The world is shifting too quickly. Irma is now a Category 5 and headed toward Florida, the Mayor is not running so that race is in chaos, an Entrada protest on Friday, an update on DACA, and a change in the Town Hall on Sept 16 to allow discussion of DACA, renewables, and white supremacy.
After a few updates and events, we’ll look at excerpts from a tremendous DACA article written by a DACA leader. It describes her family’s courageous immigration to the US, being the first in her family to graduate from high school and then college….and this is who our country now plans to deport. A scary realization from the Washington Post: About 24 percent of DACA recipients, or 190,000, will be able to renew their permits before March 5. The rest —roughly 595,000, will have their permits expire. See below for more on DACA.
The Times, They Are A Changin’: So Retake Adapts
Mayor Gonzales Not Seeking Re-Election. In a stunning announcement, the Mayor of Santa Fe announced he would not seek re-election, creating a wide-open playing field with rampant speculation as to who might run. Click here for his announcement.
Sept. 16 Town Hall Shifts Time and Focus Due to Changing Circumstances. In yesterday’s post I bemoaned the challenge of planning posts when crises and events are erupting daily. The same can be said about planning events. Retake takes pride in adjusting plans to be responsive to our community, and today we announce that we are making two significant changes in the Town Hall slated for Sat., Sept. 16. I am in dialog with SF Dreamers and Somos about ways in which we can all support their work. It will take time to formalize this, but a big piece of the Sept. 16 Town Hall will be discussion with Allegra Love from Santa Fe Dreamers and Mariel Nanasi from New Energy Economy. We are organizing others working with DACAs to join us, as well as leaders who can speak on white supremacy issues nationally and in Santa Fe. The intent is to hold a series of presentations on each issue, allowing for questions. The purpose will not just informational but to identify concrete things that folks can do now in relation to each issue. Updates will be provided in the next few days.
We are rescheduling the time of the Town Hall to 1:30-3:30 pm (previously 3 to 5 p.m.) because the memorial for our dear colleague and advocate Susan Duncan is at 4pm the same day at the Universalist Unitarian Church. I worked closely with Sue when we worked to establish the dual-credit program at SFCC and Santa Fe High. She was amazing. A terrible loss. So please mark your calendars with the new time for the Town Hall, and RSVP on Facebook by clicking here or just reply to this email. Let’s get a large group together and form plans for direct sustained action.
Local Research Advocacy Team. Thursday, Sept 7, 6-8pm (TODAY), 1420 Cerrillos. If we want to Retake Our Democracy, we have to get our hands dirty figuring out how it works. That is the work of this team. Join us in examining how Community Land Trust, Inclusionary Zoning, People’s Councils, and Participatory Budgeting may all be part of a progressive use for the University of Arts & Design (UAD). This team has been researching public transit, affordable housing, low-income rental strategies, and other municipality options to prevent gentrification and replacement. Between meetings, members review research, talk with community officials, city staff ,and Councilors to better understand how the city makes decisions and how we can proactively make constructive suggestions. This is a key meeting in relation to our thinking about the UAD. I have talked with Councilor Harris who is heading up the process with Councilor Lindell. I have also had conversation with Daniel Werwath, an affordable housing developer, Kim Shanahan of the Santa Fe Home Builders Association, and Glenn Schiffbauer of the Green Chamber of Commerce, and these conversations will be shared. Join us by clicking here for more information and to RSVP on Facebook (preferred) or just reply to this email and let us know you are coming. We especially need folks with experience in affordable housing, economic development, or community development.
Co-Existing Cultures: Uniting Pueblo & Spanish Communities. Friday, Sept 8, 11am, at IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts,108 Cathedral Pl, Santa Fe. The Poeh Cultural Center will host a community event to gather input on solutions to find a respectful and improved future here in New Mexico. Large idea boards for the public will be available to share their thoughts on, “what are our common values?” and “how can we improve our co-existence together?” Click here for more information and to RSVP on Facebook.
