Democracy for New Mexico

'We The People' to Feature Air Force Academy Grad Mikey Weinstein

WE THE PEOPLE: October 27, 2005
Mikey Weinstein, Third generation graduate of the Air Force Academy: Religious Discrimination and the U.S. Air Force
7 PM, Albuquerque Channel 27
HOST: Mickey Bock

WE THE PEOPLE is an innovative call-in television show looking for TRUTH and TRANSPARENCY in local, state and federal governments. We hope to remind viewers of their legacy and heritage coming from the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. It is our country's government--based on law and not tyranny--that grants us FREEDOM.

Watch us every Thursday at 7-8 PM on Community Cable TV Channel 27, Albuquerque, NM. CALL-IN:  346-1633 (the number will also be flashed on the TV Screen).

THANKS FOR WATCHING
Mickey Bock/Judith Binder
www.1776wethepeople.com
mickbo@earthlink.com

Editor's Note: Mikey Weinstein is suing the Air Force for religious discrimination. Here's a Washington Post article about his suit and the response of the Air Force.

KOB-TV to Air Richardson Documentary Today

KOB-TV will air a 30-minute, commercial-free documentary on Governor Richardson today, Saturday, October 22, at 6:30 PM.

From childhood, through his congress days and the present, the show features interviews with leading democrats in the state (including Governor Richardson) and people who worked with him in his early days in New Mexico. Produced by Neil Simon

KUNM Program Features Atrisco Land Grant Discussion Tonight

Tune in to Espejos de Aztlan on KUNM 89.9 tonight, Monday, October 17th at 8:00 PM for an interview with James Aranda (heir of the 57,000 acre Atrisco Land Grant on Albuquerque’s West Side) about the struggle against the proposed sale of Westland Development Co., Inc. to Delaware corporation ANM Holdings Inc. for $160,000,000. This past Saturday afternoon, over 250 land grant heirs and supporters held an organizational meeting at Rio Grande High School to discuss the issue's seriousness.

"Espejos de Aztlan" is a weekly radio program highlighting the courage, strength and beauty of the Chicano/Latino community in New Mexico. Espejos has been on-air since 1979 and is part of the Raices Colectiva which conducts programming on news, culture and music from a Latino perspective on KUNM 89.9.

For more information about current organizing efforts against the proposed sale of Westland Development Co., Inc., contact James Aranda at 553-0879 or via email at atlixko@yahoo.com.

Election Reform Activists Urge Media Coverage of Vigil-Giron's Coming Purchase of New Voting Machines

Media Alert from Verified Voters NM:
NM Secretary of State(SOS) Rebecca Vigil-Giron appears ready to spend millions in taxpayer money on voting machines for the disabled but has ruled out the one machine the disabled are said to like best. Moreover, she is doing this out of the public view.

Her action, she says, is to comply with the requirement of the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that at least one voting system accessible and usable independently and privately by the disabled must be purchased for each polling place by December 31. The Secretary seems poised to use an estimated $9 million in HAVA funds for buying some 1,400 electronic voting machines.

During Sept. 19-23, Secretary Vigil-Giron held an unpublicized meeting in Rio Rancho, to which she invited representatives of the disabled as well as county clerks from throughout the state. She has not revealed who these disabled representatives were and how comprehensively they reflected the range of disability. At this meeting she barred the county clerks from providing input and asked the disabled representatives to rate three touch screen machines – the Sequoia AVC Edge and the ES&S iVotronic and the ES&S AutoMark. According to testimony on 10/13 before the legislative task force on election reform, nine out of ten of the participating disabled voters at the Rio Rancho meeting preferred the AutoMark. But inexplicably the SoS told them that the AutoMark is not eligible for selection on grounds that it is not HAVA compliant -- this despite the fact that the other two machines being rated are also not HAVA compliant at this time.

Election reform activists with Verified Voting NM and United Voters NM say the SoS is arbitrary and wrong to willfully bypass the AutoMark.

The AutoMark utilizes a ballot marker that enables the disabled to vote without assistance and in private. It has a sip/puff tube for voters unable to use a touch screen and an audio function for blind voters. It is equally efficient for non-disabled voters. Also, the AutoMark does not count votes as other voting machines do. Instead, to insure counting accuracy, it utilizes a conventional paper ballot that can be readily audited or recounted by hand or by the electronic scanning machines already available in many NM counties. By contrast, the Edge and iVotronic use rolls of paper tape for verifiable paper ballots that are much more difficult to audit and recount.

