Juliette’s first language was French, and now she’s bilingual. She’s four years old, and goes to the Dr. Pat Feinstein Child Development Center on Westminster Street. Her parents found the school through friends who sent their kids there.

Juliette likes to “play house, to play on the trampoline” and her favorite color is purple. She also loves to dance – ”I just started lessons.” She has two big brothers, aged 14 and 17. They lend her their iPods.

Lou has been working as a street cleaner on Westminster Street for about four years, pushing a distinctive yellow cart.

“I do this in the mornings, and then at night I’m a drug and alcohol counsellor. I’ve been working there for about twenty years. It keeps me going.”

He works at a halfway house on the West Side, where young men with addictive dependencies go to try and rebuild their lives. Some are sent there by the courts, others end up there through interventions by family or friends.

“In the house is 22 guys, so you have 22 personalities, that’s what you got to deal with.

“You have to, not judge, but figure out what kinds of problems they have. You come to me, and we’ll talk about what you’re going through and what you can’t kick. I have to sit and let you talk, and then I can pinpoint what’s what. I’m not saying I’m Mr Perfect because no-one is, but if you were to sit down with me, I could point some things out.

“Myself, you, me, we have to be leaders. If we’re not leaders, they got no-one to look up to. Let’s reach out and help somebody, get somebody’s hand, tell someone you love them.

“I’ve been clean for twenty years now, I love helping people, reaching out to them.

“Some fall and don’t make it back. That’s the sad part.”

Josie was managing a club in Taunton, MA about five years ago when “a dude walked in with two guns.

“He started going off about how this was a gay establishment, he pointed one gun at the bartender, and one gun right to me and our doorman. He put a gun to my head, had us lie on the ground, robbed us.

“It was pretty scary, I thought I was going to die. We had 12 customers in the bar at the time. The guy was in there for probably three or four minutes, but I swear, it felt like three or four hours.

“The bartender that was on at the time, he was a drag queen. When the guy with the guns left, we ran to the women’s room and locked the door. The cops showed up, and we’re on the phone saying “How do we know it is really the police?” It was surreal, it doesn’t hit you until after the fact, then your body’s in shock.

“I kept doing that job for another week, and then my mother said to me, “You know, this really isn’t a good time to be gay,” and I decided to leave.”

Josie, who is an electrician, moved to Providence three years ago, shortly after marrying her wife, who works as a Spanish teacher. She says they face a variety of reactions as a gay couple.

“Where my family is from, near Randolph, MA, is a little suburb of Boston. People there don’t have an open mind, and they don’t bring their children up to accept other people. There was one black family, it was Marvin Hagler the boxer’s son, and they were the only black family in the whole town. But behind closed doors everyone would talk about that.

“It varies where you go here. If you go to a gay-friendly establishment, you won’t have problems. But my wife and I have had our share of strange looks. It’s what people don’t understand, they fear. But I’m comfortable with who I am in my life. Whatever.”

Joe’s fame pops up at the most unlikely moments.

“Recently I was in the emergency room at the hospital, I had a wound in my head, blood coming out, and the nurse leaned down and said ‘I loved you in Cabaret.’”

He has been a member of Trinity Rep’s acting company for five years. He moved here from New York, and lived for a while in the Smith Building, around the corner from Westminster Street.

“It was great being downtown. I was heavily involved in the Downtown Neighborhood Alliance and the Hospital Resource Partnership. It was great – that’s how I met most of my friends, living, working, causing trouble downtown.

“This is my neighborhood. It’s a wonderful area because we’re not New York, and we’re not Boston, we’re right in between, and we have access to so many things in this region.”

He’s not positive about downtown’s current situation, however. “I think that downtown needs to become a place that is revitalized on the backs of artists, like all great cities, and we haven’t figured out a way to incorporate artists into downtown. It’s still a very expensive place to live, and we feed on the backs of the students who come to the universities here.

“I don’t think we’ve found a way for those people to be downtown who want to live and work in a community, and want to make those communities vital. That’s artists, and that’s the gay community. That’s why I moved to Federal Hill – because I couldn’t afford to live down here.

“It’s a tragedy, and we’re seeing the repurcussions right now. Those with the passion to invigorate the city can’t afford to be here. I think we have to make a choice between money and greed, or common sense.”

Chris is the manager of The 201, a bar formerly known as Remy’s, at 201 Westminster Street. It’s owned by Mama Teresa’s next door, where he also works.

He’s here “almost seven days a week. I work pretty much day and night. If I have time, I might have a cappuccino at Tazza, I also like going to Murphy’s Pub. Otherwise I’m working. I also do property management on the side. What do I do for fun? I work.”

He lives on the West End, and walks in most days. If the weather is bad, he rides in on one of his bicycles. He likes it downtown, but it’s still far from perfect.

