Drive-by on Doyle
I wish that we could begin the week with some good news out of Mt. Hope, but Channel 10 reported this story last night and the Providence Journal reported it this morning.
Man shot on East Side01:00 AM EST on Sunday, December 17, 2006
PROVIDENCE — The police were investigating a drive-by shooting of a man walking on Doyle Avenue on the city’s East Side about 6 p.m. yesterday.
The man, who was not immediately identified, was unable to provide the police with a description of his assailant or the car from which the shots were fired, according to detectives. He was taken to Miriam Hospital with a bullet wound to the arm that the that the police did not believe was life-threatening.
I guess the man quoted in the post of the 17th, Drive-by shootings and . . ., from a letter he wrote to the East Side Monthly that cruelly characterized the Camp Street area (as he called it) as rife with these types of problems, as unkind as his characterization is, seems to be right on the money.
A Sunday evening incident of this kind, that took place in front of the subsidized housing between Doyle and Pleasant where activity that looks a lot like drug dealing can often be observed, does nothing to dispel Mt. Hope's reputation as a dangerous neighborhood that is still controlled by drugs, criminals, and the ever present threat of violence.
Posted at 11:15 AM | Issues | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Poem of the Week
Wanting
Let me sleep with you
And touch your soul
while you dream
your dream of sleep
without stress
or waking before
dawn,
and I will love you
in a manner both profound
and profane,
sustained by nothing
but sheer physicality
and nearness,
earnest love,
hard by your legs
and crevices,
even your toes
arousing in me the desire
to engulf you,
to enflame you
with heat
and with a wetness
unknown by rain,
unseen by light,
but better,
better yet
than that solitary sun,
which burns not just
our souls
but our hearts
and leaves us wanting.
-
-
John Twomey
Posted at 04:05 AM | The Arts | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Kevin Jackson the Enabler
It has long been the worst kept secret in Mt. Hope that Councilman Kevin Jackson is the greatest enabler of drug dealing in Mt. Hope.
Without K.J., drug dealing would have disapeared long ago. He may as well stand down at the Crossroads, the corner of Camp & Cypress, and pedal drugs himself for all he has done to enable the drug dealers in Mt. Hope.
He leans on the police to go easy, to not enforce the law in Mt. Hope. He never hesitates to play the race card and to accuse the police of racial profiling. The drug dealers know of his liberal, knee-jerk leanings and run to him with stories of racist police action whenever a minority drug dealer is arrested for selling drugs on the streets of Mt. Hope.
That is the main reason why the police seem to be hamstrung in Mt. Hope. They are loath to take on a City Councilman when he opposes them enforcing the law. Who wishes to commit political suicide?
How would you like to be the District 8 Commander and have the Ward Councilman tell you to "leave them alone"?
He crows about being one of the first, avid supporters of our new mayor. How complicit is Mayor Ciciline for going along to get along?
We, the law abiding, property tax paying citizens of Mt. Hope pay for these politicians pandering to the scum who deal drugs on Mt. Hope streets.
For what?
Because the drug dealers are minorities?
You guessed it.
If Kevin Jackson opposed drug dealing in Mt. Hope, and actively represented the property owners in Mt. Hope, as well as all the law abiding, market-priced renters, family's, and working people in Mt. Hope, drug dealers would not be controlling the streets in Mt. Hope. In fact drug dealing would have long ago ceased to exist in Mt. Hope.
It is a shame that Jackson usually runs unopposed and that people do not realize what destruction he has wreaked on Mt. hope through his pandering.
The Summit is also victim to his pandering for Mt. Hope exports crime to the Summit neighborhood. Yet he wins them over with money for landscaping and "bump outs".
What a joke!!!
No more fear!
Even if you are a policeman, hamstrung and frustrated by the situation, or just a citizen,
VOICE YOUR OPINION HERE,
YOU WILL BE KEPT ANONYMOUS!
Posted at 07:18 AM | Community | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Drive-by Shootings and Crack Houses
This, from a letter to the East Side Monthly from a constituent of Kevin Jackson, a constituent who is not afraid to tell it like it is.
"Perhaps you should pull your head out from the clouds and realize that as we in the Summit Neighborhood congratulate ourselves on supposedly reduced crime rates, just across Rochambeau in the Camp St. neighborhood you have drive-by shootings and crack houses. In the Fox Point neighborhood, a place that desperately NEEDS a branch library, the Fox Point Branch is slated to close. In the meantime, we get new sidewalks no one actually needs, and traffic bumpouts that actually obstruct and interfere with pedestrian and vehicular safety."