North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming have all selected the AutoMark as their voting machine of choice, as well as counties in California, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Florida.   

This impending purchase by the Secretary of State is of major importance to voters in NM since these voting machines are used by both the disabled and non-disabled. Selection of voting machines should be carried out with full public input and with all alternatives openly considered.

On behalf of many election reform supporters in NM, we urge the media, in your key role as watchdogs of democracy, to look into this issue and report your findings. (signed)  Robert Stearns 988-3718; Kim Kirkpatrick 454-0598; Stephen Fettig 662-6785, Pat Leahan 425-3840; Paul and Laura Stokes 898-1237, all citizen volunteers with Verified Voting NM or United Voters NM. Note: We have no financial connection with any voting machine manufacturer or vendor, nor does VVNM and UVNM.    

More info on Verfied Voting New Mexico: https://vvnm.org

Editor's Note: If you'd like to contact media in your area about this issue, here's a site that makes it easy.

Contact information for NM Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron:

Office of the New Mexico Secretary of State
State Capitol North Annex, Suite 300
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87503
Phone: (505) 827-3600 
FAX: (505) 827-3634
Toll Free 1-800-477-3632
Email: secstate@state.nm.us

Click for contact Information for NM County Clerks:

KUNM's 'Espejos de Aztlan' Tonight: What's At Stake in Tomorrow's Election?

From Javier Benavidez:
Check out KUNM 89.9 TONIGHT, Monday, October 3rd, from 8:00 PM to 8:30 PM for "Espejos de Aztlan," a weekly radio program highlighting the courage, strength and beauty of the Chicano/Latino community in New Mexico. I will be interviewing three local community organizers who have been working tirelessly on various issues that are up for vote on tomorrow's city-wide election ballot.

Answering the question "what's at stake for our community in tomorrow's election" will be Dr. Teresa Brito-Asenap, a leader with Albuquerque Interfaith, Rey Garduno, an activist in the Clean and Open Elections campaign and Danny Rivera, a union organizer from the Albuquerque Living Wage Coalition.

Espejos has been on-air since 1979 and is part of the Raices Colectiva which conducts programming on news, culture and music from a Latino perspective on KUNM 89.9.

ABQ Public Access Channel to Air Highlights of Election Reform Event

From Suzanne Prescott, Community Producer, Channel 27 - Albuquerque:

Greg Palast, Lowell Finley and John Boyd are featured in an hour show this Sunday, September 11, from 6-7 PM. The show will be on channel 27, the public access channel on Comcast cable in Albuquerque. This program will be repeated on Monday, September 19, from 6:30-7:30 PM.

The hour show includes only a fraction of the great information from the event [cosponsored by NM Democratic Friends and DFNM to benefit Voter Action NM] that May evening at the IBEW hall, but does include the major presentations by Greg Palast, Lowell Finley and John Boyd in their entirety.

My apologies in advance for the poor equipment, editing and not including more of the great information from that evening.  If you want to hear Greg Palast say as clearly as anyone has that this election was stolen, this is your chance.

Editor's Note: For background, click for related DFNM posts on the May 2005 events in NM with Greg Palast here, here and here. To learn more about the ongoing lawsuit by NM voters against NM Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron and a number of county clerks, visit the Voter Action website.

For reports about discrepancies in 2004 vote tallies in New Mexico, click here, here, here and here or scroll down and click on the links under the heading NM Election Reports on the left-hand sidebar on this page.

On 'We The People' This Thursday

WE THE PEOPLE: Thursday September 8th
TAPE the program if you cannot be present

GUESTS:
Mayoral Election and Distribution of Voters' Guides
Josephine Porter, League of Women Voters Albuquerque/Bernalillo County

How our neighbors react to tragedy
Claire Luna, Organizer and neighbor         

HOSTS: Mickey Bock & Judith Binder

WE THE PEOPLE is an innovative call-in television show looking for TRUTH and TRANSPARENCY in local, state and federal governments. We hope to remind viewers of their legacy and heritage coming from the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. It is our country's government--based on law and not tyranny--that grants us FREEDOM.

