Delegate Mary E. Batastini of Providence, in yellow blazer, addresses her fellow delegates on May 1, 1986, during proceedings of the Rhode Island Constitutional Convention, the last year the state held one. Batastini was the chairwoman of the Committee on Citizen Rights. (Screenshot from Plenary Session video/Rhode Island State Archives)
The mild debate over whether Rhode Island should hold a constitutional convention is unsurprising. And not because the political world has become recently polarized. In fact, Rhode Island has always been very particular about the language in its governing documents and has found it difficult to come to consensus. Once we manage to adopt something, we become pretty invested in not changing it.
Consider Rhode Island’s original European settlers, who were free thinkers who had trouble aggregating. They settled in Providence, Warwick and in two places on Aquidneck Island establishing separate communities with their own governing authorities. But pressure from adjoining colonies, which both rejected notions of religious tolerance and wanted Rhode Island’s resource-rich landscape, encouraged the groups to come together and to get from King Charles II a document which codified the ways they had chosen to live, most particularly, with freedom from governmental stipulations about religion.