Earth-shaking news or Nothingburger?

An end to Blake Filippi’s career-ending lawsuit

By Will Collette

Last Friday, the news media carried an announcement that due to Speaker of the RI House Joe Shekarchi’s decision to reactive the Joint Committee on Legislative Services (JCLS), Charlestown’s former state Rep. Blake “Flip” Filippi would drop his lawsuit against General Assembly leaders.

Shekarchi actually told the Democratic caucus he would reactivate the JCLS in 2020 but, on the advice of House lawyers, he held off due to pending litigation, which we’ll discuss below.

This Joint Committee was supposed to be a mechanism for Senate and House leaders of both parties to get together and make big decisions about the operations of the General Assembly.  

On paper, this is an important committee. In reality, it’s just another committee. Three years ago, Filippi was in a feud with then House Speaker Nick Mattiello. Mattiello didn’t think much of the JCLS and simply didn’t convene it, making decisions himself that otherwise would be sent to the JCLS.

Flip needed an issue to frame his feud with Mattiello as one of good versus evil, liberator versus tyrant. He decided the JCLS was the ticket so, in addition to a relentless effort to stir up public outrage, he filed a lawsuit.

Well, the JCLS thing never really got a lot of traction. As Filippi’s own lawsuit noted, the JCLS had not met in over a decade – and apparently no one except Flip noticed. Or cared.

Make no mistake – Mattiello was a tyrant and was broadly despised by critics left and right. But as some pundits put it, the JCLS is such an “inside baseball” issue that it’s really not an issue at all. Quick: without referring back to paragraph one, what’s the JCLS’ full name?

Is there anyone who follows politics in the state of Rhode Island who was shocked to hear that Mattiello made all the decisions? 

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Blake “Flip” Filippi made the surprise announcement that he was not going to run for re-election. Flip had a relatively safe seat, thanks to a lot of campaigning for him by the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA), plus he was the leader of the House Republicans.

But he gave it all up, saying that he needed to focus all of his attention on his JCLS lawsuit.

WTF? Over the past 8 years, if there’s one thing Charlestown has learned about Blake “Flip” Filippi is that he needs to be in the public spotlight all the time. Sure, Flip got a lot of coverage after making this announcement until Tina Spears’ landslide election to replace him. But after that, not so much.

I cannot believe that Flip gave up a job that gave him what he craves most – power and attention – to work on a piddling lawsuit about an agency no one’s heard about, or cares.

Filippi tweeted:

I’m thrilled Leader Chippendale and Speaker Shekarchi have agreed to regular meetings of the JCLS – which was the goal of the lawsuit I filed in 2000. With their agreement in place, I’m more happy [sic] to dismiss my lawsuit, and look forward to the first JCLS meeting in over 10-years.

Except that Flip got his dates wrong. He filed his lawsuit in 2020, not 20 years earlier, and had to refile it in 2021 because his first suit was dismissed.

I still can’t believe Filippi didn’t run for re-election for this stupid lawsuit. If you have any theories or better, proof of why Filippi didn’t run for re-election, please e-mail Progressive Charlestown. 

In a lot of ways, Filippi reminds me of former Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey who was a thing for a few years in the early 2000s when he seemed like a dangerous rising star in conservative Republican politics. After being mayor for four years, he made challenged Lincoln Chafee in the 2006 Republican Senate primary.

Laffey lost, as did Chafee in the General election to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

Like Filippi, Laffey went into cattle ranching after moving to Colorado. He kept his hand in, though, running for the US House in 2014. Laffey came in last among four candidates vying for the Republican nomination.

Like Filippi, Laffey is a raging narcissist with a casual relationship with the truth, wacky conservative politics but a certain amount of charm that appeals to some segments of the electorate. Despite his cattle ranch, you could say Steve Laffey is all hat, no cow.

But you can’t keep a good narcissist down. Laffey has just declared that he is now running for the Republican nomination for President in 2024. Despite reports in the news media that Nikki Haley is the first declared challenger to Donald Trump, Laffey actually beat her by a couple weeks. But then, no one outside Rhode Island ever heard of him or takes him seriously.

Maybe Filippi will also throw his cowboy hat into the Presidential ring too.

What a total crock!

Flip talks about why he quit

By Will Collette

I should just be happy that Charlestown state Rep. Blake “Flip” Filippi is leaving and not dwell on the reasons why. However, Flip just came out with his “reasons” and once again, I can’t helped but being sucked into his craziness vortex.

Here’s the lede from Bill Seymour’s article in the current issue of the Independent:

“State Representative Blake Filippi said he will not seek his State House seat again so that he can continue leading the fight against a special committee controlling nearly $50 million for special-interest projects.”

