Legislation would take aim at foreign gender based violence
The International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA), introduced by Congresswoman Jan Schokowsky (D-IL), would be a significant advancement for women and girls as participants in humanitarian crisis situations and the future development of their communities. Gender identities, violence, and gender inequality should be essential considerations for foreign aid and development. Gender Based Violence (GBV) is both highly personal and individually devastating, and is a community, public health, and global economic and humanitarian issue...
There Must be a Better Idea for Expo New Mexico
The audit findings recently released regarding EXPO New Mexico presents still more documentation of the mismanagement and lack of vision and leadership that have plagued one of New Mexico’s most valuable “commons” for at least the last several years.
How can we, as responsible citizens, continue to stand by and do nothing about the misuse of this public asset, an asset that has become a financial millstone around our collective necks? Shouldn’t this 236-acre resource that is so strategically located in the middle of the State’s largest city and in the middle of our State be the “pearl” of New Mexico, a thriving site that provides a year-round venue where citizens can gather to recreate, relax and enjoy some respite from today’s pace of life?...
Dispatches from the DOJ community meetings
Editor's note: We received these dispatches and images from a person who wishes to remain anonymous.
Monday, April 28th - Alamosa Community Center DOJ Meeting
Last night at the DOJ community meeting Berry-Perry consultant (Scott T. Greenwood) was present at the back of the room. At a point in the meeting as people were presenting their grievances to Martinez and Saucedo, the consultant moved up to the front and began responding to the expression of grievances. Of course, his goal is to craft Berry-Perry remedies to behaviors Berry-Perry allowed to happen. The consultants responses were therefore hopeful and promises. Promises that no one has confidence will happen. Another way of saying it is that his responses were PR spin and bullshit...
The Susana Martinez Bitchslap
Yo, little bitches, behind the scenes our sainted governor sure sounds like Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman, always having to drop more dough in the cuss jar, Susana’s cuss jar that holds more money than New Mexico Social Services.
Don’t let that fool you, though. Not only does Suze not like social services, she still doesn’t like Hollywood either and she wants to make NM less attractive to these glamorous types. They are not her business friends, all those actors and filmsy folk. That’s why she slashed the NM film budget, I guess.
Susana has a long list of stuff she doesn’t like and she wants to go all green eggs and ham on everything she hates just like Sarah Palin, her predecessor and mentor, just like Ted Cruz, her idol she adores...
Leaving Albuquerque Behind
Ten years ago we rolled southward down I-25 on our way to retirement in an entirely new culture, and the finest sight of all was Albuquerque in our rear view mirror. That's the way this narrative is supposed to read, is it not? That's the well-trodden script, the one we all know so well, and I violate it at my peril.
Change. That's really what our departure was all about. And Albuquerque, that seductress by the River, was to blame. It's the kind of place that can become too comfortable, because of its beautiful natural setting in a vast land where the imagination can soar, and also because of its deep ugliness as the 'heights' keep spreading outward across lands we once explored as children...
The Art of Clifford Berryman Or, Why Do Things Remain the Same?
George Santayana famously wrote that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Examples of this axiom can be found everywhere in our nation’s history. Sometimes, however, it’s necessary to look to our artists to reveal them to us.
Clifford Berryman was a political cartoonist who worked for the Washington Post during the start of the last century. He worked until his death in 1949. He was the man who in 1902 first associated President Theodore Roosevelt with a small bear cub, one he refused to shoot, thus earning him the nickname “Teddy”—the cartoon, “Drawing the Line in Mississippi” inspired New York store owner Morris Michtom to create a new toy and call it the Teddy Bear...
‘Tribes’: When no one wants to listen
Fusion’s new production of Tribes at Albuquerque’s Cell Theater is all about deafness—not just the inability of some people to hear but the unwillingness of everyone to really listen.
None of the members of the family at the center of this award-winning play by the young British playwright Nina Raine listen to each other, sending a potent message to the audience that our private preoccupations prevent us from ever knowing even those closest to us.
The “tribes” of the title are families, especially one family, but also communities—intellectuals and “hierarchies” of those with varying types of hearing impairment...
Mark Rudd: The Albatross Around Alan Webber’s Neck (You Should Be Scared!)
Stop the presses. In a copyrighted story this morning, the Albuquerque Journal’s James Monteleone links those two forever political siamese twins, Santa Fe candidate for Gov., Alan Webber and far, far leftist Weather Undergroundie Mark Rudd. I for one am shaking in my boots, or my sandals, as the case may be.
Rumor has it that in 1532 Rudd rode with Pancho Villa. Rumor has it that Rudd was spotted somewhere near a place where Fidel Castro coughed after lighting up a stogie. Rumor has it that some forty years ago Rudd didn’t like the little military scuffle in Vietnam one bit. Rumor has it that he became a terrorist who wanted to blow up government washrooms and buildings, which is probably why he ultimately became a math teacher at CNM. Teachers are pretty much all terrorists, you know...
Mountain love affair
Who is there in New Mexico who does not love mountains? Our love affair with our mountains may be because aside from the mountains the land is more drab brown than vivid green, more desiccated than lush. There is not a lot to be said for our flatlands, the Chihuahua Desert landscape of rocks and brush, where what we call rivers are really streams and what we call streams are more often seasonal arroyos.
This mountain love affair has spawned a lot of books, of which the newest, and one of the most lavish, is the just-published, New Mexico’s High Peaks: A Photographic Celebration, by Michael Butterfield (UNM Press, $39.95, 188 pages including 134 color photographs)...
Climate Foreclosure / Climate Migration
Climate migrants may soon be a new breed: the latest wave of those forced to leave their homes and seek refuge elsewhere. These will not be people fleeing political violence or poverty. Or not simply those two things. They won’t be leaving only their homes and the graves of their ancestors behind. These will be the hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—forced to migrate because their homes, ancestors’ graves and every bit of familiar landscape will have disappeared, beneath the rising sea levels caused by global warming...