(gentle music) - [Michelle] Tonight, Rhode Island's newest congressman on his historic rise to the United States Capitol.

- Having the opportunity to work for great people, it plants a little seed in your head about what you might be able to do.

- [Michelle] Then, the changing faces of Rhode Island politics with Ted Nesi.

- [Pamela] And from a Pawtucket workshop, extreme art as accessory and icebreaker.

- If you wanna be left alone, if you wanna chill, low-key evening, do not carry one of my pieces.

(laughs) (bright music) (bright music continues) - Good evening and welcome to "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

I'm Michelle San Miguel.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

He's gone from the Rhode Island State House to the White House, and now the House of Representatives.

Gabe Amo is two months into his new job as Rhode Island's Junior Congressman.

- It's fair to say the freshman Democrat has his work cut out for him in a divided Congress that only passed 27 bills last year.

Amo won a special election in November after former Congressman, David Cicilline, resigned.

But the first time candidate has shown he knows how to set himself apart and break barriers along the way.

- A lot of people questioned my sanity when I decided to run for Congress, and I think this was the right thing to do, because people in Rhode Island deserve more folks in their government that they elect who reflect them and their priorities.

The journey of so many Rhode Islanders and their families is one of great hard work, determination, and resilience.

- [Michelle] It's been two months since Gabe Amo made history becoming the first person of color to represent Rhode Island in Congress.

- And thank you to Rhode Island for putting your trust in me.

I won't let you down.

(crowd cheers) - [Crowd] Gabe, Gabe, Gabe, Gabe, Gabe, Gabe... - What have people been saying to you about what your historic win means to them?

- I got into this race.

I said I was running to make a difference, not to make history, but we are all representative of so many different aspects.

Just this morning, someone said to me, "We're rooting for you."

I don't necessarily know who the we is, but I like to think the we is the whole of the Rhode Island community, because it's not just my success.

- [Michelle] Amo grew up in Pawtucket where he attended Catholic school and was an altar server.

He says he learned the value of hard work from his parents.

He saw his mother, a Liberian immigrant, put in double shifts as a nurse in nursing homes, while his father, an immigrant from Ghana, ran a liquor store.

The pursuit of a better life motivated Amo's parents to leave West Africa.

That same dream has brought a surge of migrants to the US-Mexico border.

- House Speaker Mike Johnson and fellow Republicans at the border in Eagle Pass, Texas today saying, "America is at a breaking point."

- [Michelle] How to address it is a contentious issue for lawmakers.

Congressman Amo says the humanity of these immigrants needs to be respected, but he adds the United States also needs to secure its border.

- That's everything from having more border patrol officers, and it's also investing in our immigration courts and asylum process so that it's actually functional, so people are not disincentivized from finding legal pathways here.

So, we have to act this with some urgency.

- Do you expect that Rhode Island will see an increase in these migrants?

- I think if it's just a natural effect.

If there are more people coming over, I think everybody's going to be impacted.

This is why we need a comprehensive solution.

- There will be people who say, "How can we welcome newcomers "when we barely have enough affordable housing in our state "for the people who are already here?"

- Yeah, and I think that is a reasonable point.

Our challenges with affordable housing are broad.

And this is why as we look at these solutions, it cannot be piecemeal.

We have to make sure that we slow the arrival of people, but we have to do it in a way that respects that there are often legitimate or asylum reasons for people to flee the nations of origin.

And what is beautiful about hope is that it cares not about your race, your religion, your gender, or where your ancestors came from.

- [Michelle] The 36-year-old is now the second millennial in Rhode Island's congressional delegation after Representative Seth Magaziner.

Amo's young but he's hardly a newcomer to politics.

He worked for former Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo, as well as President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama.

Was your intention always when you were working for Governor Raimondo, President Biden, President Obama, that someday you would seek elected office?

- I'm not sure that I ever thought it was certain.

I was blessed to work for great ones and having the opportunity to work for great people, it plants a little seed in your head about what you might be able to do.

- [Michelle] Amo credits his dad with sparking his interest in world affairs.

He says his dad would play the headline news on a 30-minute loop.

(traffic humming) The father and son also spent a lot of time at Summit Liquors.

The congressman's father, Gabriel Amo, has owned the liquor store on Hartford Avenue in Providence since Amo was a young boy.

- This is it, right?

- [Customer] Yep.

- Gracias.

- [Michelle] On the day we met with Gabriel Amo, the congressman jumped right in to help his dad.

- When he came here, I was seven, eight years old, and on your Saturdays, if you're gonna spend time with your dad in my case, you're gonna spend time here at the store.

