Democracy for New Mexico

Sunday Chocolate Bunny Blogging

No birds today. Just bunnies, chocolate or otherwise. Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Spring, Happy Pagan Egg and Chick Worshipping or whatever else you might call the celebration of a warm and sunny Sunday in April!

Religion and Politics Forum Resumes 4/30

From Ecumenical Voices for Democracy:

Religion and Politics Forum
Topic: Faith, War & the Politics of Fear
April 30, 2006
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
TVI Smith-Brasher Hall
Corner of University & Coal
Suggested Donation $5.00
Moderator: Dr. Richard Wood, UNM
Panelists: Noel H. Pugach, UNM History Professor; John Wymore, Psychologist, Gestalt Center; Holly Beaumont, Disciples of Christ Minister; and Steven Fish, Col. US Air Force, Retired.

Topic: Faith, War & the Politics of Fear: The politics of fear has been used throughout history by political leaders to manipulate a citizenry into supporting leaders who then claim to be able to protect them from harm. But religious faith is ultimately about trust and hope. Can religious leaders use faith to counteract the politics of fear?

Presented by: Ecumenical Voices for Democracy, an organization that has been presenting a timely and thought-provoking series of public forums on various topics related to religion and politics since May 2005. The organization's goal is to combat the misuse of religion by encouraging a conversation that reflects constitutional values by promoting human worth and dignity, individual liberty, and the common good.

Join LCV & Sierra Club for NM Earth Day Events

From Maggie Toulouse, SW Campaign Manager, League of Conservation Voters:

Next Saturday, April 22 is Earth Day 2006!
The League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club will be holding an Earth Day gathering and community canvass in Albuquerque to commemorate this important event. Please join us and local leaders as we plan to make the environment a key issue in this year's important election.

We will begin the morning with a rally featuring guest speakers who are leaders and experts on local and national conservation issues. Following the rally, we'll take to the Albuquerque streets to inform voters about issues facing New Mexicans, such as the threat to our precious state and national resource, the northern New Mexico Valle Vidal.

These events will take a few hours of your time, but the impact to the future of our environment could be momentous. Please consider donating your precious time to the cause.

We'll provide refreshments, a dynamic presentation and thorough training. All you have to provide is yourself (and some comfortable shoes).

What: Earth Day Gathering and Community Canvass with LCV and Sierra Club
When: Saturday, April 22
9:30 AM - Speakers begin
10:30 AM - Canvass begins
Where: Immanuel Presbyterian Church - Fellowship Hall
114 Carlisle SE, Albuquerque
To attend click here.

I hope you'll be able to attend this very important event. Together we can make a tremendous difference.

Taos: No War On Iran Actions, Sunday, 4/30

From Taos Action:
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld Threaten Nuclear War on Iran. We Say: No War on Iran! Nuclear War is Unthinkable!

Sunday, April 30th
3 PM: Citizens' Arrest of Rumsfeld at his Canoñcito home 

5 PM: Rally at the Taos Plaza: Public Sentencing of Rumsfeld and Speak Out by John Nichols and Phyllis Bennis (Institute for Policy Studies)

7 PM: Speech at the Taos Center for the Arts (TCA): Phyllis Bennis "Challenging U.S. Empire: Iran, Iraq & the Middle East." $10.

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and has been on Democracy Now! many times about US foreign policy in the Middle East; she's speaking at the rally in NY on Saturday and then here in Taos at the Plaza & the Taos Center for the Arts (TCA) at 133 Paseo del Pueblo Norte. $10

Express your Humanity! Speak Out against Nuclear War on Iran!

Powerful Earth Charter Exhibit & Talk By Stewart Udall Set for 4/17

Earth Charter Art, The Paulo Freire Institute, Brazil

This is one not to miss. On April 17 at UNM the SGI Buddist Center is sponsoring an exhibit and talk by conservation pioneer Stewart Udall. The Earth Charter exhibit is a breathtaking panel exhibit on our current destruction on the earth and the steps critical to making global changes -- the focus is on sustainability and peace. To learn more go to SGI.com and EarthCharter.org

Seeds of Change: The Earth Charter and Human Potential
The exhibit was created by the SGI and has been shown in 20 countries around the world. The exhibit links panels on the state of the world with a hopeful message about the potential of even one individual to make a positive change. It is structured around the Earth Charter –- a declaration of ethical principles for building a just, sustainable and peaceful global society. Click for event flyer (doc).

