During the long hot summer of Black Lives Matter race riots, Providence’s Mayor Jorge Elorza announced a truth and reparations commission, accusing the city and all of Rhode Island of perpetrating “generations of pain and violence and systemic oppression”.
The leftist racist, who has been steadily sending the city down the drain, urged the 33% of white people still left in Providence to “heal by discussing and accepting these uncomfortable truths”.
The commission would not be looking into Elorza’s alleged systemic racism which resulted in a lawsuit by the city’s former Department of Public Works director claiming that he was fired over a principled refusal to hire unqualified people “because of their ethnic backgrounds” while being banned from hiring “qualified applicants of a different ethnic background”.
These “uncomfortable truths” were not on the truth and reconciliation menu.
Instead, Elorza pushed forward with a plan to offer $10 million in reparations even though Rhode Island had actually been the first state to ban slavery and was founded by Roger Williams: an opponent of slavery. The tiny state had mobilized 25,236 soldiers in the Civil War including the 11th United States Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment. 1,771 Rhode Islanders paid the ultimate price and twenty were awarded the Medal of Honor.
That, not Eloriza’s $10 million grift, is what actually fighting racism looks like.
“These funds move us one step further towards closing the present-day racial wealth and equity gap,” Mayor Elorza falsely claimed.
With 28,834 black people living in Providence, that $10 million amounts to a $346 check for every black person. That’s enough to cover a week of groceries for a family of four.
Meanwhile, only “14 percent of Providence students are proficient in English and 6.8 percent are proficient in math.” The good news is that Providence students are so illiterate that they don’t even realize that Rhode Island wasn’t a member of the Confederacy.
And they know so little of basic mathematics that they have no idea how much $346 is.
Elorza’s racist virtue signaling doesn’t close any gaps. And it’s now under fire because it’s insufficiently racist since poor white people can also apply. That’s because the racist mayor chose to use cash from Biden’s inflationary $1.9 trillion stimulus plan which can’t exclude non-black applicants. Like the mayor himself, his reparations have failed in every possible way.
“You can’t just throw around $10 million for this-and-that program and call it reparations, because then it will be done without ever really having a conversation about what repairing the harm would look like,” a member of Elorza’s African American Ambassador Group complained.
Elorza’s racist crusade has thus far toppled a Columbus statue, and eliminated “plantations” from the city’s historic name in time for Juneteenth: even though the name had nothing to do with slavery. But expecting a city of illiterates to know that may be asking too much.
Meanwhile, Providence still has a 23% poverty rate: more than double than the state average.
The 92% of minority students in the Providence School District, most of them Hispanic, have reading proficiency scores that are half that of the state average and math scores that are almost a third that of the state average.
Homicides rose for three straight years: hitting a high that hadn’t been seen in a decade.
In 2021, 75 people were shot and 23 were killed in Providence. More than half of the entire state’s murders in 2020 took place in Providence even though the city holds only a fifth of Rhode Island’s population.
Asked to explain this phenomenon, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha pointed out that, “If you shoot 22 rounds into the air, the odds of hitting someone go dramatically up, which in part leads to more outcomes resulting in death.” This is as undeniably true as it is irrelevant.
More relevantly, pro-crime policies, like those championed by Mayor Jorge Elorza, such as the Providence Community-Police Relations Act, have worsened crime in the area. To paraphrase the attorney general fired by the Trump administration, If you keep pandering to criminals, the odds of them committing crimes go up which leads to more outcomes resulting in death.
Mayor Jorge Elorza and his allies keep blaming racism for Providence’s miserable state, but Democrats have run Providence for 86 of the last 100 years.
If there’s any systemic racism, it was their system. And it’s so now more than ever.
Elorza has been running Providence into the ground for the last 7 years. Whose fault is all the misery? Taking down a Columbus statue or requesting a report about events 400 years in the past is a convenient cover-up for who’s actually in office now. And it ain’t Christopher Columbus.
Providence has a Democrat mayor and an all-Democrat council.
In 2019, former Providence City Council President Lou Aponte, one of the most enduring politicians on that body, pleaded guilty to felony embezzlement. In 2018, Majority Leader Kevin Jackson was sentenced to a year in prison for stealing over $100,000 from a youth charity.
What Providence really needs isn’t a truth and reconciliation commission, but a commission to stamp out the corruption and organized crime that the state and city have become infamous for.
Behind all the racist virtue signaling are uncomfortable truths about crime and demographics.
A Matter of Truth, the truth and reconciliation report commissioned by the mayor, blames racism for black people getting COVID and quotes BLM co-founder Alicia Garza boasting that “black communities have the power not just to save the country, but to lead the country.”