At least there is one honest person in the Ward and in District 8 who recognizes Mt. Hope for what it is: a place where the City, and Kevin Jackson, Councilman, enables and allows the drug trade to prey on Mt. Hope residents and to export crime to adjacent neighborhoods such as the Summit, once known as "Hope".
They've distanced themselves from that moniker: I wonder why.
Read the entire letter, below.
Reaching the Summit
To the editor:
I would like to share with your readers the following letter that was written in response to an article encouraging residents of the Summit neighborhood to avoid putting vinyl siding on their houses in the hope of achieving “historical neighborhood” status.
Dear SNA:
I am writing in response to the column titled “Vinyl is not Historic” on page 2 of the Fall 2006 edition of the Summit News. First of all, I want to express my deep resentment at the shallow, self-righteous elitism implicit in this article. To suggest that “my neighbor’s homes in the Elmgrove Gardens…” are “not so different” from my own and therefore someday my “home could be in a historic district” makes the presumption that this is something I would desire.
But let me express another perspective here. I see my home, and my neighborhood, not as a museum piece or picturesque tribute to someone’s idea of “quaintness”, but a living, breathing neighborhood filled with children, energy, and LIFE! I would rather look forward to the future, doing the things that best preserve the structural integrity of my home and doing so with an architectural aesthetic that is not mired in someone else’s notion of “historical”.
For me, history started in the 1950’s – a period that reflected new textures, new materials, and (god forbid!) a variety of color schemes. Beyond the elitism of your anti-vinyl propaganda, there are the real-world economics of raising a family in the Summit Neighborhood. Perhaps I cannot afford to repaint my house in historically-correct colors every 10 – 15 years. Perhaps vinyl (dare I say it… even ALUMINUM!)is a more cost effective solution for me, and would far outweigh the benefits of any tax credit.
But beyond this, I find the implicit intrusion into my rights as a property owner to be an unforgivable affront. Believe me, SNA, if I decide to cloak my house in day-glo orange aluminum siding I will do so, and I will oppose to the death any movement to prevent me or anyone else in my neighborhood from doing the same.
Perhaps you should pull your head out from the clouds and realize that as we in the Summit Neighborhood congratulate ourselves on supposedly reduced crime rates, just across Rochambeau in the Camp St. neighborhood you have drive-by shootings and crack houses. In the Fox Point neighborhood, a place that desperately NEEDS a branch library, the Fox Point Branch is slated to close. In the meantime, we get new sidewalks no one actually needs, and traffic bumpouts that actually obstruct and interfere with pedestrian and vehicular safety.
Please keep your elitist propaganda to yourself. Don’t assume “East Side” to mean “upscale” – we are a varied people from all economic strata and with a range of background, tastes, and aesthetics that reflect the plurality that makes us strong. When I want to experience the Victorian era, I’ll go to the museum. But I don’t want to live there.
Maurice Methot
50 Summit Ave.
Providence
Posted at 04:45 AM | Community | Comments (0)
Laferte's Folly
On Catch-23 Redoux and Katie Laferte's allegations
“Mount Hope doesn't need fifteen organizations fighting each other. We're talking about twenty blocks here.”
“ . . . rather than staking out territory and duking it out like the kids are doing in their ridiculous ‘gangs . . . ”
I’ve learned to have a sense of humor in dealing with Mt. Hope's unselfish, though ambitious and thoroughly ambivalent citizen activists, because, well, a sense of humor is definitely needed in order to keep one's sanity -- otherwise one would rue the day they ever became active in neighborhood politics.
I think our illogical commenter, Ms Laferte, got caught a little bit off base in her mini-rant mini-skirt, about Mt. Hope neighborhood organizations, and here, she gets picked off base, to use a baseball metaphor.
I’ve been involved in community work in Mt. Hope and with GCCC for many years, and I have experienced no conflict with any other Mt. Hope organizations. The Mt. Hope organizations I know of have separate missions which do not overlap.
For instance, the Ministries do community outreach to poor people using government funds, and the MHNA uses government funds to provide after school programs, while the GCCC uses only member dues to do their work, which focuses on quality of life issues.
Our Catch23 writer says that, “
“Mount Hope doesn't need fifteen organizations fighting each other. We're talking about twenty blocks here.”
