We’re one week out from the Nov. 4 election and the polls are tightening. What once seemed like a sure thing, now looks in danger of slipping away. FiveThirtyEight.com is calling it a “toss-up.”

I’m talking about California’s Proposition 8, a measure that would amend their state constitution and abolish over 11,000 same-sex marriages in America’s third-biggest state. The “Yes” folks are gaining; the No on Prop 8 campaign needs your help.

Why contribute to defeat a California ballot initiative? For one, it’s the right thing to do. The legal, secular institution of marriage should not be subject to religious abrogation (see: First Amendment). And the moral argument particularly falls to pieces when you consider that heterosexual couples don’t consider marriage all that sacred anyhow. Political issues are rarely so cut-and-dried. In Providence, a city that has a gay population 75% higher than the national average, California’s fight should be near and dear to many of our hearts. This is a flashpoint. To allow Prop 8 to pass would be huge setback in the struggle for marriage equality, and loss for us all.

You can donate here.

As of an hour or so ago, it’s okay for people of the same sex in the Nutmeg State to get hitched, making them the third state in the nation to okay gay marriage, after Gayssachusetts and Gaylifornia.  The state’s supreme court went 4-3 in favor of the ruling, saying there was no legal justification for banning gay marriage, so I guess now we have a reason to think of the Nutmeg State as something besides Those 93 Exits of Boredom And Torture You Have To Go Through On The Way To New York.  The whole 85-page decision is online here, if you’re that bored.  As the Guardian notes, in any other election year this might just be one extra thing for the right-wing crazies to get worked up about, this year everybody’s probably too distracted by their gloomy finances to worry about what the kids are doing in Hartford and New Haven.

One of my favorite bits from the Simpsons ever; Only audio below, but you can watch the quicktime video here.

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Also, note that the Flag-Burning Amendment is a real thing. Lyrics after the jump: more »

yum

On my way to work each morning, I walk past the Attorney General’s office on South Main Street, and I never tire of giggling at the building’s inscription:

With great power comes great responsibility. — Stan Lee

Yesterday, it seems, this motto received more than mere lip service when special assistant AG Molly K. Cote managed to prove two ACI guards—Former Capt. Gualter Botas and former Lt. Kenneth Viveiros—guilty on charges of assaulting four inmates.

The ProJo reports:

Yesterday’s verdicts, which culminated an 18-day trial before Superior Court Judge Daniel A. Procaccini, came after jurors had deliberated for less than four hours over the course of two days.

Afterward, state corrections Director A.T. Wall issued a statement that began with a quote from former President Theodore Roosevelt: “No man is above the law and no man is beneath it.”

“These two former correctional officers have now been held accountable in a court of law for their abuse of inmates entrusted to their custody,” Wall said. “They do not represent the staff of this department. In fact, through their actions, they have dishonored the 1,500 men and women who perform their jobs with pride, professionalism and integrity every day. These men and women do a very difficult job, and they do it without breaking the law.”

Their charges are misdemeanors, carrying a maximum sentence of up to one year in prison. Can you imagine the fate of an inmate convicted of beating inmates? Botas and Viveiros have yet to be sentenced, but each, rightly, has been fired by the Department of Corrections.

Trial begins this week in Superior Court for Capt. Gualter Botas, 39, of Pawtucket, and Lt. Kenneth J. Viveiros, 56, of North Providence. The two ACI Correctional Officers face seven counts and four counts, respectively, of simple assault involving four inmates. Edward Fitzpatrick reports for the ProJo:

During Superior Court testimony on Wednesday and Thursday, former inmate Matthew S. Gumkowski testified that Botas “sucker-punched” him after he made a vulgar suggestion to the captain on June 8, 2005.

At the time, Gumkowski, 27, of East Greenwich, was serving sentences on drug delivery and weapon possession charges, and he was caught with a $20 bill at the minimum-security facility. Paper currency is prohibited at the prison unless inmates are on work release. [...] Gumkowski said the punch landed near his right eye and cheek bone and he began bleeding. “It was split open,” he said. “He threw some napkins at me and said, ‘Go ahead and do something and I’ll call a code.’ [...]

In February 2007, District Court Judge Madeline Quirk found Botas, Viveiros and correctional officer Ernest Spaziano guilty of assaulting Gonzalez, an inmate who was serving a sentence on a drug conviction. The three officers appealed their convictions to Superior Court. Spaziano, 40, of Burrillville, was the first to go to trial in Superior Court, and earlier this year he was found not guilty of assaulting Gonzalez. Now, Botas and Viveiros are receiving a Superior Court trial. Originally, the trial was to include allegations that Botas forced inmate Michael Walsh to taste his own feces.

But Michael J. Healey, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said Procaccini granted a defense motion to sever that allegation from the others. He said the judge told prosecutors they could either try all the allegations at once while not using evidence that Walsh was “allegedly made to eat his own feces” — or they could use that evidence and try the Walsh allegation separately. Prosecutors chose to have a separate trial.

So, yeah. COs, meet my friend, Justice. Play nice, boys.

I’ve often seen gentrification as a difficult problem to tackle. For many of my friends—young, working people trying to live in diverse areas and support themselves on small, non-profit or public service salaries—it is a struggle to find housing without becoming an agent of gentrification. But a New York Times piece today about Mount Morris Park, a traditionally-black Harlem neighborhood, explores one of the uglier examples of that phenomenon.