What? So Flip, with no warning to his party, decides just a few days before the election candidate filing deadline that he’s quitting so he can carry on a lawsuit that he is bound to lose like he loses most of his lawsuits about an issue no one but him seems to care about?

Flip claimed:

“My private polling showed that I could easily win” but that “I can’t do the case and run for representative.  I can’t do both…fixing JCLS is fighting a cancer at the highest level of government.”

Further, he says:

“I am left with having to do this myself. The case is coming up and so far I’ve put over $100,000 worth of work into the case.”

He filed his lawsuit two years ago when Nick Mattiello was Speaker of the House.

Sorry, Flip, but this is bullshit. Throughout the eight years we’ve known you, you’ve picked up lawsuits and then either lost or dropped them.

You’ve taken on causes that started out being ever so important but then you got distracted by something shiny and walked away. Like the way you botched the shoreline access bill. Like the way you botched Charlestown’s requested legislation on quarries year after year for the past eight years. Like you have with just about every piece of legislation you ever sponsored.

Steadfastness to ANY cause – other than your own glorification – has never been your strong suit.

If you had said you were leaving the House to marry one of your cows, or to turn Ballard’s into a casino, or to join a militia group in Idaho or to run away with the circus, that would be more credible.

I am convinced the real reason why Blake Filippi abruptly decided to end his legislative career is something a lot more interesting than his desire to follow through on some arcane bit of litigation. Frankly, Flip’s explanation is pretty lame and obviously a distraction.

But the truth will come out.

How can we miss you when you won’t go away?

Former Speaker Mattiello returns to the RI State House… as a Lobbyist

By Steve Ahlquist in UpRiseRI

Former Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello returned to the the Rhode Island State House on March 9 for the first time in a “year plus.” 

The former Speaker, who represented House District 15 in Cranston, was soundly defeated by his Republican challenger Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung in 2020. 

After waiting a year, as the law mandates, Mattiello registered as a lobbyist with Westminster Consulting Ltd, and collected clients such as Lifespan, The Providence Journal, and RIALA (Rhode Island Assisted Living Association).

“Mr Chairman, members of the committee, it’s a pleasure for me to be here. It’s been just about a year plus since I’ve been in the building so it’s really nice to see all of you and to be in such nice surroundings,” said Lobbyist Mattiello before addressing the substance of the bill.

Here’s the video:

Lazy arguments and unexplored privilege are not the worst things about RI’s ‘historian laureate’

Justifying slavery, dismissing new historical insights, disparaging protest are not what we expect from the state's historian laureate

By Phil Eil in Uprise RI

Last October, I wrote a piece  for Uprise about Rhode Island “historian laureate” Patrick Conley, and what makes his continued grip on this state-sanctioned title so strange. 

In the piece, I pointed out that, while Conley does have solid academic credentials, he’s also got a lot of other baggage. 

He worked closely for disgraced Providence mayor Buddy Cianci. He once spearheaded a failed “personal quest” to develop Providence’s industrial waterfront into “$300 million mixed-use development.”

He holds, or once held, the distinctions – which he touts on his own website – of “Providence’s largest, private landowner (in terms of number of parcels owned)” and “holder of more Rhode Island real estate titles (via tax sale purchases) than any person in Rhode Island history.” 

I also wrote about his history of arguments that seem out-of-sync not just with Rhode Island’s progressive electorate, but our current cultural moment of reckoning with the past. To pick just one example: as protests against police brutality roiled the nation following the death of George Floyd, Conley wrote about “The current irrational and hyperbolic political discourse – both right and left, but especially left.”

And, in addition, I wrote about the troubling circumstances of Conley’s re-appointment to this position in early 2020. Unlike the first go-round, there had been no public call for applications this time. The transaction took place unannounced and behind the scenes, with only a small, after-the-fact acknowledgement to Public’s Radio reporter Ian Donnis.

Unfortunately, the things that irked me about Conley last year have not only persisted – I daresay they’ve gotten worse, and with higher stakes. Conley remains our “laureate,” and he continues to disseminate his stale, embarrassing, poorly-argued opinions in our state’s newspapers – always accompanied by a reminder of his honorary title that conveys the idea he’s speaking for all Rhode Islanders.

In December he wrote a piece for the Providence Journal attempting to refute accusations of racism while also, bafflingly, telling Black folks why they shouldn’t celebrate Juneteenth on its widely-accepted date.

In August, he penned a letter to The Independent that was ostensibly about an overlooked Rhode Island-raised Olympic athlete, but which quickly veered off-subject to a defense of the Founding Fathers’ slaveholding.

