BLM RI PAC and RIBBA host Congressional District One Debate
The Black Lives Matter Rhode Island Political Action Committee (BLM RI PAC) and the Rhode Island Black Business Association (RIBBA) hosted a Rhode Island Congressional District 1 Debate on Friday, August 4th at the Providence Public Library on Empire Street.
The attending candidates were Lieutenant Governor Sabina Matos, State Senator Ana Quezada, Providence City Councilmember John Goncalves, Stephanie Beauté, Former State Representative Aaron Regunberg, Gabe Amo, State Senator Sandra Cano, and Don Carlson.
BLM RI PAC President Harrison Tuttle emceed the event.
Panelists asked the first four questions:
Lisa Ranglin, President & CEO of Rhode Island Black Business Association;
Paige Clausius-Parks, Executive Director of Rhode Island KIDS COUNT;
Zainabou Thiam, CEO of Sunu Body and youth advocate; and
Ellijah Mclean, Education Policy Program Officer at United Way RI.
"This debate is not only about political discourse, but it's also about engaging in meaningful conversations that can drive positive change in our communities," said Harrison Tuttle in a statement.
"The candidate from Rhode Island lucky enough to sit in the congressional seat must move with urgency as it relates to advocating for economic equity at the federal level, cascading down to the local level," said Lisa Ranglin in a statement. "The elected candidate must advocate boldly for greater investment and resources for communities of color to counter racial and economic inequities. RIBBA is proud to partner with BLM RI PAC to host a candidate forum that focuses on the most important economic issues individuals of color face and what approach will level the playing field and close the wealth gap to create a future world beyond barriers."
See my other Congressional District One race interviews here:
See my other articles on the Congressional District One race interviews here:
CD1 candidate Allen Waters declines public forum invitation due to his anti-trans bigotry
Sabina Matos breaks silence on nomination signature collection scandal
Full coverage: Democratic Women's Caucus holds CD 1 candidate forum
Local addiction, recovery, and harm reduction organizations host RI-CD1 candidate forum
BLM RI PAC and RIBBA host Congressional District One Debate
You can watch or read the debate below. The transcription has been edited for clarity but not brevility:
Harrison Tuttle: Who's ready to have a debate? The first thing we're going to do tonight is introductions.
Don Carlson: I live in Jamestown. I grew up here in Rhode Island. I grew up on Seventh Street, near the Summit Avenue School, right in the shadow of the Miriam Hospital and the old Rhode Island Auditorium, and started life in a two-family tenement house on Seventh Street. I went to public schools K through 12 in Rhode Island and I got a great education. It was terrific and prepared me well for college, law school, and for what was to come. It's one of the reasons I believe so strongly in reinvesting in public education. One of the principles I've learned in life is you never regret how much money you invest in education because it always pays dividends for your whole life forward and that's true on an individual and social level.
I was a lawyer for several years. I practiced criminal defense as well as startup law and a whole bunch of other different kinds of law. I became a business builder and in between, I would take breaks and go back to being a professor for a little while. I built 16 sustainable businesses that are doing something today. The 12 that have survived anyway, are doing something today to mitigate and remediate climate change. Building those businesses is something I'm proud of - actionably doing something to make climate change better.
John Goncalves: I'm a two-term city councilman representing the East Side and downtown in the City of Providence, and my story is similar to other people who live in Rhode Island. I grew up in poverty in a single-parent household. The struggle that so many people face in Rhode Island isn't theoretical to me. The reason I'm in this fight is because so many people are struggling. People are worried about the cost of living, they're worried about housing, they're worried about reproductive rights, and they're worried about the climate crisis. We need a fierce advocate at the federal level who can get the job done. It's exactly what I've done as a local legislator, having been the lead sponsor on over 70 pieces of passed legislation. But the other piece that I want to share, which is critically important, is that I'm a teacher. When we think about standing up to our gun lobby, when we think about standing up for the issues that matter for our children, families, and seniors, I encourage you to send a teacher to Congress.
Sandra Cano: Buenos noches. I'm a state senator for the City of Pawtucket. I am proud to represent you at the state level. I am the current chair of the Senate Education Committee and before that, I was on the city council and before that, I was on the school committee. I'm the only candidate in the state that has been in every level of government doing legislation. Not only that, I'm a mom. I'm an immigrant and I am happy to share that I have experience in the financial sector professionally. For education, I have a master's in public administration. I'm running because I care deeply about making sure that policy works for all Rhode Islanders and I believe that we need representation that matters at the table, people that have been able to understand the struggles of congressional district one residents. I advocate for legislation at the state level for many important issues, such as gun control, reproductive health, education, and housing.
Gabe Amo: I'm running for Congress because I believe Rhode Islanders deserve a representative who can be effective from day one. I grew up in Pawtucket. I currently live in Providence. I have lived a life that has been great because of the investments of so many in this community. My dad owns a liquor store. My mom has been a nurse in nursing homes. They are hardworking people who inspired me to work at the heights of government. I had the opportunity to work for President Barrack Obama as a junior staffer in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, here in Rhode Island as a senior member of former Governor Gina Raimondo's team, and most recently, just three months ago, as the special assistant to President Joe Biden as the deputy director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House, where I helped local leaders across the country, mayors and governors, deal with some of the biggest challenges of our day and invest in people and places around the country. I want to use that experience to be effective for people here in Rhode Island.
Ana Quesada: I'm a state senator for district two in Providence and I'm happy to have been able to represent my district for the last eight years. I'm a social worker. I'm a regular Rhode Island who went from the factory floor to the Senate floor, from the welfare office to state office, somebody who worked hard for everything I have in life, somebody who represents my district to the best of my knowledge, working hard to raise the minimum wage in Rhode Island to $15 an hour, protecting women's rights, making sure undocumented people have the right to have a driver's license, doing work for families to have [access to] childcare, making sure that women could braid hair without a license and many other issues. I went to school late in my life and I know how important education is. I'm part of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a member of the Senate Education Committee and I'm happy to be here.
Sabina Matos: I'm the lieutenant governor for the State of Rhode Island. Before that, I was on the Providence City Council for over 10 years. I served as the Providence City Council President. That's the role I had before becoming Lieutenant Governor. I'm a mother of a 13-year-old daughter of and a son that just turned 18. I'm a wife. I'm the daughter of aging patterns, including my grandmother who's 99. I see the challenges that they're going through right now, trying to extend the few dollars they get from Social Security to pay for rent, food, and medicine. I'm running for office because of them. I'm running for Congress because, for the first time, we're losing rights in this country. My daughter is going to have fewer rights than I did and that is not right. We have to make sure that we protect a woman's right to choose and that we fight to get rid of assault weapons on our streets.
Aaron Regunberg: I started my career organizing with young people in the Providence Public Schools. I founded the Providence Student Union. When I was there, students took on racist high-stakes testing policies in our state and they won. They took on racist school transportation policies and won. They pushed for ethnic studies courses in our school so they'd be reflected in the curriculum and they got them. That's what inspired me to get involved in politics - seeing how important it is for our elected officials to listen to voices from the community and then fight like hell for the issues that they bring forward. That's the work I did when I was in the General Assembly, helping to lead the fight to pass paid sick days for over a hundred thousand families in our state, increasing wages, and beginning the fight to reform solitary confinement in our prisons. Change is possible. I've seen it. But it takes communities coming together and organizing, and being willing to take on entrenched interests. That's the work I'd be supporting as a congressperson.
Stephanie Beauté: I grew up here, on the West end of Providence. I went to Gilbert Stuart Middle School. From there I went to Hope High School. After that, I went to the University of Rhode Island as part of the talent development program. Talent development helped to cover the financial aid portion of my studies for me to be able to go to school. I am the first person in my family to go to college. I'm proud of that. Then, when I graduated, the economy went bad. That's when the bank failures took place and I found myself struggling to find a job. At the time I wanted to go to law school. I was interning at the Public Defender's Office so I pursued a career as a social worker for folks with developmental disabilities. I did that for several years, fighting with the state to make sure that they were funded. After that, I decided to go back to school and get my Master's in Information Systems. Since then I've been working in cybersecurity, mobile app development, [and] ATI integrations. I hope to have a formative discussion about my platform today.
Lisa Ranglin: It's August. It is National Black History Month. As the president and CEO of the Rhode Island Black Business Association, I encourage all of you here today to invest in and support your local Black and brown and all businesses in our state, but Black businesses are at the bottom in our state right now and I encourage you to go out and support them in a meaningful way. With that said, as you can imagine, representing the Rhode Island Black Business Association, I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking to you and asking you a question about your platform and what you're trying to do.
