Economic Progress Institute head Weayonnoh Nelson-Davies calls out the insider politics that perpetuates social and economic inequality
This story was originally published in Rhode Island Current, a publication partner of Ocean State Stories.
PROVIDENCE — Minutes into his work day on a June Monday, Mike Healey saw a post by his social media-savvy boss in support of payday lending reform tagging the leaders of both chambers of the Rhode Island General Assembly.
A few hours later, another post by Weayonnoh Nelson-Davies, executive director for the Economic Progress Institute, crossed Healey’s screen.
“I call BULL! RI lawmakers are ready to do away with this usury. ONE lawmaker has ignored all of the evidence we have provided with alternatives. How has the military and every other New England state figure[d] it out? Give me a break. @RISenate”
Healey gasped in shock. This was hardly the kind of language and tone he was accustomed to after 18 years in communications for various state government agencies.
“So I get up and knock on her door, and she’s just sitting there in her chair with the guiltiest look on her face,” said Healey.
Busted.
No one dared to call out Senate President Dominick Ruggerio by name before, fearing retribution from the top Senate leader, who has near unilateral power over what legislation advances to the full chamber for a floor vote.
Despite the momentum from the historic 70-2 vote on the House floor in 2023 and an intensified public awareness campaign in 2024, leadership in both the Rhode Island Senate and House refused to bring payday lending reform legislation to committee or floor votes.
Even so, Ruggerio had emailed Nelson-Davies and thanked her for her advocacy.
“We have a responsibility to listen to all of the testimony we receive and, as best we can, to weigh the positive and negative ramifications of each piece of legislation before us,” Ruggerio wrote in the email obtained by Rhode Island Current.
“Some witnesses testified and submitted testimony with serious concerns, particularly with regard [to] leaving lenders with poor credit very limited options. Without pay loans, these witnesses argued to the committee, desperate individuals could be driven to less reputable, unregulated, sources of borrowing if an unexpected cost arises, such as a car repair they may suddenly be needed so an individual can get to their place of employment.”
But two weeks later, the session was over, the bill still languishing in legislative purgatory in its respective chamber committees. It was the same unhappy ending that has characterized the 15-year saga to repeal the special exemption from state interest rate limits and require storefront payday lenders to play by the same rules as other lenders.
Nelson-Davies remains unfazed by the power imbalance or potential consequences.
“She is a hell of a lot braver than me,” said Margaux Morisseau, co-chair of the Rhode Island Coalition for Payday Lending Reform. “We had a lot of conversations back and forth as the session went on about how to approach this. Eventually, she was like, ‘We need to get loud. What have we got to lose?’”
Morisseau credited Nelson-Davies’ brazen approach for reenergizing a tired advocacy campaign and drawing new support from key figures, including Gov. Dan McKee.
As for Healey, he said it’s Nelson-Davies’ fearless leadership that sold him on taking the job he started in May.
‘Power in this voice’
As a child growing up in Liberia, peers and even siblings poked fun at Nelson-Davies’ booming voice, which was unusually deep for a child. She learned to keep quiet.
But after years of violence and chaos in the decades long civil war that consumed her adolescence, ultimately leading to the death of two of her brothers, a little schoolyard ridicule seemed less important. During a break in fighting, Nelson-Davies joined a group of middle school classmates to put on touring performances, aimed at convincing child soldiers to abandon the war effort and return to the classroom.
“People actually stopped and listened to me, and it was like, wow, there is power in this voice,” she said.
Inspired by her hero, Nelson Mandela, Nelson-Davies decided to use that power to fight for peace in her country. But her plans were cut short when her parents insisted she seek refuge in the United States, where several of her siblings already lived across the country.
Providence offered a tranquil, but isolating, contrast to Liberia. No one gathered in the streets to talk. Her existing knowledge of 1990s American culture like “Sweet Valley High” wasn’t enough to help her feel bonded with her classmates.
One source of comfort was a local Liberian youth group led by Henrietta White-Holder, a fellow refugee who came to Rhode Island 16 years before Nelson-Davies.
White-Holder saw in Nelson-Davies the same inner turmoil she had experienced as a new immigrant. And Nelson-Davies found in White-Holder a maternal figure who would become a lifelong support, from organizing her marriage to taking her pre-teen daughters, who refer to White-Holder as “Meemaw” to Galilee for a weekend beach trip.
“Of course, I am so proud of her,” said White-Holder, struggling to hold back tears in a recent interview. “But it isn’t just watching her accomplishments, it’s seeing her humility and the fact that she knows where she comes from.”
