Monday: one hour, one hearing, it is time for Retake supporters to show up and then allow our allies from Dreamers and Somos to speak for themselves while we show support. A week for action and solidarity is coming. Wish we were with you.
Thoughts on Today’s Roundhouse Hearing: Linda Fertal emailed me Sunday morning making the point that the 3 hour hearing today (below) includes one hour of testimony. That hour should be entirely devoted to the impacted community speaking for itself, not for those of us who are alarmed by the shameless criminal justice and immigration policies to hog the show with our outrage. Our outrage can best be demonstrated by the number of us present and our support for each speaker. If there is time at the end of the comments, then we can also show our support then.
Thoughts on the Democratic Party and the Need for Bold Leadership. We are just over 2 years from the 2020 Presidential election and a year from the build-up to primary season. Yet to date the only names being bandied about are Warren, Biden, Sanders and just yesterday rumors that Hillary is considering another run. Nancy Pelosi is said to be planning to defend her leadership in the House. Please, as much as I like Elizabeth Warren and love Bernie Sanders, it is time for the Democratic Party elders to step aside and let another generation lead. There is a grassroots youth movement aching to become activated and a youth-student activism emerging out of the gun safety movement. It is time to pass the baton.
Tuesday’s Blog. You’ll want to make time for Tuesday’s blog. it provides excerpts from a brilliant Resilience article that describes clearly and succinctly our socio-political-economic predicament and a reasonably practical and achievable path toward economic and racial justice. If only some forty-something Democratic leader would embrace this platform and take the mantle of the Party and run with it. It wouldn’t dissolve capitalism or create a democratic socialist system, but it would be a huge step in the right direction. Stay tuned.
A Week for Action!
Protecting Those Most Vulnerable Community Conversation about Environmental Justice for Pregnant and Parenting Families. Sunday, July 15, 1pm-4pm. Northern New Mexico College. 921 N Paseo de Onate, Espanola. Please be on hand on July 15th for our presentation on “Protecting Those Most Vulnerable – Environmental Justice For Pregnant and Parenting Families in Northern New Mexico.” Speakers include TWU’s Jessica Riggs, Kathy Sanchez, and Beata Tsosie-Peña. Hosted by Tewa Women United and Yiya Vi Kagingdi Doula Project
We will be discussing the hexavalent chromium plume that is currently affecting our communities.
PLEASE RSVP FOR THIS EVENT USING THIS FORM: https://goo.gl/forms/Q6QcN22qviViWUQL2. This is a FREE event, but your RSVP on that form (in addition to this FB event page) will greatly help us in planning for food and other logistics.
Public Hearing on Immigrant Detentions
Public Hearing. July 16, Mon., 1pm-4pm @ Roundhouse Room 307. Multiple, actually many multiple sources have written to me asking that I do all I can to pack the room for this hearing. This is our chance to weigh in on private prisons, detainees, etc.
For those New Mexicans who have been asking “what can we do” about the ongoing immigration crisis in our country, please take note that on Monday July 16th at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe in Room 307, our legislature committee on Courts, Corrections, and Justice will have a public hearing from 1-4 about exerting more oversight on private correctional facilities in our state and there will be an hour of public comment, apparently between 3-4pm. This is opportunity to raise your voices and to engage with officials, law enforcement, and lawmakers about the crisis of immigration detention in our state.The room holds about 300, let’s make sure they need an overflow room. Please share this post with your personal lists and make plans to go with friends to this hearing.
We have to use this opportunity well and be focused and clear with our lawmakers about what our expectations are for the treatment of immigrants in this state. From a bulletin from Santa Fe Dreamers: “We have been in these prisons and our clients have been abused, are in mental health crisis, experience medical neglect, and are put in isolation. We have met people who have been sexually assaulted and one member of our trans-pod died in May. These corporations are not capable of keeping my clients safe and they are getting very very rich in the meantime. I think it is incredibly important that people show up at this hearing informed and organized with their comments and demands. There is only one hour for public comment and it must be used well. Inform yourself, be a deeply educated activist, and please show up ready to listen and share space with the whole community, especially those who have personal connection to this issue.” (If you don’t live in NM– you can organize and demand this hearing in your own legislature).