- [Michelle] Gabriel Amo says he wasn't all that surprised that his son chose to run for office, given his early interest in politics.

- So anytime I'm watching the news, he's interested.

He wants to know what's going on, and then he ask questions, "Daddy, what happened?

"How did he do this?"

Why and how, he was always asking questions.

- [Michelle] Gabriel Amo had a question of his own when his son told him last year he was going to run for Congress.

- First thing I asked him, I said, "How're you gonna do it?"

I was in doubt.

I said, "Nobody knows you.

He said, "Daddy, well, "nobody knows you, but people know you.

"You've been in this business for a long time, "and everybody knows you are my father, (laughs) "so they'll get to know me when I get in, all right?"

And then he did it, and I'm so proud of him.

When you work hard, the goal is always success.

- [Reporter] Tonight, Ukraine is reeling from what it says is Russia's biggest aerial attack yet.

- As Amo prepares for his first full year in Congress, he's thinking about the violence raging overseas.

He sits on the House's Foreign Affairs Committee.

Next month will mark two years since Russia invaded Ukraine.

And Amo says the United States needs to continue providing aid to Ukraine even though support is waning nationwide.

At what point do you feel like the United States needs to scale back its assistance?

So far, the United States has directed more than $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine.

- This is a battle for the protection of democracy around the world.

We can't have foreign leaders arbitrarily deciding that they want to go take back what they view as lost possessions.

This conflict requires American leadership and support, because we know that the goals and aims of Vladimir Putin would not end with Ukraine.

And we cannot risk American troops being on the ground if his current objectives are met.

- [Michelle] Amo's attention is also on another conflict, the Israel-Hamas War.

While the congressman says he's sympathetic to the lives lost in Gaza, he supports President Biden's commitment to root out terrorism by Hamas.

- I wanna express how heartbroken I am by the images that we see of innocent civilians, Palestinians largely, who have lost lives, who have seen families harmed irreparably, and we also have Israelis, who are reeling from hostages who have yet to be returned, the people who were murdered by Hamas.

- [Michelle] Back at home, Amo's former boss, President Biden, is beginning the race for reelection.

The congressman says Biden has his support.

- I was there for the first two years of the Biden White House, and I saw the historic impact of the Infrastructure Law, of the Inflation Reduction Act, of the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, I can keep going.

And I'm optimistic about that.

- [Michelle] Amo is also up for reelection this year.

When he's not in Washington DC, he says he wants to meet with constituents in Rhode Island's 1st Congressional District and hear what's on their minds.

- I'd love to get a readout from you of future conversations.

- [Michelle] When his time in office comes to an end, whenever that may be, Amo says this is how he hopes to leave it.

- That those rungs on the ladders of opportunity are closer, that someone who grows up on Sisson Street in Pawtucket, just a few blocks from where we are, has the same chance to serve in Congress, to be a doctor, to be a professor, or a lawyer, as someone who grows up in Oak Hill or the East Side of Providence, that opportunity is equally distributed.

You just gotta get one hand on the rung.

(bright music) - Now on this episode of "Weekly Insight," WPRI 12 politics editor, Ted Nesi and I, take a closer look at Congressman Amo's rise and other changes in Rhode Island's congressional delegation.

Ted, it's good to be with you again.

You covered the special election for Congress extensively last year.

We saw Congressman Gabe Amo won a strong campaign.

He won about a third of the vote during the primary.

But let's go back to last April.

When the congressman announced he was running, the vast majority of Rhode Islanders did not even know who he was.

- Yeah, that's for sure, Michelle.

I think some political insiders knew Gabe Amo from his time working for Governor Raimondo and other senior politicians, but yeah, he was not a household name.

And I think if you think back to then, there are so many scenarios that if they changed, I think Gabe Amo might not have won this seat, all the way back to that period you're talking about.

We thought Joe Shekarchi, the House Speaker might run, or Helena Foulkes, who ran for governor in 2022.

They both took a pass, so that took out two people who would've had a lot of money and name recognition.

Then Sabina Matos, the Lieutenant Governor, looked like a very strong candidate, had a lot of outside support, her campaign collapsed after that scandal over the signatures on her ballot papers.

Tom Carlson, a first time candidate, but had a lot of money.

He was the best funded candidate in the Democratic primary at one point.

After our investigation at Channel 12 into the circumstances that led him to depart from Williams College, he drops out of the race.

So by the very end of it, you have a two-way contest between former state Rep Aaron Regunberg, a more Left wing Bernie-aligned candidate, and Gabe Amo running as a traditional, Obama-Biden type of Democrat, a very different race from what we'd been expecting, not to take away anything from Amo and his team.