Not so much in Providence, Rhode Island, where Latinos have long since become the dominant minority group. Mayor Jorge Elorza is the son of Guatemalan immigrants. Of the 15 city council members, all Democrats, 6 are Latino, some of African heritage, but only one is black American.
And behind the virtue signaling and wokeness are some ugly realities, Councilwoman Carmen Castillo, the Dominican immigrant who became the subject of a documentary for going from hotel cleaning lady to the city council, was charged in a hit and run crash. While Castillo might have faced a 6-month prison sentence and a ban on running for public office, instead she got a slap on the wrist with no prison time and a $3,500 payout to the victim.
Asking about that would be racist. Obviously.
Castillo defeated NAACP president Gerard Catala who faces an investigation over campaign finance violations including depositing a political contribution to his personal bank account.
But that’s just Providence politics which brings together corrupt Democrats of all races and creeds to screw over the illiterates who can’t read or add, but keep voting for them.
Even after they’re dead.
Providence’s Latino political elites keep pushing the ‘white guilt’ button while using black people as human shields. Most of the city’s minority population isn’t black and sleazy racists like Elorza are using false accusations of racism to seize power and distract attention from their abuses.
America isn’t racist, but Providence’s political elites are as corrupt as they are racist.
Other Parts of the Series:
Part I: Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot.
Part 2: LA’s Eric Garcetti.
Part 3: DC’s Muriel Bowser.
Part 4: KC’s Quinton Lucas.
Part 5: SF’s London Breed.
Part 6: Philly’s Jim Kenney.
Part 7: St. Louis’ Tishaura Jones.
Part 9: Seattle’s Jenny Durkan.
Part 10: Minneapolis’s Jacob Frey.
Part 11: Charlottesville’s Nikuyah Walker.
Part 12: Portland’s Ted Wheeler.
Part 13: Atlanta’s Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Part 14: NYC’s Bill de Blasio.
Part 15: Enfield’s Mondale Robinson
Thanks Daniel. I was thinking about how the reparations will actually harm the recipients. Like lottery winners who end up with ruined lives. It isn’t as paradoxical as it sounds. More valuable to the recipients would be learning basic economic skills, such as how to minimize costs, and add value by doing some kind of work.
Also, the reparations will just whet their appetite for more, rather than satisfying them.
Yes, free money doesn’t ‘solve anything’. but does create dependency. And if you’re running a political machine based on a welfare state, that’s what you want.
Dem-controlled states are looking to follow Oregon’s lead by giving all the brown skin students diplomas…without having been to a single math or English class. Why? Equity. Math has become ‘racist’ today since brown skin students have the lowest math/English test scores in the country, so instead of admitting these students aren’t naturally as ‘skilled’ as other students, the only other possible reason for their failure has to be…’White Supremacy’. So they are sending out a generation of black unskilled workers into the world and patting themselves on the back, thinking they’re making an important step against ‘racism’. That’s liberal-logic for ya.
Gee, isn’t this the destructive trajectory present in most all cities with Democratic political control? One might think it is, as the Marxists say, no accident.
The ‘blue model’ works beautifully.
Destroy cities by wiping out the middle and working classes, leaving nothing but thin enclaves for wealthy hipsters and massive welfare ghettos.
And then use a political machine to control urban and then statewide elections.
Don’t knock it, they’ve used the model to take over America.
Sad and tragic that a son of Guatemalan immigrants that came here for a better life produced by the remnants of capitalism still left in America is dedicated to destroying those remnants.
But even more shocking is the case of Alejandro Mayorkas a Cuban refugee that came here on a raft escaping communism and is now also dedicated to destroying freedom, liberty, and the remants of American capitalism.
Where could these refugees and sons of refugees have learned this ideology that America needs to be transformed into a socialist-fascist dictatorship? That the remnants of American freedom and liberty need to be destroyed? At their schools. At their universities. Mayorkas was indoctrinated at Berkeley and Elorza was brainwashed at Harvard.
“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.” – Aristotle
“The present state of the world is not the proof of philosophy’s impotence, but the proof of philosophy’s power. It is philosophy that has brought men to this state—it is only philosophy that can lead them out.” – Ayn Rand
Mayorkas didn’t come here on a raft. He was an upper class kid from a wealthy family who grew up in Beverly Hills. His parents made it out of Castro’s Cuba, but they did it legally.
This article is incredibly spot on. I live in Providence and the amount of corruption in this city and state are beyond compare. I have two choices for the state’s motto – “The Grifter State” or “The Entitlement State”. It is a society of who can get the most out of the government as they possibly are able. From generations on welfare and housing subsidies to politicians who say one thing, but do another. The latter is a given in that circle, but it seems like Rhode Island has too many chiefs with their hands stuck in the smallest of money pots and no accountability.