Black businesses across the nation are one of the fastest growing yet they're not able to grow and thrive. Many of us remember the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which speaks to financial institutions providing products and services for their community and people within the community. We know that Black and brown businesses have been historically shut out from accessing contracts and loans, or able to grow jobs and impact the state's economy. Many of you probably heard me talk about this number: [There are] 4,768 black-owned businesses in the state of Rhode Island and sadly, only 4% of those businesses can have any employees. I'm going to let that sit for a moment. 90% of small businesses hold little funding as it relates to making payroll. If you are elected to go to Congress, I want you to speak actionably. What would you do as a Congressperson representing Rhode Island to ensure that Black and brown businesses, who are currently at the bottom, move to a place where they're able to create jobs and access loans? What would you do about the 1977 Community Reinvestment Reinvestment Act that does not work for the community as it was intended to do?
Aaron Regunberg: Thank you for laying that out. We know that Black businesses have been systematically shut out of access to credit and capital, and we know there's a long history of racist banks working to shut communities of color out, and that was one part of what the CRA was intended to resolve, but the legal framework around the CRA does not have enough community accountability. Banks get to say "We're going to take a portion of our investments and put it into the community," but there's no real structure to ask, "How does that go, who are you investing in, and is it working for the people who it should be?" There's a lot of work that needs to be done to expand accountability. At the federal level, we need to be making sure, in every federal program and contract, that we're getting those [investments] to minority-owned businesses.
Part of that is implementation because there are goals and they're often not met. An issue that I hear the most when I'm talking to business owners is health insurance - the bureaucracy, the hassle, and the cost of rising health insurance. It seems crazy to me that we have a system where we're putting all of the responsibility for health coverage onto business owners and particularly, it's going to disproportionately impact Black business owners who don't have that funding set aside. That's why we should do what every other country does and have Medicare for All. That's something we often think about as helping patients that's going to help businesses and it's going to help, in particular, businesses that struggle with some of these issues.
Sabina Matos: The Community Reimbursement Act is not implemented the way it should be. We should be able to hold financial institutions accountable for equity in the way they implement the Community Reimbursement Act. In Congress, I would fight and advocate for an implementation process by which we can make sure that communities that have been disadvantaged can get a fair share when it comes to the funding that the banks and financial institutions put back into the communities.
That's one thing. The other thing that we have to do is make sure that we are helping our small business community. We need to make it easier for Black and brown small business owners, as well as women-owned businesses, to have access to capital and funding available through contracts from the state. You and I have had this conversation before and I've had this conversation with many members of the community. I believe that the way we go about certifying small businesses and for MPE and WPE needs to be updated. This is a conversation we've had since I was on the Providence City Council. We've been having this conversation over and over again. We have to make sure that we are not creating a law that is punishing those that are trying to do the right thing. We are creating a law thinking about who's going to break the law instead of trying to help the ones that want to do the right thing.
Ana Quesada: I used to have a business many years ago here in Providence. I used to have a grocery market on Brady Avenue and a construction company when I used to fix houses. I know the trouble small businesses go through, especially communities of color. There are two things we need to do for them. We need to educate them on how to do a business plan, and how to be ready, so when a loan [opportunity] comes, they will be able to apply. Because sometimes when the money [is available] those businesses are not ready to apply because they don't have all the paperwork they're required to have to be able to apply.
My daughter has a food truck and I saw all the trouble she had to go through. Town by town, they have different licenses that you have to apply for, and many other things. As a congresswoman, I will make sure that we are bringing enough resources to Rhode Island to help our small businesses, educate them, and help them grow. I feel sad when a big company comes to Rhode Island and the city council gives them a tax break, but they don't give it to small businesses. They don't help them. They say, "They're going to build a big hotel. They bring in work." But who's going to clean the bedrooms? They have to have workers. I don't believe that only big businesses should get tax breaks and never anything for people working seven days a week for the business. I will fight to make sure resources come to Rhode Island to help small businesses.
Gabe Amo: My dad's a Black business owner. I hope he's a dues-paying member of RIBBA. If not, we'll talk to him after. The CRA is an important tool that we need to add more strength to and expand the types of institutions that the Community Reinvestment Act applies to. It can be mortgage institutions, credit unions, or even broader. Let's give it more teeth. That's going to require legislation. You asked what I would do as a congressperson. I would go through the CRA and see the whole range of institutions that we can ensure it applies to make sure that communities are getting their fair share. That's a prudent step, but to go beyond that, I would team up our capacity with the CRA with greater investments in the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA).
For those of you who may not know, this is a subunit of the United States Department of Commerce that is tasked with helping spur growth in minority-owned businesses. It only got permanently authorized under the president's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that I helped advocate for and got lots of major support for, including from leaders in the Congressional Black Caucus. We must make sure the MBDA has real teeth and resources to team up with the other parts of government that are active, including the Small Business Administration, to make sure that we are giving every opportunity to our Black businesses and all of our minority-led businesses to thrive.
Sandra Cano: I have implemented programs already in my professional life. As a congressperson, I will take that experience and bring it in the form of legislation. I'm going to explain myself. I worked for a credit union for 13 years creating policies that [helped] close the gap between the underserved communities and the small business owners with access to capital and made sure that we were creating partnerships with local organizations, like RIBBA, to make sure that we got those loans out onto the streets. Small business owners do empower our communities.
I will do two things. First, the Community Reinvestment Act eligibility standards need to be more flexible. For example, sometimes we mandate credit scores of 620 or 680 for business owners to get access to capital. We have to be mindful that sometimes, especially after the pandemic, credit can be affected. What we did at the credit union was change those rules and make sure that we do things like accepting a reference letter from RIBBA so business owners have the opportunity to access capital programs and also get technical assistance. [We must] make sure that we have those policies in place to create grants and collaborate with small businesses to get access to those programs. I will take that experience into Congress and create policies that work for the small business community.
John Goncalves: The CRA is an important start, but that's what we hear all the time. There's a lot of lip service, but there's no implementation in terms of compliance at the local level. I'll just give you a couple of examples of what I have done and what I intend to do should I be elected to Congress. If we look at our MBE requirements on the local level, we've seen too that there are no compliance standards and no accountability. Some developers are getting off the hook after not ensuring that they're including 10% women and minority-owned contractors in their projects, and that's an abdication of responsibility.
I grew up in the Fox Point neighborhood and what hurts me every day is the gentrification that I've seen in that community. We once had vibrant communities of Portuguese, Irish, and Cape Verdean immigrants, who started their life and their families there but have been since pushed out because of the terrible policies that have been in place, whether it's the ongoing gentrification or the redlining that we've experienced in our neighborhoods and we need to correct those. But most importantly, we need to ensure that there's compliance, particularly at the federal level, and that's exactly what I would try to do should I be elected your next congressperson.
Don Carlson: The Community Reinvestment Act is an important tool and an important piece of federal legislation. When I first started my career, right out of law school, I went to work in Congress. I am the only person up here who's had any experience in the House of Representatives, the job we're interviewing for. I was a senior staffer at two different times in my career, for two different members of Congress. The first one was Joseph Kennedy and he was on the House Banking Committee. The CRA was my bread and butter for four years of my life and I studied that and we passed some pretty remarkable legislation to beef it up.
The 1977 act passed by Senator Williams Meyer was a nice gesture. It kind of encouraged banks to lend into areas that had been historically disinvested by other banks and that was a good idea. But in 1989, we passed legislation, that was signed by President George Bush, that beefed up the Community Reinvestment Act and made the exam on the CRA part of a bank's examination. Overall, what does that mean? A bank examination is when they go in and test the safety and soundness of a financial institution and if you don't pass that examination, they shut your doors and close you down. We made the Community Reinvestment Act a part of the bank examination process. The banks had to deliver. They had to show a track record of success in investing in minority communities and often in communities that had seen disinvestment over many years.
Like most pieces of legislation, you start with a good idea, you beef it up and you beef it up some more. It becomes meaningful over years. It wasn't until about 1995 that new amendments to the CRA were passed, largely with the help of Gene Ludwig, the comptroller of the currency, to make it a more forceful piece of legislation. What we need to do right now, and what your congressperson can do is be proactive in taking advantage of that law and lots of other federal incentive programs to drive lending into minority-owned businesses and disadvantaged or disinvested communities. It's an important idea. Businesses live on credit, they thrive on credit, they need credit to survive and it's that credit that we need to drive into those communities.
Paige Clausius-Parks: Despite the outcome of this election, I hope each of you will use the platforms you have built to continue to fight for the needs of our kids, especially for our Black and brown kids, our low-income kids, our multilingual families, our kids with disabilities, and our immigrant children. They need you. You are all leaders and we hope that you'll continue to lead for our kids. We're happy to partner with you on that.
