I understand one of his many vetoes this legislative session: the courthouse construction bill, a piece of legislation pledging $88 million to the construction of a new Blackstone Valley courthouse. According to the ProJo, Carcieri said in his veto message, “Never, not even once, has any Rhode Islander — save a legislator or a judge — ever spoke to me of the pressing need to build a court-house in the Blackstone Valley.”

On the urgency of the project, however, Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams declared in an April speech:

The need to better serve our citizens in northern Rhode Island and to decongest a severely overcrowded Garrahy Judicial Complex in Providence by building a Blackstone Valley Courthouse is not going to go away.

As a legal intern with the RI Office of the Public Defender, I may not be privy to every aspect of life at the Garrahy complex. I do, however, work there 4 days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and I’m a bit perplexed by the congestion with which the Chief is concerned. In fact, things can get pretty slow around there, and I’ve taken to reading The New Yorker in between Judge Higgins’ arraignments in Courtroom 4C, where I am usually stationed.

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GET READY FOR THE 4TH OF JULY!!!! Come to Movies on the Block this Thursday.

Providence’s only outdoor movie screen opens for its second season. Every Thursday through September, movies will be screened on the corner of Westminster St. and Union St. As always, introducing the show are International shorts presented by the Rhode Island International Film Festival. Pop hits, local shorts, even some music performances. Bring your friends and family down for a drink, some eats, and a free film. Movies start at Dusk, blankets welcome!!!

Those of us who missed Mayor Cicilline at Saturday’s Pride festivities should be placated by news of how he spent that day. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, gathered for their 76th Annual Meeting in Miami from June 20-24, unanimously passed a resolution calling for city-coordinated drug overdose prevention efforts.

The Resolution championed several strategies to reduce fatalities from drug overdoses, including:

• Supporting the distribution of naloxone – an opiate antagonist medication effective in reversing the respiratory failure that typically causes death from opioid overdose;
• Urging state governments to adopt “Good Samaritan” immunity policies that shield people who experience or witness an overdose and contact 911 from prosecution;
• Calling on the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fund research to evaluate the effectiveness of overdose prevention interventions and develop model programs; and
• Calling on the FDA to take steps to facilitate the testing and approval of nasal and/or over-the-counter formulations of naloxone and to consider recommending prescription naloxone concurrent with strong opioid analgesics.

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You either love it or hate it, but you can’t forget it once you’ve had it. No, I’m not talking about…well, lots of things. I’m talking about root beer. NY Times wine guy Eric Asimov and his panel taste a bunch of root beers and conclude, among other things, that “too much root beer can make a man mean”.

Our No. 1 root beer, from Sprecher in Wisconsin, a wonderfully balanced and complex brew, uses a combination of corn syrup and honey, while our No. 2, the restrained and flavorful IBC, uses only corn syrup. So even with the importance of the sweetener, something more is at play with root beers.

I’ve always wanted to have a root beer tasting.

This week we’re showing FLETCH.

Chevy Chase anyone?

(And that’s THURSDAY, yo.)

Awww, shit, you gotta be kidding me? How come I didn’t get a memo on this one? Oh, right, because my office is my bedroom and my secretary is my cat. Darn.

Apparently, would-be writers, the trick is not to solicit publishers one-by-one hoping to find one for whom your novel/screenplay/poetry/suckpileofhumanexcrement is a perfect fit. No, no, no, that is –so– 2007. Why waste your name with that? Just place an ad on Craigslist like Gina did:

The headline reads “ Writer seeking Publisher“…

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If you are thinking about running for office this year, you have until this Wednesday to make your intention official. June 25 is the deadline for filing Declarations of Candidacy for federal, state and local office. Secretary of State Mollis posts the necessary forms and all the key dates in the 2008 election calendar on his website at www.sec.state.ri.us. Got a question? Contact me at cbarnett@sec.state.ri.us or 222-4293.

HEY SO there’s a poster/print show this FRIDAY @ 5 Traverse Gallery on the corner of wickenden st. and traverse st (a.k.a next to kabloom, across from the utrecht parking lot– have a latte at coffee xxx-change, eat some cous cous). it’s an OPEN SHOW which means ANYONE can show up and put their prints/posters/flyers/p-copies/l-press/litho-graph-y/s-skreens/etchings/openbitez/soft embosses/pulp prints/etc etc etc up on the wall. maybe some dudes will buy some stuff!
as jay z (local jay z, not beyonce’s jay-z) would say: “IT IS WHAT U MAKE IT”. some come through and MAKE IT GOOD!!!!! (more…)

The RI General Assembly is starting to vote on the budget today.
Here is the website where you can find info on who your state rep is and how to contact them.