“Some presentistic accounts of American History condemn Washington, Jefferson, and Madison for slaveholding, while ignoring the fact that in their time slavery was global and an accepted practice by humans, whether in America, Africa, or Asia,” he wrote. “These Founders were born and raised in the slave-ridden culture of Virginia from which they could not escape.”

Then, this weekend, the Journal ran an op-ed in which Conley defended Christopher Columbus’s record of slaveholding with that same rationale: “Such a brutal fate dealt to humans in 1500 shocks us in 2021, but enslavement of an enemy was common practice at that time in Europe, Asia, Africa, and among most Native American tribes.”

Defending the slaveholding of prominent historical figures is apparently a crusade for Conley. 

General Assembly bill to end discriminatory process of solemnizing marriages is a moment for Pride

Not only should the Governor sign the bill, he should do so as a celebration of Pride.

By Steve Ahlquist

EDITOR'S NOTE: For some legislators, the only bills they can get passed are those that authorize a person otherwise not eligible to officiate over a marriage to do so. Take Charlestown's state rep Blake "Flip" Filippi, for example. These kinds of bills, plus resolutions of condolences and congratulations are just about the only legislation Flip gets passed.   - Will Collette

Six years ago I was writing at RIFuture.org, and I stumbled across an interesting piece of legislative discrimination. Despite Marriage Equality – the right for LGBTQ couples to marry – being passed in 2013, there were some legislators so blinded by homophobia that they had figured out a way to continue to vote against LGBTQ marriages two years later. 

In fact the practice of sitting in judgement on marriages, certifying some as worthy of a vote and some as unworthy, continues in some form or another to this very day. But that may be ending soon.

Is RI Finally Ready To Legalize Marijuana?

It's time

By BETH COMERY in the Providence Daily Dose

Could this be the year? The conversation surrounding the legalization of recreational marijuana for adults sounds different this year. 

Once again, as he has done every year for at least a decade, Senator Josh Miller — along with Senate Majority Leader Michael J. McCaffrey — has introduced a bill that would do just that. According to the ProJo:

The two sponsors said they envisioned the first retailers would probably be the state’s medical marijuana dispensaries (now three, but expected to grow to a total of nine this year) since those establishments already have the regulated infrastructures in place to pivot to selling recreational cannabis as well.

Good idea. I can attest that the Thomas Slater Compassion Center in Providence runs like clockwork. The three existing centers could then grow to a total of nine this year. And this sounds promising:

In a briefing with reporters Tuesday before the bill’s introduction, the sponsors said their 68-page proposal could meld well with the plan Gov. Dan McKee is expected to introduce Thursday legalizing recreational use of marijuana.

McKee may have noticed the the financial benefits being enjoyed by states across the country. For many marijuana reform advocates like myself*, legalizing marijuana was primarily a social justice issue and the Miller/McCaffrey bill has not forgotten the disproportionate impact experienced by people of color and impoverished communities these past 50 years by our failed war on drugs.

“We want to ensure as many Rhode Islanders as possible have the opportunity to participate in this new economy,” said Miller. “That is why we set low, tiered licensing fees and we are also calling for the creation of a cannabis equity fund to help individuals who have been directly and indirectly impacted by our past policy of prohibition.”

The fund would provide free assistance to people wanting to expunge their criminal records for previous marijuana-related offenses.

This is the least we can do.

Make sure your senators and house reps know you support this bill! Call or email now: It really matters when a legislator knows that their inbox is overflowing with support.

In 2017, ex-Speaker Mattiello once again made sure the legislation never made it out of committee by forming a totally pointless and unneeded “study commission.” At this time many of us decided our time and resources would be better spent working towards Mattiello defeat. The excellent Marijuana Policy Project has more on the history of Rhode Island’s marijuana legislation.)

*As a speaker for LEAP (Law Enforcement Action Partnership) I testified several years at the state house in support of marijuana reform. Should this bill finally go through this year, I will be writing about and thanking all the other committed advocates whose testimony illuminated this issue so persuasively and helped bring about this long overdue result.

On with the show

The General Assembly leadership battle is over, and just beginning

By Steve Ahlquist 

House Trumplicans are expected to vote for Charlestown's
state rep (and House GOP Minority Leader) Blake "Flip"
Filippi. His role in the upcoming legislative session
will be to be as big a pain in the ass as possible.

The Rhode Island General Assembly opens its 2021 session today, Tuesday, January 5. Under Covid, of course, it will not be an ordinary session. 

The State House remains closed, so the House of Representatives will be meeting at 2pm at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Providence and the Senate will be meeting at Rhode Island College‘s Sapinsley Hall at 4pm. Both sessions will be carried by Capitol TV.

After new members of both houses are sworn in, there will be a leadership vote in both chambers. 