And even earlier, in a related statement, she compares Mt. Hope organizations to teenage gangs fighting over turf.
“ . . . rather than staking out territory and duking it out like the kids are doing in their ridiculous ‘gangs’.”
Who are these 15 organizations, Ms. Katie Laferte; which ones are duking it out; and what are they duking it out about?
I, myself, want you to inform me as I’m a long time member and leader of one of the organizations (GCCC).
And I assure you, Katie, the "kids" don't in any way see their gangs as "ridiculous" -- they see them as deadly serious, as you should, too, as we all should. How many have died?
It seems to me that this Katie commenter cemented herself concretely in an abyss of obese hyperbole, if you know what I mean. In other words, I think she’s got it all wrong.
Our Catch23 commenter asks that:
"The organizer of these meetings has told me she's contacted the GCCC leadership on a few occasions to extend an invitation to attend. I would like to pass on the information to a member who would like to get involved (not someone who would derail the process, but someone who would be willing to attend as a representative of the principles of the GCCC)".
My stance on meeting with other organizations at the request of CATCH is that it would be a waste of our time unless they provided GCCC with a clear agenda.
If CATCH had a concrete proposal for the GCCC organization asking GCCC to perform a certain function for them or aid them in a specific area or task we would have looked over the request carefully, put it to our members, and acted on it one way or the other. But we received no proposal, no phone call to discuss issues, just an e-mailed meeting announcement with no agenda.
Since my wife, Irene, was battling cancer at that time, all such insignificant activities, as GCCC leaders, we just put insignificant requests on the back burner.
GCCC categorically rejects Ms. Laferte's allegation that a rift exists between any Mt. Hope organizations and challenges her to prouduce evidence of her unfounded manipulative, delusional, and paronoid accusations.
But we (you) can certainly create a rift if you so desire!
But we did ask a GCCC member to represent GCCC at a CATCH meeting; Ellen Baver, and Ms. Baver left that CATCH meeting in tears after being viciously attacked by the woman who works at the Learning Center, Ann Marie Ready, and from someone from the Mt. Hope Neighborhood Association, a Mr. Carvallho,, and Ms. Devine, all for Ms. Baver’s writing a letter to the editor of the Providence Journal and the East Side Monthly expressing her point of view as a Mt.Hope mother, parent, and resident who walks Camp Street on a regular basis.
See the July 7th post, Pro Jo Editorials = Two of a Kind -- Does Mayor Get It? : the comments made under that post, using names like Kangroo Communique, et al.
Ghastly behavior!
I’m appalled at the gall of these people.
To publicly attack and criticize someone for exercising their right to free speech, their right to voice their political opinion? To verbally attack her out of the blue in front of all the other people present at the meeting.
One person implied, (in what I consider a manipulative lie) that Ms. Baver's letter offended Mt. Hope's youth -- can you countenance such an outrageous accusation -- who did Ms. Baver's letter offend, the youthfull drug dealers on Camp Street?
Another person told Ms. Baver that she intervened to keep somone from burning down her, the Baver's, house! Can you imagine?
Ms. Ready, Mr. Carvhallo, Ms. Devine, write your own letter of dissent to the editor, for Christ’s sake--voice your disagreement in the public forum like Ms. Baver had the courage to do.
Cowards! Cowards all!
Ms. Baver reported to me that she was totally unprepared for such a vicious, personal attack and that it really shook her and her family up. She left their meeting in tears and was upset for days afterwards. Ms. Baver is one of the Mt. Hope residents and GCCC members who has worked the most courageously, and unselfishly, for positive change in Mt. Hope.
What way is that to treat someone whom you invited to participate in your meeting?
I wish I had been there --I really, really wish I had been there.
Despicable behavior! Shame, shame, shame on all you who participated!
Since my wife, Irene, successfully beat her cancer (she’s cancer free, thanks, to all of you kind people who inquired) she has attended every meeting of CATCH. She has not yet heard of a proposal for GCCC from CATCH.
So what’s the deal, Ms. Laferte?
What have you and CATCH got for the GCCC?
What are you calling for?
You sat right next to Irene at the last CATCH meeting, and you had every opportunity to follow up on this Catch-23 post of yours, yet you were as quiet as a little mousey. Are you mousey by nature?