Red Nation Entrada Protest. Friday Sept 8, 1pm. Santa Fe Cathedral Park, 131 Cathedral Pl, Santa Fe. Join Red Nation and others to demand an end to the celebration of the genocide of Pueblo people and all Native people of the southwest. Together, engage in the struggle to protect sacred sites from ongoing occupation and resource extraction. The revisionist history perpetuated by the Entrada erases centuries of Pueblo Resistance and minimizes current struggles to protect Native sacred lands. Retake is hoping to support efforts to identify a path forward on this issue, but it is not our place to lead on this or even to offer opinions. We will, however, support and or facilitate seeking solutions. For more information and to RSVP for the Entrada protest, click here.
DACA: Up Close and Personal
The graphic above is taken from the Santa Fe Dreamer’s home page. Click here to review it more clearly. It describes the contributions New Mexican Dreamers are making to our communities.
You read the numbers and are horrified: 800,000 DACAs subject to deportation, the contact and personal information they provided to obtain their DACA status is now to be used to hunt them down. It is obscene. Truth-Out presented a highly personal view of the life of a young DACA. It is written by Reyna Montoya, a daughter, a sister, an educator, a dancer, a community organizer, a DACA recipient and the founder of Aliento, an undocumented-youth-led organization that provides community healing through the arts, community organizing and ally engagement, and leadership development. She is also a 2017 Echoing Green Fellow. Twitter: @ReynaE9 and @AlientoAZ. She describes her life moving to the US from Tijuana, escaping the violence in Mexico that had resulted in her father being kidnapped and thankfully rescued after paying ransom. Montoya has graduated from high school and college, is an educator, and advocate. And this is who our President wants to deport. The article goes beyond analyzing the situation in which 800,000 DACAs find themselves, but does so in a highly personal way. You get to know one DACA person and in so doing, understand far better the human tragedy of this decision. Click here to review the entire, inspiring article.
It is truly sad the path on which this country is headed. We must remain committed to sustained advocacy and activism. One way to start is to get involved with the local Research & Advocacy Team and its development of plans for the use of UAD, or with the Roundhouse Activism team that is developing a statewide platform and working with political leaders throughout the state. Or come to the Town Hall on Sept. 16 and find out what you might be able to do in relation to DACA, renewable energy, or white supremacy. But please, don’t stay home.
In solidarity,
Paul & Roxanne
Categories: Actions, Social & Racial Justice & Immigration Reform
I would sure like to see some “new” blood come out and run for mayor; a true progressive and of the female sex to counter the bad taste that the female Governor has left in the mouths of many of us..BOLD leadership would be good, frequent meetings with the likes of our West Coast leaders in California, Portland Oregon, and Seattle would be great for a consolidation of forward thinking economics and infrastructure that serves the people of Santa Fe, ALL PEOPLE OF SANTA FE, better….run on a platform that says “Gross National Well-being” is as important as all the every day matters for a Mayor and Council to attend to. Someone willing to hold frequent townhalls and pose questions to the public that would get us all thinking as a collective to realize practical yet uplifting Santa Fe dreams…like terrific schools and roads that don’t ruin the “chassis” (is that the word?) of one’s car, and more parks with water conserving features and playful colorful environments where people can “think” or not or meet or be quiet….clean streets and colorful storefronts and retool all the empty buildings on Cerrillos (and elsewhere) for PUBLIC needs….colorful clean housing, meeting spaces for groups of all kinds where people want to go because it ‘FEELS GOOD’ to be in those environments—well, that’s all I have time for “on the fly”, but townhalls to redo Santa Fe in color and clean and happy could get us all involved. Do you know that a Mayor in some eastern European city that was completely rundown and the people too were rundown, made it his first priority to spend city money on paint….all sorts of colorful paint and as the city transformed from dull and grimey, more and more people got involved, business picked up and new visions for what the city could be poured in because people were INSPIRED with new energy. I have the video somewhere… if I find it, I will post it….anyway, an amazing time to “go new” and “go collective” as Santa Feans…Mayoral candidate asking people what do you think we really need to do right now to have a “path of totality” to ‘renaissance’ of our collective spirit in Santa fe; ALL of us not one culture or color…..”Santa Fe, AN UNTAPPED RESOURCE” …..leadership can lead the way and ignite the tremendous innate intelligence of all citizens if it focuses on the people as who it is here to serve. Thanks.