In November, the House Democratic Caucus endorsed Representative Joseph Shekarchi (Democrat, District 23, Warwick) for Speaker and the Senate Democratic Caucus endorsed Senator Dominick Ruggerio (Democrat, District 4, Providence) for another term as Senate President.

Both of these caucus nominations were challenged from the left by women, and both challenges failed. Challengers Representative Liana Cassar (Democrat, District 66 Barrington, East Providence) and Senator Gayle Goldin (Democrat, District 3, Providence) have now formally withdrawn their names from consideration, virtually ensuring Shekarchi, Ruggerio and their teams take control of the state legislature on Tuesday.

While COVID-19 surges to record highs, Republicans like Blake Filippi encourage more to get infected

Charlestown’s state representative embraces Trump’s insane pandemic “strategy”

By Will Collette

As the coronavirus pandemic keeps getting worse while we wait for the vaccines to come along to save us, Donald Trump and many Republicans have embraced the concept of “herd immunity” as the best way to go.

“Herd immunity” is a real concept that means a high enough percentage of the population has acquired anti-bodies to block an infectious disease from spreading. How high a percentage? The Mayo Clinic says it depends on the disease. For a very infectious disease like COVID, you need a very high percentage.

We eliminated smallpox and polio through herd immunity achieved through near universal vaccination.

“Herd immunity” doesn’t work very well on COVID without a vaccine because of its severity. The only way to achieve the 70-90% of the population with antibodies that stop the disease is for that many people to catch the disease. Some number of them, perhaps millions, will die in the process or suffer long-term damage.

By Mike Luckovich, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

But herd immunity is the perfect lazy man’s solution to the coronavirus pandemic because all you do is let it take its toll until the virus runs out of people to infect. Trump embraced this herd immunity last summer when he realized he could not lie or bluster coronavirus away.

He pushed his actual expert advisors – Drs. Fauci, Birx, the CDC, the Surgeon General, the NIH, the FDA et al. – into a soundproof room. Then last August, brought in Dr. Scott Atlas, a rightwing neuroradiologist with no training or practical experience with infectious diseases to be his new chief science guy - at least until today (Monday, Nov. 30) when he resigned.

Atlas has been a firm believer in herd immunity, although he makes an exception for senior citizens, saying that somehow, while everyone else is getting sick, they should be kept safe. Maybe in special camps or turned into Soylent Green. He’s not very clear on what he means.

To promote herd immunity without vaccines is tantamount to mass murder, and that is exactly what has happened. Over a quarter million Americans have died, many after Trump and red states like the Dakotas adopted “herd immunity” as the way to protect “freedom” and the economy rather than save people’s lives.

Photo by Steve Ahlquist, UpriseRI

We’ve got our own herd immunity guy right here. Charlestown is represented by state Rep. Blake “Flip” Filippi who is also the leader of the Republican Minority caucus. 

I call him “Flip” because of his casual relationship with the truth. He has lied about where he lives. He has changed his position on issues depending on who he is talking to. He has broken promises.

Even his mother Marion Filippi raised doubts about his honesty, stating in a 2016 lawsuit that she had been cheated after being forced into signing documents through “the use of threats, duress and coercion, failure to disclose material information” about family owned property and that her son had filed “amended registration documents falsely claiming that they [Flip and his brother Paul] are the sole managers of the LLCs” that were owned by the whole family. SOURCE: Marion Filippi and Steven Filippi vs. Blake Filippi and Paul Filippi, WC-2016-0627, December 15, 2016, original complaint, Clause 32.

Up until recently, Flip’s primary role in the state’s pandemic efforts has been to complain about procedural issues – especially the lack of in-person General Assembly sessions – and Executive Actions by Governor Gina Raimondo under the state of emergency we have been in for the past several months of pandemic.

Just before Thanksgiving, Flip was interviewed by the odious Sinclair Broadcasting local station, WJAR (Channel 10).

When asked about increased COVID restrictions, Flip said “Is the cure to this thing locking us in our homes? There comes a point where the cure is worse than the disease… Maybe the thing to do is massively focus our efforts on our seniors who really are the vulnerable population and allow everyone else to live their lives."

Flip said he was really concerned about the effects of the upcoming “Pause” on restaurants and bars. He should know about that since he is himself a major hotel, restaurant and bar owner on Block Island.

He said: "Many of them have already shut down. The ones that have survived, I have heard from some of them, them don't believe they can take another hit, especially for restaurants December is one of their busiest months.”

So there you have it. Flip has swallowed the Kool-Aid for the “herd immunity” approach, almost mimicking the way Trump COVID guru Scott Atlas describes it. He also puts the interests of businesses like the ones he owns above the public’s health.

Let’s break down where Flip goes totally wrong.