You will not be surprised that my question this evening is about childcare. To families, childcare and early learning programs are a nonpartisan issue, but in Congress, they can be a political issue, particularly when it comes to funding. Currently, the number of Rhode Island families participating in the childcare assistance program is at a 20-year low. We continue to have waiting lists for early intervention services and about 20% of Head Start and Early Head Start classrooms are closed because programs can't find and keep the highly trained educators they need. After all, the wages are too low. These challenges are not unique to our state. Most of the resources and policies to support these programs come from the federal government. How would you approach colleagues in the House during this divisive time to secure sufficient federal funding so that children and families in Rhode Island have access to the childcare and early learning programs they need to succeed?
Stephanie Beauté: I love that question because I have a five-year-old and to be quite honest, I couldn't afford daycare. I know that that sounds ridiculous for someone in tech, but it's that expensive. The cost of daycare is about $1,700 a month, depending on how much you pay for rent. And if you don't qualify for low-income, that's what it is. If you are low-income, then you have what Paige mentioned, a long waiting list. The positive part of Covid, to be honest, was that I got to stay at home with my child.
The conversation here [needs] to move past debating with the Republican Party. It's talking about enforcing it. How do we want people to be secure and go to work when they don't have adequate childcare? How do we make sure that this is something that is not just in the back of their minds? Being strong and passionate about how we're supporting not just low-income, but middle-class families because it is expensive to have a child and be able to maintain that. How do we ensure that we have capable staff? We want to make sure that the staff is properly trained with CPR, but also that they have funding, to make sure that the facilities are safe and clean. That is a big part of being a mom. It is a struggle for my sister who is trying to find a nanny for her 24-year-old son. This is important to me. It is a human issue that we need to address and tackle in a more aggressive [way] because it affects us not just in Rhode Island but folks in Kansas too.
Don Carlson: I love talking about this topic because this is probably the highest and best use of government funds in the whole world. It's remarkable that over and over again, studies have come out that show that there is no government spending that produces a higher return than investment in early education and that's an important idea to ground us with. Some government programs probably don't pay back a whole lot. This one does and what it does is give kids an early start to be learners, prepare them for the challenges of school when they're a little bit older, and give them basic skills and structure in their lives for kids who don't have enough structure in their lives. It's an important idea and it's the best use of government funds there is.
I'm sorry to hear that so many of the Head Start programs are closing down. This is a key issue that needs to be worked on and we need to deliver resources there. My oldest child is a primary school teacher and she works with kids from three to six years of age, helping them get ready for public schools when they're a little bit older. She talks a lot about the social and emotional learning that those kids go through in that critical period. She's responsible for what they call the whole child in her Montessori school, which is all about dance and movement, nature and outdoor experience, nutrition and organic farming, and all the kind of stuff that isn't reading, writing, and arithmetic. That's her job. It's remarkable to watch those kids go through that program and come out of it and get into school and have such a leg up and such a benefit. My kids were lucky enough to have that and it served them well. Every child should have that.
John Goncalves: I can assure you that this will be a top priority should I be elected your congressperson. I want to start by talking about why this work isn't theoretical for me. First off, I was a beneficiary of Head Start, so it's personal to me. I went to Providence Public Schools from K through eight and I had that experience. The other experience that I have is I've been a teacher for nearly the last decade. This work isn't theoretical for me. I am a fourth-grade teacher. All the things that my colleagues are talking about in terms of social-emotional learning and the important things that our kids need in classrooms, that's what I've done for nearly the last decade as an educator. As a legislator, what I'm responsible for as the chair of public property is helping disperse over $700 million in public school bonds because I'm deeply passionate about this issue. When it comes to childcare, one of the things that I'm going to fight for at the federal level is universal Pre-K and childcare for all of our families.
It's what our families need. We also need to fight for free childcare for all. That's a piece of legislation at the federal level. We need to make sure that we are raising the wage act so that families have access and capacity to send their kids to childcare. This is an equity issue and I will fight tooth and nail to make sure that we fix the racial and economic inequality that we're experiencing, and that certainly starts with childcare.
Sandra Cano: This has already been a priority for me. I've been the champion and the lead legislator of the Childcare is Essential Act and the Early Educator Investment Act in the State Senate, which increased wages for early educators. Many of them are working moms making low wages and it's unfair that they're taking care of our more precious people in the world, which are our kids. As a mom, I understand firsthand the need for childcare. I will do in Congress as I have done at the state level for many years. We made deep investments at the state level for our childcare system. I made sure that our legislators in the General Assembly believe that this is an economic issue.
Doing investments in childcare and early education is going to translate to our economy because our working families are going to be able to be part of our workforce and that is important. I will translate the experience I have to the federal level. The most important thing is that I have good news. I have, as a chair of the education committee, implemented a holistic approach with the work of the Right from the Start campaign, a group here in Rhode Island that is organizing. What we have done, in a holistic way, is combine the childcare system, pre-K system, and early education system. We have a holistic plan and by 2028 in Rhode Island, we'll have universal pre-K school and make sure that no more classrooms will be closed here in Rhode Island. We need investments at the federal level and I will pledge to do that.
Gabe Amo: I want to go deeper into the specifics of your question about approaching Republicans and thinking about a bipartisan argument. We've heard the theme of making it an economic argument. We saw how effective the expanded child tax credit was. going to be the result of that. In the research, [we learned that] people were using that expanded child tax credit for childcare. Making a compelling case that this is an important need for our economy is central to getting some Republican support. We even had people like Mitt Romney be supportive of a child tax credit. You've got some targets there.
Going further, this is some of the biggest unfinished business of the Biden/Harris first term. There were elements of taking care of our care economy caregivers at every level from childcare to elder care. This is something that we have to look at critically in three ways. We should look at and explore a cap on the amount of a household's income that is going to childcare. It can't be 30%, it can't be 40% as you see that for so many families. We also need to make sure that we're funding both providers, many of whom are Black and brown, and make sure that they are funded from the federal level in addition to trying to recruit additional talent to offer this critical service. And ultimately what we need to do is make sure that we are valuing both the work and the goals. If we go forward here, universal pre-K is achievable and we have to set it as a north star to make sure that childcare through the whole system is something that we're thinking through.
Ana Quesada: There are a few things that we need to do. Childcare is such an important issue for so many working mothers, as I was. I had three children and at the beginning it was hard. I used to work in a factory. I had no problem qualifying for childcare assistance.
When we passed my minimum wage bill, I called the Department of Human Services office and I asked how this would affect working families. And one of the things that I was surprised by is that somebody making $14 an hour does not qualify for childcare anymore. It's unbelievable that somebody making $14 an hour would not qualify.
One thing we need to do in Washington is to raise the poverty level in the United States. It is too low and many families do not qualify for child care. That needs to be fixed. The poverty level in this country is unbelievable. Somebody making $14 an hour does not qualify for childcare. We need universal childcare. We need to pay more money to the people who work to take care of our children and send people back to work. Many moms are not able to go back to work because they do not qualify for childcare. As a congresswoman, I will fight for that to be changed because that's not been changed since 1964 when that act was done in the United States. It needs to be fixed and it needs to be fixed in Washington.
Sabina Matos: One of the great things about being in Rhode Island is that we have candidates that agree on what is important for our working families. We are fortunate because other states don't have what we have here. You can hear most of us or all of us agree that there should be more resources from the federal government for childcare, but we also have to make sure that we provide more resources for families to be able to have options about where they want their kids to go. If they want to stay in a family-home daycare, there should be more resources to help them have their children go into a family-home daycare. My kids experienced both their home daycare with a family as well as a center.
We should be able to provide those resources, at the federal level, for families to have their kids go into childcare and early education. One of the hardest things I have gone through is when I had a family call me because they applied for the pre-K lottery and their child was not picked. Their struggle is trying to figure out what they're going to do. One of the parents will have to leave their job. Unfortunately, most of the time it's the mother, right? What does that do for that for the woman's career and her future when she's going to retire with her income? This is an issue on which all of us agree. We have to make sure that the federal government provides more resources for childcare.
Aaron Regunberg: Our system is upside down. I've got a two-year-old and every time I drop him off at daycare, I hand him over to these two teachers and 11 toddlers are running around like crazy. These two folks have to care for them and teach them all day every day and provide love and education. They should be millionaires. That is some of the most important and challenging work that there is in our society, yet we have a system that pays them poverty wages. It is completely upside down. We need to be raising wages and benefits.
I remember when we were writing our paid sick days legislation, the home childcare providers came to me and said, "We've been having trouble negotiating sick days with the state. We need your help. Can you put us in this legislation?"