Here are a few links offered by SF Dreamers, as a way to get updated and oriented:
- From the Las Cruces Sun this week: https://www.lcsun-news.com/…/ice-new-mexico-ille…/747158002/
- From NM Political Report last October: http://nmpoliticalreport.com/…/inside-a-private-prisons-15…
- Here is the website for the committee: https://www.nmlegis.gov/Committee/Interim_Committee…
- As usual I suggest learning broadly about the issue of immigration detention from Detention Watch Network: https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/
Once oriented, it is time to show up on Monday!
Protest at National Governor’s Conference July 20
When: Friday July 20 10:30 am- healthcare
- funding for education
- environmental protection laws
- women’s reproductive health and right to choose
- asylum seekers’ right to due process and family unity
- polices that restrain ICE from violating immigrants’ rights
- workers’ freedom to negotiate
- free speech rights to support legal boycotts and criticize other country’s violation of human rights
- voting rights
- Stricter gun control laws
- End to mass incarceration and no private prisons
Looking Back: A Week of Simmering Revolt
Trade War Decimates Farm & Rust Belt and Religious Right Revolt Against Family Detention: Is Trump Eroding His Base as We Head to the Mid-Terms? Tuesday, July 10.
Is it time for a dramatic shift to the left? Trump trade and immigration policies are eroding Trump’s base. The blog also includes a powerful video of family separation and evidence that the Midwest may be primed for a revolt. Also, Parkland students come to NM tomorrow. While not posed in this blog, my question is: When will Democrats organize around a vision that clearly contrasts with the shameful policies Trump and his cronies have foisted on our Nation: tax policy that is unvarnished wealth theft; using immigrant families as a negotiating tool; utter failure to address the increasingly obvious Russian intervention in the 2016 election; abandonment of the Paris agreement; and whatever the hell he is doing with NATO. This should be such an easy target and yet…..What Radical Justice Could Look Like and Evidence It Just Might be Possible. Thursday, July 12.
This post includes a vision of a radically new future from Jackson, MS (with a tremendous 20-minute video). This is an important blog as it really outlines quite clearly our current economic and political context and points to a very different world that Jackson is trying to create. WE also include a profile of a radical volunteer run community collective in Montreal, and a brief snippet on Beto O’Rourke’s radical Texas campaign. Great stuff. Click here to review the full post. The video was commented upon so favorably I have placed it at the end of this blog.A Call to Action as July 15-22 Is Filled with Actions: Testimony Against Detentions & Private Prisons and the National Governor’s Conference. Saturday, July 14.
Categories: Economic Justice, Community & Economic Development, Local-State Government & Legislation, Personal & Collective Action
It is predictable, the New Mexican will be promoting private prisons, as “Job Creators.” They will regurgitate some canned nonsense about the jobless in an area of our state, and how a private prison will bring prosperity. They will just trim out the facts, like the effects on the one in five kids in New Mexico with an incarcerated parent. The system is too busy with “overcharging” to prosecute real violent crimes. Follow the money, the lobbying groups benefit, while families pay extortion. For years I had hoped the Feds would step in and shut the Racket down, instead lessons learned here have been applied in other states. The new DA just doubled down on the scheme.
They have extracted an enormous amount of money, and property from local families. None of that has been covered by local “News.” New Mexico’s “Crime Wave” has been very profitable for a few. Those “criminals” are products of the system, they created a new generation. It is almost Genocidal, where people brutalized and traumatized by the system, get turned out to create more “crime.” The newspapers downplayed their involvement, in the Victoria Martins case, in Albuquerque. Children were traumatized by the news coverage, as they went into lurid details that were fabricated by a police officer. They do that kind of thing right here in River City, but those cases are not so high profile. The DA and Judges just shrug off the misbehavior, they know no one can afford to get any justice.