Part Two

PROVIDENCE – This story was not meant to be a travelogue of past stories published in ConvergenceRI. But one story stands out from the others in the last year: the personal story of teacher Betsy Taylor, told in her own words, “A teacher speaks her mind,” following her decision to interrupt a news conference in front of Hope High School called by Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza and other elected officials.

A year later, what is still missing from much of the conversation around turning around Providence schools and the decision to reopen Rhode Island public schools in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic is the voice of the teachers and the parents. Why is that?

First, Gov. Gina Raimondo has commandeered the airwaves with her weekly news briefings, showing only herself and her team – and never the reporters asking questions. Second, the Governor has effectively begun a coordinated email campaign through Constant Contact to recap her accomplishments, often on a daily basis, which always end with the P.S. that begins: “Information is our greatest weapon in the fight against COVID-19.” Really?

Third, the news media has become a willing collaborator, if that is the right term, in providing a regular platform for R.I. Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green to spread her gospel. Most recently, WPRI has offered Infante-Green a weekly slot on its 4 p.m. news show, which also recently featured an interview with Gov. Raimondo.

The carefully managed public relations effort by the Governor and by the Commissioner goes to the heart of the issue – whose voices are heard, whose narratives get told?

Similarly, it was surprising to see Bill Batholomew, now a member of RI PBS’s team of storytellers, feature Infante-Green on a recent B-Town podcast, as if she needs any further amplification of her messaging.

One thing that I wear, as a badge of honor, is the refusal by Gov. Gina Raimondo to agree to a one-on-one interview with me. It is now going on five years since she first shook my hand, looked me in the eye, and agreed to do so. I have interviewed numerous members of her administrative team, including CommerceRI Secretary Stefan Pryor and Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, director of the R.I. Department of Health, without any problems. The question remains: Why is the Governor afraid to talk with me? Is it that I ask too many good questions?

Being transparent
There is a reason why it has taken me so long to recap my adventures with ConvergenceRI in its first eight years of publishing, breaking it into a two-part story. As attentive readers know, I had been struggling with an undiagnosed health condition, causing me to lose my ability to walk – identified in an MRI that something was eating away at the myelin in my spinal column in my thoracic region.

I now have a diagnosis, auto-immune encephalitis, and a proscribed treatment that can hopefully arrest the damage being done.

I have not lost any of my mental acuity, and I would like to think that I have not lost my sense of humor, although I admit that I am occasionally much more irritable these days.

I say this to let that you know that ConvergenceRI will continue to provide in-depth, accurate, detailed reporting and analysis, breaking down the silos in covering health, science, innovation, technology, research, education, and community, writ large.

What I ask from my readers and subscribers is that you continue to support my work at ConvergenceRI.

Let me close with two quotes and a brief story.

The first quote is from Dan Fagin’s book, Toms River, which details the industrial poisoning of a community in New Jersey and efforts to identify and redress a cluster of cancer cases in children.

Fagin wrote: “It was the final link of a remarkable chain of highly improbable personal connections: The Toms River kids in the oncology ward in Philadelphia happened to have an exceptionally committed nurse, Lisa Boornazian, who happened to have a sister-in-law who worked at the EPA, Laura Janson, who happened to reach the ATDSR’s Steven Jones, who happened to pass on her concerns to the one man who could investigate them, Michael Berry, who happened to send an unsolicited copy of his results to Robert Gialanella, who happened to known both Linda Gillick and an editor at the state’s top newspaper, Tom Curran. If any of those links had been missing, it is hard to imagine how the Toms River childhood cancer cluster would ever have become such a big deal.”

Call it the power of serendipity and convergence at work.

The second quote is from This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, a collection of stories written by Tadeusz Borowski, a Polish national who survived the Auschwitz death camp.

Borowitz wrote: “We work beneath the earth and above it, under a roof and in the rain, with the space, the pickaxe and the crowbar. We carry huge sacks of cement, lay bricks, put down rails, spread gravel, trample the earth. We are laying the foundation for some new monstrous civilization. Only now do I realize what price was paid for building the ancient civilizations. The Egyptian pyramids, the temples and Greek statues – what a hideous crime they were were! How much blood must have poured on to the Roman roads, the bulwarks and the city walls. Antiquity – the tremendous concentration camp where the slave was branded on the forehead by his master, and crucified for trying to escape! Antiquity – the conspiracy of free men against slaves!”

For any reporters who are self-professed students of history, both books can be found at the local library. If not, I would be happy to lend you my copies [as long as you return them].

Finally, there is the image of the poster using a black and white photograph of Albert Einstein, taken by Lotte Jacobi, to announce the efforts on March 30, 1980, by the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance, in a nonviolent “vital action,” to shut down and decommission the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon, Vt. The framed image of the poster is used to illustrate the second part of this story.

Two quotes by Einstein are featured in the poster:

• “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophes.”

• “To the Village Square we must carry the facts of atomic energy… From there will come America’s voice.”

Forty years later, all the demands articulated by the members of the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance have come to pass – the plant’s license was suspended; a commission to study decommissioning was established, with full public participation; public meetings on decommissioning were held in Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire; and regional development of safe and renewable energy sources were used to replace the electricity once supplied by Vermont Yankee.

It took more than two generations, and 40 years, but the citizens emerged victorious. It is a story of serendipity, convergence, and persistence – a message that resonates today.