We wrote the legislation to cover them and there was a lot of pressure from a bunch of different forces to strip them out as the legislation was making its way through the process. My response every time was no freaking way. These are the people who are caring for our kids. It's the most important work. They need to have benefits like paid sick days. Gabe mentioned that this was a big part of Biden's initial Build Back Better agenda, the care economy, long-term care, and childcare, both investing in and making sure that people have access to it. And that the workers who are doing this incredibly important work get the compensation they deserve.
I know you mentioned Republicans, but there's work to do on the Democratic side. It was Democrats that stripped that out of Biden's Build Back Better agenda, right? It was Senator Manchin and Sinema and conservative Dems on the House side. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is the caucus, David Ciciclline helped lead that I'm proud to have been endorsed by, they are making this a priority for this year. They are organizing and building a foundation so that the moment we win back control in 2024, we're coming in guns blazing, saying we're going to invest in childcare. I'd be proud to be able to support that work.
Zainabou Thiam: I'm here speaking for not just the youth of Rhode Island but for all of the marginalized BIPOC students whose voices are consistently silenced and ignored. The significance of education and preventing criminal behavior cannot be overlooked. I know personally, as a Black first-generation youth, I have friends from all walks of life and I've seen the effect that it can have on them. My question is, how do you plan to back initiatives to enhance and support educational opportunities in BIPOC communities, and curb the school-to-prison pipeline?
Stephanie Beauté: One of the things about Hope High is that the nickname is Hope for the Hopeless, right? A lot of folks don't survive. You either have teenage pregnancy, you're arrested, and if you're part of the small group that happens to make it out of Hope High School and go to college, some might flunk out because they didn't have the best resources and support. And if by some chance, a miracle, you pass that level, you're the shining star, the golden ticket for Hope High School.
I have a lot of friends and acquaintances that unfortunately, due to environment, life circumstances, and things that are beyond their control. The way the education system was designed in Rhode Island has encouraged poverty. It was designed to keep our students behind. I'm tired of hearing about these programs, with people showing up, and taking photo opportunities with our Black and brown students, while they continue to fail in the same system that was designed to keep them failing.
That's not going to change by sending the same type of people that promote this [to Washington]. If we're being honest, poverty is profitable for these people. Sit in our places and tell us about these solutions that you're going to propose and then look at your communities five years, 10 years, or 20 years later: They deteriorate time after time and nothing changes. My platform was there before any other candidate talked about education, really funneling the pipeline to give you an option besides college because there should be another opportunity for success for you. It's a personal point and it's a success metric because the only way to eradicate poverty in these communities is to make sure that you're not setting up for failure so you don't have the lowest-paying jobs.
Don Carlson: Some of these answers are pretty easy, but hard to implement. For example, one of them would be reinstating affirmative action at every level of our public school system and throughout colleges. That's one thing that we can all agree on is that we need to find ways to overrule this regressive Supreme Court and reinstate affirmative action for folks to have equal opportunity. That's an important priority for our society.
There are a lot of things we can do in education. As I said at the top of the hour, we will never regret the money we invest into education as a society. A lot of people said over the years, from the founding of this country, that education is the cornerstone of democracy. To have good citizens, you have to be people who are educated and understand civics, literature, math, and science, not just to earn good money, but also to be good members of our society and good citizens.
We will always be grateful for the money we invest in education. Right now, we're suffering from about 50 years of dramatic underinvestment in our public schools, particularly in urban centers and among communities of color. That is a devastating indictment of our country. We need to remedy that. We're seeing generations of young people grow up without the opportunities that they deserve and what is tragic about that is that it's squandering human potential, because if every young person can grow up to achieve their full potential, then our society achieves its full potential. There's so much talent, energy, and drive being squandered by the lack of a strong investment in public education. It should be the cornerstone of our society and it's something that we need to attend to for the benefit of all of us.
John Goncalves: What's at the root of this, if we're going to be completely honest, is that Black and brown communities always get the short end of the stick. That is the reality. If you look at our public schools, there's been historic disinvestment in our schools, almost criminally underfunding. We need leadership at the federal level that's going to stand up and make sure that we're bringing as many federal resources back to our state and back to our education system [as we can], particularly in our urban core where there's so much disparity. When I was 12 years old, I was lucky enough to go to Nathaniel Green Middle School and it was then Congressman Cicilline who helped me get into that school. That changed my trajectory forever.
I was able to get into the Wheeler School and then go to Brown for undergrad and grad school. But I should not be an exception. That should be the norm for all of our kids, all of our Black and brown children. And that's why I'm in this fight. We don't need more saviors that are going to give us lip service, say one thing do another, and not put our communities first.
I also want to address an important question that you asked that no one's addressed yet, and that is removing School Resource Officers, and SROs, from our schools. We need to end the school-to-prison pipeline because if you go to some of our most wealthy and affluent communities, and if you go to their schools, do they have droves of officers walking around? No. And that's why we need to fix it.
Sandra Cano: A lot of what you're saying comes down to one word that we underutilize, or sometimes overutilize when it's convenient, and that is equity. Instead of empowering our youth, we underestimate our youth, especially BIPOC youth. I have a lot of hope because I see the youth speaking up and helping legislators like me understand the solutions. I'm hopeful because, as a legislator, I saw the youth organize to make sure that I was the sponsor of legislation called Building Opportunities for Out of School Time. What does that mean? Making sure that we have investments in afterschool programs that are meaningful.
As a member of the Juvenile Hearing Board, I saw that youth were getting in trouble because they didn't have the opportunity to have an afterschool program or a mentor or someone there guiding them. It's important to invest in education and programs that matter and do the work. We do have a coalition in Rhode Island that is amazing and is providing hands-on opportunities for BIPOC youth and we need to make sure that we continue doing that, as well as create opportunities for the Hope and Promise Scholarships, and making sure that we continue doing things like in-state tuition. I'm proud that I have done that here at the state level and I will continue with the same passion at the federal level.
Gabe Amo: The federal government right now doesn't have proactive agenda on education. It's generally confined to increased funding for Title One schools or broad programs on the higher education side. But your question so accurately focuses on the pathway to opportunity after high school, after your initial education, and for me, a big focus has to be on economic opportunity. We have this historic moment right now where there are trillions of dollars coming out of Washington DC to build our country back in so many ways, whether it's infrastructure, building out electric vehicle charging, building out our climate readiness with so many clean energy investments, and getting our talented young people from our schools into these opportunities that don't require a college education has to be central.
A lot of the challenges that people face are economic and why you make certain life choices is the burden you have coming out of your household. My focus as a congressperson here for Rhode Island is making sure that the equity that we described comes to the job opportunities of the future. That will last into the decades to come. These are family-sustaining opportunities and we have to be in the game. You need a congressperson who's going to be a vigorous advocate for getting every single dollar, every single program, every single opportunity here. When we look at the schoolhouse, investing in the recruitment and retention of school leaders who care and of school leaders who can help transform lives is of utmost importance.
On the violence and community violence intervention, making sure those funds help the right programs throughout our community.
Ana Quesada: Education has been an important issue for me since I became a Senator. When I first met with Senate President Theresa Paiv-Weed, she asked me what committee I wanted to be on and I said education because education is the one who opened the door to us. For me, education is personal. I went to college late in my life because I didn't have that opportunity at a young age. One thing that we need to do in Rhode Island, and not just in Rhode Island because we have education issues all over the nation, we need to make education a constitutional right for students. Rhode Island copies many of the acts that Massachusetts passes, but we do not want to make education a constitutional right for our students [even though] that's the way to invest in our children.
We pay now for education or we pay later because if we are not providing education, a lot of our children end up in jail and we pay a lot of money for those kids. It's unbelievable that somebody in a training school makes more money than somebody in a regular school. Those are the things that we need to change. We need to bring more resources. We have to make sure that our schools have the money and the resources they need and that we are providing.
Education should be a constitutional right for children in every state, to have the best education possible. As your congressperson, I will fight hard for every state to have the money and resources they need to make education better for every student, not depending on what zip code you live in.
Sabina Matos: We need more resources for education, but I want to give you a different perspective. Earlier Councilman Goncalves asked who, at this stage, went to the Providence Public Schools. I lived in the Dominican Republic, so I didn't go to public school here, but I can tell you something that I learned from my friends that did go to school here in the United States. My friends, many of whom are successful right now, have college and master’s degrees, were told that they were not college material and that's the reality that many Black and brown students go through. If you have an accent because in your family speaks Spanish or Portuguese or any other language, you get put into an ESL program even though you don't need an ESL program. The perception is that you're not going to be able to be successful and go to college and that needs to change.
We have to make sure we're providing more resources to educate the guidance counselors and those that are in leadership in schools and speaking to our youth. Some of my brightest friends were told, "You're not college material. Make sure that you get technical classes. Get your license so you can work in hair salons." I believe in having a path for all the options, not just college, but the expectations that we're putting on our students is affecting what is going to happen after - whether they're going to go to college or whether they're going to be successful and we need to give opportunities for internships like Prepare RI. have some of the students from Prepare RI in my office. We need to continue to provide opportunities like that from federal funding.
