UPDATE: RIFuture’s talking about them too.

Ian has a post on them today.

I empathize with the concerns of the proponents of at-large seats — In particular, they’d like to reduce our 15 wards to 10, while adding 5 at-large seats.

The presence of at-large members will free the City Council as a whole from the constraints of ward politics, encourage big-picture thinking, and provide additional avenues for citizens to express concerns about citywide issues. Furthermore, having several at-large seats on the Council will give the legislative branch more opportunities to give input to the executive branch on policies and actions that will affect the entire city, thus creating a better balance in visioning and decision-making.

But this is a BAD idea, unless seats are allocated proportionally. Ari and I wrote about these issues here. Two quick points about the 10-5 plan:

• It’d mean more representation by rich, white, high-turnout portions of town, and therefore more influence by moneyed interests.

• The city would be setting itself up for a civil rights lawsuit, as Ward 11 — the only seat held by an African American — would be chopped up into majority white and Latino areas. A city that is 15% African American would likely be left with no African American on the city council. (Have we really not learned the lessons of the redistricting of 2002, which pitted Sens Pichardo and Walton against one another?)

I’ll write about all of this in more detail later.

Does it count as shameless self-promotion to promote my promotion of a friend’s event? Hopefully not. Scope my piece in this week’s Phoenix on the upcoming criminal justice reform festival, Justice or Just Us?, taking place at AS220 real soon.

Many of you know that, for the past two years, I have been facilitating arts and writing workshops at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) through Space in Prison for the Arts and Creative Expression ( SPACE).

This Sunday, May 4, SPACE will be opening its annual exhibit of art and writing from the ACI. The exhibit will take place in the Youth Gallery at AS220, 115 Empire Street from 4 PM to 7 PM.

In addition to displaying art and writing, we will be reading selections of poetry written by the men and women who participate in our workshops. We will also be distributing our annual Zine, a collection of their work. Refreshments will be served. If you can’t make it on Sunday, the exhibit will be up in the AS220 Youth Gallery through July; please stop in and check it out!

More about SPACE and the exhibit after the jump.

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This time with a commentary on race and the death penalty. I’m starting to love this guy. In today’s Times, Liptak examines a forthcoming study by the Houston Law Review on racial disparities in the application of the death penalty in Harris County, Texas. He writes:

The unexceptional finding is that defendants who kill whites are more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill blacks. More than 20 studies around the nation have come to similar conclusions.

But the new study also detected a more straightforward disparity. It found that the race of the defendant by itself plays a major role in explaining who is sentenced to death.

Check it, and look for more of Liptak’s pieces in which he brings to light the harsh truths of our criminal justice system.

For some reason, it takes fancily-worded articles in the New York Times for my family and friends to realize what I’ve been hollering about for years… America’s addiction to incarceration. Anyway, props to Adam Liptak for consistently bringing these issues to public eye. Today, Liptak sheds light on an important and staggering statistic: that the US, with 5% of the world’s population, incarcerates nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners. He writes:

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Oh, and speaking of crimes that would not produce prison sentences in other countries, scope my bit on how lil’ Rhody incarcerates its debtors in this week’s Phoenix.

I just came from the Black Rep, where I was privileged to see the premiere of their new play The Etymology of Bird. Written by Zakiyyah Alexander and directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian, the play delves into the fabric of Bed-Stuy (the same Brooklyn neighborhood that inspired Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing) and provokes a series of important questions on race relations, criminal justice, family life, love, fear, stereotypes, and hard choices. The Rep describes The Etymology of Bird:

Brooklyn, New York, 2008. Another long, hot NYC summer where B-boys, fly girls, and MCs mix with merengue, salsa, dancehall, and the new cop on the block. Birdy and Jermaine have known each other forever, but this summer, they see each other for the first time. The Etymology of Bird is a love story about our neighbors, our neighborhoods, and the choices we make that can change everything.

But this description only scratches the surface of the play and the complicated issues it tackles on a minimalist stage with a relatively amateur cast. The two main characters, Jermaine and Birdy, are played by two incredibly talented Brown students–Jonathan Dent and Fedna Jacquet. They, along with the rest of the cast, drew me so far into the thick of the plot that I found myself sitting jaw-clenched, teary-eyed, tight-fisted, and short of breath on a sunny Sunday Providence afternoon. If that description makes The Etymology of Bird sound painful, let there be no mistake: it is. But it is also funny, heartwarming, thought-provoking, and powerful.

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Much will be said and written about the career of Charlton Heston in the next few days and I have already told everyone to check out the excellent Ben-Hur, for which he won an Oscar. He also became known in recent years for his conservative politics and gun rights advocacy as president of the N.R.A. “[I’ll give you my gun when you pry it] from my cold, dead hands” (makes me laugh every time). But let’s remember that he started out as a democrat and marched on Washington in 1963 with Martin Luther King, Jr., and, seen here, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. This was not necessarily a popular position with his particular fan base. He was always his own man.

The prison reform activist community presses on, despite a depressing showing during last year’s session. (We actually took a step back, as 17 year-olds were all tried as adults for a period of several months last summer and fall.)

While criminal justice decisions shouldn’t be predicated on financial considerations, the state budget predicament makes any initiative that would yield savings pretty attractive. The prison population and the prison budget keep climbing, and the US continues lead the developed world in incarceration rates. We can do better:

“The idea is by taking a different stance instead of a purely punitive one that costs lots of money and is essentially throwing money down the drain, that you can invest that money in social programs that would address all the different problems that people are talking about,” said Mimi Budnick of the advocacy group Direct Action for Rights and Equality.