“There should be a greater sense of community for the businesses here. Sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t. Some of the city government practices aren’t very helpful, either – the favoritism and nepotism, that’s always there.

“But the one biggest problem is parking, and some of the disappointing choices regarding it. Such as when they took down the old police station, and installed a flat parking area instead of a parking garage. Not such a smart move. I’m not saying you bend over backwards for the businesses, but there should be a more even-keeled attitude.

“With the debt load on the city and the debt put on us as small businesses, I think that the universities in town need to pick up some of the debt load of the city. The fat times are over, and the tax breaks they get are inappropriate.”

Chris grew up in Rhode Island, and remembers, “when I was a kid, there weren’t cars on Westminster Street. It was awesome, especially before it got depressed in the 1990s. I’d love to see it go back to being pedestrianized.”

Carlos is part of the Downtown Improvement District (DID) safety team. “We’re funded by local businesses, to make this part of the city look better, and to keep it safe.”

The DID is one of 34 city improvement groups run by a company called Block By Block, based in Nashville, Tennessee. It began in Providence in 2005, and Carlos has been working for them part time for the last two years.

“We make sure that people get to where they need to go. We’re almost like tourist informants a lot of the time. We’re not allowed to carry any weapons, we just carry a radio. If there’s anyone on the sidewalk or street that may be over-intoxicated, we ask if they want rescuing, we keep things in order so to speak. We also write reports on what we see, maybe there’s a construction site that might not be so safe. Stuff like that.

“One lady came up to me, it turned out she hadn’t been back here for fifty years, she looked confused, and she asked me, ‘Sir, what happened to all the department stores?’”

“It came to me like a calling. I was a bank teller before I did this, but I’d also done a lot of non-profit work. I’m going to school at URI, studying sociology, and two years ago, I happened to see an ad for this job. I’ve always been into community work, being a city youth myself, and I felt inclined to be involved in that.”

In an evening when he’s not working, you might just catch Carlos on the dance floor.

“I dance salsa, two or three times a week. I did some teaching, but I decided to get away from that side of it. I went to the Black Rep a lot, and I also go to a few venues in Boston. It’s a very social activity.

“Two weeks ago, we had a salsa congress at the Biltmore Hotel. It was a big meeting of all the regulars, up in the ballroom. It’s like a night out, but done in a more upscale way. You dress up. I went by myself, you meet people. You ask politely a lady to dance with you, and that’s what you do.”

When he was a kid, Ernest used to hang out at Bankers Quarters – known as the most luxurious Burger King in the country. It was on the corner of Dorrance and Westminster Streets, where Dress Barn just closed down, and had a chandelier, a fireplace, expensive rugs, and “fur-lined seats. We used to all hang out here, talk to the girls.”

He grew up in East Providence, and moved to Providence when he was 13. While he was in high school, his mom moved with him down to Atlanta, GA, which is where his troubles began.

“I used to play a lot of sports when I was younger. I played for Central High in Providence, I was on one of the best teams Central ever had, they won the championship two years in a row. That was in 1986 and 1987. I was the number two guard.

“Then my mother moved me to Atlanta just when I was being sought after by Providence College and others, to play sports for them. So I started drinking a little here, smoking a little there, and the next thing you know, you can only go higher and higher so I did the next drug after that, which was cocaine.

“I was full of resentments as a child. It was a self-medication type of thing, because I had a pain in my mind that was bothering me, and I was oblivious to what was going on, I just knew that I needed to medicate, and what seemed to be fun was partying, drinking and getting high. A relationship came about, and then it fell apart, and that’s when I really felt the brunt of the resentment and the pain, and I would take anything at this point to medicate.

“I continued getting high, but slowly I packed my bags, told my mother I was going to Boston, I got on the bus to Springfield, Mass. When I got there, I slept outside. I wanted to be clean so bad, I was running away. I slept on the ground for two days in Springfield, and then I got into a really good shelter in Westfield, and the ball started rolling.

“That’s what happened. It’s all a part of growing up and I am a direct example of every decision I made.”

Now he’s a resident at MAP on the West Side, one of the city’s leading drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, where he also works as the activities coordinator, helping out with community projects.

“MAP is a different kind of treatment facility. They allow you to work on your behaviors – the symptoms that brought us there are not the main issue, a lot of times it’s the behaviors and the things we do. I don’t have to go back to the old things I used to do. It gives me a new avenue.

“I’ll be there until they say I can go, because I have to let my will go. If I take my will back, I’ll be doing the old things. I have to allow somebody else to drive my ship.

“I feel really really good, I think it’s the best thing I ever done for myself. It’s all about admitting you have a problem, and getting into the right place for that, and I think that MAP is the bomb.

“I wish I could take people on my journey, they would see that recovery is a process, and the process starts with you accepting the fact that you’re powerless.

