New Mexico Mercury

Bulldozing Public Trust in the Bosque

In an extraordinary display of disdain for the wishes of the public he nominally represents, Mayor Richard Berry ordered a trail to be plowed through the Bosque on Tuesday.  Although not literally done in the dead of night, the Mayor could not have been more secretive.  The Mayor's intentions for the design of the trail were never disclosed, and the plans to begin construction on Tuesday were never divulged, but were only discovered by accident after construction had already begun.  The Mayor reneged on the City's promise to allow the public to review and comment on specific design options before a final plan was selected...

Publicity from Hell

This year the state Department of Tourism is spending $8.6 million on ads, but some publicity is so valuable it can’t be bought at any price. Such is the case with the New Yorker’s just over 1 million subscribers and Rolling Stone’s nearly 1.5 million. However, without the Martinez administration spending a single cent, New Mexico just scored major feature articles (totaling some 15,000 words) in both magazines in the same week...

Only More is More

When immigrants and refugees from Eastern and Southern Europe immigrated to the US in the late 1800s and early 1930s found work and could provide for a family the education of their children became the first priority. These people knew the value of education from experience and provided it sometimes at great sacrifice. In fact, they demanded it and insured that their children understood its importance...

Vacancies in Our Morality

On Monday, the city issued three-day eviction notices to the people living in tents along First Street. The notices are based on nuisance abatement laws, statues allowing the removal of something or someone deemed to cause an inconvenience or annoyance. The posted notices state that the city will file a complaint in Metropolitan Court “to eject you” from the city’s property or right of way. As we know, the strategy of the city’s leaders to eject the nuisances near the Rail Yards will only shuffle Albuquerque’s most-needy population to other locations where these individuals will be less concentrated and less visible...

I Love Spineroosms, Don’t You?

As our fantastic governor knows full well, most people in our glorious state are either garbage, or they simply don’t exist. New Mexico Native Americans for sure exemplify the non-existent, erased people as shown forth by recent event on Native American Day at the Round House.

For the first time in living memory, tribal leaders were not invited to address the State Legislature, now dominated by sensitive, warm, and fuzzy Republicans. Instead, Queen Susana herself took the podium and held forth to tell everybody she knows all about this Native American thingy and what to do about it, and how big she is, and how great everything is with the New Mexico tribal types...

Dispatch from ‘Tent City’

This week, the City of Albuquerque issued eviction notices to the residents of "Tent City." That is, to those residents who haven't been ran off, arrested or bribed out with a weekly voucher to a motel. By Thursday all must be out and gone; to go who knows where. My name is Vincent and I write this not just as a journalist but as someone who has been a part of the street life here downtown for over 20 years.

The people being talked about on the various stations as residents of Tent City are my friends. I have eaten with them, gotten high, and walked these streets alongside just about every one of those who live here in what is now known as “Tent City.”...

Fool’s Gold: Lights Out

I’ve traced my ancestry as far back as Paleolithic cavemen and rural West Virginians. Yet I never understood their rough subsistence—not fully—until my power went out.

So I didn’t have electricity. Big deal, right? We humans shape the world with the mere strength of our minds. Borders, governments, religions, and the continued success of ABBA could not endure without our constant and combined mental fortitude. Climate change does not exist, so long as we refuse to acknowledge it. A little loss of electricity should hardly matter to such a superior being as I.

And it didn’t, for a half hour or so...

Curbing Money in Politics the Key to Restoring Public Trust

Early last month Common Cause New Mexico commissioned a poll to find out how New Mexico voters felt about money and politics in the wake of the 2014 elections.  The results from Research and Polling are now in, and one thing that is abundantly clear is that disclosure of campaign finances of all sorts—candidates, lobbyists and independent groups—is important to voters.  

The results confirm what we’ve been saying for several years, namely that everyone wants and deserves to know who is lobbying and paying for the campaigns of our elected officials.  And according to these results, transparency is almost a magic word...

A Birthday in the Desert

The rain started before dawn—a pounding bitter cold downpour—so Pastor Galván and I decided to forego the pig roast. Therefore, the huge El Chino got to live for at least another week.

It was January 30, my birthday and many months ago the patients at Vision in Action, Galván’s mental asylum in Juárez had promised me a fiesta and pig roast in celebration. Although I have no interest in birthday celebrations, this was a gesture of kindness that I couldn’t resist. I mentioned it to a number of friends and many showed up, but I was very concerned as to how they would react...

The Lost Poets of the Russian Revolution

I have always loved poetry, its power and resonance in the human heart; and I have always had an affinity for the Russian poets, especially those of the October Revolution of 1917, how they used their words to further that revolution.

My meager study is cursory at best, a mere dip in a great sea of verse. Yet, it might whet your appetite to explore further, as Russian poetry holds a unique place in literature. As Joseph Brodsky says in his essay on Osip Mendelstam, “For those raised in the English-speaking world, it is difficult to comprehend that Russian poets have long had a political status as great as that as more public figures and that Russian poetry frequently has a political impact.”...