Here is another Laferte quote from the Catch-23 post:
“The much maligned CATCH program has held a series of meetings since the spring about "affordable housing." The fallout of these meetings is the idea that all Mount Hope organizations should get together and talk to one another, to develop trust and accountability and really try and deal with the various problems people perceive in the neighborhood rather than staking out territory and duking it out like the kids are doing in their ridiculous ‘gangs’.”
What do you mean, “The fallout of these meetings . . . “? Should we all be in our “fallout” shelters?
And by the way, Ms. Laferte, who told you Mt. Hope organizations don’t have “trust and accountability” -- or are you making that up?
CATCH, Ms. Laferte? Who? Empty rhetoric, Ms. Laferte: we await proof?
Has anyone observed anything like a gang war between Mt. Hope organizations?
I think Ms. Laferte needs to stick to organizing neighbors and community residents to clean up the empty land trust lot that blights the view from her house: she has organized at least two such clean-ups, calling them “Community Cleanups”, when in fact they only cleaned up the filthy part of the community that she could see from her front window:
I participated in one of her so called “Community Clean-ups, and I felt used and dirty afterward. And I vowed, never again.
There are many kinds of community activists -- Ms. Laferte is one kind.
Some people are only involved in CATCH because they think they can have some minor input into the affordable housing that is going into Abbott Court, the Walkway off of Knowles Street where Ms. Laferte lives. CATCH should be aware of such motives.
As far as for CATCH, none of the three principal organizers lives in Mt. Hope, nor have they invested financially in Mt. Hope. Only their meeting moderator, Ms. Devine, is a Mt. Hope resident, with a financial commitment to Mt. Hope. She is a professional in social work for Miriam Hospital. I wonder whether she is the CATCH front person only because she lives in Mt. Hope and only becaues she is a person of color.
In fact, most of the people involved in CATCH and the Mt. Hope Empowerment Network are what I refer to as Professional Liberals. They draw their paychecks either from the government or from organizations that draw funds from the government for social services. It is important for their careers, for their resumes, to be involved in something like CATCH.
I call it resume building.
Although these people all have an ulterior motive, I believe that these people strongly, honestly believe that they are doing good.
They just cannot tolerate anyone who disagrees with them.
I do.
I personally, strongly disagree with them.
Believe me, liberals are less tolerant than conservatives, and I am in no way a conservative, but I believe Professional Liberals are the least tolerant of all, as evidenced by their attack on Ms. Baver for voicing her opinion.
I consider the leader of CATCH to be Dr. Peter Simon, of the Health Department, and I wish he had the courage of his convictions to confront his associates for their viscious and unconsionable attack on GCCC's Ms. Baver.
I think CATCH, or now, The Empowerment Network, can do some good and bring some needed services to people who need them. I hope they can bring some of their ideas to fruition.
GCCC remains ready and willing to work with CATCH: we simply await a written proposal explaining what CATCH is all about and what role they wish GCCC to play in their plans.
I strongly believe that GCCC should be operated in a professional, legal, business-like manner. CATCH should approach GCCC with these principals in mind.
I respectfully ask CATCH if they have plans that include GCCC, please forward them in writing to us, or simply call us up on the phone, or e-mail us, and fill us in on the details. GCCC is open to considering any projects that will benefit the entire Mt. Hope community, as expressed in our Mission Statement.
GCCC also remains willing to reach out to the Mt. Hope learning Center’s Ms. Ready and to the MHNA’s, Mr. Carvhallo and to CATCH to work toward common goals benefiting Mt. Hope: but we strongly believe that the individuals who attacked Ms. Baver owe her an apology for their vicious and unconscionable, personal, ad hominem attack on her at the winter, 2005, CATCH meeting.
Yeah, one must have a “mind of winter” to behold “the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” To quote Wallace Stevens.
And, oh yeah, one must have a mind with a sense of humor, otherwise, well . . .
Drug dealers still operate freely right around the Crossrroads, Camp & Cypress, within sight of the Police Department's District 8 Substation -- it takes both a "mind of winter" and a "sense of humor" to tolerate that!
John Twomey
Posted at 03:59 AM | Community | Comments (1)
Dear Mayor Cicilline
This letter was published in the Pro Jo and in the East Side Monthly.
The writer was viciously attacked by members of the Empowerment Network or formerly, CATCH, for exercising her right of free speech in the press.