First, what does it mean to “massively focus our efforts on our seniors?” How do you protect seniors when you let everyone else get sick? Does Flip plan to lock all of us up (I say “us” because I am 71 and definitely a “senior”) under armed guard to keep us separate from the COVID-riddled younger population? Flip, you need to explain this remark.

Second, to just let everyone who is not elderly “live their lives” means even sharper inclines in RI COVID cases and hospitalizations that would completely swamp Rhode Island’s hospital system. Westerly and South County Hospitals are being pressured to the max. Rhode Island’s hospitals are full and the state plans to start treating patients in the two mass field hospitals it set up for this contingency starting this week.

Third, It is not true that COVID is a disease of the elderly. Yes, it is true that most COVID fatalities are elderly (94% in Rhode Island), but the non-elderly get most of the infections (77%). 38% of COVID hospitalizations in Rhode Island are non-elderly.

Statistics are from the RI Health Department’s COVID Response data website.

After nearly a year of this virus worldwide, research now shows COVID attacks the respiratory system, shredding the lungs. It also attacks the heart and brain. Serious medical problems relating to COVID can last indefinitely – especially in younger patients.

COVID kills little kids, teenagers and adults, not just Grandma. It tends to leave lasting effects in many who survive it.

Yeah, Flip, just let people live their lives, but how about living their lives safely?

Right now, the virus is out of control in Rhode Island and serious measures must be taken to get it back under control. We are so close to having good vaccines – why blow it now?

When we get the vaccines, I am hoping we will have an aggressive vaccination effort to achieve real herd immunity like the kind that eliminated smallpox and polio. Everyone should be required to be vaccinated against COVID unless they have a verified medical reason why they can’t.

But oh, lest we forget, you are against vaccination mandates, aren’t you, Flip?

Flip has been getting away with slinging bovine excrement since he burst on the scene in 2014 by beating one of Rhode Island’s best legislators, Donna Walsh. He keeps getting re-elected, usually without opposition despite having virtually no legislative achievements.

Despite numerous public clashes, Filippi was actually a soulmate to dethroned House Speaker Nick Mattiello, so any Democrat who wanted to take on Flip and all his money could not count on Mattiello support.

Now he’s being listed as a likely 2022 candidate for Governor, though so far he has demurred. Maybe he’ll let the idea float to draw more of that media attention he loves. Or maybe he’ll simply flip his position again and go for it.

Whether he can fool a majority of Rhode Islanders as he has fooled his pals in the Charlestown Citizens Alliance with his smarm and money will be one big question to follow in this new election cycle.

Goodbye Mr. Mattiello

You Will Not Be Missed

by BETH COMERY in Providence Daily Dose

And he can take his Trump tie with him

House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello will not be returning to the general assembly in January, and having been one of his more vocal critics over the years, I should probably have commented on that glorious news by now. 

But, like millions of other Americans, until last Saturday I was curled up in a fetal position under my bed weaving dream catchers out of dust bunnies. 

Now that I can breathe again, I can share some final thoughts on Mr. Mattiello’s legislative career which ended November 3 when he lost to his Republican challenger. 

Whoever becomes speaker next January can consider this a list of things-not-to-do and how-not-to-be:

Asking the likely new RI Speaker of the House about tax breaks for the rich

A question for Majority Leader Joe Shekarchi

By Andy Boardman 

With November 3’s results certified, the election after the election has begun. The race is on to fill outgoing House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello’s spot as the Ocean State’s most powerful politician.

One leading contender is Joseph Shekarchi, a Warwick Democrat who has served as House Majority Leader since 2016. Shekarchi is mobilizing support, capitalizing on his relationships with colleagues and fundraising prowess.

But what’s his in legislative record?

In Rhode Island, the primary vehicle for passing new ideas into law is the annual state budget, a roughly 500-page document that covers public spending, taxation, regulation, social services and more — in short, it includes just about anything legislative leaders want it to include.

As the Speaker’s Number Two in the top-down House of Representatives, Shekarchi has had unique clout to advance his agenda through the state budget. 

Legislators who back leadership are often able to find a place for their priorities, just as those who oppose leadership are iced out of the process. With outsized influence and many worthy causes to choose from, a legislative leader’s choice of what to fight for says a lot about that lawmaker.Shekarchi recently made the choice to fight for a big tax loophole for the rich. What should his colleagues make of that?

During the 2020 budget-writing cycle, the Majority Leader championed a measure to help business owners avoid paying federal taxes. His proposal, wedged into the budget and signed into law with the rest of the package in July 2019, was aimed at taxpayers who own pass-through entities — tightly-held companies whose income is taxed at the individual level of the companies’ owners, not the corporate level.

