New Mexico Mercury

Insight New Mexico - Hakim Bellamy

V.B. Price talks with Hakim Bellamy, Albuquerque's first Poet Laureate, about his experience in that role, the diversity and abundance of poets in New Mexico, and the power for poetry to change society and empower the youth.

DOMA, Prop 8, and the Voting Rights Act

If anyone tells you again that voting in a presidential election is a meaningless exercise, remind them of June 2013 when the Supreme Court became once again, as it has off and on throughout its history, the most powerful branch of government, for good or ill.

Out of the mouths of babes into the pockets of the rich

The United State has fallen into a pit of political absurdities so chaotic, so brutal, and so cruel that many of us have become desensitized to the torturous, slow ruining of lives that poverty in our country causes every minute of every day.

We’re so mesmerized by the viciousness of our politics that rich lawmakers have no qualms about taking food out of poor people’s mouths, passing laws that diminish their only hope to get an adequate share of life’s basic substance through food stamps...

Insight New Mexico - Cecilia Portal

V.B. Price talks with Cecilia Portal, photographer and former Guggenheim Fellow, about her new work, "Documented," and about the experience of the immigrant.

What’s happened to ABQ? Part 5: Rio Grande Vision- Nature center or amusement park?

The Rio Grande Vision plan for “improvements” to the Middle Rio Grande Bosque breaks continuity with the long and illustrious history of citizen activism to preserve riparian habitat and allow residents to refresh themselves in a natural setting and observe wildlife without disturbing it.

Modeling itself on duded up urban rivers in Texas and other places, the Vision seems to have overlooked completely the ideal model right under its nose – the Rio Grande Nature Center, a masterwork of architecture so inconspicuous and respectful of its place that birds and other creatures have no fear of us when we’re visiting...

7 Deadly Sins

V.B. Price explores the conflicts and contradictions of our universal stumbling blocks.

Insight New Mexico - Alfredo Corchado

This week V.B. Price talks with Alfredo Corchado, Mexico bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News, and author of the recently published "Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter’s Journey Through a Country’s Descent into Darkness."

Leave Mount Taylor in peace

There’s something particularly ugly about the proposed new uranium mine on Mount Taylor west of Albuquerque. If past history is any indication, it will leave this sacred site littered with mining debris and contaminated water. And it will probably sell the uranium to China and India, the biggest uranium markets in the world, ruining a local place to make some people an international fortune. This will truly amount to ill gotten gains...

A tsunami of peeping toms

Whatever else happens in this degrading age of universal surveillance, let us as New Mexicans make sure that if we’re stopped in a speed trap for going ten miles an hour too fast that our entire genetic identity isn’t taken from us by some guy with a swab, blue gloves, and a gun.

It’s bad enough that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in his majority opinion last week declared that seizure of DNA is a “reasonable search that can be considered part of a routine booking procedure” in serious crime arrests. But then the AP reported that New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez was considering proposing to the Legislature next year a bill to make DNA a reasonable search in misdemeanors as well as felonies...

Insight New Mexico - Don McIver

V.B. Price speaks with Don McIver - poet, producer and poetry curator for the New Mexico Mercury. They discuss political poetry and the evolution of the art form.