Maybe it’s an echo of my angry-young-man laborer days, but statements like this continue to grate on me:

Former state Rep. J. Aaron Regunberg issued a statement Friday on behalf of Never Again Action: “We are glad to hear that a grand jury is looking into this incident. Our hope is that justice will be served. That means holding accountable the individuals who attacked peaceful protesters with pepper spray and a truck. It also means holding the Wyatt accountable as an institution.”

He continued: “These were Wyatt employees, in uniform and on the job. If they were willing to assault peaceful protesters, in public and on camera, we know that this violence is just a shadow of what happens behind the walls.”

Let’s review who the speaker is, here.  Regunberg graduated from an Ivy League school.  Since graduation, his work appears to extend to progressive activist and legislator.  When he failed to win the lieutenant governor seat (for which he ran with copious help from out-of-state funders), the progressive mayor of Providence gave him an $80,000-a-year job as, it seems, a professional activist to tide him over until he started at Harvard Law.

In short, this is a guy with a golden ticket who is going to be just fine in life.  And here he is saying that he knows the working stiffs at Wyatt are perpetrating acts of violence against the inmates.  Worse, he’s doing so as an official statement in the state’s major newspaper.  Even worse, I haven’t seen anybody, anywhere call him out on it.

Meanwhile, here’s a news tidbit from another prison in Rhode Island:

A guard in the high security unit of Rhode Island’s state prison has been assaulted by an inmate. …

The guard was taken to the hospital, treated for a wound and released.

My 9th grade English teacher, Mrs. Murphy, taught me not to make accusative statements about people or organizations without more-substantial evidence than “everybody knows.”  Apparently, it’s possible to get through Brown University without learning that lesson, and apparently, it’s possible to rise to the top of progressives’ activist network while exploiting that educational deficit.