I would sure like to see some “new” blood come out and run for mayor; a true progressive and of the female sex to counter the bad taste that the female Governor has left in the mouths of many of us..BOLD leadership would be good, frequent meetings with the likes of our West Coast leaders in California, Portland Oregon, and Seattle would be great for a consolidation of forward thinking economics and infrastructure that serves the people of Santa Fe, ALL PEOPLE OF SANTA FE, better….run on a platform that says “Gross National Well-being” is as important as all the every day matters for a Mayor and Council to attend to. Someone willing to hold frequent townhalls and pose questions to the public that would get us all thinking as a collective to realize practical yet uplifting Santa Fe dreams…like terrific schools and roads that don’t ruin the “chassis” (is that the word?) of one’s car, and more parks with water conserving features and playful colorful environments where people can “think” or not or meet or be quiet….clean streets and colorful storefronts and retool all the empty buildings on Cerrillos (and elsewhere) for PUBLIC needs….colorful clean housing, meeting spaces for groups of all kinds where people want to go because it ‘FEELS GOOD’ to be in those environments—well, that’s all I have time for “on the fly”, but townhalls to redo Santa Fe in color and clean and happy could get us all involved. Do you know that a Mayor in some eastern European city that was completely rundown and the people too were rundown, made it his first priority to spend city money on paint….all sorts of colorful paint and as the city transformed from dull and grimey, more and more people got involved, business picked up and new visions for what the city could be poured in because people were INSPIRED with new energy. I have the video somewhere… if I find it, I will post it….anyway, an amazing time to “go new” and “go collective” as Santa Feans…Mayoral candidate asking people what do you think we really need to do right now to have a “path of totality” to ‘renaissance’ of our collective spirit in Santa fe; ALL of us not one culture or color…..”Santa Fe, AN UNTAPPED RESOURCE” …..leadership can lead the way and ignite the tremendous innate intelligence of all citizens if it focuses on the people as who it is here to serve. P.S.: Oh, and the word poverty consciousness gets thrown around alot, but a depthful discussion about it at a seried of town halls (using imaginative and evocative questions)…like…what it means and what does it look like and what can replace it…would unearth a whole lot of tamped down energy…….
I would hope more people would join the conversation re: Mayoral Candidates and that we start early! I am positing two “out of the box” Mayors that might inspire a NEW way that Santa Fe can challenge Mayors to get outside the NORM with their platforms for why they would be good for Santa Fe:
“POLITICS NEEDS TO COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES……I found this TED talk several years ago and thought: “if only politicians would get out of their left brain box and INCREASE THEIR TOOL KIT for governing”….THIS MAYOR INSPIRED ME NO END…..if I ran for MAYOR, this would be the brain I would brain….inspiration and demonstration can change everything…..live life, govern, run for office with the mantra I coined for myself in these times: IMAGINATE, ILLUMINATE, ELEVATE, AND DEMONSTRATE!!
Here is the link and it is EXCITING to change the conversation…..
https://www.ted.com/talks/edi_rama_take_back_your_city_with_paint/transcript
Paul…how does one edit a comment….don’t see a way to correct a spell or word…thanks. Morgana
I am not sure. I can’t see what you see, as I am an administrator, but I think you may be able to see the word “edit” next to the date and time of the post (at the top). I think if you click that, you can edit.
MORE “go beyond the norm of how politics and governing ‘looks’:
http://napkinbetabeyond.com/the-mayor-who-used-mimes-to-cut-traffic-fatalities-in-half/
The political conversation is always controlled by those who inspire or “move” the people..it can be humdrum or negative or it can IGNITE :
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2004/03/academic-turns-city-into-a-social-experiment/