Tale of Three Towns
Providence, Rhode Island is a city made of 3 cities into one. Evil and good mix up there and it’s hard to understand where are their borders. This is the story of a mayor and his town, as told on Gimlet’s Crimetown
The good thing about tales is that you can always say who’s good and who’s bad. There’s evil on one side and good on the other. Usually good prevails in the end and everybody lives happily ever after.
Reality is unfortunately different: good doesn’t always win and what’s worst is that evil sometimes mixes up with good. That’s exactly what happened in Providence, Rhode Island, the third city in the US by number of people belonging to the organized crime.
The beloved and longstanding mayor Buddy Cianci started as a special assistant attorney general in 1969 when he became famous as an anti-corruption layer. And he used this fame to become mayor for the first time with the help of mobsters (he won for 700 votes against the dem candidate). He was able to go through scandals, budget crisis and accusation of felony and eventually forced to quit. For the first time, because he became once again mayor for a second run years later, during what’s know as the Renaissance of Providence.
This is not only his story but one’s of a whole city. And its crime scene, that was deeply intertwined with politics and business.
This podcast is very well done and produced and it’s always entertaining, even if the themes are always tough and violent. In the end it’s the story of a whole city told by different voices: good and bad guys, common people and basically all its population.
What’s puzzling and sometimes scaring is that it’s really hard not only to say what and who’s good or bad but also to step out the fascination for all those mafiosi: bad people with keen and powerful minds. You see how evil they were but you are attracted by their cleverness at the same time. Listening to it, you’re in an unconfortable zone: you condemn them but at the same time you cannot deny their minds have something interesting and fascinating. You feel good because you’re not as bad as they were and you feel bad because you feel the power of their irony and intellects.
