Dan Lawlor: Where is Rhode Island’s One Percent?

Monday, April 16, 2012

Daniel Lawlor, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

 

Who are Rhode Island's one percent? What are they doing?

I've seen plenty of empty villages throughout this state. Have you been to downtown Pawtucket? Artic? Woonsocket? So many places have a sense of once being beautiful, and now being forgotten.

Suburban sprawl has brought corporate headquarters and office parks to formally rural parts of Smithfield, Lincoln, East Greenwich and the like. This sprawl has continued alongside a declining tax revenues and job opportunities in our urban core.

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Let's be clear: State socialism created the suburbs. Government funded roads and government backed mortgages helped fund the massive suburban migration of the 1970s and 1980s. That migration - of educated, middle class workers away from the cities and mill villages - limited tax revenues and job opportunities in city centers across the state.

Imagine Woonsocket with a few additional office towers and hotels in its downtown, instead of those businesses sidelined into office parks along the highway. I see a downtown with thriving business, multiple high end restaurants, tourists, parking garages, and art galleries. I see people spending money, investing in downtown, living in lofts, creating jobs. I see social entrepreneurs taking risks and helping the community. That's not the case now.

There are awesome things going on in downtown Woonsocket- from River's Edge to an enterprising Indian restaurant. Yet, obvious to any afternoon stroller, much of the main streets are empty. Empty of business, empty of people, empty even of art (several murals exempted).

Walk around Artic in West Warwick (felled in part by Warwick Mall and Rhode Island Mall), and it’s the same story. Scrappy, independent businesses - including a great New York System - next to empty store front after empty store front. The department stores all moved to the strip malls.

Rhode Island doesn't need more rich people to be successful. We need small scale business owners, middle class entrepreneurs, and working people across the state to work together and get the support needed to open businesses, open museums, open community libraries, end chronic homelessness, and create engaging, exciting places to live.

A few years back, a Phoenix article described Providence as a poor, gritty city hiding beneath of veneer of Renaissance. Today, the downtown is shiny, modern, new - and most of the city is still poor. Yet, plenty of community groups in Providence - City Arts, New Urban Arts, Manton Avenue Project, Youth Pride, Youth in Action - are creating alternative spaces for community success. Today, the public goods are still not distributed fairly. Some school buildings are falling apart and near toxic lakes, some are not. Some neighborhoods will have easy access to the new train line, others will not. Providence is poor and cosmopolitan, brimming with potential, yet held back. It's a bit like paradise with polluted ponds and street gangs.

Where are the 1%? Living in nice big houses in Newport, in Providence, in Little Compton. Where are the 99%? In Manville, Olneyville, Pascoag, Centerdale, Smith Hill, Elmwood, and Valley. The 1% funded the factories and moved them overseas, leaving polluted ponds across the state. The 99%, working paycheck to paycheck, trying to make rent and insurance, need a break - a break from politicians holding us back, a break from foreclosures, a break from another round of church closings, community center cuts, and empty storefronts.

It took thirty years to try to knock out this state. It hasn't worked. People still create art, music, go to worship, go to parks, open business, and organize. They can knock down neighborhoods for highways, move corporate headquarters out of town, and say these villages are dumps. Yet, these places aren't dumps. They have history, potential, and a future. We can still bounce back.


 

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