Author Archives | Beverly Burris
Beverly Burris grew up mostly in Houston, Texas but left at the age of 19, seeking political asylum in the Northeast. She received a Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University in 1982, and came to Albuquerque in 1986 to take a job in the Sociology Department of UNM, where she taught for over 25 years, retiring in 2012. In addition to writing scholarly books and articles during the past 30 years, she has occasionally published some journalism on selected topics. Now that she is retired, she plans to write more journalism about issues that concern her: climate change, the fact that our health care system is by far the most expensive but least effective system in the industrialized world (and why), the demise of the Democratic Party as a force for progressive change and the political implications of this, etc. She lives in the SE Heights with her husband Pete, a retired social worker and artist.
America’s For-Profit Health Care Dilemma
America's poor health outcomes have more to do with systemic profit incentives than merely access to health insurance.
Continue reading...Change is in the Air, but Contamination still in the Ground and Water
05. August 2014
Citizen activism has spurred positive developments for the KAFB jet fuel spill clean up, but there's a long road still ahead.
Continue reading...Ten Reasons Why People Are Not Concerned About the Kirtland Jet Fuel Spill
23. June 2014
In August 2013 the NM Mercury published an article of mine entitled “Why Aren’t More People in Albuquerque Concerned about the Kirtland Jet Fuel Spill?” After working on issues related to the spill for the past 10 months, I now know much more about the spill itself and have a much better idea about why most people in Albuquerque are not particularly concerned about this major threat to our drinking water.
Here are the top ten reasons...
Continue reading...Why aren’t more people in ABQ concerned about the Kirtland jet fuel spill?
25. August 2013
During the past few months, a sense of dismay and outrage about the situation has been growing in me. In March, V.B. Price wrote a NM Mercury article entitled “Kirtland Spill: Get Serious,” which was commendable for its honesty in raising red flags. I began to pay more attention to this issue. Over the summer, I read with growing alarm various Albuquerque Journal articles by John Fleck. Fleck reported that the current effort to clean up the spill, the soil vapor extraction system, was malfunctioning repeatedly and even when running was only able to extract about half of the contaminants originally projected...
Continue reading...
11. September 2014
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