At 7pm Tuesday, October 1 in the Brown University Friedman Auditorium (in Metcalf Building), 190 Thayer St, Providence (Facebook)

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If you’d like to compare presidential candidates from a progressive perspective, a forum this coming Tuesday offers the closest thing to a presidential debate in Rhode Island. It will feature knowledgeable supporters of different candidates, such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, presenting their candidate’s views on 5 topics: war/peace, immigration, surveillance, policing, and climate.

To help voters get more information, the last part of the forum will be devoted to audience Q&A.

The forum is sponsored by the Rhode Island Anti-War Committee. Since the organizers are not interested in inviting more war-oriented presidential campaigns, the candidates who will be included in this forum tend to be on the more progressive side.

The speakers at the forum are knowledgeable supporters of different Democratic presidential candidates. There may be as many as six speakers for six different candidates. Three have definitely confirmed they will be there, including notable local supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And three others have expressed ongoing interest in participating but have not yet sent final confirmation. The way we’ve identified a speaker for each candidate has always involved contact with that candidate’s campaign, but some of our speakers are Rhode Islanders while others work directly for their candidate’s campaign. We do not expect that any of the actual candidates will participate themselves in the forum Tuesday, although one campaign has floated the option of sending their candidate as a slight possibility. A full list of the candidates who will be represented at the forum should be available and posted on the Facebook event page by Monday, September 30.

In addition to the Rhode Island Anti-War Committee, the event is cosponsored by Brown War Watch, East Bay Citizens for Peace, and Rhode Island Rights.

This should be a good opportunity to compare progressive candidates’ views on some of the most important issues of our time. The Facebook event page can be shared here.