Nelson-Davies’ resume boasts a string of leadership roles in Massachusetts legal services organizations, a faculty mentorship with Brown University’s Warren Alpert School of Medicine, and a law degree from Roger Williams School of Law.
While Nelson-Davies sailed through her final years at Mount Pleasant High School, she was unable to qualify for financial aid to attend college because of her temporary immigration status. She wound up working behind the cash register of a Dunkin Donuts until she got a chance to join City Year Providence, which offered the purpose, and some financial assistance.
The two-year civic engagement program revived Nelson-Davies’ sense of self and purpose. It also offered the first of what would become many audiences to share the story of a childhood during wartime.
“For me, it was therapeutic,” Nelson-Davies said of sharing her most personal and vulnerable parts of herself. “It was the first time I really got to cry out and say how hard it was.”
Equally striking to Morisseau, the payday lending reform advocate and a fellow City Year member, was Nelson-Davies’ presence.
“You knew right away there was something special about Weayonnoh,” Morisseau said, “She had such a powerful voice, such leadership. And she had this self-confidence many of us did not have at that age.”
The duo attended Rhode Island College together before parting ways when Nelson-Davies headed to Roger Williams University School of Law on a merit-based scholarship, and then to work as an attorney for various legal aid groups in Massachusetts.
Many of the people she represented were repeat clients, unable to escape the endless cycle of poverty and racism that forced them back into the justice system for evictions, debt and other legal issues. The work was grueling but motivating, an opportunity for Nelson-Davies to use her voice to fight for her clients and against the systems that perpetuate inequality.
With much coaxing from Morisseau, who had served as Economic Progress Institute’s interim executive director for an eight-month span starting in 2021, Nelson-Davies applied for the open position as EPI’s new leader. The small but mighty economic justice research group, sequestered in a corner of Rhode Island College’s School of Social Work, reported $16.5 million in donations in 2021, spending $10.5 million on staff and services that same year, according to an audited financial statement.
The title of executive director held little appeal; she had no interest in becoming a figurehead sequestered in a corner office. But she was enticed by the chance to turn her attention and her voice back to helping people in Rhode Island, rather than Worcester, Massachusetts.
Fearless fighter
Nelson-Davies’ clear passion for the economic and racial issues integral to the institute’s research and advocacy was clear, said Linda Katz, co-founder of EPI, who was involved in the hiring and leadership transition. Katz retired as EPI’s policy director in September 2022 and has continued to watch Nelson-Davies from afar.
She lauded Nelson-Davies for strengthening community ties and beefing up staffing levels — more-than-doubling the institute’s employee roster from four to nine people in two-and-a-half years.
As for Nelson-Davies’ approach to social media?
“It’s a very different style,” Katz said, adding that it “remains to be seen,” how legislators will respond.
Morisseau put it more bluntly.
“Leadership can be vindictive when you piss them off,” she said.
But, Morisseau also acknowledged, following the rules of state politics yielded little success in passing payday lending reforms.
Rep. Karen Alzate, a Pawtucket Democrat and bill sponsor, welcomed the pressure Nelson-Davies placed upon legislative leaders, including the social media posts.
“I remember being pleasantly surprised by that,” she said. “We don’t really see a lot of these executive directors that are really at the forefront. Sometimes as legislators, we do feel like we are the only ones genuinely advocating behind the scenes.”
Nelson-Davies emphasized that the intent behind her social media posts was not to pick a fight with State House leaders. Instead, she saw it as a last-ditch effort to call attention to a social and economic justice issue that, in her eyes, had gone largely ignored or unnoticed by top lawmakers.
Especially because on the same day she called out the Senate president for holding up votes on proposed payday lending reform, Smith Hill leaders revived a proposed tax rewrite intended to benefit Citizens Bank. Lawmakers promised to fast-track the legislation through in the final days of the legislative session to appease the locally headquartered financial services giant. Nelson-Davies could not comprehend how lawmakers were willing to jump through hoops to do a favor for a well-heeled corporation without giving the same attention to vulnerable borrowers trapped in a cycle of debt due to predatory payday lenders.
“That was to me, a disrespect, that we will not give to residents what we will give to corporations,” Nelson-Davies said.
While she did not intend to upset legislative leaders, she wasn’t afraid of them, either.
“There seems to be a culture of nervousness, here,” she said. “I come from a country where you get killed for speaking up. Now, I am a U.S. citizen. In America, it shouldn’t be that way.”
Read an Ocean State Stories Q & A with Weayonnoh Nelson-Davies.