Aaron Regunberg: One of the things that frustrated me the most, and I hope this hasn't been your experience, is seeing how often our schools do not value student voices. Working with the Providence Student Union, I saw the incredible impact that young people can have when they come together. Taking on drill kill, bubble fill, and standardized test policies to say we value critical thinking in our schools. Taking on obstacles to attendance, we needed bus passes for thousands of students that shouldn't have to walk three miles in the snow and rain to get to class. Launching the Counselors, not Cops campaign to say that we need to be supporting our young people, not policing them, not starting them into the school-to-prison pipeline.
We don't value the leadership that comes from the people who are in our schools, whether it's students or families. Providence, right now, as most people know, is under a state takeover. When the state was beginning its takeover there were a bunch of community forums and so many young people from our youth orgs and schools, families came out, educators came out, and they were saying, "We have all these ideas. We know what works, we know what doesn't work because we're living it every day. Let us into this process, give us real leadership roles."
There was such a wasted opportunity there because the approach was this top-down system that does not work. We need to be working to empower our young people, our families, and our educators.
At the federal level, it's important to remember that education is not just impacted by what happens within the walls of the classroom, right? Housing policy is education justice because it's hard to learn and do your homework when you're housing insecure and when your family's dealing with potential homelessness. Food policy, the farm bill is education justice because it's hard to learn when you're hungry, and you're not getting the nutrition you need. And that is all decided by federal policy. We need to think about what happens in our schools and the larger picture of how students are kept back in so many ways.
Ellijah Mclean: Despite the unwavering and commendable efforts of our local education agencies and educators, Rhode Island students have experienced unprecedented learning loss, as reflected in the most recent Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System (RICAS) data. Less than one-third of Rhode Island students are proficient in core subjects regarding English language arts. Only 33.1% are proficient. Regarding math, 26.6% proficient. And regarding science, only 30.7% are proficient. And when race is factored in, Black and brown youth are disproportionately performing lower than their white counterparts. How will you address the current federal education funding formula and prioritize education investments to improve student achievement outcomes for Rhode Island youth? Specifically, please outline your education priorities and provide a clear strategy for ensuring equitable and effective utilization of the congressional office to inform the usage of federal dollars to drive positive changes in the state's education system.
Stephanie Beauté: One of the things about that statistic is if you break it down by zip code, you can see the proficiency change across. I see you're nodding so we agree there. Part of my platform is that we use federally funded dollars to level the playing field so Kiwan, who lives on the south side, doesn't have to compete with Keith, who lives in Jamestown. They're both going to get the same type of education but when we're being honest that that's not truly the case. Using federally funded dollars to make sure that the education curriculum in Jamestown mirrors that in Central Falls, mirrors that in Woonsocket, and back down here in Providence. That sets the playing field.
How do I plan to outline that? Looking at it from a zip code perspective and then looking at it from an education perspective, what type of teachers are part of the curriculum in Jamestown, their certifications, and making sure that we have the same thing. If you look at Hope High School, right across the street is Moses Brown, and you see the clear disparities and it's across the street. That's evidence of what the problem is and how broken that is. Another piece is creating a pipeline so when you're part of your school there is a resource you're tapped into. One of the great things about New York that they do in their school system is that if you're interested in a particular trade, they make sure that you have that certification. Now, when you are trying to apply for a job and your manager is racist, you have that certification already so you're not going through those hoops and those steps.
We're creating a funnel of opportunity there so that part of the education curriculum isn't based on standardized test scores, but on job preparedness and readiness so that way you can be successful. How do we look at science and hands-on learning? How do we build with math, hands-on learning, Legos, architecture, and design? There are so many ways that we can move the margin instead of just having people circle A, B, or C. There's a unique set of skill sets that we can bring in through federal dollars to help support our teachers so that way they have the resources that they need and we level the playing field across the board.
Don Carlson: It's great that you point out the acuteness of the problem and it being worse due to covid, by kids losing two years of learning in classrooms. This is a serious problem that we need to address. I agree with Stephanie that we need to use federal money to level the playing field and that should be the first and highest priority of federal money. What happens a lot of times cities, and this is the tragic reality of our current system in cities where people can opt out of the public education system and opt into good private schools, people have an incentive to not fund the public schools. That's just the reality. It's a little bit like the subway in New York City. If people can ride around the limousines, they won't fund the subway. It's the same thing in Rhode Island right now, especially in Providence where you have some high-quality private schools that some people are fortunate enough to afford, and as a result, they systematically defund the public schools and we need to reverse that.
A good use of federal money is to even that out and level the playing field in that way. There's also a lot we can do to elevate teaching and I like some of the ideas that I heard earlier about lifting teaching as a profession, not just in compensation, but in all the different parts of being a professional - accountability, status, honor, and how we treat professionals. I'm a college professor right now. I teach at Yale Law School and I get a lot of status from that. It's a nice rewarding job and I get a pretty decent paycheck for it as well. Why don't elementary school teachers get that? Their job is no less important than mine. They're preparing the kids that I'm going to see a few years down the road. We need to lift teaching as a profession and we can't ignore social and emotional learning. What keeps so many children back is not having the social skills and emotional skills they need to cope in school. Finally, [we should be] trying to help students understand the concept of being lifelong learners, and looking at a broader set of evaluative tools that measure teacher success by whether they have created inspired students who become lifelong learners.
John Goncalves: It's so hard to articulate all the important things that we need to do around education. I want to remind everybody that I am the only early childhood education person at this stage. I've been a fourth-grade teacher for nearly the last decade. I can put my money where my mouth is and I can also say that bureaucrats, unfortunately, don't understand education and that's why the systemic inequities are constantly reinforced. Your zip code should not determine your destiny. That's just the bottom line. As your next congressperson, I will work hard to make sure that we move forward on things like the Higher Education Opportunity Act. We can also ensure that we're fighting for a minimum $60,000 salary for teachers all across this country because that's exactly what they deserve.
When it comes down to the nuances of what we do in classrooms, we need to be focused on social-emotional learning. We need to be focused on how we invest in our kids so they can become critical thinkers and we need to address the stark economic inequality that we're experiencing, and that starts from addressing affordable housing in our communities. It starts by investing in our families, particularly our families that are disproportionately impacted, our Black and brown communities. That's exactly what I will do if you elect me as your next congressperson, and it's what I've done at the local level. I've brought millions of dollars of funding to the local schools in my district and that's going to be a major priority for me at the federal level.
Sandra Cano: Education is my number one policy priority since I was elected to the school committee. Why? Because I believe education is an equalizer. It worked for me and many families in Rhode Island. The first thing that I would do if elected to Congress is transfer all the leadership skills that I have built here with the legislation that I have introduced and passed as the chair of the Senate Education Committee to the Congressional level. For example, since 2019, we've been able to take a look at the funding formula in the state senate and the funding formula doesn't currently work for our communities of color and for cities such as Providence and Central Falls, which are the lowest performing districts in our state. That is not a coincidence.
It's no secret that it takes more money to educate multilingual learners and special education students and to make sure that we support their families. We need to look at the parameters of the funding formula and at federal investments to bring Rhode Island what we need, for example. Our minority communities often need meals at school to be able to perform. I have a bill, Meals for All to bring healthy meals to all our schools. We need to have that implemented in the funding formula at the federal level to make sure that they're successful. Also, mental health in the schools. All of that should be included in the education funding formula. I have worked on those initiatives at the state level and I can transfer the experience to the federal level.
Gabe Amo: I don't have a lot of disagreement with what was said before. Focusing on social determinants is an important thing. On the mental health side, we see so much inequity in terms of providers, in terms of the wait list that folks have to deal with as families and as individual students. We must start there. I also commend the Senator's work on making sure that no child is in the classroom hungry. We know the impact of having breakfast on those early periods of the day. All those pieces are transformative. When we look at the formulas that are constructed to distribute funding, we must take into account decades of outcomes that haven't been what we wanted. [We must also] map, at the federal level, all of the critical needs that we have in this country to create the building blocks of what careers might be, whether they're going to college or going straight into the workforce. Thinking about our education system is not just part of our economic engine, but [determines] what kind of country we building for the long term.
The way you level the playing field is you look at a town that is more well-to-do and you say, "They have the fundamental advantages of seeing what those opportunities might be, baking into the formulas the creation of opportunity both for the workforce but also the types of communities that we want to build." I believe, at the intergovernmental level at the height of government, getting our massive cabinet agencies aligned in a comprehensive strategy is how you get that done.