A long night and long days ahead

Mostly it's a case of waiting

By Will Collette

Like many millions of Americans, I went to bed confused and troubled and woke up pretty much the same. 

The one clear conclusion is that we have a deeply divided country - the damage to the American psyche caused by Trump over the past four years is plainly evident. Whoever wins will know that half the country is against him. 

Another clear conclusion is that polling sucks. If I did polling for a living, I'd be thinking about a new career. If I was hiring pollsters, I think I'd be taking that line item out of my budget.

We will not know the results of yesterday's election until all the votes are counted and even then, if as I hope Trump loses, we can expect an extended period of additional drama after that.

On the Rhode Island level, the big news is the defeat of Democratic Speaker of the House Nick Mattiello by his Republican opponent Barbara Fenton-Fung. Though that was categorized as an upset, I fully expected Mattiello to lose. Odious creature and the living definition of a DINO. 

Fenton-Fung is no better but rather than being the most powerful political figure in the state as Mattiello was, she'll just be another right-wing back-bencher in Blake "Flip" Filippi's merry little band. 

There were no upsets among south coast legislators, left or right. Flip was unopposed. Dennis Algiere only faced an obscure write-in challenger. Both Elaine Morgan and Justin Price fought off credible challenges from good progressive candidates. 

It was a nail-biter for hours after the polls closed, as the in-person Election Day votes were heavily skewed Republican. For a while, it looked like Sen. Sue Sosnowski (D-SK-Block Island) might lose. But when the totals for early voters and then many of the mail-in ballots came in, order was restored to the world.

Photo by Steve Ahlquist

One race I watched with interest was Doreen Costa's attempt at a political comeback, vying for the Senate seat in North Kingstown vacated by retiring Sen. James Sheehan. Costa had quite a colorful, indeed crazy, run while a member of the House of Representatives. It looks pretty certain that she lost.

The outcome in Charlestown municipal elections is still not totally clear, though we will have a very different Council almost certainly to be led by Democrat Deb Carney who has led the voting throughout. Whether the CCA Party will lose its majority is not certain.

At this writing, 111 votes separate current #3 Council candidate Susan Cooper (CCA Party) and #9 place Jodi Frank (Charlestown Residents United - CRU/Dem). So there are seven Council candidates vying for three Council seats. 

In the honorific position of Town Moderator, CRU incumbent Charlie Beck (owner of the Mini-Super) trounced the CCA's Ron Areglado. Areglado was the leader of the failed Whalerock wind turbine opposition that ended up costing Charlestown $2.1 million to make that project go away. He is the instigator of Charlestown's current shady land deal SPA-Gate.

Finally, it looks like Rhode Island will shed "Providence Plantations" from its name and repudiate its ties to slavery. Charlestown, where a lot of those Plantations - and those slaves - took place, seems to have also voted to make it "Rhode Island, period" by a small majority.

Our town, state and country face an enormous challenge of completeing this election process with honesty and integrity and then must deal with how to live together as neighbors now knowing how deeply divided we are.

Rhode Island election tidbits

Last minute facts for those of you who have not voted.

By Will Collette

Police in Graham, North Carolina gas voting rights marchers who were
attempting to go inside to cast their ballots. The marchers had a permit. 

On Saturday, I updated my latest election coverage to note the endorsement of the three Charlestown Democrats running for Town Council by our federal Representative Jim Langevin.

I left out the peculiar endorsement by Republican state Representative Blake “Flip” Filippi for the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) slate even though there are two Republicans running in the race in opposition to the CCA Party.

This led to a fast and furious endorsement of Grace Klinger and Stephen Stokes, who are running as Republicans under the Charlestown Residents United (CRU) banner, from the Rhode Island State Republican Party to clearly rebuke Flip for breaking party rules.

For the record, Flip has also endorsed the far right armed militias that are terrorizing several states and he is also endorsing Donald Trump for re-election. Flip displayed his usual strong convictions by noting his endorsement of Trump came out of this deep reasoning: “I don’t like a lot of the stuff, the rhetoric, but a lot of the people I dislike and institutions I dislike hate Donald Trump.”

Attaboy, Flip! Voting hate all the way.

Last February, the Providence Journal asked Flip about his presidential preference and reported this result:

Filippi’s choice of words sparked some criticism on Twitter. He said he liked [Rep. Tulsi] Gabbard “because of her perspective on war and peace and if not her, Donald Trump because he is not a globalist. ... He believes in strong nation states.”

“To be clear I support both,″ he later said on Twitter.

State Sen. Gayle Goldin tweeted this response: 

“Filippi said he supports Trump because Trump isn’t a ‘globalist’ — a term embraced by alt-right to spread hate of Jews. We can disagree on policy (after all, that’s what we are elected), but I will not turn a blind eye to dog whistle antisemitism by R.I. GOP leaders.”

