As people who work on the frontlines know, it’s difficult to attract funding for prevention. “Basically, what’s billable is provable, which is ridiculous,” Teny Gross, the first director of the Nonviolence Institute, told me when I did the first in-depth story on the nonprofit, in The Providence Phoenix, back in 2003.

In other words, how do you document the value of stabbings and shootings that never happen? Or establishing a truce to gain time for trying to avert further violence?

This helps explain why the Institute, despite an acknowledged role as a vital player in Rhode Island, now has five streetworkers, down from 15 in the past. It also helps to explain why a group of state lawmakers, led by Rep. Jose Batista and Sen. Tiara Mack, both Providence Democrats, are pushing to boost the Institute’s state funding from $200,000 to $1 million.

“The mass shooting that took place in the working-class neighborhood of Washington Park on Thursday May 13, 2021 – and the multiple shootings that have taken place since – revealed the dire need for greater violence prevention and violence intervention in our state,” the lawmakers wrote this week in a letter to House Speaker Joe Shekarchi and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio.

People often feel powerless in the wake of gun violence. But the “Boston Miracle” of the 1990s showed how communities can reduce the carnage. Violence interrupters are a key part of that strategy. Now, with an improved budget outlook and a torrent of federal stimulus money headed to Rhode Island, the moment could be right for a heightened state commitment to violence prevention.

The essential need for hope

Under the violence prevention model known as Group Violence Intervention, “Community members with moral authority over group members deliver a credible moral message against violence. Law enforcement puts groups on prior notice about the consequences of further group-involved violence for the group as a whole.”

For Jim Vincent, president of the Providence NAACP, offering a sense of hope for young people is a vital part of the equation.

“I look at it from more of a 40,000-feet view,” Vincent said on Political Roundtable at The Public’s Radio last week. “If you have children or young adults who have hope – they have hope – they will not resort to violence. I’m a believer of that. And I’ve never seen a person with a meaningful interest be a gang-banger. I’ve never seen it. So give somebody hope … I think that’s what you’ve got to do.”

The revolving door in Providence

Including interims, there have been close to 10 Providence school superintendents since talk started percolating in the late 1990s about the need to improve public education in Rhode Island. The spotlight on Harrison Peters, under broad fire for hiring an administrator charged with assault on a minor, has sparked renewed questions about the state takeover in Providence and the merits of an elected versus an appointed school board. Long story shorter: the already daunting challenge of overhauling the city’s schools – a big economic issue for the state’s future, and an urgent question for families in the capital city – has grown even more complicated.

Different takes on a $15 minimum wage

Failure is an orphan, but success has many parents, as the saying goes. With that in mind, consider some of the framing around Gov. Dan McKee’s signing of a law last week that will raise Rhode Island’s minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2025.

The progressive RI Working Families Party pointed to how the outcome followed “years of advocacy and work to elect allies.” The movement toward a $15 wage fits squarely within top goals of progressives across the country.

During a signing ceremony outside the State House, House Speaker Joe Shekarchi cited longtime support for a higher minimum wage from Reps. Marcia Ranglin-Vassell, David Bennett and Anastasia Williams.

At the same time, Shekarchi added a different context – how his House Democratic majority has backed a series of measures with higher wages, including the revised IGT-Twin River deal and the bill to raise pay for nursing home workers.

Raimondo’s record on judges

The Providence NAACP’s Jim Vincent credits former Gov. Gina Raimondo for diversifying the Rhode Island judiciary with some of her judicial picks, including the elevation of Melissa Long as the first person of color on the state’s highest court. But Vincent said it’s important to keep the big picture in mind, since only about eight of 90 judges in the state are people of color.

“I think we need a lot more,” he said on Roundtable. “I’m not a bean-counter or a math major, but that number should be maybe 20 or 25, at least, because 30 percent of the state are people of color. It needs to represent the people that they serve.”