They worked hard, they had good ads, they raised a lot of money, he was very energetic, but you also do need breaks in politics.

- And also, it became more of his seat to lose by that point.

I recently sat down with the congressman, and we met up at the liquor store that his father owns in Providence.

So I'm talking with both father and son there, and I said to him, "Congressman, do you ever pinch yourself "that you're sitting here, the son of a liquor store owner, "but you're also the junior congressman from Rhode Island?"

And he said, "No, there should be more of this.

"There should be more people "who have stories like mine sitting in office," which I thought was telling.

- Yeah, I have no doubt Congressman Amo feels that way, and you can understand why, but at the same time, it is a major change to send someone like Gabe Amo, the son of immigrants onto Capitol Hill from Rhode Island, a place that's often sent blue bloods (chuckles) to Rhode Island over the years.

So while I understand that, I think the fact that he was also a historic candidate was another bit of wind in his sails.

- Yeah, the congressman is a millennial.

Representative Seth Magaziner, who took office last year, also a millennial.

They both replaced what are considered baby boomers, Jim Langevin and David Cicilline.

We should also stress- - Younger baby boomers.

- They are younger baby boomers.

- They'd want us to say that.

- But it's interesting because both their departures, Langevin and Cicilline, I think to most people was shocking.

- Yeah, it's certainly to me, and it's my job to know these things, right?

- [Michelle] Yeah.

(laughs) - But I didn't see it coming.

I don't think most people did.

I mean, a couple years ago, we were wondering if they'd be running against each other if Rhode Island lost a House seat, and now within a couple years, they're both out of Congress, big surprise.

And as you say, it has led to a generational change in the US House delegation, and actually, if you add in across the border in Massachusetts, Jay (indistinct), who represents part of Bristol County, he's a millennial too, so you have a real reset in who's representing this region in Congress just in the last few years.

And it's an interesting contrast with the conversation in Washington right now about political leaders holding on into their 80s, even into their 90s in some cases.

That's not necessarily the case, at least in the House delegation around here.

- But it is a contrast to what we're seeing in the US Senate as it relates to Rhode Island.

The last time that we had a seat open up here in Rhode Island in the Senate was back in 2006 when Sheldon Whitehouse ran against Lincoln Chafee.

Jack Reed has been in the Senate since 1997.

There's no indication that either wants to give up that seat anytime soon.

- Yeah, certainly Whitehouse is up for reelection this year.

He's running, he is a strong favorite, though two Republicans are seeking the nomination against him.

He's 68 this year, so that's a spring chicken in the US Senate at this point, right?

(Michelle laughs) And then Jack Reed, he's gonna be 77 in 2026 when he's up for another term.

I am curious about Reed's decision.

He is getting to the point in his career where he may decide at some point not to run again.

I'm not expecting that though.

We recently had Speaker Shekarchi who's close to Reed on "Newsmakers" and Channel 12, and he was adamant Reed is running again.

He's the chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

He's certainly still very vigorous, so I do expect him to run, but as you said, Michelle, the surprise of those two retirements in the House has me kind of on edge about somebody surprising me again.

- Yeah, well, and also we should stress, senators from Rhode Island tend to serve for a long time.

We look back at John Chafee, he served for almost a quarter century, John Pastore for more than 20 years, Claiborne Pell for more than three decades, so this is clearly a trend.

Once they're in office, they wanna stay there.

- Right, Reed can point to TF Green, the man, not the airport, who ran for his final term in 1954.

He was 87 years old, and he won that race.

It was most expensive race in the country in 1954, so there's history for Reed if he wants to run and run and run.

- Yeah, this is good historical context to help us understand elections now.

Thank you so much, Ted.

- Good to be here.

- Up next, designer handbags are all the rage.

And one Road Islander has taken signature style to a whole new level, transforming his artwork into accessory.

Instead of his creations hanging on the wall, he decided to put them right in your hand.

(sewing machine humming) - 22 years ago, if someone had told me I would be making purses from my artwork, I don't know if I would've been happy hearing that.

Now, I'm living the dream.

- [Pamela] The dream for Rhode Island artist, Kent Stetson, is being a designer of handbags, whimsical, colorful, topical.

They are all made by hand in his Pawtucket workshop and sold in hundreds of boutiques worldwide.

The purses are clutched by celebrities, such as Martha Stewart, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Megan Thee Stallion.

Not only do his bags star on the red carpet, they fly down the runway.

These are not your mother's pocketbooks, they are a fusion of art and accessory.

- I think in terms of art, it's interactive, it's modular.

