Sunday, November 06, 2022
PHOTO: Campaign
Diego Arene-Morley is running for Providence City Council in Ward 9 — here’s why.
1. What do you think is the biggest political issue this campaign season in Providence?
As a true believer in local government, I answer from the perspective of only city politics and policy. While my neighbors care about inflation and abortion we understand that I could not affect those things from my position on City Council. Neighbors and I almost always talk about education. Not just schooling, but the educational environment of our schools, after-school opportunities, and our neighborhood itself. We talk about what the future has in store for our children and grandchildren in Providence. Our ability to house them, to educate them, to raise them, and protect them. This is the context for the other topics of our conversations: rising rent, utilities, dangerous speeding, noise and a feeling of lack of common courtesy. These were by far the most common topics of conversation regardless of party affiliation, immigration status, socioeconomics, or age.
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2. What do we need to do to improve Providence’s economy?
I think the economy is strong in a way that it was not in 2008. People are working, but they are just not earning enough to cover the cost of inflated rent and energy. These increased costs pinch our lower-income residents the hardest. We can drive down these costs by expanding the number of homes through zoning reforms and building out community solar infrastructure. Lowering these costs will allow people’s disposable income to go toward investments in their future: their education, their health and their leisure, which in turn generates other economic activity.
The other structural factor that depresses investment in our City: the unfunded pension liability, i.e. our debt. This issue has plagued other cities and towns, in Rhode Island and elsewhere. We made mistakes by overpromising benefits and making bad accounting assumptions. We cannot make cuts to these benefits, so we must increase revenue streams from higher taxes and/or new business. For example: if Rhode Island had been the first State to regulate marijuana as we do tobacco and alcohol and brought in a billion dollars in new revenue (as did Colorado), we would probably have had the funds to cover our pension liability.
3. What is the greatest challenge facing Providence?
Total cynicism in government and public institutions. Even cynical adults are concerned at the level of cynicism their children have about the future. Our kids just don’t think that the government is on their side. I truly think that my job as City Councilor is to show them otherwise. I want to bring more government transparency and accountability to my neighbors. This starts in my neighborhood, one block at a time, one neighbor at a time. This is also why I am running as an Independent – for all Ward 9 residents regardless of party affiliation, immigration status, socioeconomic status, and political connections.
4. Why are you running for office? What makes you uniquely qualified?
I am running for office because my neighbors deserve a choice in the general election. In me, they have the opportunity to vote for a competent, bilingual educator and social worker. People are not happy with a primary-take-all system in which the presumed winner does not win a majority of votes.
My work across Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls as a teacher, school social worker, and peer recovery specialist comes from my unique family history. My mother fled a violent civil war in El Salvador and my father was a journalist who covered the atrocities. I hope that our community campaign can be a vehicle for the survivors of childhood trauma, civil war, addiction, domestic violence, and family separation. I am finishing my Masters Degree in Social Work from Boston University in a year-long internship with the Interfaith Counseling Center, located in a church off Broad Street. ICC provides meals, clothes, community and mental health services and more to many of the uninsured, undocumented, and chronically stigmatized residents of Providence. The wisdom of our campaign comes from ordinary people in our neighborhood, living extraordinary lives hiding in plain sight.
5. Who is your inspiration?
My mom who finished her undergraduate degree during a violent civil war and then finished her Masters in Social Work at Howard University while teaching herself English. Her father, who I never met, who fled Romania during World War Two for being Jewish, ended up in El Salvador, knowing no one, hiding his identity his whole life and somehow hosted a popular TV show that made classical music accessible to all Salvadorans. “Politically” speaking, I find inspiration on every possible side of the “aisle” across many intellectual and theological traditions: Barack Obama, Liz Cheney, Shirley Chisolm, Monseñor Romero, Fred Rogers, Sandra Day O’Connor, William F Buckley Jr, and Michael Harrington, and way too many more.
For more information on his campaign, go here.
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