Timothy Williams chronicles the recent dispute over the neighborhood’s Marcus Garvey Park where, since 1969, drummers from Africa and the Caribbean have played an important role in shaping the social fabric and dynamic of the place. “The musicians,” he explains, “who play until 10 p.m. every summer Saturday, are widely credited with helping to make the park safer over the years.”

Across the street from the park however, at 2002 Fifth Avenue, is “a new seven-story cream and red brick luxury co-op with a doorman, $1 million apartments and a lobby with a fireplace.” Predictably, there have been some disputes about the character of the neighborhood.

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As I mentioned in a prior post about the Garrahy Judicial Complex, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately in that facility’s Courtroom 4C, where arraignments for RI’s 6th District take place. The judges at arraignment give a shpiel about the meaning and consequences of a plea whenever someone pleads out at that stage of the game, and I often take much of that shpiel for granted.

An important part of what they must instruct the defendants is that any criminal conviction or guilty plea will affect any immigration status or proceedings. For many, this means that deportation is inevitable. One thing missing from the shpiel, however, is consideration of how a guilty plea and prison sentence will affect the defendant’s status in Family Court. All too often, defendants are counseled to accept a shorter sentence with time served only to be served with Family Court subpoenas on charges of neglect—neglect that occurs while these parents are behind bars—or deportation papers.

Colorlines magazine has a great piece this month on the intersection of systems—namely immigration, incarceration, and foster care. In “When an Immigrant Mom Gets Arrested,” Julianne Ong Hing and Seth Wessler write:

Immigrant mothers are not the first to deal with the ways that different government agencies intersect, usually to their detriment. The experiences Black families have had with child welfare and criminal justice policy make clear what can happen to communities when family policy intersects with a set of other punitive policies.

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Or so read the headline yesterday on one of my favorite blogs, History Is a Weapon. And when you look at the late Senator’s resume, he’s left us little reason to mourn. Here are a few of his most remarkable achievements:

• Fighting integration;
• Opposing Martin Luther King day;
• the Helms-Burton act, the centerpiece of the embargo against Cuba;
• Disputing ALL Affirmative Action programs;
• Voting to bail out the savings and loan industry AND to slash school lunches for impoverished children, medical care for disabled veterans, prescription drugs for the elderly, and wages for working families;
• Hating all gay people;
• Supporting apartheid in South Africa;
• Routinely fighting against AIDS research from the beginning, blaming people suffering from the disease for it;
• Leading the fight to discontinue Pell Grants for inmates;
• And, in 1993, singing Dixie to the first African American senator, Carol Mosely-Braun, and promising to make her “cry.”

I think HIAW sums it up well, when they proclaim: “Hell burns hotter tonight.” Want some more inspiring food for thought? Check out “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” a speech given by Frederick Douglass in Rochester on July 5, 1852.

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Then she dunked again the next game.

Everybody knows that just before you get to New Haven proper on I95, there is this giant American flag. Its all tattered and brown, and it can’t always appear majestic because of its shear weight. RISD prof and local smartist Liz Collins will be bringing 8 knitters and thousands of queers together to reimagine the original pride flag - maybe even surpassing 95’s old glory. The flag will incorporate the original hot pink and turquoise that we now see missing (representative of sex and art respectively). It happens today between 12PM and 6PM at Waterplace Park and is the fourth installment of Collins’ Knitting Nation project.

For covering concerns expressed here and elsewhere about the 10-5 plan for at-large seats on the Providence City Council.  At-large seats aren’t a fundamentally bad idea — but one would hope they’d be structured in a fashion that would make the council more representative of the city.

“This is a BAD idea, unless seats are allocated proportionally,” Segal wrote in one post. “. . . 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,” Segal continued. “A city that is 15 percent African-American would likely be left with no African-American on the city council.” Referring to the 2002 election, when Juan Pichardo became Rhode Island’s first Latino state senator — but only at the cost of Charles Walton, the only black member of the chamber, losing his seat — Segal wondered whether the lessons of that contest have been learned.

Jerzyk weighed in with this: “It is disturbing to see so many ‘liberals’ support the idea of downsizing the Providence City Council from 15 wards to 10 wards and then adding 5 at-large seats. This effort will reduce the ability of Providence residents to run for office, reduce the minority representation on the Council (from four to two or one or zero), and position the wealthy areas of our city to have a wind-fall on the Council. I support the progressive solution: Councilman Seth Yurdin’s idea of keeping our 15 wards and adding two-to-six at-large seats to the Council elected on a ‘proportional representation’ system to ensure ‘one-person, one-vote’ throughout the city.” 

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Awesomely enough, this dude may actually beat out the front runner in today’s Oregon Senate primary. If he wins, and beats sitting GOP Senator Gordon Smith in November, Novick is automatically Captain Hook in the Senate’s annual production of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.

In other news about politicians’ hands, RI Congressman Patrick Kennedy broke his doing karate a month ago. F’real.

I am doing a sexy little dance in my office chair right now, because:

Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the California Supreme Court ruled [today].

According to the court, “In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.”

I look forward to attending several fabulous destination weddings for my gay and lesbian friends over the next few years. (Then again, maybe I’ll finally find the right girl…)

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.