Indian-giver [sorry, couldn't resist] Judge Susan McGuirl gave a suspended sentence to three Narragansett tribe members convicted of assaulting state police. Projo’s got it:

The three Narragansett Indian tribal members convicted of assaulting and scuffing with state police during the 2003 raid on a tribal smoke shop will not have to spend time in jail. Judge Susan McGuirl issued a suspended sentence for one of the defendants and filed the case of Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas and the other tribe member, ordering them to provide community service by talking to school children about tribe history.

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 »

I’m getting pretty amp’d for The Steelyard is Burning tonight. I know because I woke up jittery and anxious at like 6:30 this morning and began compulsively adding my favorite jammies to my already ample playlist. Just imagine the vibes and wonderful people at a normal Providence is Burning (the next installment of which is coming on May 31, 2008 at Firehouse 13) and crank them up about four gagillion times. Jackson and I, Certified Max and a bevy of artists and industrialists of all stripes will be holding it down in a rainproof tent with a battery of subs by our sides. Come check out dope lights by Power Posse and cold brews by Gansett cuz 27 Sims is gonna get loopy tonight at 10pm.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBapgYfgOU8&eurl=http://www.ri-familylifecenter.org/index.php?name=reinvest]

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.

I have to throw in on this new Stanley’s Burgers place down on Richmond Street. I had never heard of this Rhode Island institution and I’m not a big hamburger person, particularly when it’s just a gigantic ball of ground meat. For me a sandwich is all about the proportion of the bread to the other stuff  — a little bit of this and a little bit of that — not just a huge tower of meat. And it should be easy to eat. I had Stanley’s bacon cheeseburger for lunch today, and at first it doesn’t look like much, it’s a pretty small patty.  But it totally works.  And the bun is real soft so you can squish it down flat the way I like. I would order two next time I think. According to Dave they are open until 2AM… good late night food.  The decor is a bit much, but I don’t care, I’m going back.

Stanley’s Burgers/371 Richmond Street/270-9292 

UPDATE: Footage, courtesy of the Greenwash Gorillas themselves… even as this was a pretty amazing spectacle, the footage kind of makes me want to give Tom a big hug. While I understand the criticisms of Friedman’s work, I wonder if this was an effective way to get the message across, or whether this merely reflects poorly on the University… thoughts? Could the pie-throwers have raised their dissent during the Q&A with as much flair?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv6nvMUq10U]

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman had just begun his Earth Day lecture at Brown last night, when Molly Little ‘08.5 and a colleague let him know what they thought of his work. The Brown Daily Herald reports:

A female audience member ran on stage last night and threw a green pie at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman [...]. The woman had been sitting in the south side of the auditorium’s front row when she pulled the pie out of a Brown Bookstore plastic bag that had been tucked in a red backpack and leapt out of her seat.

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Props to friend of the Dose Dan Lawlor’s brother for b-boyin’ it up in North Providence:

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=dP0jrzVI8LA]

Lo! What news from yon goodly port of Bristol, cradle of patriotic fanfare and tricolor medians? Buddy’s back in the parade? By my troth!

BRISTOL — He won’t ride atop a horse borrowed from the Providence police, and a helicopter (most likely) won’t drop him off at the Bristol County Medical Center or Colt School. But Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, one of Rhode Island’s most colorful characters and a long-time fixture in Bristol’s Fourth of July parade, is coming back to town this year.

Bristol Fourth of July Committee parade chairwoman Judy Squires told her fellow committee members last Wednesday night that Mr. Cianci will “march” in the parade through his affiliation with WPRO radio, where he holds a job as an on-air talk show host. There will be no horse, she said, but Mr. Cianci will likely be driven down the route in a red car donated for the day by Tasca Ford.

The longest continuously held July 4th parade in America, Bristol’s Fourth of July Pomp-down is also the storied-est. The former Providence Mayor’s history with this grand old fest, in turn, comprises some of it’s richest modern moments.

Also in this years parade, the World Series Trophy! more »

Don’t spvill yuh kawfee oa nuthin but the Juhnal sez that:

While it might be a badge of honor for some, others with a wicked strong accent might want to get rid of it.

Whether considered an impediment to clear business interaction or a source of embarrassment, many Ocean Staters have turned to an accent-reduction class offered by the community-based education network, Learning Connection.

What does Don Bousquet think about all this?