Please use it, and please call, and please take a stand about one of the issues in the state budget. The environment bond needs saving, as does funding for our public university system. And then there is the issue of poor families being left out in the cold.

I am going to call Rep. Anastasia Williams. And then, I am either going to crawl into a corner and cry, or I am going to ask Representative David Segal to marry me.

Following last month’s awesome, and huge, meeting, we’ll be getting together on June 24th for the next Social Justice Night.

Stay tuned for more info in coming days.

Come downtown for another 80s classic. This Thursday at dusk.

Seems to be the way things are headed.  I’ll be swamped, and posting less than usual (would be great if other Dosers could help pick up the slack…)

The budget is going to be heard by the full House of Reps on Wednesday, probably passing on Thursday after 12-or-so hours of debate.

The Projo covers it here.  Moments of note include:

• Many kicked of of Head Start and RiteCare;
• Municipal aid reduced, relative to last year’s enacted budget;
• Increase in public school  funding of about 1.5%, but a cut to the college and university systems;
• Affordable energy fund money gets ’scooped’;
• Prisons budget goes down by about 6%.
• Asks (and assumes) federal permission for unprecedented ambiguous Medicaid restructuring, claiming savings of $60 million
• No increase in broad-based state-level taxes, but expect cities and towns to have to raise taxes by maximum amount allowable, and reduce services too.

And some other legislation that’s still in play, as we reach the home-stretch:

• National Popular Vote;
• Pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds;
• Package of renewable energy bills that would drastically increase renewables production here over the next several years;
• RIPTA package (incentives for public employees and college students to use RIPTA)
• End to mandatory minimum sentences
• Probation reform
• Court Fines reform
• Medical marijuana dispensaries

And there’s still the possibility of passage of some of the slew of anti-immigrant bills that were introduced this session…

I’ll give updates as I can, over the course of the week.

In ‘Sicko’ Michael Moore questions why the French government seems so much more responsive to its citizens and comes up with an obvious answer — it’s afraid of them.

The people of Paris are nothing if not riot-ready. Recently British truckers closed down London to protest rising fuel prices. And look at what’s going on in Soeul, South Korea.

This started out as a protest against American beef imports and has grown into a generalized anti-government demonstration. Just look at it. Why hasn’t this been the view outside President Bush’s window for the last five years?

A childhood favorite- Princess Bride.

When: tonight when it gets dark.

Where: Outside Tazza

Come to the State House this afternoon at 3pm to let the House of Representatives know you want a vote on the Compassion Center bill. This bill would allow the Department of Health to establish and regulate a dispensary to grow and distribute medical marijuana to patients and their caregivers. Patients need safe access to medical marijuana and, according to RIPAC executive director Jesse Stout, most state reps have already indicated support. Get over to the State House on Smith Street in Providence at 3pm Wednesday afternoon to help lobby for a Compassion Center, and bring as many friends/family/neighbors as you can. Remember, you may need this someday, so help now. For more information call RIPAC at 861-1601.

Yet another reason emerges to add public waterfront space, and try to draw people back to the water. The laying of Route 195 was a tragic instantiation of top-down, classist and racist urban planning (with analogues all over the country) and contributed to the dessimation of Fox Point’s Cape Verdean community. Increasingly, they’re making it clear that they want — and deserve — more recognition as the highway move pushes on:

Fox Point was once the home of a large Cape Verdean population. Then Route 195 was built, and much of the community was uprooted as homes were destroyed to make way for the highway. Changes in the neighborhood’s demographic in the following decades brought wealthier residents and further broke up the old neighborhood.

Now, as the city holds a four-day charette to discuss the future of the Providence waterfront, members of the scattered Fox Point Cape Verdean community of the 1960s have joined to fight for the preservation of the India Point Park area as community space — specifically, the Shooters nightclub property, which borders India Point Park and is for sale.

“India Point is our space. If nothing else, let’s preserve it for public space,” said Claire Andrade-Watkins, an Emerson College professor who grew up in Fox Point.