Dear Mayor Cicilline,
I'm writing you on behalf of my family the Bavers. I am Ellen, my husband is Uri, and our four children are Nechama, Eliyahu, Elimelech and Chana, aged 10 to three years.
We are an orthodox Jewish family, and we live on Camp Street in Mt Hope, close to Rochambeau. We bought our lovely home about 6 months ago, and we paid almost 300, 000 for the house. That may not be a lot of money in some books, but we saved for years, and Mt. Hope was the neighborhood we could afford and where we fell in love with a house large enough for our big family. We love our home and the nice people we meet around the neighborhood. What we don't understand is what is going on around Mt. Hope with all the drugs and crime, and why don’t the police and the City do more to solve the crime and social problems here. Why are good, tax paying home owners being victimized by home and car break-ins and having to live with fear in their own homes and neighborhood. We feel like hostages to addicts, dealers, thieves and other criminals? Drive a few streets away, to any other East Side neighborhood, and everything is clean and quiet.
Let me take you on a walk down Camp Street with us, from my house to Billy Taylor Park, as I often do with my 4 kids. Our walk to the park is just an experience in itself. We do not feel very safe walking this route with our children, and if you wish to accompany me one day, you would be very welcome. I do feel we have the right to feel safe and comfortable walking from our home to the park.
When we leave our house on Camp Street, near Rochambeau, we often encounter an addict/dealer who lives down the street and hangs out on a corner. He is someone who I do not want my kids to see or know exists. If I know what he’s doing, why can’t the police just watch for a little bit and do something about it? We see him sell drugs on a street corner and hide them nearby. We have spoken a lot times to the community police and the narcotics police, but he is still selling drugs and hiding them nearby.
Further down Camp Street we soon walk through the 200 block of Camp Street. Many times we see drug dealers on the porch of a deserted house at the corner with Camp and Grand View. In the next block, if we walk on the south side of the street, near a Ministries, we pass bags of old clothing left on the sidewalk and old furniture blocking half the sidewalk. If we walk on the north side of the street we pass men who stare with hostilely and men who smell of liquor or who look drug-addicted coming out of a building with a banner saying, Men’s Pride.
My kids ask me why is the street full of garbage and why is there always so many people just standing around. They ask why they are staring and what they want. All 5 of us feel very uncomfortable.
When we get to Billy Taylor Park, and we go down the hill to play on the grassy area, my kids are confronted with the ugly, peeling wall painting of scary looking drug addicts and a graveyard with crosses, and a saying, See Ya at the Crossroads. Again, they ask questions, like, what the pictures are about. They know nothing of drugs, and I want to keep it that way for a while so they can have a childhood. How do you explain that horrendous picture in a park for kids. I do not understand how any one could have put that in a park. If you understand, Mayor, please explain it to me and to my kids without spoiling their innocence.
Of course it would be out of the question to send my kids to the park by themselves, given the circumstances I just described, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Mayor?
When passing the little police station on Camp Street, I stop to talk with the policemen if they are there. They are real nice and friendly. Once I asked them why they don’t arrest the drug dealers and an officer told me that they can’t, the drug dealer’s friends and relatives would start a riot. That didn’t make sense. If people riot to protect drug dealers then arrest the rioters, right, wouldn’t that make the area better if both us and the police felt safe from dealers and rioters. What he told me made it sound like the police are afraid.
I ask around to people who have lived in Mt. Hope for a long time why is it this way and they shrug and tell me that’s the way it is in Mt. Hope. It’s politics, they say, the police are afraid of being accused of racism and the city tries to contain the drugs and crime in the Mt. Hope neighborhood. That way the other east side neighborhoods don’t have to cope with it. Is that true, Mayor Cicilline? That is the word around here.
Within 2 blocks of my house, I know at least 7 other new homeowners who bought here in the last year and paid top dollar for their home and pay high property taxes. We all wonder the same thing. Did we make a mistake to buy a home in Mt. Hope. Should I put my home back up for sale and move out? I have heard of others do that because of the climate of fear and crime in Mt. Hope. I hope that we won’t have to do that. But I don’t want to have to walk a street like Camp Street with my kids. I know of no other street on the East Side where such things are allowed by the City, nor do I know another park here that portrays drugs in a park wall-painting.
I would like to hear your comments and suggestions, Mayor Ciciline, because I am wondering what to do.
Very truly yours,
Ellen Y. Baver
Posted at 01:03 PM | Community | Comments (0)
