is an electrophysiologist at UCSF Health. Marcus is the senior author of the paper, which appears Nov. 9 in JAMA. "Caffeine is also a diuretic, which could potentially reduce blood pressure and in turn lessen A-Fib risk. Several other ingredients in coffee also have anti-inflammatory properties that could have positive effects."

A-Fib has been increasing in recent years along with obesity and the aging population. A-Fib, which has been diagnosed in more than 10 million U.S. adults, is estimated to affect up to 1 in 3 people.

Researchers named their study DECAF for Does Eliminating Coffee Avoid Fibrillation? It is the first randomized clinical trial to investigate the link between caffeinated coffee and A-Fib.

Mass Deportations Aren’t Helping Workers. They’re Tanking The Economy.

But Trump himself is hiring immigrants as waiters, kitchen staff and farm workers

By A.J. Schumann

Trump companies are
hiring 566 immigrant workers in 2025
at their hotels, golf courses and vineyards 

Donald Trump rode back into office by leaning on the same faux populist refrain he weaponized a decade ago: immigrants are “taking your jobs!”

Since then, Trump has launched an immigration crackdown of historic proportions. Yet rather than turning things around for American workers, we’re seeing the weakest labor market in years.

The Department of Homeland Security claims that 1.6 million undocumented immigrants have left the country voluntarily since Trump took office. Another 527,000 have been deported as a result of sweeping and often brutal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.

That should mean more job openings for U.S.-born workers, right? Wrong. Over the same period, employers announced more than 946,000 job cuts — the highest year-to-date total since 2020 — while hiring plans have fallen to a 14-year low.

The forced removal of so many workers is projected to shrink the nation’s gross domestic product by as much as 6.8 percent — a deeper hit than the one sustained during the Great Recession.

In key industries, the results will be even worse.

For instance, with immigrants accounting for nearly a third of long-term care workers, half of all nursing homes have stopped taking new residents. Meanwhile, family farms, already thinly staffed, have been watching their immigrant workforce dwindle — a trend with worrying implications for food production.

Trump’s brand of right-wing populism twists economic pain into a national grievance. It insists that ordinary people struggle not because of billionaires, lobbyists, and political insiders — all of whom the president golfs alongside — but because of migrants.

It’s a narrative that’s gotten global mileage.

For Trump, There Is No Rock Bottom

The regime’s depravity will continue to shock the world until it is removed.

Paul Street for Common Dreams

“For anyone holding their breath,” someone said online a couple weeks ago, “waiting for this fascist Trump regime to hit rock bottom: There is no rock bottom. Their depravity will continue to shock the world, week after week, for as long as they hold power.”

It is a good time to reflect on how true this statement is as we approach the one-year anniversary of Donald “Poisoning Our Blood” Trump’s second presidential election.

Mad “king” Trump is now blowing up random boats, slaughtering innocents in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, claiming without a hint of a wisp of a scent of evidence that the people he is massacring in cold violation of international and national law and basic decency are “enemy combatant” narco traffickers “at war with the United States.”

Trump is gathering major military forces off the coast of Venezuela in preparation for a likely regime-change war on that nation. He may also attack Colombia, whose president has angered him by criticizing his extrajudicial executions in international waters.

Trump and the key people around him... are dedicated sociopathic fascists eager to stamp out the last embers of American democracy, decency, deliberation, and rule of law by any and all means “necessary.”

He is sending $20 billion to Argentina to back his fellow far-right president there as 42 million US Americans face hunger because he is cutting off their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

Former SNAP recipients will join masses of federal workers Trump has thrown out of work on food lines as Trump demands $230 million from his Department of Justice as “compensation” for its (badly belated) indictment (under former President Joe Biden) of Trump for… you know, trying to overthrow electoral democracy and the rule of law at the end of his first horrific administration (and for absconding with classified documents and obstructing efforts to retrieve them).

Trump has just maniacally torn down the East Wing of the White House, planning to replace that former historic landmark with a gargantuan, gaudy ballroom funded by some of his favorite capitulating corporations, including the tech giants Google, Meta, and Palantir and the leading “defense” firm Lockheed Martin.

Where the Epstein files went

How ICE’s plan to monitor social media 24/7 threatens privacy and civic participation

The end of even the pretense of online privacy

Nicole M. Bennett, Indiana University

When most people think about immigration enforcement, they picture border crossings and airport checkpoints. But the new front line may be your social media feed.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has published a request for information for private-sector contractors to launch a round-the-clock social media monitoring program. The request states that private contractors will be paid to comb through “Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, VK, Flickr, Myspace, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Reddit, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc.,” turning public posts into enforcement leads that feed directly into ICE’s databases.

The request for information reads like something out of a cyber thriller: dozens of analysts working in shifts, strict deadlines measured in minutes, a tiered system of prioritizing high-risk individuals, and the latest software keeping constant watch.