RI Democrats court women activists

The Rhode Island Democratic Party this week unveiled a new caucus on women, children and families, co-chaired by RIDP Treasurer Elizabeth Beretta-Perik of Jamestown and Kathleen Marra of Charlestown, a native Rhode Islander who previously led the Maine Democratic Party. This initiative strikes some as an establishment attempt to recover some of the vitality that flowed into the breakaway RI Democratic Women’s Caucus.

In related news, RIDWC Chair Liz Gledhill is stepping away from that role to pursue a master’s in public health at Brown University. “There is no greater honor than to be trusted to lead, and I am forever grateful to our members for trusting me to [do] that these last two years,” Gledhill said in a statement.

According to the RIDWC, the membership of the caucus more than doubled during Gledhill’s tenure, the caucus raised $21,000 to support candidates last year, and 83 percent of the candidates backed by the caucus won their elections.

The high cost of housing

The cost of housing in RI keeps climbing, with the median price of a single-family home hitting $349,000 in April, according to the RI Association of Realtors.

Via news release: “Despite the extremely low inventory of homes for sale, closing activity rose 15.9 percent last month. At the current rate of sales, the supply of homes on the market would be depleted within 1.2 months, far below the five- to six-month supply which typically signifies a market balanced between supply and demand. Homes placed under contract in April but not yet closed rose 48.6 percent from a year ago, during which time the number of single-family homes on the market fell 50.9 percent. This combination bodes for an even further erosion of supply. ‘It’s hard to believe the appreciation that we’ve seen in the housing market in the past few years. In April 2015, our median sales price didn’t even hit $200,000. Now just six years later, we’re seeing more than a 75 percent gain. That’s great news for homeowners but for those trying to buy their first home, the scarcity of homes for sale and accompanying rising prices, are making for a difficult home search,’ said Leann D’Ettore, President of the Rhode Island Association of Realtors.”

ICE severs ties with Sheriff Hodgson

Via my colleague Ben Berke, ICE has cut its relationship with Thomas Hodgson, the controversial sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts: “Secretary Alejando Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security announced he is seeking the immediate closure of an ICE detention center in Bristol County as part of a broader effort to ensure the nation’s immigration detention centers are meeting the federal government’s health and safety standards. Since at least 2007, Bristol County’s jails have housed undocumented immigrants facing deportation as part of a federal contract known as an Intergovernmental Service Agreement. In a statement released Thursday, Mayorkas said ending ICE’s relationship with the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office is ‘an important first step’ in a broader review of how the federal government detains immigrants facing deportation.”

New training for 911 in RI

An update on 911 services in RI, via my colleague Lynn Arditi: “The Rhode Island House of Representative on Wednesday unanimously approved a bill to mandate that the state’s 911 Emergency Center operators provide CPR instructions and other emergency medical directions to callers in the critical minutes prior to the arrival of first responders. The bill (H-5629) introduced by Rep. Mia A. Ackerman (D-Cumberland), the deputy majority whip, would require that all 911 call takers be certified in emergency medical dispatch, or EMD, which includes training in so-called telephone-CPR. ‘911 operators are the real first responders,’ Ackerman said in a statement, ‘and can make the difference between life and death.’”

No hitting?

Can’t anyone here play this game? A pitching-dominant era in baseball has led to a flurry of no-hitters. According to the Times, “A number of factors are in play leading to the surge of no-hitters. Chief among them are an emphasis on power pitching and batters’ having shown a willingness to sell out contact in order to increase power. Those factors, plus surgical deployment of high-quality relievers, has resulted in strange numbers across the board.”

It remains unclear for now if MLB will adopt changes – like a lowering of the pitcher’s mound back in the late 1960s – to address this paucity of hitting. But considering the heightened willingness to tinker with the game, don’t be surprised if there’s a push to bring back more offense.

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis@ripr.org. Follow him on Twitter at

@IanDon. To read a longer version of this column or to sign up for email delivery, visit www.thepublicsradio.org