Events at the University of New Mexico:

Exhibit Showing: Monday, April 17, Noon – 8 PM
Student Union, Ballroom C
Entertainment and Tabling by Local Environmental and Peace Organizations

6 PM: Lecture by Stewart Udall and Jack Loeffler:
Stewart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior for John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, is an environmentalist who has created many National Parks, fought for environmental protection of our precious resources and written numerous books and articles on these issues, including The Quiet Crisis.

Jack Loeffler, a long time friend of Stewart and environmental activist, is author of Adventures With Ed, a biography of his friend Ed Abbey.

There is a parking structure on the south end of campus near the UNM Bookstore (which is across the street from the Frontier on Central Avenue).

Get With the Program: Sign Up for a National Dem Canvass Day Event

On Saturday, April 29, Democrats all over the nation will be canvassing door to door, urging folks to get active in Party politics and meeting Dems in their neighborhoods. You don't have to be a precinct or ward chair to participate -- all Dems are welcome. If you've never done anything like this in past, now is the time to try it out. If you're a veteran of many canvasses past, jump in again as we head into the 2006 election season. We can WIN many races this November IF we're willing to do the necessary legwork, starting now.

There are now NM canvassing events and gatherings in Santa Fe, El Dorado, Portales, Taos, Placitas, Gallup and Raton, as well as four events in Albuquerque. Click to find an event in your area or create your own. Some events even combine potlucks and socializing with the shoeleather work. Check out our previous post for more information on this DNC-organized effort.

The Democratic Party of NM is holding a large canvassing in event in Albuquerque that day, and you can sign up here. They'll also be holding a training session for canvassers on Thursday, April 13, at 6:00 PM at the DPNM Headquarters at 1301 San Pedro NE. Call 830-3650 for more information.

NM Fair Immigration Event Photos and Links

SWOPblogger has some good photos of Monday's student demonstration for a fair immigration policy on Albuquerque's civic plaza, as well as some impressive shots from Sunday's rally at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. They also provide some links to coverage of New Mexico's immigration events from local newspapers.

Si, Se Puede!

Go look at the photos of all the immigrant justice demonstrations at Yahoo. See the march (credit AP) in Phoenix (left). They erupted in more than 140 cities and towns in the nation yesterday and over the weekend, including here. Doesn't it make you proud to be an American? I watched the rally on the mall in Washington DC on CSPAN yesterday and it gave me shivers down my spine. Literally. I haven't see this much enthusiasm and love for what are genuinely American values, this much hopefulness and excitement on the streets, in years. If there are any perfect symbols for the open-hearted opportunities the nation has provided to the downtrodden and suffering for decades, these marches are it. For me anyway.

Looking at these massive crowds clamoring to be Americans in reality, not just in spirit, I kept thinking, aren't these the very kinds of citizens we have always wanted and, in fact, need to stay alive and jumping? People willing to take a risk for freedom and opportunity -- ambitious, hard-working, energetic, creative, practical, hopeful people. The very types of people who have made our nation what it was for many years -- a beacon of hope and a symbol of justice, fairness and ingenuity. I found the powerful shouts of "si, se puede," of "USA-USA," of "we are one people," to be thrilling and inspiring.

But then again, I grew up in a place created almost exclusively by immigrants, and that's still being molded by them daily. The Chicago where I grew up in the 1950's was a cacophy of languages, foods, customs, religions and ethnicities. I grew up in the blue collar neighborhoods that were the second or third stops immigrant families made after leaving the "old neighborhoods" of their youth. The path out of the masses of tenements that housed their parents and grandparents, and where they grew up mostly poor.

Almost to a household in my era, the grandparents did not speak English beyond a few phrases, but the parents did. And certainly in my generation of children, most of us instead knew only fragments of Polish, German, Italian, Lituanian or other languages of orgin. We were Americans through and through. Although our older relatives were often illiterate, we became college graduates.

The younger ones always become Americans. I don't care whether their parents or grandparents come from Ireland, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Africa, Mexico, Central America, South America or any other place. America is contagious. The very idea and spirit of America is the lure, the reward and the decisive factor. All immigrant families produce Americans, though sometimes not until the next generation. It has always been this way.

Where I grew up, most of the grandparents were the poorest of the poor peasants from abroad, come to make a new home where it would be easier for their children, not so much for themselves. For themselves there was only hard work, sacrifice and perhaps a 5-cent movie once a week. My grandmother, for instance, one of 14 children in her family, left a farm in Poland on her own at the age of 13 to work as a dishwasher in Sweden. Their much subdivided farm plot could not support 16 people. She was one of the youngest, so she was encouraged to leave.