From Kim Ahern at RIFuture:

While other states in the country are passing Constitutional Amendments to ban same sex marriages, civil unions and even as far as contracts between same sex couples - New England has turned into a bastion of equality and rights. From Massachusetts’s landmark decision in Goodridge to Connecticut currently taking up the case if there is a legal difference between civil unions and marriage - why has New England (with the notable exception of Rhode Island) been such a unique place for LGBT equality?

Come learn more at Roger Williams School of Law, in what is bound to be a provocative discussion involving a fantastic panel and keynote:

What: The Culture of Same Sex Marriage Symposium

Where: Roger Williams School of Law (Bristol, RI)

When: Friday, March 28 from Noon - 4:45PM.

Panel 1: The Same-Sex Marriage Debate in the State of Rhode Island

Panel 2: Civil Unions v. Marriage in New England

Cost: Free! Includes lunch and wine and cheese reception following the panels. However - if you are an attorney and would like to receive the 5 CLE credits available, the cost for that is $25. Co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association and the RWU Law Alliance for LGBT Students.

Click HERE to register and to read more about the Keynote Address [ David Wilson - original plaintiff in Goodridge and Board Member of both HRC and Mass Equality] and each of the panelists!

Don’t forget about two awesome events happening tonight:

• The Black Air Foundation Fundraiser to Benefit the Lambert Lima Flying Squadron Cadet Program from 7:00-9:00PM at the Cape Verdean Progressive Center, 329 Grosvenor Avenue, East Providence.
• The Incarceration Rate for Males of Color In the State of Rhode Island, hosted by the Rhode Island Young Professionals, taking place from 6:00PM and 9:00PM at Brown University’s MacMillan Auditorium, 167 Thayer Street.

Obama’s speech yesterday addressing race and the manufactured Jeremiah Wright controversy was brilliant and moving. Whether you agree with that assessment or see him as a crafty politician giving another pretty speech, it is notable for the fact that he actually dared to speak to the voters about a difficult issue as if they were mature adults capable of nuanced understanding and rational discussion.

It is unfortunate that we have to praise him for what should be the standard in American political discourse, but the fact remains that such forthright maturity is decidedly not the standard. All that remains to be seen is whether the voters (and pundits, and media, and his political opponents) actually are mature adults capable of nuanced understanding and rational discussion.

It’s extraordinary to realize that it’s been four years since Miguel Luna and I spoke at Beneficent Church, upon the first anniversary of the Iraq war. Tomorrow at noon, we’ll be gathering at there once more to demonstrate our continued opposition to the war:

In order to raise local awareness of these issues and their impact on the Providence and Rhode Island community and resist their ongoing existence, Providence SDS and fellow anti-war activists will engage in direct action and civil disobedience on Thursday March 20th at 12:00pm. We invite and encourage the press to attend in the interest of reporting on world issues that intersect with local events.

Earlier that morning, there’s the kick-off of the ‘We Can Stop the Hate Rhode Island’ initiative:

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One scraggly hippie grad student at a time. (Guns drawn, and without a warrant.)

The video’s here, in the ‘featured videos’ section.

While media attention has focused, over the past few days, on the indiscretions of Elliot Spitzer, the celebration of his Wall Street enemies, and the hotness of his $1000/hr prostitute, we might be missing the best part of this story: that Spitzer’s Lieutenant Governor, now Governor, David Paterson is awesome. Paterson, the first African-American and first legally blind person to hold the position of New York Lieutenant Gov., might be unready to jump into the role of state executive, but he might be just the man to bring real change to New York. Danny Hakim and John Sullivan profile the challenges facing Paterson, particularly the state’s mammoth budget deficit (we know a lil’ something about that here, no?), in today’s New York Times:

Mr. Paterson is considered more liberal than Mr. Spitzer on some key issues, and that could create friction with the Republicans. He opposes the death penalty and strongly supports overhauling New York’s Rockefeller-era drug laws, for example. Years ago he introduced a proposal to allow noncitizens to vote. On issues like abortion and embryonic stem cell research, Mr. Paterson is staunchly liberal, as is Mr. Spitzer.

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Justice League: New Frontier, the cartoon adaption of Darwyn Cooke’s instant classic about the dawn of the Silver Age of DC Comics, came out on DVD last week. When I was watching it, I was somewhat disappointed. My friends who hadn’t read the miniseries thought it was sweet, but I guess the actual comics ruined me. The movie didn’t capture those iconic moments like Hal Jordan kissing Carol Ferris before he takes off to fight the Center and J’onn J’onnz going apeshit and transforming into the Martian Manhunter we know and love when King Faraday died. That being said, I want to talk about something a little more substantive than fanboy concerns.

I want to talk about the political overtones of the story. That period in the late ’50s was an exciting (and scary) time to be alive for far greater reasons than the dawn of the Silver Age of comics. Americans were suffering silently under conformity, lynchings raged across the South, McCarthyism destroyed people’s lives, and we all feared that nuclear annihilation was around the bend.  But the Global South was on fire with social revolution — A lot of folks believed a real change was a-coming. Among them was Martin Luther King, Jr. (after the jump): (more…)