I think it speaks in an interesting way - [Pamela] And an interesting twist carried Stetson into the world of high fashion accessories.

Stetson grew up in this cabin on a working horse farm in New Hampshire.

He studied studio art and philosophy at Brown University and started out creating these digital, hybrid paintings.

- So computer generated paintings at the time, we called it new media.

Today, I think it's just called digital art.

And so these are very colorful, abstract pieces.

- [Pamela] But Stetson admits he was unsuccessful selling his modern art, so he pivoted.

His plan B translated to in the bag.

- I worked at a shoe store at the time though, and I had a gift for convincing people to buy shoes and handbags that they didn't particularly need, and so I connected the dots.

- How did you land on purses as the frame for your artwork, of all things you could have picked?

- It was a way to package my art in a format that had some use.

A handbag gave me much more license to be fun than I ever felt I had permission to do with a piece hanging on the wall.

And so, almost instantly, I made pieces that were a little bit irreverent and tongue in cheek, and funny.

- [Pamela] Funny, as in notoriously tasteful.

Stetson's popular confections made in Hope Artiste Village, feature donuts, animal crackers, sushi, and even our state's famous wieners.

- [Kent] Three all the way, New York system is an iconic Rhode Island comfort food, and so we had to translate it into a bag.

- Stetson says, when you carry one of his designer handbags, it starts a conversation and might make a friend, whether it's one of his doggy bags or a selection from his bar cart of popular cocktails.

They're a statement piece.

- It's an exclamation point on your outfit.

I mean, it does not get the silent treatment.

When you carry one of my pieces, it gets acknowledged.

- [Pamela] And sometimes, it can initiate a complicated discussion, which was the case with this attention-grabbing bag.

- On October 7th, I was really struck by the fear that my Jewish friends were expressing to me about antisemitism, here and abroad, and so we created a piece with the Israeli flag on it, and we still make that piece, and we are donating the proceeds to Amnesty International.

And so, I wanted to make it very clear that our company is very opposed to antisemitism and Islamophobia as well.

- Can Stetson's signature handbags, which sell for between $150 and $300, support a number of charitable causes.

One style references the lace collar of late Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

- When she passed, Mariska Hargitay used this bag on "Law & Order: Special victims Unit."

- I just got an alert, Irena's building.

(dramatic music) - Okay, Kat, you and I will go up.

- The sales for this piece sort of went haywire, and so we donate the proceeds to the ACLU.

- [Pamela] Others may tote an alligator handbag, supporting Everglades preservation.

- Everything start to finish is done right here.

- Stetson says making each purse takes 50 steps and three days to complete.

First, he creates an image, formats it on his computer, prints and laminates the canvas.

But while the process begins with high-tech innovation, the rest is old world craftsmanship, hand tracing and hand sewing.

In general, Stetson's signature bags are slim, envelope styles.

A lot of people look at it and say, "I can't get anything in this bag."

What do you say?

- It's a fun little going out bag.

Listen, if I made a larger bag, I'd have to leave Rhode Island.

We're the smallest state in the country, I gotta be making small bags.

- Describe what it is you want people to see in this form of art.

- Well, I think I want people to know that I made this with love and a sense of joy, and I know that it's going to make an outing just that much more fun.

It's come from my hands, my studio.

I sign inside each piece as we sew them up.

And so I want people to feel like they have a real connection to the creation of this piece, where it came from.

And I think this is like the farm-to-table version of personal accessories.

- [Pamela] Accessories that will do all the talking.

- People are gonna say something.

You're gonna light up the room.

So if you wanna be left alone, if you wanna chill, low-key evening, do not carry one of my pieces.

(laughs) (bright music) - Finally tonight, this week, Rhode Island PBS premiered a three-part docuseries on the risk of giving birth, examining the maternal health crisis through a local lens.

(dramatic music) - In 2023, the maternal health crisis is not getting better.

In fact, it is getting worse.

- People giving birth in the US are increasingly more likely to die now than they were decades ago.

- Why do so many of us have these issues?

- We cannot continue in this path.

- The first episode of "The Risk of Giving Birth" premiered January 12th here on Rhode Island PBS.

The second will air January 19th and the third on January 26th.

You can watch the entire series online at ripbs.org/riskofgiving birth, and it's well worth watching, a critically important issue.

- Especially when you consider that so many of these complications and maternal deaths are preventable.

And that's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Michelle San Miguel.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

We'll be back next week with another edition of "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

Until then, please follow us on Facebook and X, and you can visit us online to see all of our stories and past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly, or listen to our podcast on your favorite streaming platform.

Goodnight.

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