Ana Quesada: Before we fix education, we need to fix some issues. Children going hungry to school are not going to learn. Children who live in a car with their parents are not going to learn. For us to fix education, we have to fix health, we have to fix housing, we have to fix lunch. We have to fix all those components for children to be safe and learn. Because if you are hungry, you're not going to learn anything. If you are not healthy, you're not going to learn either. There are so many issues.
Before school started in my district, we saw every school building in my district. We need safe and clean buildings for children to learn. If you go to a school full of mold, how are children going to learn in those conditions? We need to invest in our buildings. We need to invest in education, but before we do that, we need to invest in housing. We need to invest in health because if you have asthma, you're going to miss many days of school.
All of that together, then we can focus on education because the children are healthy, the children have proper housing, and the children have mental health [support]. If students have those things, they will see education grow. You will see children learn and you will see how we fix our education problem. As a Congressperson, I promise I will work on each of those issues for Rhode Island.
Sabina Matos: There are a few things I would like to touch on. As someone that was president of Providence City Council, who worked on passing 10 budgets for the City of Providence, I can tell you that one of the biggest challenges we have is how we are putting too much of the burden to educate our children on communities that don't have the resources. The City of Providence has the largest school district, but more than 40% of the land of the City of Providence doesn't pay taxes. Is that fair? We have to make sure that there's funding coming from the federal government to make sure that we're not relying that much on the taxes of the local communities, especially communities that don't have the opportunity to pay enough taxes to meet the cost of education.
When it comes to learning loss, one of the things that has been proven to work best is to have tutoring available for students to be able to catch up. Some of the things that the governor's putting together with the different municipalities is trying to make sure that there's an opportunity for students to learn outside of school hours. A rich person, if their kid is not doing well in school, has the resources and they will pay someone to help their child catch up on that subject. That opportunity should be available for every other child.
Aaron Regunberg: We need to be massively increasing federal investments in our schools, and don't tell us that we don't have those resources, not while we're cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans, not while we're lowering the corporate income tax on the biggest corporations in this country to nothing, not while we're continuing to increase the Pentagon's budget year in and year out. We have the resources. It's a question of prioritizing our young people.
Having said that, as important as it is to fight for more federal investment, I don't want to let the state off the hook As Senator Cano discussed, we have a state school funding formula that structurally, systematically, and by design underinvests in English language learners, in students with special needs, and in our low-income students. Districts like Providence are structurally burdened by that. That's a state issue. I know the state legislators here have fought for improvements in the school funding formula. It's useful to think about the role that our next congressperson can play in influencing state-level policy.
Traditionally, there's been a sense that the federal delegation should focus on federal issues and leave state issues alone. But, whoever of us is elected, we're going to be one out of 435 in Congress. It's a big platform, whoever's in Congress should be willing to use that platform to put pressure on General Assembly leadership and campaign on these issues for state changes.
Also, we need laws requiring a certain number of social workers per student. We need to provide the resources for schools to do that because there are vast inequalities between schools.
Harrison Tuttle: Now we will move into the debate element of our evening. I want to go over some basic rules. Each candidate will have two minutes to answer this question. If a candidate is mentioned by another candidate, that candidate will have 30 seconds to respond. All of the candidates and the campaigns have been notified to keep their remarks to policy-centric solutions.
My question is, what unique qualities do you possess that set you apart from other candidates running in this race?
Sabina Matos: Thank you. I spoke a little bit about this earlier. The State of Rhode Island has not sent a person of color to Congress. The state of Rhode has not sent a democratic woman to Congress. The state of Rhode Island has not sent a working person to Congress, that comes from the neighborhoods. I have the experience of being in elected office on the Providence City Council for more than 10 years, and I've been serving statewide as lieutenant governor. I have been able to get things done in my community. Those of you that have known me since the beginning, in Olneyville, Silver Lake, and Valley neighborhoods of Providence can go and see the differences that have happened in those communities since I was serving there.
I know how to work to get things done. I understand the challenges. When you get elected, you think you can change everything right away. Then you go there and realize that you have to work in collaboration with the people that are in the building to get things done. I have that experience. When I was in the city council I worked to pass 10 budgets. I have experience working for affordable housing and housing at all income levels since I've been in local government. I believe that makes me qualified to run. I am someone that has worked in the jewelry factory, like many Rhode Islanders, that came to this country without knowing the language, learning English, and serving my community. That qualifies me.
Don Carlson: I would break it down into two things: leadership and experience. I teach leadership and I developed a leadership theory that I've used in several different corporations as well as educational institutions as a leadership teacher, but more than a teacher. I practice it as a first responder. I'm an EMT in my hometown. As a business leader, I've led divisions of companies. I've been CEO of companies and I've led several different organizations over the years, including not-for-profits, including one that did a lot of work in trying to teach social and emotional learning and critical thinking skills in Rwanda. The leadership bucket is an important one.
It's also experience. I've had a much longer career than some of the folks on this stage. When I first got out of law school, I worked in the House of Representatives instead of running for Congress. At that age, I thought that was a more appropriate thing for me to do and I got great experience doing it and I learned how the House of Representatives works so that I can hit the ground running on day one and be effective as a legislator down there. I've worked in law and I've represented criminal defendants, I've represented startup companies, I've represented lots of folks. That underscores the need for effective legislation.
I know how to write legislation and how to implement it effectively. I've worked in education as a professor for many years at Williams College and now at Yale Law School and I've worked in business. That panoply of experience is unique to my candidacy. The interesting thing about the working and business part is it gives you the ability to bring accountability to the private sector. Right now we've seen a whole string of incidents in this state where our state government has failed to work effectively with the private sector, whether it's Tidewater or the Cranston Street Armory or any number of other things, like Revolution Wind number two, where contracts have fallen apart. That shows that you need somebody in the office who knows how to work effectively with folks in the private sector.
Sandra Cano: Let's talk about leadership and experience. I am proud to be from the community and for the community and tonight we talked about a lot of issues. I have the pleasure of saying to all of you that I have championed all of those issues at the state legislature. I did investments in Rhode Island with the care economy and access to capital in small businesses. I've been the champion to increase MBE and WBE at the state level. I brought accountability to the governor many times to make sure that there is access for minority business enterprises. I have been the champion of the Childcare is Essential Act. I've been the champion of the Early Educator Act. I have not only done protections for Social Security and Medicare but helped pass Cover All Kids at the state level.
I empower the BIPOC communities because they are important to me. I have done work on the funding formula level as a chair of the education committee. Education is important for me because it's an equalizer. I talked to you about that before. Working families are the people I advocate for because congressional district one resident care about the issues that I care about and affect me every single day, like inflation, childcare, and the economy. I empower youth because I believe that the youth are our future. I'm a working mom. My children deserve a healthy planet. I was a lead co-sponsor of the Act on Climate.
Let's talk about values. We need someone that has done the work and that has proven leadership in the State of Rhode Island, that listens to the community, is from the community, and for the community. It's going to take only one of us to make a difference for all of us.
John Goncalves: That was beautifully said and I appreciate that we're all in this process. It is about democracy and democracy is about choices. What differentiates me from the folks on this stage is that I've spent nearly the last decade as a teacher. We talked about education, and that is what I've done. I've been in classrooms. The other piece is, it's all good and well to be a staffer, but I've also been a legislator. I've been the lead sponsor on so many critical pieces of legislation at the local level. And I've also worked with my colleagues at the state level, putting bottom-up pressure on behalf of the largest municipality in the state. I like to remind people that the ward that I represent is bigger than 13 smaller cities and towns. It's the fastest growing ward [not only] in the City of Providence, but also in the State of Rhode Island.
When we think about the boxes that my colleague Matos mentioned here, I'm a working person, I'm a teacher, I'm a person of color. I've got experience as a legislator. And the other important piece that I want to highlight for folks today is that I'm not self-funding my candidacy. That's important because we want real representation. Remember, I grew up in Providence. Providence, born and bred. I've been here my entire life giving back to my community. If we want people who are representative of real people, we have to send real people. We don't need any more saviors. We need people who are from the community, real people from the community. We've raised over $150,000 in small, grassroots contributions from all over the state. We are truly the grassroots campaign. I say that to highlight that we are with the people and the people are supporting us. There's no outside Washington interest, no special money. We are powered by the people and we are for the people.
Sabina Matos: My comment was not referring to the people running for office. I represent the same life that many others represent, which is working families, first and second-generation immigrants, many of them that work in the jewelry factories, that went to school, went to Rhode Island College, and now I'm able to serve my community.
