The Questions We Asked the Providence Mayoral Candidates

Question 1: Providence Police and the Gang Unit

According to PrYSM's 2010 report, For Justice and Love: The Quality of Life for Southeast Asian Youth, 71% of young Southeast Asian males have been accused of being in a gang even though they were not. When a young person is accused of being a gang member by police, they are often entered into Providence's gang database -- sometimes without ever having committed a crime. However, right now, young people are not notified when they are entered in the database. PrYSM believes that police should be required to notify people when their information is going to be recorded in the gang database.

PrYSM also supports the creation of a formal process by which people can challenge their membership in the gang database and request to be removed. We believe this process should be overseen and decided by a neutral body, separate from the police force, such as a judge. Would you support these policy changes -- yes or no?

Question 2: Providence Public School Reform

It often feels like the views of students are not sought after and reflected in education policy decisions. Hope High School is an example of how teachers, parents, and students worked together to improve test scores, increase attendance, and lower violent incidents at school. Yet, Hope now has to make changes due to budget concerns and the current school administration’s uniform schedule and curriculum policy. When many students spoke out against the changes and offered alternatives, it became clear that there was no formal process for their ideas to be heard and the decisions had already been made without them.

What is your view of the reforms that the Providence school department has made under the leadership of Superintendent Brady? And, how will you support student-led decision making and avoid the politics of blaming either students, parents, teachers, or teachers’ unions for failing schools?

Question 3: Policing in Neighborhoods and Schools

We have police in our schools. We have police cars in every parking lot, watching over us. When we go home from school we can pass 10 police cars, and are likely to see people who look like us being frisked or having their cars searched. Everywhere we look, there is someone in a uniform with a gun, and they are not from our neighborhoods and they don't look like us. We have friends in the gang database because they live on a certain street or wore a color one day. Our classmates are being kicked out of school at a high rate, and Rhode Island DCYF has one of the highest rates of taking kids out of parental custody in the nation. We know that this causes some sort of psychological impact on young adults who have spent their whole lives growing up in a militarized community.

What commitment will you make and what steps will you take as mayor to reduce the investment on policing us and increase the investment on prevention programs like mediation, conflict resolution, and more counselors per student in our schools?

Question 4: Budget Priorities

For the past two years, young people have had to deal with the underfunding of the Providence public schools in a complex way. Because the school department cannot afford to provide transportation to high school students who live within 3 miles of their school, many used to rely on monthly bus passes provided by their health care coverage for rides to school. Now, this same health coverage only gives youth Rhody 10s each month to cover bus rides, which of course is not enough to get to and from school everyday. Students shouldn’t have to rely on their health coverage for school transportation. This is an example of how youth and youth-related programs are often the first to bear the brunt of policy changes and budget decisions, especially when the economy is bad.

How will your administration be different when it comes to balancing the city budget? What are your spending priorities and what will be their impact on youth?

Question 5: Youth Civic Engagement, Voice, and Leadership

In cities around the country youth are having more of say in the decisions and policies that impact their communities. In Massachusetts, there’s a statewide youth council, in Oakland there’s a student serving on the school board, and here in Providence young people form the majority of the boards at both Youth In Action and Young Voices. However, in Providence as a whole there are many places where it is still difficult for youth to have a say in decisions that affect themselves and their community.

What would you do to have the city of Providence reflect the youth-led culture of our organizations?

Question 6: Youth Bill of Rights

As the Youth 4 Change Alliance we have created a Youth Bill of Rights, which consists of 8 basic rights that youth should have based on the issues that affect us in our community. The bill is a reflection of the stark realities we all face on a daily basis and changes we would like to see. The Youth Bill of Rights is one of the many steps needed to show the community that we have a voice and our ideas need to be valued as much as any other constituents’. We believe in a community where young people are acknowledged and elevated as powerful leaders for positive change.

Will you sign in support of the Youth Bill of Rights? And, if elected, what will you do as mayor to help us make these rights a reality?

*Photo by YIA Media Team