Big ups to the lovely and brilliant Ariel Werner, Brown junior, criminal justice reformer, Dose blogger and Rhode Island’s own and only 2008 Truman Scholar. Her bio on truman.gov:

Ariel Werner is a student at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she works to understand and mitigate the effects of mass incarceration. In 2006, she served as Student Coordinator of the RI Right to Vote Campaign, a ballot initiative that restored voting rights to 15,000 individuals on parole and probation. She received a C. V. Starr Public Service Fellowship in 2007 to work at the RI Family Life Center for ex-offenders and an Arthur Liman Public Interest Law Fellowship in 2008. She currently coordinates Space in Prison for the Arts and Creative Expression (SPACE), a Brown student group that works to provide a forum for creativity within the RI Adult Correctional Institution.

Kim beat me to the punch on RIFuture, but all of us at the Dose are proud of Ariel. Especially me. Way to rep the Ocean State!

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.

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Projo’s got it:

A teenager allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail outside a long-vacant Jewish temple in South Providence early yesterday, but the police caught him and two of his apparent accomplices. The teens apparently intended to toss the Molotov cocktail into a vacant lot across the street from the temple in order to enjoy the sight of it shattering and flaming, but it was hastily cast aside onto the grass outside the temple when a police cruiser approached, the police said.

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For those of you who missed Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci at Brown tonight, he was incredible [and bald]. Those of us who’ve read The Prince of Providence saw a very different Buddy tonight. First, he narrated his time as Mayor, the challenges he faced, and his accomplishments. He then made some key policy prescriptions–some minor, some radical:

• Providence Gardens: Buddy’s plan to cover I-95 from Broad Street to Atwells, connecting downtown with the West Side and opening a ton of land for development, residential space, business, and gardens. The highway would run, like a tunnel, under this development.
• Development on the other side of the mall, more so than exists already.
• Narragansett Landing: Development of 200 acres stretching from the Hurricane Barrier to Allens Ave. to Roger Williams Park. This would include a revamped Port of Providence, lots of jobs, and lots of green space along the South side of the city.
• The three above projects, titled “the 3 Cities” encompass 538 acres in Buddy’s imagination. He admits, “Some of that would have happened, but I was detained a little while.”
• Most radical, his plan to conglomerate the PVD metro area into one giant city including Providence, Warwick, Cranston, Pawtucket, East Providence, and North Providence. With or without conglomerating these cities and towns, he said, we are a city of 500,000 people that should have a unified government, tax base, police department, fire department, school department, and social services. Rhode Island is, and should be, a city-state, the former Mayor declared. He spent a long time ragging on suburban sprawl.

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Thanks to tipster Bill M. for alerting us to this story:

Chinese Laundry, which opened March 11th at 121 North Main Street (right in my neighborhood!), is not receiving the warm welcome for which its owner, Chow Fun Food Group owner John Elkhay, had hoped. The restaurant, which claims to offer, “a modern pan Asian dining experience with an intoxicating vibe, incredible worldly flavors, and a sensual, sophisticated atmosphere,” opened amidst a firestorm of controversy.

The Projo explains:

John Elkhay, who has brought fun, trendy restaurants to the Providence dining scene, arrived at his VIP party on Friday night after a stressful and unexpected debate that emerged in the blogosphere earlier in the day. An ad for his newest restaurant, Chinese Laundry, in Providence Monthly featured the naked torso of a woman and the words “See what you are missing.” It caught the eye of a student at Brown University who referred it to a blog written by a self-proclaimed “angry Asian-American woman.”

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This post, written by my good friend Andres Idarraga, ran on the Brennan Center for Justice blog and Alternet. Andres, a senior at Brown University, was one of the primary spokespeople for the Rhode Island Right To Vote campaign, and he is one of 15,000 Rhode Islanders with a conviction in their past who had their right to vote restored on November 7, 2006.

I just voted! For first time in my life, I stepped inside the polling place and “completed the arrow” that selects the candidate I think would best run our country. It was a simple action that took only a few minutes, but far too many years to achieve.

I was sent to prison nine years ago when I was twenty years old. When I was released six years later, I hit the ground running—determined to give back to my community and become the role model that I never had. I got a job and I was accepted into Brown University. But under Rhode Island’s state constitution, I would have to wait more than thirty years to be able to vote. I couldn’t wait that long. So I joined the Rhode Island Right to Vote campaign and began to work to change the law.

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