Stephanie Beauté: To the question about unique qualities that separate me from other officials. A lot of the questions that have been posed have been about issues with the childcare education formula and everyone's going to talk about their ten years of legislation. If we're going to be honest, if it was working, then we wouldn't be here complaining about it. That's what separates me here. If it were working, I honestly wouldn't be running for office. I would continue my job in tech because I would be able to afford childcare. I would not have to worry about my mom not being able to afford to retire because all the elected officials would be doing their jobs and I wouldn't be here advocating because I didn't feel like it is getting done.
When we talk about leadership and experience, I can talk about the equipment that I built for the Department of Defense. I can talk about the teams that I've managed. I can talk about the KPIs and hitting hard metrics. I can talk about the millions of dollars that I've done for big companies and being able to leverage that experience and take startups to the next level. I can speak on that, but what is more important to me is the fact that the system hasn't been working for us. It hasn't been working not just for Black and brown, and yes, I'm Black and brown, but also for the poor people in Woonsocket who are also white. They have been struggling as well. And if we're being even more honest about these endorsements and how they work, the education formula was worked on by Secretary of State Gregg Amore. A lot of the endorsements that these candidates receive are just high fives to their friends to continue this poverty problem.
Let's be honest about the bills that are being passed and the work that's being done. Everyone sits here to collect another job and it is a political promotion for them. I'm not interested in leaving my job at the White House for another salary upgrade. I'm interested in actually working to make sure it's sufficient. I'm not promoting anyone else's platform. I'm concerned because it hasn't worked for me. It's not working for my mom, it's not working for my neighbors, it's not working for the people in Woonsocket, not in Newport, and not in Providence.
The audience: [Cheers] Mic drop!
Sandra Cano: I respect Stephanie a lot and we've been working together well. Representation does matter, and it takes people of color to be in elected positions to make a difference and make changes. If you don't have a seat at the table, then nothing is going to change from one day to the other. The things that I have been able to move in my capacity are because I'm able to build coalitions, talk to people, and bring my passion and my lived experiences to state legislation. These things take time. Let's be real. As a legislator who has been at every level of policy, I would say that it takes a legislator to understand. It takes building coalitions without compromising values to make sure that you work for the community. Without my voice, things are not moving the right way. Let's make sure we recognize that.
John Goncalves: I'd also like to affirm that being an elected official is a very hard job. The sacrifices that I've made personally - it is tough. And with all due respect, I'll say when you're in the gross[?] of it, you know what it's like. I have been a fierce advocate on behalf of my constituents. I've sent over 3 million emails to my constituents. We have the fastest-growing ward in the district and the state and the city. We are spurring important issues that make a difference in people's lives. It's all about putting people first and that's exactly what we're going to do should we be elected to Congress. People first, and people over politics too.
Ana Quesada: What makes me different from them? Many, many things. I make leadership uncomfortable when I don't agree with them. Some of us over here say, "Yes, yes, yes, yes," because now they have the support from leadership. Another thing is that I do what I say I'm going to do. I'm somebody who has worked hard and who represents my district. I have experience. I passed many pieces of legislation since being in the Senate.
When Gina Raimndo was elected as Governor for the second time I met with her to [demand] judges of color in Rhode Island to represent the community because we are not all the same color and we have a diverse community and the court needs to represent the community that we represent. Because of that, we have five African-American judges, one Asian, and two Latinos sitting in court today. That was because I sat down with the Governor and I said, "If you don't do that, I will not support you." I called everybody and that was in the Latino/Black Caucus and I made sure that everybody pledged with me to make sure that we had judges of color.
We need somebody who going to be a strong voice. We need somebody who is not going there to benefit themselves. We need somebody who is going to fight for you, from a working family, who was a welfare mom, who knows what you're dealing with every day, who lost her house because of nonpayment. That's me, who went through what many of you went through in your lives.
Gabe Amo: I was referenced in a few of the responses. Let me say this: I dedicated my life to service because my story is similar to a lot of people here. I don't think it's super unique that my dad was born in Ghana, my mom in Liberia, and of all the places they could meet, they met here in Rhode Island and you can go to 452 Hartford Avenue right now and see my dad working a register. You can see my mom recovering from her second knee replacement surgery. For me, the desire to be in government as a staff person was one where I thought I could contribute to the conversations, contribute to the dialogue, contribute to the outcomes, and be there to serve. So any criticism of that desire is something for you to assess.
I'll tell you this: in that job as a staff person, I've helped communities across this country, including communities here in Rhode Island. When you've seen a mass shooting happening in Highland Park in Buffalo, I went and picked up the phone, called the mayor, and said, "How can I help you? How can I help your community heal, marshaling federal resources with leaders across the country?" When extreme weather has hit, hurricanes and big storms, I have been on the ground to help people. If that is something worthy of criticism, I question that, but there is no intention here in my candidacy other than to serve and serve a community that has done so much for me and so much for my dad.
John Goncalves: To be clear, being a staffer is not worthy of criticism. if that was misconstrued by anyone, that is not the case. But I would say being on the ground is a different experience. As a teacher, I have to live with the experience, every day, of going into a classroom and teaching my kids about active shooter drills instead of teaching them about multiplication and division. That's why I'm in this fight. We need people who are going to stand up to the gun lobby. We need people who are going to hold big pharma accountable. We need people who are going to hold big oil accountable. That is why so many of us are in this fight and fighting for the things that we all believe in. I want to affirm that and thank everyone for this critical discussion tonight.
Aaron Regunberg: I'm an organizer. That's always been my approach to winning change. How do we bring communities together to build collective power and coalitions to take on entrenched interests and win? That's been how I've seen that real change is possible, including a lot of fights where many people didn't think it was going to be. I remember when I was first elected to the General Assembly. So many people said we'd never pass paid sick days or that too many corporations and too many conservative lawmakers were lined up against it. But we organized. We brought workers and small businesses and unions together. We knocked on doors. I organized, with my legislative colleagues, folks I agreed with and some folks that I didn't always agree with. But you build relationships, you find points of commonality where you can move forward together and we figured out how to get it done. A hundred thousand Rhode Islanders who couldn't before could start caring for a loved one or recovering from an illness without having to worry about losing their pay.
I remember when I was a Rep doing a tour of the Department of Corrections and starting a correspondence with some folks who were incarcerated there and them reaching out and saying, "We need you to start doing something about solitary confinement in our prisons." I was a little apprehensive about that because looking around, it didn't seem like there were resources, capacity, or funding to build a coalition that could take on the DOC and the Correctional Officers' Union, powerful interests. But folks kept saying, "We need you to start this fight." So we introduced that legislation, we started organizing, we started sharing folks' stories and when it didn't pass, we did a study commission that led to a report which was then cited heavily in litigation, challenging the unconstitutionality of solitary confinement, which worked just last month. There was a consent decree ending long-term solitary confinement in our state based on the judicial opinion that also heavily cited that report. I've seen that change is possible, but it takes us coming together, organizing, and taking on tough fights and entrenched interests, to do it.
Don Carlson: A quick reflection. I don't see this campaign as a fight. I see this as the progress, of a group of people with good intentions getting together to try to do something useful. I also don't see a lot of the world as a fight. Now there are some things worth fighting for. Reproductive freedom is one of them. Individual rights are another one. The right to a decent education is another one. There are a lot of things that are worth collaborating on - working together to get more funding for education in the state for the people who need it, equalizing funding across districts, and working together with the private sector to build the institutions we need to fight climate change. We're not going to sue our way out of that problem. We're going to build our way out of it.
Harrison Tuttle: We will now go to closing statements.
Aaron Regunberg: I want to thank the BLM RI PAC for the incredible work that you do standing up for criminal justice reform and police accountability. Thank you for being a voice for the repeal of the Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights, which desperately needs to go. Thank you to the Rhode Island Black Business Association, and all of our incredible panelists for bringing us together and again for the work that you do.
I've got a two-year-old, that's why I'm in this race. I spend a lot of time worrying about the kind of world he's going to grow up in. Are kids going to be safe at school from guns and mass shootings? Are they going to have clean air to breathe and a livable future? Are they going to have a functioning democracy by the time they're old enough to vote? When I'm up late at night worrying about these dangers, it's not just fear that I feel. I'm furious because none of that is an accident, right? It is not an accident that kids die from guns in this country more than anywhere else on the planet, right? It's not an accident that our climate is spiraling out of control. It's not an accident that so many working people are struggling right now while corporate profits are hitting record highs. The gun industry, fossil fuel companies, corporate CEOs, and their Republican allies are creating and feeding these crises because they're making billions and billions of dollars off of them.
But I also have hope. As furious as that makes me, I've seen that when Rhode Islanders come together, there's not a lot that we can't do. We've won change. We've taken on entrenched interests and on so many of the fights we care about, whether it's ending the school-to-prison pipeline, supporting small businesses, fighting for an education system that works for all of our young people, or taking on the gun industry to stop these terrible tragedies, we need leaders who can organize and bring people together and has a record of winning real progressive policy change. That's the work I've been doing here in Rhode Island for many years. That's the kind of work I'd be honored to contribute to in Congress alongside organizers, leaders, and activists like all of you.