At 17 she made it to America, staying at first with an older sister who had already arrived in Chicago. Again, she worked as a dishwasher, then worked her way up to the position of cook at a quality restaurant in downtown Chicago. Then she married and had three children, two of whom finished high school and one of whom -- my mother -- quit school at 16 to work since my grandfather had died young. Meanwhile my grandmother got a job cleaning offices downtown. My mother's two children -- myself and my brother -- both graduated college. A common story in the neighborhoods I spent my youth.

What is different about the immigrants I knew growing up and those who come from Mexico now? Only one thing -- absurdly low immigration quotas that have made them "illegals or "undocumented." It's important to realize that America had no immigration quotas until the mid-1920s. Before that, it was a free-for-all. The huddled masses were entirely welcome. And even after, for many years, the quotas were very high, the legal immigrants allowed in many. As is the case now, there were dirty jobs to do that weren't appealing to most workers who were born here. Some things never change.

Why were immigration quotas finally enacted? The same fears and biases that are present all too often in the current debate. Remember reading about the signs around New York and Boston that read, 'No Dogs or Irish Allowed"? Oh, it was scary to have so many swarthy, oily, ignorant, smelly, nasty, drunken, unhealthy, sneaky foreigners coming to our soil! They didn't speak English! They never would! They would never "assimilate"! They weren't really Americans. They were disloyal. They were communists. They were dangerous. They would take the jobs of the Americans. Many of the same things are heard now, about this crop of immigrants.

And what is causing the significant increase of undocumented workers from Mexico? Numbers have skyrocketed since NAFTA was enacted. Think about it. The restrictions and requirements imposed by "free" trade, the world bank and other instruments of unfettered capitalism on Mexican workers and farmers has, for the most part, crushed them. When you practically force Mexico to import huge quantities of corn whose low price is subsidized by the American government, it destroys the livelihoods of thouands and thousands of small farmers who can't sell theirs. When you do the same with other goods, you shut down the jobs of small buinesses and their workers. It's not rocket science. And just wait until the full effects of CAFTA kick in. There will, no doubt, be large increases in the number of immigrants leaving their homes in Central America as well.

What results is massive dislocation and poverty on a grand scale, even worse then before. To eat, to survive, these people will do anything and go anywhere, especially when employers are there across the border, ready to snap them up and put them to work. Who wouldn't risk it if they were in the same circumstances? Only those whose spirits are already so broken by poverty and hopelessness that they can't make the move. What is created is an economic structure with a thin layer of ultra-rich investors, a destruction of the middle class, and an eruption of poverty for most people. Just think, the BushCo loyalists would like to create a similar economic mess right here, and they're already hard at work on that project.

So what can we do to solve the immigration "problem"? To my mind what we need to do is expand legal immigration quotas drastically, to suit the real situation on the ground. We need to provide a reasonable way for those already here to attain citizenship -- and stability. We need to put the pressure on our elected officials to make trade more fair and to rein in the worst traits of global capitalists. In other words, we need to push to make global trade, financial and trade forces serve the people, not the other way around. And if we legalize our immigrants in a proper manner, they can help us organize to accomplish this. They can vote for the people's concerns. They can join labor unions and push for higher wages. And you wonder why corporatists of both Parties are fighting this? No mystery to me...

Benefit Wednesday for Moises Gonzales

From the Moises Gonzales Campaign:
Come meet Moises Gonzales
Democratic Candidate for Bernalillo County Assessor
Wednesday, April 12, 2005
6:30 – 8:30 PM
District Bar and Grill – 4th and Copper St. (Downtown ABQ)

Hosted by: James Aranda, Arturo Archuleta, Isaac Benton, Eric Griego, Martin Heinrich, Melanie Maldonado, Mariana Padilla, Mike Puelle, Michelle Rizek, Giovanna Rossi, Drew Setter.

Live music by the Rudy Boys Project
Light refreshments, Cash bar
$25 suggested contribution

For more information call Mariana Padilla: 366-7901 or marianapadilla@yahoo.com

Editor's Note: Moises Gonzales is a Democrat running in the June primary against two other Democrats: Karen L. Montoya and Dolores C. Maestas.

Monday-Tuesday Open Thread

Someone emailed me and suggested we institute some open threads where anything and everything can be discussed by readers. So here goes, our first Monday Open Thread.

What issues are you thinking about today? What are you concerned about? Found anything especially funny, upsetting or interesting on the net lately? Go ahead and start a conversation. Click the comment button below and type away. I know there are hundreds of you out there who haven't yet made a comment on this blog. Now's a good time to start. Go head. Be Wile E!

To give you some background music for your keyboarding pleasure, here's Pink and the Indigo Girls doing Dear Mr. President.