On Sayles Street
Ruth Wartenberg at the BLM rally outside the Providence Public Safety Complex on July 3rd, 2021. Photo by Steve Ahlquist of Uprise RI
Hello all,
Many of you, especially those residing in Rhode Island, are by now familiar with the incident that occured on Sayles Street in Providence on June 29, 2021 between Providence Police and a crowd of mostly young residents. While the investigation is ongoing, there has been a considerable backlash from the community regarding policing in poor and/or predominantly minority communities in Rhode Island. The release of several bodycam videos in the wake of the incident has brought condemnation of some of the officers’ actions by the city’s mayor, Jorge Elorza, who felt that while some of the officers behaved in a professional manner, others were inappropriate in their response to residents of Sayles Street. As of July 19, 2021, three of the officers who responded that evening have faced disciplinary actions for their role in the incident.
LGPs own Executive Director and Co-Founder, Ruth Wartenberg, is a school social worker in Providence who has worked closely with the low-income, racially diverse, and immigrant communities in the area. When she witnessed the police response to the Sayles Street incident, she was outraged. Wartenberg joined a Black Lives Matter protest around the Providence Public Safety Complex on July 3, 2021, just days after the event, to condemn the actions of the Providence Police Department. “They [Police] don’t know how to de-escalate, they don’t have the training,” Wartenberg told the crowd. “And when you dehumanize people and call them animals, it’s really easy to brutalize them.”
Wartenberg described difficult, even life-threatening, situations where she’s used her skills as a social worker to de-escalate tensions and get people in crisis the help they really need. In those situations, she insists, an authoritarian response would only have served to exacerbate, rather than de-escalate tensions between police and civilians. That is exactly what seems to have happened on Sayles Street, and it’s become clear in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement across this country and around the world that real change is needed with regard to how police and/or authorities respond to certain situations.
“Social workers can do this,” Wartenberg said. “We have the training to do this. We have the empathy, the compassion, to do this. And I’m held accountable by the Rhode Island Department of Health and the Rhode Island Department of education to not step out of line.”
This change does not just apply to handling citizens on the streets. It also applies to families who are in tough situations with mentally ill relatives, seeking help from the police when things turn for the worse, or children in schools who come from troubled homes and find themselves face to face with an authoritarian who doesn’t understand them, and does little to try. It applies to every misunderstood and underserved community here and around the world.
As such, the LGP Community Foundation stands firmly in support of our Executive Director, Ruth Wartenberg, and others in Providence who are pushing for real change in this matter. This includes the Providence Alliance for Student Safety (PASS), who recently demanded “Counselors, Not Cops,” calling for the removal of armed school resource officers from Providence schools, and to replace them with counselors. Maribeth Calabro, President of the Providence Teachers Union, has also expressed her support for the PASS demands in the wake of the Sayles street incident. “We are committed to advocate for the health and safety of all of our students, and reiterate our support for the PASS proposal to replace armed Student Resource Officers with professionals trained in restorative practices and increased support services,” Calabro posted on Facebook.
Most importantly, we stand with this community. We are here with you, we are here for you.