Sabina Matos: Thank you for this opportunity. There are a lot of things we spoke about today, but at the end of the day, when you're making your decision, think about this: It's not about any one of us here. It is about people that say that we can look at her and tell her, "Yes, in this country you can do anything you want. There's no limit for you. There's no limit. You can not run for Congress." There cannot be a limit that a person of color or a woman cannot be elected to be the Congressperson from Rhode Island. It's not about any one of us here. It is about what it takes to be able to run a campaign and to be able to finally send representation to Congress. It is about sending someone that's going to fight for people like my parents that are on fixed incomes, relying on Social Security and Medicare and worrying if they're going to have enough to pay for their medication, pay for their food, and maybe be able, when the ice cream truck drives by and the grandkids are home, to buy ice cream.
That's the reality that people are going through right now here in Rhode Island. I'm running for Congress because we have to make sure that when my daughter tells me that one day she wants to be President of this country, I can look into her eyes and say, "Yes, you can do it. People are going to stop telling you that you're not enough."
Ana Quesada: I'm going to ask a couple of questions and please, if you feel comfortable raising your hands, do it. How many in this room lost a loved one to gun violence? How many in this room have been on welfare? How many in this room lose their home because of non-payment? How many in this room have gone hungry because sometimes they didn't have enough to give food to their children?
Then I'm going to say one thing to you: You need to send somebody to Congress who understands the issue that we are talking about today. I'm running for Congress because we need to send somebody who is going to represent you, who knows what it is to be in your shoes, who is a working family, who went from the welfare office to state office, and who knows what we go through every single day. It is time for Rhode Island to send a woman of color to Congress, and that person is me.
I will fight for you. I will do everything, when I get to Congress, to represent you. I'm tired of people coming to our community when they need our vote, but then you don't see them again. I'm tired of people coming to use us when they need us, but then, when they have to respond to our needs, they're not there and nowhere to be found. How many of you have a family member who can give you $125,000 to send you to Congress? How many of you can take $400,000 from your account to run for office? That's why, on September 6th, you have to vote for Senator Quesada for Congress.
Gabe Amo: Thank you to all the organizers for the opportunity. I am grateful to sit here, and I'm also thankful to the other people running. I know sometimes it gets contentious, but democracy is sometimes messy. We know that, but we also know that it is worth fighting for. It's worth fighting for because we all have stories that anchor us. I often talk about my mom studying for the citizenship test because it is formative for me. It's one of the reasons that I'm doing this. I sat with her after her shifts and we would go back and forth on the questions. Who wrote the Star Spangled Banner? or How many stars and stripes are there on the flag? or Why did the pilgrims come to this land? For us in this room, we all have our why.
Part of my why is, when I refer to my parents, their effort and their hard work got their son from Pawtucket to the Oval Office to sit with the President of the United States to brief on the important issues of the day and find solutions. That's missing in a lot of our politics and that's why we're all assembled here. We need a government that is solutions-oriented. We need elected leadership that is focused on solving problems. We need representative leadership. That's why I'm running because I know I can provide that from day one and I'll be honored, truly honored, to have your support Thank you for being here and I look forward to seeing you along the trail.
Sandra Cano: I'm running for Congress because I deeply care about helping people and I always carry the voice of my community. My lived experiences have shaped my values and my vision as a policymaker. I witnessed gun violence in Colombia. My dad got kidnapped. I came to this country as an immigrant and I have lived racial justice and cultural divisiveness, and I have lived under the cloud of bias. I'm a mom, I'm an immigrant. I'm my parents' daughter and I'm doing this because their sacrifices need to pay off. They taught me that I need to say thank you to this country through public service and also for my kids because they deserve a better future. I'm here just to represent all of you because I'm from the community and for the community. I hope that I will be your choice because, on September 5th, you need someone that understands the struggles of Congressional District One.
These are not talking points for me. We need high-quality education, living wages for working families, access to healthcare, and reproductive justice. The housing crisis is horrible. Immigration reform: This is the country that allows me to have the American dream. It is only possible to do change when you have the passion, commitment, and advocacy that I have done at the state level and bring and carry that experience to the federal level. I'm Sandra Cano and I hope you allowed me to be your congresswoman and represent you at this federal level. Thank you.
John Goncalves: I want to thank my fellow candidates for the robust discussion tonight. I'm a two-term councilman and I'm a teacher and I'm running to put people first. There are so many people in Rhode Island who are struggling, and that is my story. I grew up in poverty, in a single-parent household. It was then-Congressman Cicilline who helped me, at age 12, to get into a local elementary and middle school and the rest is history. Your zip code shouldn't determine your destiny, and that's exactly the reason I'm in this fight. I've been an effective legislator at the local level. I've solved thousands and thousands of constituent service issues and I'm trying to bring that leadership to Washington to put people first. I'm horrified by the things that we're experiencing in this country.
The decisions that have been made by MAGA Republicans and the Supreme Court are our lived experience and I'm going to fight tooth and nail to bring federal funding back to Rhode Island. I'm going to fight for economic opportunity and education and an equitable Rhode Island. I will fight for the most aggressive climate justice legislation, be it the Green New Deal or other important things that are going to put our climate and our people first. I'm going to fight to hold special interests accountable, whether it be the gun lobby or big pharma. We have a multi-racial, multi-generational coalition that we're putting together and I hope that I can earn your support.
Don Carlson: I'm running to be your representative in Congress because I love the state and I love the quirky, wonderful, independent-minded, diverse people of this state. We've talked about a lot of important issues tonight. I'm glad that we drilled down on education because it is the most important issue. It's the foundation for everything else to bring up our children with the right life and critical thinking skills and the love of lifelong learning to prepare them to be good citizens and good employees, workers, and leaders. That's a wonderful thing that we've done. We haven't talked about some issues that are also critically important. Things like mass incarceration, gun safety, police accountability, and climate change, which is something that I'm deeply passionate about. I'll come back to that in a minute and with all due respect to my colleagues on the stage up here, I am part of this community.
I was born here. Only three of us were born here. I grew up here. I grew up over a Dunkin Donuts for goodness sake. My grandfather was a firefighter his whole life, and I'm a fourth-generation Rhode Islander. My family has been in this state through thick and thin, through good times and bad for four generations, so I do think I'm a part of this community. I also think that David Cicilline did a pretty darn good job representing all the parts of this community, Black, brown, and everybody else, and as a proud gay man like David, I can do equally well as your advocate in Congress. I don't take second place to anybody about being able to serve you well in Congress.
Finally, in terms of my background, I'm an educator. That's where I light up - in front of a classroom. That's where I'm in the flow. I'm a teacher at heart. I believe in education and most important of all, for the future of this state, I want to lead the state in the fight against climate change. I want to build sustainable businesses that create great jobs for union workers with apprenticeships. That issue, of the wind energy business and all the sustainable businesses that we can build around it, can be the new economic engine that powers Rhode Island, and I'm proud to lead it.
Stephanie Beauté: First of all, thank you for your diligence in putting together this amazing event, and thank you, everyone, for attending and being part of the conversation. There was someone else who ran for office and when he wanted to run for office, they told him one, he was inexperienced, two, he didn't have enough money, and three, it wasn't his turn. That person and I share the same birthday, Barack Obama. They told him it wasn't his turn. They told him he didn't have the resources, and it was Hillary's time.
It's my time.
Audience: Come on now.
Stephanie Beauté: I want us to be honest with ourselves. Rhode Island has been a Democratic state. We shouldn't have these issues. When we talk about going to Washington to go fight the Republicans, who are we fighting here in Rhode Island, and why hasn't it worked? How has it worked here for us? Exactly, because it's lip service.
When people talk about how they've organized, what they've done is they've created systems and tools that later on they can use to their benefit, and then they get to sit at the top to make those decisions and dictate to us how they will help us. It's our time to have a seat at the table, and if they won't allow us to sit at the table, I will bring the table myself and my folding chairs.
I want to add to "Democracy is sometimes messy." No, democracy needs to be honest, and I want to thank Senator Quesada for being honest today about what's going on. It's not messy, it's being honest. When power plants were being put in providence to pollute our communities when we were talking about clean air, we had staffers on that team as the face of those campaigns in our community lying to us. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you. I'm going to Congress to work for you because it's been broken in Rhode Island and it hasn't worked for us. Today is my birthday. I'm asking everyone to give me a campaign contribution Let's get off the debate stage because these fellows know they can't take me one-on-one. Let's make sure everybody hears it.
Harrison Tuttle: Thank you so much...