Part THREE

PROVIDENCE – The interview with R.I. Attorney General Peter Neronha had gone on longer than expected. My recording device had run out of recording space on its drive, necessitating a pause in the conversation, so I could delete two older, recorded files to make more room.

Interviewing, it seemed, was always about improvisation, listening and responding to a musical riff that keeps changing.

Neronha had been in the middle of telling a story about his encounter with several young men of color at the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in Providence, when Neronha had been campaigning for Attorney General.

His story had been prompted, in part, by my question: “What specific actions can the R.I. General Assembly take on gun violence?”

His answer had also been informed, it seemed, by a news conference Neronha had attended the day before the interview, along with other elected officials and community leaders, addressing gun violence.

“We’ve got to invest in education, in things for these young people to do after school, to put them in a position to have a life plan,” Neronha explained. “Too many people don’t have a life plan.”

The session at the Institute, as Neronha described it, was an opportunity for him to meet several young men of color that were at the highest risk. “We talked about the criminal justice system and their lack of faith in it,” he said. The conversation, he continued, “was pretty candid and pretty raw.”

In Neronha’s view, Rhode Island was reaping the lack of investment in education and in the things that can make a young person’s life more meaningful.

“We can do all the targeted enforcement we want,” he said. “We can make it harder to get guns. We can make it harder to get guns that put out a lot of rounds in one shooting, before you have to change your clip. But if we don’t address the underlying problems, then the problem is not going away.”

For Neronha, the problem was not that much different than what it was when he first started doing firearm cases back in 1996, and from when he was a gun prosecutor working as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, beginning in 2002. “It hasn’t really changed in 20 years,” he said.

And, he continued, “It’s not going to change, I think, until we make those investments in people’s lives. And that’s the challenge.”

The interview then pivoted to talk about Neronha’s role as Attorney General in serving as a legal “activist” when it came to serving as a public health advocate, particularly around environmental issues.

ConvergenceRI: Can we pivot to talk about your efforts to protect the public health by protecting the environment, and your efforts around achieving racial equity and racial justice?

I recently reported on the work being done in Newport, as a collaboration between the Women’s Resource Center and the R.I. Coalition Against Domestic Violence, connecting violence prevention with initiatives to increase tree canopies.

The groups received a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to demonstrate how if you increase tree canopy coverage, you can actually reduce the levels of intimate partner violence in the community. [See link below to ConvergenceRI story, “Greening urban spaces as a prevention strategy for intimate partner violence.”]

Research has shown that if you look at the areas that have the least tree canopy, they are places where you have the most violence. So, in neighborhoods such as Washington Park in South Providence, in ZIP code 02905, they have the least amount of tree canopy in Providence. Community groups have launched an initiative to see if they can plant “5,000 trees in five years in 02905, as a strategy to re-envision the Allens Avenue neighborhood.

My question is: How does it change the equation of “value” in a neighborhood that has more tree canopy and seems less oppressive?

I have been impressed by your “activist” stance – my word choice – in how you have responded to the proposed medical waste facility in East Greenwich, and to the planned expansion of Sea 3 in the Port of Providence. In both of those cases, you seemed to be saying that state agencies were moving much too quickly through the regulatory process.
NERONHA: What you asked raises lots of issues. You used the word “activist.” I don’t know when that became a bad word in our lexicon.

But what it means to me, Richard, is this: We need to be active. You can come in and become Attorney General and the work will come to you. It’s not like, if you just sit there, work won’t walk through the door. It will.

We’ll get sued 573 times, and we’ll defend those civil cases. The R.I. General Assembly will pass laws, and they will be challenged – truck tolling, continuing contracts, online gambling, I can go down the list. I don’t need to do a thing to do that work.

People will commit crimes; they will commit robberies and murders; and they will sexually assault women and men, and we will prosecute those cases. That’s not being active.

So, what does being “active” mean? Being active is being a robust health care regulator. Being active is being engaged [in weighing in] on the individual health insurance plan market rates. Being active is getting involved with environmental matters when they are not going the way that you think they should.

Being active on the criminal side is doing expungement clinics and in putting together a Diversion Court, and in deciding you are actually going to pursue wage theft cases, even if it means using your own investigators.

To me, that is what being an “activist” is all about. It means doing work that doesn’t just walk in the door.

And, in that space, which includes the environment, I can’ think of anything that is more important. If the regulatory bodies that we entrust with keeping Rhode Islanders safe, if they are not following the right procedures that allow for in-depth analysis of what is being proposed, and for public input, then somebody needs to step up and call them on it.

If the Attorney General is not prepared to do that on behalf of the people of this state, then who is? A safe environment is about public health. So, I view that as a crucial role here.

That is not to criticize my fellow state agencies out there. But somebody needs to take a look at what is going on. And, if the right procedures are not being followed, if the analysis is not robust enough, if the public input isn’t robust enough, then somebody needs to say: this needs to change.

That is why we have become so involved with so many things over the last six months to a year.

I will tell you something else, Richard. And, I’m going to be candid with you. Building the capacity to do that in this office took time. And, we have been able to put together a really strong team, particularly in our civil division.

ConvergenceRI: Does much of the credit go to Miriam Weizenbaum?
NERONHA: Totally, totally. Credit goes to Miriam and to the people who have joined our civil team. I’ve been incredibly impressed, both on the criminal side and on the civil side, by the attorneys that have been willing to join this office.

And, to do public service and, frankly, to leave a lot of money on the table, because they understand how important this work is – and they find it gratifying.