I am a researcher who studies the intersection of data governance, digital technologies and the U.S. federal government. I believe that the ICE request for information also signals a concerning if logical next step in a longer trend, one that moves the U.S. border from the physical world into the digital.

Here's a surprise: New research finds no clear link between acetaminophen (Tylenol) and autism debunking Trump and Bobby Jr. false statements

DO NOT take medical advice from Trump or Bobby Jr.

BMJ Group

An extensive review of existing studies, published in The BMJ on November 10, finds no clear evidence that using acetaminophen (Tylenol) during pregnancy increases the risk of autism or ADHD in children. The new analysis was conducted in response to growing public debate about the safety of acetaminophen use while pregnant.

Researchers reported that the reliability of earlier studies and reviews on this topic is rated as low to critically low. They noted that any apparent associations observed in past studies may be influenced by factors shared within families, such as genetics and environmental conditions, rather than by the medication itself.

Community health centers provide care for 1 in 10 Americans, but funding cuts threaten their survival

Groups like our local Wood River Health Center provide vital service

Jennifer Spinghart, University of South Carolina

Editor's Note: Group like 49-year-old Wood River are chronically underfunded and, in these times, face harsh cutbacks. 

That makes them even more dependent on community support, which is a lot of work. Recently, Wood River held its major annual fundraiser and raised $125,000. But it takes a lot more than that to stay open, so please give them your generous support.  - Will Collette

Affordable health care was the primary point of contention in the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, which hit 43 days on Nov. 12, 2025.

This fight highlights a persistent concern for Americans despite passage of the landmark Affordable Care Act 15 years ago.

In 2024, 27.2 million Americans, or 8.2% of the population, lacked health insurance entirely. A significant number of Americans have trouble affording health care, even if they do have insurance. The tax and spending package signed by President Donald Trump into law in July 2025 puts a further 16 million Americans at risk of losing their health care insurance by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Many people who lack or have insufficient health insurance seek health care from a network of safety net clinics called community health centers. Even though community health centers provide care for 1 in 10 people in the U.S. – and 1 in 5 in rural areas – many people are unaware of their role in the country’s medical system.

As an emergency physician and the director of the student-led community health program at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Greenville, I collaborate with the community health center in Greenville and am closely familiar with how these types of providers function.

These clinics often operate on razor-thin margins and already function under continual demands to do more with less. Slated cuts to health care spending from the tax and spending bill and funding uncertainties that were driven by the shutdown threaten to destabilize them further.

Bannon Tells GOP: ‘Seize the Institutions’ of Government Now or We’re ‘Going to Prison’ After 2028

Trump advisor calls for MAGA to mount fascist takeover

Jon Queally for Common Dreams

Far-right podcaster and former top presidential advisor Steve Bannon told a crowd of aspiring conservative staffers on Capitol Hill this week that the job of Republicans between now and the midterm election next year is to seize complete control of government institutions and turn as many of Donald Trump’s executive orders as possible into law as a way to avoid politic defeat in the coming years and, ultimately, keep MAGA loyalists from being tried and sent to jail.

“I’ll tell you right, as God as my witness, if we lose the midterms and we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison,” Bannon told the crowd Wednesday at an awards event hosted by the Conservative Partnership Academy. This group offers training and certifications to aspiring right-wing ideologues working in politics and government.

Bannon, who has already served time in prison for refusing to submit to a congressional subpoena related to his role as a top aide to Trump during his first term, included himself among those who might be targeted if Republicans lost power.

In his remarks, Bannon said Tuesday’s election results in New York City, Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere—where Democrats swept the GOP—should be seen as a warning to Trump’s MAGA base, but called for an intensification of the agenda, not a retreat.

Ready, set, GO!

Trump's economic fantasies

Now he wants to give every American a $2000 payment from the trillions of dollars he has imagined the US has collected in tariffs charged to American companies for imported foreign goods...
 

South County Hospital used to be consistently rated "A" for patient safety - rating drops to "C"

South County, Roger Williams hospitals slip in new national ranking while Westerly Hospital continues its "A" streak

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

Four of Rhode Island’s nine acute care hospitals earned the highest marks in the latest report by a national nonprofit that ranks patient safety. But three slipped one grade.

Rhode Island Hospital and the Miriam Hospital in Providence, Newport Hospital, and Westerly Hospital all earned an A grade from the Leapfrog Group in results published Thursday.

Landmark Medical Center in Woonsocket received a B. Kent Hospital, South County Hospital in South Kingstown and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital in North Providence all received a C. Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence received a D.

None of the Ocean State’s hospitals received the lowest grade of F. 

VA hospitals, children’s hospitals, psychiatric hospitals are excluded from the report.

The Washington, D.C.-based Leapfrog Group assigns letter grades to hospitals based on its surveys plus safety data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The ratings are updated twice a year, in spring and fall, and calculated across over 30 measures related to errors in care, infections, injuries, and how effectively hospitals minimize and prevent harm to patients.