Thank you. It’s a shame. Would be happy to hear any stories you have.
I have spent most of my life about 8 miles from Providence. It is worth noting that it’s present population is about 0% of what it was in 1950. As to state motto, my father, noting the corruption, always suggested “Everything falls off the truck in Rhode Island”
Sad. As a descendant of Jeremy Clarke, several times colonial governor in the state (and other colonial noted VIP’s there – I am aware of the history of slavery in the area. Both ancestors John Stanton and John Porter were the latest slave owners there – but that was over almost a hundred years before the Civil War.
From these roots came connections that make me a Second cousin of Levi Coffin. As well as a host of lesser remembered persons who worked to end slavery.
I have ancestors who fight in the Civil War to end the session. One, John Locke died outside of Vicksburg before the siege of it. I had an First cousin who was sent to the Andersonville Prison. He survived, but had a much reduce length and quality of life due to that.
The thing is – none of this makes any difference with these corrupted and rotten people. The money will go into the sands of time, and leave people returning again to demand.
Demand money from people who never owned slaves to be handed over to people who were never slaves. And further, money be demanded with an order to submit – with no consideration being given that there were people worked to end an evil.
It insults even the money.
Hear you. Here in California a reparations group recently recommended $350,000 be given to every negro for a grand total of $560 BILLION.. Never mind that California never was a slave-holding state!!! This is being abetted by gov. Newsom, a loathsome creature with presidential ambitions.
If “black communities have the power not just to save the country, but to lead the country”, why after 160 years do they need $346 to get ahead? This virtue signaling hand out does nothing but pit people who were never slaves against people who never owned them and belittle blacks by implying they are less capable than others. Tax dollars are for the common good of citizens not rewarding one demographic at the expense of others.
I have spent most of my life about 8 miles from Providence. It is worth noting that it’s present population is about 0% of what it was in 1950. As to state motto, my father, noting the corruption, always suggested “Everything falls off the truck in Rhode Island”
Excellent article and series! The same happening here in Los Angeles. The all-Democrat council recently was rocked when three LATINO council members and a union boss were recorded making so-called racist commentaries. One councilman, Kevin Leon (another Guatemalan) refuses to resign and leftist activists are pursuing him to the point of violence. The left eating its own. I love it.
Democrats that propose reparations prove they are racist by proposing reparations. Sane, honest, non-racist people of color do not want reparations and do not feel they are owed reparations. Democrat politicians, especially white democrat politicians, think all people of color are ignorant racists who will sell their vote for free stuff.
Elorza and the rest of the crooks think they are the cream rising to the top when actually they are just s—t floating.
Maybe one day people will start talking openly about the White who were enslaved by black Muslims in the 14th Century, or the Irish who were enslaved in the West Indies? Brown skins and lefties are always moaning about slavery and how ALL blacks are “owed reparations”, with zero idea of how many black Africans were actually bought from their African friends and brought to Northern America as ‘slaves’. Not every state allowed slavery so there were only 15 ‘slave states’ where just over 8-million Whites lived. But slaves were expensive (between $1,200-$1,500 each!) so only 6% of those 8-million could actually afford even one. According to Census, by the end of 1850, there were 3,204,313 black Africans who, at some point between 1620-1850, were N. American slaves. In fact, over 800,000 of them were living here as free men!
Funny they never talk about the 10-MILLION black slaves in Brazil for over 500-years, or the Middle East Muslim slave traders. They only hate us Whites.
The Arabs castrated all The Men and boys , that is why , when 48 % of all Black slaves went to the middle East , there are no Blacks there , i guess The Arabs do sometimes get something right …ha..ha…
All Blacks and Spics are Racists , it is We Whites that have tried to accomadate the brown and black inferior humans .
No More , they are The Enemy …Ammo up , and No Mercy !
All illegal invaders and their kids born here illegally must be deported or exterminated . Latinos are The Enemy of White Christian Eurocentric Civilization …they are peasant scum , nothing more .
Who taught you to hate like that?
tsk, tsk. how is it the blacks have figured this out and all the other races in america fund the idea. black america has realized that in a free nation you simply vote yourself a check. its that simple. the good news is.. you can have one too. all you have to do is give up your moral code and hard work ethics and let the mules do all the work. I feel for all the hardworking americans who think their taxes are going to a just system. its not. you work. they dont. and they get a check. dont worry about when the mules figure it out, there wont be any money left to go around.
The 14th ammenment must be repealed , otherwise thhe country will be flooded with illegals
with the right to vote .