Side of the Rhode: Who’s Hot and Who’s Not? - March 3, 2023

HOT

New Brazilian Jiu Jitsu School Has Opened in Providence — With an Inclusive Mission

A new Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school has opened in Providence — with an inclusive mission. 

Providence BJJ is located at 4 Aurora Street — just off of Valley Street — and GoLocal spoke with owner Marco McWilliams about the new business. 

“I wear a few different hats,” McWilliams told GoLocal. “I’m a community organizer; I’m an adjunct faculty member at the University of Rhode Island teaching African-American history and the legal system; and I also teach applied justice at YouthBuild.”

It is McWilliams’ passion for Jiu Jitsu that led to his opening the new gym along with co-owner Mickey Zacchilli. 

“I’m doing all the things that I love. I’ve been training for more than twenty years now and I’m a black belt,” he said. “Providence BJJ is a way to bring this martial art to the community, and especially folks who may be marginalized. This is a way for them to build not just power in their bodies, but their community.”

“BJJ is the most effective martial art for practical self-defense,” said McWilliams. “The community needs access to that.”

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HOT

The Coach That Is a Fixture on This List

University of Rhode Island head women's basketball coach Tammi Reiss was named the Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year for the second time in three years. 

And, junior Mayé Touré earned Most Improved Player of the Year. 

Touré also earned a spot on the All-Conference first team, while grad transfer Madison Hattix-Covington was named to the All-Conference Third Team.

The Rams had an All-Conference First-Team selection for the fourth straight year for the first time in program history.

PHOTO: Alan Hubbard/URI

HOT

The Center of the City – Architecture Critic Morgan

GoLocal's architecture critic Will Morgan has a tremendous column on the 

Does the Turk’s Head Building mark the heart of downtown Providence? Despite rumors of downtown’s demise, the group of buildings around the Ottoman’s figurehead is the epicenter of Providence’s commercial world. More people work in the one-block area of the Turk's Head Plaza than anywhere else in Rhode Island.

The open plaza in front of the Turk’s Head–not 225 Dyer Street nor Parcel 8 beyond Trader Joe’s–is the past and future location of our city’s urban soul. This space is a bellwether for the return of downtown’s vitality. This is clearly demonstrated by GoLocal’s having established its offices on the ground floor of the Turk’s Head Building.  

Why is this one spot so crucial to the identity of Providence? What makes it both successful and timeless?

History is always the starting point in Providence. The city’s early market area was on the east side of the river, but the mercantile nexus moved across the river as the port city flourished. The Arcade, one of America’s first indoor malls, along with the equally monumental Customs House, the set the tone for this area. The six-story Merchants Bank at the entrance to Westminster Street was the area’s first tall building, joined by the fancier Empire Bank of 1888 (now the Beatrice Hotel). The Banigan Building of eight years later was the city’s first skyscraper, heralding a boom of canyon-producing New York-style skyscrapers.

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HOT

Gotta Love the Passion

Former Providence Mayor and real estate developer Joe Paolino is all in on Providence.

A few weeks ago, he bought the RDW Building, and this week he announced he purchased 70 Kennedy Plaza. 

Read more here. 

NOT

Brett Smiley Launching Electricity Program in Partnership with Controversial Florida Power Company

Providence and six other RI Communities will move nearly all residents and businesses onto a new electricity provider. 

The company they have contracted to is a major Florida conglomerate NextEra -- a company who along with their subsidiaries, have been major GOP funders (especially Republican Ron DeSantis), been fined more than $30 million for health and labor violation, and an expose´ by the Guardian, Miami Herald and other papers uncovered political dirty dealing against pro-environmental elected officials.

NextEra is the parent company of Florida Power & Light and the new subsidiary launching now in RI.

The investigation uncovered a range of damning communications:

"The CEO of the biggest power company in the US had a problem. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Light’s (FPL) profits. Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants – bypassing FPL and its monopoly on electricity.

“I want you to make his life a living hell … seriously,” FPL’s CEO Eric Silagy wrote in a 2019 email to two of his vice-presidents about state Senator José Javier Rodríguez, who proposed the legislation.

Within minutes, one of them forwarded the directive to the CEO of Matrix, LLC, a powerful but little-known political consulting firm that has operated behind the scenes in at least eight states.

Rodríguez was ousted from office in the next election. Matrix employees spent heavily on political advertisements for a candidate with the same last name as Rodríguez, who split the vote. That candidate later admitted he was bribed to run.

Smiley says he is sticking with the Florida company.

NOT

Polluter and Regulator 

For the second time in less than a year, the operator of the Woonsocket sewage treatment facility repeatedly released improperly treated waste into the Blackstone River.

Last summer, twice in one week, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) officials issued a notice to the public warning of the dangers of the improperly treated waste.

Then it happened again on Wednesday and it is continuing -- raw sewage is being dumped in the Blackstone.

DEM officials admit that their regulatory action has taken too long and has been insufficient.

Read more here. 

NOT

China

The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic "most likely arose from a laboratory leak," according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress according to a report published by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

In March 2020, Professor Arthur Waldron — the Lauder Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania — writing exclusively for GoLocal, asserted that the Wuhan Lab was the likely source of COVID-19.

Adding his voice, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News this week his agency has concluded that the virus began in the Wuhan government lab.

The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office.

“The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic’s origin. The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory. Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two are undecided,” according to the WSJ.

The new finding is consistent with what China expert Waldron wrote.

Waldron wrote in part in GoLocal, less than four weeks after Rhode Island's first case, "The holocaust in China since December has now done previously unimaginable harm, with tens of thousands or more infected in the nation and a death rate comparable to SARS, bringing much of China to a panicky halt. And now there are hundreds of thousands – or more – cases in the world, and many thousands of deaths as the pandemic rolls on."

The new Energy Department conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research.

According to the WSJ, the Energy Department made its judgment with “low confidence,” according to people who have read the classified report.

NOT

How Low Is Low

The Massachusetts operator of a chain of addiction treatment clinics is being charged in federal court in Providence with millions of dollars of health care fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering and obstruction, announced United States Attorney Zachary A. Cunha.  

In addition, the treatment center and its former supervisory counselor were also charged with healthcare fraud. 

Michael Brier, 60, of Newton, MA, Mi Ok Bruining, 62, of Warwick, RI, and Recovery Connections Centers of America, Inc. (RCCA) are charged by criminal complaint with health care fraud.  Michael Brier was also charged in the complaint with aggravated identity theft, money laundering and obstruction. 

It is alleged in court documents that, Brier, Bruining, and RCCA shortchanged Rhode Island and Massachusetts substance abuse disorder patients out of much needed counseling and treatment services, while defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and other health insurers out of millions of dollars.

At a press conference announcing the culmination of this investigation and resulting criminal charges and arrests, Cunha commented, “What makes the fraud scheme that we have charged today particularly pernicious – is that not only was this scheme, as we allege, designed to defraud by enriching these defendants with federal and private healthcare dollars they did not earn, but that in the process it cheated a vulnerable population of recovery patients out of the full, genuine support and treatment that they need to have a chance at recovery.”

L-R: U.S Attorney Zachary A. Cunha for the District of RI and Joseph Bonavolonta, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Boston Division. PHOTO: GoLocalProv