“I feel really good today. One thing I did get from playing basketball all these years is how to start something and and how to finish it. It’s like going to practice, in pre-season you gotta do all this stuff to prepare for the games.

“And I still play. I’m in the 30-and-over league with those same guys from Central High. Life today is beautiful. I’ve seen the dark side and I’m not ignorant to it, so I don’t have fear. When I see somebody who’s struggling, I know how to deal with it, or not deal with it. That’s what helps me to be aware and keeps me from using again.”

Vellachi came here to study from Bangalore in southern India. “My options were the UK and US. I chose here because culturally there’s more exposure to television and movies from the US in India. She’s a graduate student at RISD, studying textiles.

“I’m not sure if I’ll stay afterwards. I’m happy that I got this education. Textiles is a really important export economy in India, and it’s a lot more hands on. I’m happy for what I’ve learnt here, but that’s where the playing field is, I can go back and put what I’ve learned to use.”

She works in a studio downtown, and is often “up all night working, right up to the time of a presentation. It’s fun to be able to dip in and out of the culture that’s here. When you need a break and to see other people, you can get that here. I like walking around and peering into all the stores.”

“No creo que tenemos las mismas oportunidades de toda la gente (I don’t believe we have the same opportunities as everyone else),” says Erick, who is from Morelos in Mexico, and works at Mama Teresa’s. He left his previous job after being discriminated against for his nationality. “No me importa la nacionalidad, no me importa el sexo ni nada. Lo que me importa es que uno viene aquí por trabajar. (I don’t care about nationality, gender, nothing. What matters is that people who come here do so to work.)”

Belén works at Manpower, placing people in jobs. Her own daughter, however, is finding it tough to get employed. “She’s kind of heavy set, and companies won’t hire her because of her size. It happened to her three times already. A company tells me that they’re hiring, and I say ‘It’s not for me, it’s for my daughter’, and then she goes in, and they say, ‘Oh no, we’re not hiring.’”

Josie married her partner three years ago in Massachusetts. She works as an electrician, and her wife is a teacher. “When we moved here, I went to the bank to cash my paycheck, and they wanted two forms of ID. I asked if I could use my marriage license. They said sure. I brought it in, and they said ‘Oh, two females – that’s not a legally binding contract’, and wouldn’t cash my check. My wife and I have had our share of strange looks. What people don’t 
understand, they fear. But I’m comfortable with who I am. Whatever.”

The Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights is based on the third floor of the building behind you, above where Dress Barn used to be. From July 2008 to June 2009, they took on 356 cases of discrimination, 51 less than the previous year. “We’ve heard that people are scared of the recession, and don’t want to put their jobs at risk,” says Susan, an investigator with the Commission. The Commission can be reached at 401-222-2661.

The RI Commission for Human Rights receives thousands of complaints every year. Many are referred to other agencies. Below are the total numbers of cases that they took on for each category of discrimination during the fiscal year 2009, in the areas of employment, housing, public accommodation, and credit:

Physical Disability 82
Age 65
Race 59
Sexual Harassment 34
Sex 30
Mental Disability 27
Ancestral Origin 27
Retaliation 10
Familial Status 8
Sexual Orientation 7
Religion 5
Color 1
Marital Status 1

Seung, owner of Two Brothers Beauty Supply store, likes being downtown, but hasn’t always felt welcome. She tried to rent a space on this street a few years ago, and feels that she was discriminated against because of her customers. “They didn’t want to give us the store, because my 50% of my customers are black. We were angry. They say black people can move anywhere they want, but they didn’t want to give us the store. Then the owner of this building offered us a space, so we moved here.”

John is 79 years old. He remembers downtown in the 1940s, when black people “weren’t allowed in the elevator at some of the stores, we had to use the stairs. At the movie theaters, we had to go upstairs. I asked the manager, ‘Why can’t we sit downstairs?’ ‘You don’t belong there,’ he said. We couldn’t get a permit to shine shoes downtown, though I used to do it sometimes anyway. And there were streets on the East Side where the cops wouldn’t even let you walk. Those were very difficult days because of racial prejudice. When it comes right down to it, I don’t think it’s really changed.”

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” – Dr Martin Luther King Jr

Mike is looking for a job in advertising. He graduated in May from Johnson and Wales, and is working right now as a substitute high-school teacher.

He came here from Vermont, choosing JWU “because it’s close to home, and isn’t completely different from home either. My brother went to school here too, so it was an easy transition.”

He did an internship at a local advertising agency, and is now applying for jobs. “I’ve got an idea for a campaign building in my head, but I’m going to keep that to myself for a while.”

In his spare time, he enjoys traveling and reading. “I’ve started getting in to classic books. I just finished reading ‘1984′ – definitely an eye-opening book. I see everything a little bit differently now.”