Former member of Congress from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard ran a strange campaign for the Democratic nomination, drawing strong criticism from other Democrats, perhaps most strongly from Hillary Clinton who referred to Gabbard as a “Russian asset” being groomed by the Russians to run a spoiler third party campaign. Gabbard was also criticized for her free-lance “diplomacy” to some of the worst despots in the Middle East such as Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Gabbard barely registered above 1% in the primaries. Her best result was second-place in American Samoa (even though she was the only Samoan running in 2020) behind Michael Bloomberg that netted her only Convention delegate.

Early Voting

As we go into the last day of early voting, 3,531 Charlestown mail-in ballots and early votes have been registered by the Secretary of State. That’s 58% of the 6,115 total active voters in town. Remember to drop off your mail-in ballots at the drop box at Town Hall, NOT in a mail-box or at the Post Office, Under RI law, all votes must be RECEIVED by November 3.

Rating the General Assembly on the Environment

By Matt Wuerker, Politico

The Environmental Council of Rhode Island has issued its traditional pre-election scorecard and gives the whole General Assembly (as well as Gov. Gina Raimondo) an “incomplete, lacking leadership” rating for passing NO major environmental legislation in the past two years.

This is largely due to the blockades by Speaker of the House Nick Mattiello (DINO-Cranston) and lack of initiative by Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio and the Governor.

ECRI did what they could with what they had and listed legislators by their attempts to pass environmental legislation – they scored legislators by how many bills they introduced or co-sponsored.

Here’s how our local Senators and Reps did.

SENATE: Sen. Sue Sosnowski (D-South Kingstown) had the highest score in the state Senate with 25 attempts. Bridget Valverde (D-SK, NK, Narragansett and EG) came in sixth with a score of 9. 

Republicans Dennis Algiere who represents the southern end of Charlestown and Elaine Morgan who represents Charlestown north of One both scored ZERO.

HOUSE: The top South County score – ninth place – went to Carol McEntee (D-SK) with a score of six. Bob Craven (D-NK with strong Charlestown ties) came in 16^th with 5. Kathy Fogarty (D-SK) had two.

The rest of our South County House members tallied big fat goose eggs. That includes environmental activist Teresa Tanzi (D-SK) and Flip Filippi (CCA Party) who generally takes anti-environmental positions.

Teresa is so high on Speaker Mattiello’s shit list that she refrains from putting her name on bills so they don’t automatically get killed, though in some cases, she was actually blocked from co-sponsoring bills she really likes. If Mattiello fails to get re-elected or doesn’t get the votes to continue as House Speaker, Teresa may be able to resume her fight for the environment.

YES on Question 1

Fight institutional racism in Rhode Island and Charlestown

By Will Collette

Image credit: RI State Archives, "A Heritage discovered: Blacks in Rhode Island" (1976).

There is only one statewide ballot question for voters to decide in 2020. It is aptly named State Question  1. This question asks you to approve or reject the elimination of “Providence Plantations” from the state’s official name, “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”

This question was put before voters in 2010, without success. A decade later, I hope Rhode Islanders will vote APPROVE. Here’s why.

The word “Plantations” has connotations of slavery and in this year of struggle over America’s legacy of racism, it is the right time to stop memorializing the vile institution of slavery.

Few Rhode Islanders know the extensive history of Rhode Island and slavery. The Speaker of the House Nick Mattiello actually said he didn’t know slavery ever existed in Rhode Island.

Some of the state’s most prominent founding families – the Browns of Brown University fame among others – were main players in the transport of Africans to the Americas, and to Rhode Island in particular where African slaves worked in prominent Providence and Newport households and South County plantations.

Even though Rhode Island officially banned the slave trade in 1652, it persisted in practice for more than 100 years more. You can see slave graves in the old cemetery at the Episcopal Diocese in Providence. In 1755, one out of three residents in “Narragansett Country” (which includes Charlestown) were slaves.

But much of our local slave labor, especially in South County, did not come from Africa. Instead, they were mostly Narragansett Indians who were captured after the Great Swamp Massacre in 1675. With permission from Roger Williams, our local founding families ran Charlestown’s plantations with Narragansett slave labor.

Our misdeeds toward the Narragansetts did not end when the last slaves were freed. In 1880, the state decided to declare the Narragansett Indian Tribe no longer existed. Unspoken but understood was the belief that Rhode Island had succeeded in its genocidal efforts. What is crystal clear is that the state tried to erase the Tribe from history for land and profit.

From 1882-1884, whites grabbed virtually all of the Tribe’s land, leaving only two acres in Charlestown as the nub of a homeland.