Watch us every Thursday 7-8 PM on Community Cable Channel 27, Albuquerque, NM. CALL-IN: 346-1633 (the number will also be flashed on the TV Screen). Kindly forward to Albuquerque area friends.

www.1776wethepeople.com
mickbo@earthlink.com

THANKS FOR WATCHING: Mickey Bock/Judith Binder

Dean Rocks on Face the Nation

By all accounts (except the RNC's), DNC Chair Howard Dean did a terrific job on Face the Nation yesterday. See for yourself:

Transcript       Video excerpt

Some quotes:

About Iraq--

First thing we need to do have a plan for leaving. And the second thing we need to do is to make sure that to the best of our ability we can influence the writing of the constitution. It looks like today, and this could change--as of today, it looks like women will be worse off in Iraq than they were when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq. That's a pretty sad commentary on this administration's ability to do anything right.

Asked if the President should meet with Cindy Sheehan--

Sure, he should. I mean, he's--he asked her to give up her son. She did give up her son. There's been many American women and men who've lost their lives and we're trying to understand for what. Today--today, also in your paper, there was an article that said that this--the troops still don't have the proper equipment. What are these people doing that are running the armed forces? I'll tell you what they're doing. People like the president, and people like Secretary Rumsfeld, are ignoring the career experts like General Shinseki who told them before we went in that we needed adequate equipment and adequate troops. They thrust that aside. These people do not know what they're doing that are running this country. They have no conception of what it's like to fight a war because none of them ever have. And that's the great--that would have been the great positive that John Kerry would have brought to the presidency.

On what the Democrats' plan is for getting out of Iraq--

Well, Bob, the president of the United States is commander in chief. It is up to him to come up for a plan. You can't expect a congressman and senators who don't have the same access to intelligence as the president does to come up with a plan to withdraw our troops from Iraq. We look--the president got us into Iraq 'cause people were willing to trust the president, even some Democrats were willing to trust the president in assuming he knew what he was doing.

On Intelligent Design--

The president has been anti-science for a long time.  This is the most anti-scientific regime I've seen in my lifetime.

Rep. Picraux on We The People This Thursday

WE THE PEOPLE

JULY 21, 2005 -  Albuquerque Channel 27, 7-8 PM. CALL-IN:  346-1633. Please, TAPE the program if you cannot be present.

GUEST:    Representative Danice Picraux, New Mexico District 25
HOST:    Mickey Bock

WE THE PEOPLE is an innovative call-in television show looking for TRUTH and TRANSPARENCY in local, state and federal governments. We hope to remind viewers of their legacy and heritage coming from the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. It is our country's government--based on law and not tyranny--that grants us FREEDOM.

Watch us every Thursday 7-8 PM, Community Cable Channel 27, Albuquerque, NM. Call-in (the number will be flashed on the TV Screen) or e-mail us and we will try to answer your questions and concerns. Kindly forward to Albuquerque area friends.

www.1776wethepeople.com
mickbo@earthlink.com

THANKS FOR WATCHING
Mickey Bock/Judith Binder

Tonight On We The People TV: Can the Democratic Party Be Saved?

WE THE PEOPLE

JULY 14, 2005 - Albuquerque Channel 27, 7-8 PM. CALL-IN:  346-1633. Please, TAPE the program if you cannot be present.

GUEST:    Matt Farrauto, Communications Director, Democratic Party of New Mexico
TOPIC:    Can the Democratic Party Be Saved?
HOST:    Mickey Bock

WE THE PEOPLE is an innovative call-in television show looking for TRUTH and TRANSPARENCY in local, state and federal governments. We hope to remind viewers of their legacy and heritage coming from the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. It is our country's government--based on law and not tyranny--that grants us FREEDOM.

Watch us every Thursday 7-8 PM, Community Cable Channel 27, Albuquerque, NM

Call-in (the number will be flashed on the TV Screen) or e-mail us and we will try to answer your questions and concerns. Kindly forward to Albuquerque area friends.

www.1776wethepeople.com
mickbo@earthlink.com

THANKS FOR WATCHING
Mickey Bock/Judith Binder
******************************

Editor's Note: A recent article by Ollie Reed, Jr. in the Albuquerque Tribune profiles Public Access Channel 27 and some of its participants, including Mickey and Judith. Excerpt:

People whose shows are coming up later in the evening begin filing in. Mickey Bock arrives with his wife, Judith, the producer of "We the People."
[. . .]
Bock, 76, and his wife are disappointed supporters of Howard Dean's presidential campaign. They started "We the People" to carry forth Dean's philosophy of "take back your country" and to drive home Bock's concerns about enforcing separation of church and state.

"The rock of this country is separation of church and state," says Bock. "Believe what you want, just keep it out of government."