Today, we offer thoughts on Thanksgiving and how to manage the dinner conversation, along with some suggestions for reading in your spare time and two outstanding climate change videos to share with your friends and/or family But first, we alert you to a Redistricting Special Session and an organizing Zoom moderated by Fair Districts, NM. A short one, today.

Redistricting Special Session & Zoom Discussion of the Session and the Maps

The Redisricting process has been inclusive and transparent, at least to date. Now the full legislature takes a shot at selecting one of nine maps that have emerge from the process. This is a chance for NM to show the nation that just because you have power, you don’t have to abuse it and gerrymander your opponents out of existence. Fair Districts NM will moderate the Zoom below where they will try to make sense of it all, and orient you as to how you can weigh in effectively.

Fair Districts NM (FDNM):Redistricting Zoom, Monday, Nov 29, 6:30. At the Zoom FDNM will describe and discuss the redistricting process to date and the Special Session where legislators will select district boundaries for the next ten years. They will also answer questions about the process, possible outcomes and how you can advocate effectively before and during the Special Sessoin, starting Dec. 6.

Click here to join the zoom. no registration required, just click the link at 6;30, Monday.

Thanksgiving Thoughts

Each year we publish a post focused on Thanksgiving, generally with suggestions as to how to broach social justice issues over turkey and stuffing. This year, we offer a caveat by acknowledging that, given what we’ve been through and what lies ahead (2024 election and the prospect of Trump bFiarack on TV nightly–ugh), maybe we all need a break from contentious debates with defensive friends and/or relatives. But many of you will be around the table with friends and family who would welcome the kind of stimulating discussion we offer. So use your own judgment. I particularly like the idea of introducing different perspectives when teens and young adults are present. So below, we provide links from past Thanksgivings and offer our hopes that if you travel, your travel is safe, family discussions are rich and refreshing, and that you return to the Land of Enchantment rested and ready to push the PRC to deny the PNM-Avangrid merger and begin prep for the 2020 legislative session.

For us, we have a number of things for which we are most grateful. At the top of the list for me is surviving a massive stroke in July and continuing to recover sufficiently to enjoy walks with Roxanne, trips to visit kids, grandson and friends, to enjoy days at home with Roxanne, cooking, reading, writing, and hanging with friends. Nothing like a medical airlift to ABQ and emergency surgery to help you appreciate what you have.

We are also grateful for our adult kids who have weathered the COVID storm as well as can be expected and are thriving in their lives. And to our NM friends, who have all largely escaped COVID and provide an ongoing source of camaraderie, laughter, and support.

If that isn’t enough to be thankful for, there is this work and all of you who make the work so worthwhile. We have some hills to climb in 2022, and Roxanne and I are ever so grateful for the ally organizations with whom we collaborate and the Retake volunteers and donors who enrich and support this work.

I use this graphic every year, as it is important that we never forget that most of what we enjoy today as Americans came at great cost to others. Part of Thanksgiving should involve being grateful for what we have, but also recalling how we got much of it and who we owe.

Thanksgiving Conversations

The activist in me can’t resist suggesting that a dinner conversation can be civil and mind opening and so worth having. Most of the suggestions in the posts from prior years would not be food-fight inducing and, in most families, would actually be welcome. Here are some ideas:

• Speaking Truth but Keeping Peace on Thanksgiving Nov. 26, 2019, a good piece if you are going to try to inject some discussion of climate and/or indigenous justice. Very brief.
• Thanksgiving On Our Minds: What We are Thankful For, Plus a Report on Yesterday’s Special Legislative Session, Nov. 25, 2020. Just skip over the brief report on the legislature. Includes some interesting reflections on 2020, generally just an abysmal year.
• Thanksgiving Revolution: Suggestions for a Decolonized and Amazon-Free Holiday, Nov. 22, 2018. My favorite post as it offers suggestions for using the dinner conversation both to reflect on climate and indigenous justice and to challenge the family to break with the consumer-driven holiday traditions of uncontrolled gift-giving and Black Friday, which has remarkably evolved into a 2-month long purchase-fest.
• Diné Artist, Lyla June on the Truth of Thanksgiving + Poem from US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, Muscogee Nation. Nov. 29, 2019. This is my next favorite of the bunch, as Lyla June’s and Joy Harjo’s words are especially moving.

Before we close, Thanksgiving week is a good time to catch up on your reading. Over the past month, Retake has published some very important posts, some of which you may have missed. Here are links to a few of those posts. As you have time, reviewing them will get you primed for action as we race toward 2022.

• Avangrid Deception Continues –Urgent Action Needed, Nov 20. This post lays out the gritty truth behind this horrid merger with links to our Avangrid strategy. A Must Read.
• Hydrogen Hub or Hydrogen Hype? You Decide, Nov. 18. Hydrogen is a complex issue that will be pushed relentlessly by our Governor This post lays out what it is and why it is such a bad idea.
• PRC: Ratepayers Will Pay $361M to PNM for ‘Imprudent’ Investments in Four Corners & Avangrid Merger Call to Action !, Nov 16. What was so bad about the ETA? Find out it this post. But if you’ve understood the ETA for awhile, skip this one.
• Tell Gov & Speaker You Do Not Want an Uncritical Stampede for Net Zero or Hydrogen Schemes, Nov. 10. Explains how both Net Zero and Hydrogen are dangerous schemes and offers testimony from international climate and indigenous leaders.
• Connecting the Dots: COP26, NM’s ETA, Net Zero, Nov 7. This is a very important post if you wat to understand how the devil is in the details in most legislation and policy initiatives.

And if you still have 500 pages to go in your novel and want to stick with that, take a minute for one of the best and wittiest video I’ve seen in a very long time. Worth sharing before Thanksgiving Dinner. You won’t need other prompts to generate a rich discussion. This is brilliant.

And from the same folks who produced the video above, one on Carbon Capture.

That’s it for the week. Enjoy your holiday with friends and family and we will do the same. Back to the good fight next week. Unless something earth-shaking occurs, we’ll leave you alone for a week.

In solidarity, hope and gratitude,

Paul & Roxanne

Categories: Social & Racial Justice & Immigration Reform, Uncategorized

Tags: Featured, Indigenous justice, read more, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Indigenous jusice