For the next hundred years, the Tribe fought to regain its land, achieving some success, first with the 1978 settlement agreement that returned 1800 acres to the Tribe and 1983 when the Tribe won official federal recognition. At every stage, they faced unceasing white resistance.

We cannot erase this history. Personally, I think we need to learn and talk more about it, because these events still affect how Charlestown operates today. But I truly believe it is a step in the right direction to strike the odious term “Providence Plantations” from our state’s official title. So please vote APPROVE.

There’s a statewide group pushing for approval of this measure. You can CLICK HERE to get their reasons for why we need to change our name.

Let’s move on to how Charlestown remains locked into a system of institutional racism.

NOTE: you can find more historical detail and numerous links to historical sources in my June 30 article End institutional racism in Charlestown.

At least since the 1978 settlement and 1983 federal recognition, old Charlestown has fought to prevent any further advances by the Narragansett Indian Tribe. Our town’s official position is that we hold dominion over the Tribe in all land use matters.

Larisa's most recent bill show he spent 1 hour of work for which we
are paying him more than $2000.

We hire attorney Joe Larisa as the town’s Special Counsel for Indian Affairs and pay him a baseline retainer of $24,000 a year. 

His job is to watch the Tribe as well as any legislative, judicial or regulatory matters that affect the Tribe and to stop any self-advancement efforts by the Tribe. 

Larisa raises the town's conviction that it has dominion over the Tribe at every opportunity.

This is raw, flagrant institutional racism. If Charlestown wants to remedy institutional racism, it can start by cancelling Larisa’s retainer agreement.

A second step could be to reach out to the Tribe to seek a process of reconciliation perhaps adapting Nelson Mandela’s reconciliation formula that worked in South Africa. It won’t be easy given we’ve had our knee on the Tribe’s neck for 345 years.

But far from reconciliation, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) that has controlled Charlestown for the past decade, has instead doubled down. 

The recurring theme of the CCA Party’s re-election bid is to make the Trumpian claim that they – and only they – can protect Charlestown from dire threats (real or imagined) to the town’s “rural character.”

Set their “rural character” rhetoric next to Donald Trump’s white supremacy dog whistles about protecting the suburbs and marvel at the similarity.

Charlestown does not have a definition of “rural character” even though the term is used endlessly. It's all over this year's CCA Party campaign propaganda.

In 2016, I formally asked the town under the state’s Access to Public Records Act to provide any document used by the town to define “rural character.” Not surprisingly, no such document exists.

Nonetheless, the CCA Party knows what they mean by “rural character” and so do a growing number of Charlestown residents.

Meanwhile, on July 21, the Chariho School Committee approved formation of a task force to examine “policies, practices and curriculum through the lens of diversity, equity, inclusion and justice” in the school district. That’s a commendable step – I hope it will lead to concrete findings and meaningful change.

Charlestown needs to address its own festering institutional racism problems. They are not going to go away by ignoring them. The Town is currently in federal court facing two civil rights lawsuits from elders in the Narragansett Indian Tribe. Read HERE and HERE.

We need new town leadership and an end to dog whistles. We need to make a good faith effort to reconcile with our Tribal neighbors.

Let the new legislature, not the lame ducks deal with RI budget

If we’re going to wait until November for the 2021 budget, we might as well wait until January

By Steve Ahlquist 

There is no guarantee, come January, that the leadership of the Rhode Island State House will be anything like the way it is currently configured. 

Senate President Dominick Ruggerio may have successfully defended his senate seat, but he demonstrated weakness, outspending his virtually unknown opponent to the tune of 28-1 and barely scoring 60% of the vote. There are already rumblings that he will soon be one senator among many, instead of senate president come January.

Speaker Nicholas Mattiello had no opponent and he received a mere 819 votes in the primary. Mattiello’s Republican opponent, Barbara Ann Fenton Fung, garnered 1086 votes in her unchallenged primary bid. 

Mind you, Democrats and Republicans were both incentivized to vote in the primary because each party had a hotly contested campaign for Cranston Mayor. So Fung getting 267 votes more than Mattiello may be significant and predictive. Mattiello won his last two races by slim margins against a Republican challenger with much less appeal than Fenton Fung, who is the spouse of the very popular Mayor Allan Fung.

And even if Mattiello wins re-election, his leadership of the House is not guaranteed.

So the coming General Assembly might look very different. New leadership may well be responding to the challenges that Covid and the economic crisis are bringing to bear in very different ways than what’s happening now. 

So it’s with a grain of salt that I read a joint statement from Ruggerio, Mattiello and Governor Gina Raimondo that they want to wait until after the November elections before they begin any deliberations on the budget.