CCA cries wolf – AGAIN!

Concocted threat to town’s rights fails to materialize....

Several CCA supporters were outraged at an article I posted a few days ago that called out the CCA for sounding the alarm against an imagined threat – and using that alarm as another opportunity to condemn state mandates for affordable housing.

Two bills supported by the RI Builders Association, H-5552 and S-533, were going to tear asunder the fabric of rural life and everyone just had to get mobilized to block this threat. It turns out that the threat posed by two pieces of state legislation was indeed all in the CCA’s mind. As I reported, these bills were stuck in committee at the time of CCA's emergency alarm and stayed that way through the end of the General Assembly session.

The House bill was “referred for further study,” General Assembly code for faggedabuddit! The Senate bill received a hearing in May, but was not voted on and died a quiet death.

The bills themselves seemed a lot less like the end of the world as we know it. But they did offer a chance for the Charlestown Planning Commission (through Council President Tom Gentz) to show once again how much they don’t like low-income people, working families with kids and senior citizens with cats. You would think that adding some affordable year-round rental units to town would cause our society to crumble.

Watch the video on Clerkbase of the June 22 Planning Commission meeting and listen, if you can, to the conversation about these bills and the snide remarks about Westerly, West Warwick and Central Falls . 

So in my original article, I drew a visual and verbal analogy between this conduct and rhetoric, and that of segregationists like the late Governor George Wallace of Alabama. To me, the analogy seems perfectly appropriate. I don’t really care that it offended some of CCA’s staunch supporters. I think their outrage has more to do with calling them on the forbidden subjects of class and race than whether my point made sense.

Class and race are still issues in Charlestown, as they have been for centuries. Class and race biases show themselves in deeds, not just words. During the years of vigorous civil rights enforcement, the US Justice Department prosecuted state and local governments for both de facto and de jure discrimination.

Our town demographics are de facto evidence of discrimination. And, there may be a de jure basis as well, in our refusal to comply with state affordable housing law and the town’s on-going opposition to any project proposed by the Narragansetts. There may come a time when our town will face some serious trouble over this. Looking away or not talking about it isn’t going to make it go away.

Author: Will Collette