Clearly New Mexico

I'm not really big on micromanagement.

And, as I've watched the parade of cabinet appointments issue forth from Chicago, I don't have an all-consuming worry that president-elect Barack Obama is out to betray his left-of-center base.

He's made some good choices, most notably on State, Energy, Education, Health and Human Services, and, um, Commerce.

We elected Barack Obama , and we empowered him to make those choices. His cabinet is his most important cadre of advisors. We must pay attention to the background of his nominees, and closely follow what they do after they take their offices.

So I'm feeling pretty good about the big choices.

I guess that's why it bothers me so much that Obama has taken the grave misstep of inviting evangelical pastor and anti-gay rights activist Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration.

Amid all the cabinet appointments, it may seem like a small matter.

But it surely is not. Not to the millions of gay Americans who supported Obama's mantra of change while struggling to maintain their human rights every day. And not to the millions of Americans who stand with gay Americans in their ongoing fight.

Obama has already begun hearing from outraged gay groups and progressives who supported him and feel betrayed by this odd and insulting choice.

Obama needs to find a graceful way to disinvite Warren, and fast.

What is health equity?

It's a simple yet complicated concept, so I'll let Anthony and Shannon Fleg explain it.

The Albuquerque couple are the sparkplugs behind bringing the idea of health equity to New Mexico, after successfully implementing their Native Health Initiative in North Carolina.

Anthony Fleg, a resident in family medicine at UNM Hospital, and his wife, Shannon, a healthcare consultant and member of the Dineh, moved to Albuquerque in May and celebrated the birth of their daughter, Nizhoni, four months ago.

In 2004, they helped found the Native Health Initiative in North Carolina, a program to empower all tribal members - not just traditional healthcare providers from the outside - to join together to address the causes of sub-optimal health and seize the responsibility and knowledge to improve the health of tribal members.

Since their arrival in New Mexico, the couple has been organizing in and around Albuquerque to start a Native Health Initiative here.

And health equity is the key concept underlying that program and all of the work that they do, says Anthony Fleg.

Basically, health equity is the notion that all health disparities between different racial and cultural groups can and should be eliminated.

Too often in the current healthcare system, shocking disparities in disease and injury rates, as well as care and outcomes, are acknowledged and accepted, says Fleg. If addressed at all, it is with the notion that the disparity should be reduced somehow - for example, that the sky high rate of Native American diabetes should be reduced to a certain percentage lower than the white rate that it currently is - instead of eliminating the disparity completely.

The concept of health equity forces the healthcare system to confront the social and cultural causes of health problems, and how they play out in each patient they see.   Read More »

It's been more than five years since Albuquerque police used smoke bombs and tear gas to break up a peaceful anti-war demonstration near the UNM campus.

In the ensuing years, U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have claimed thousands of U.S. and Iraqi lives.

That sad legacy of needless death will hang over the proceedings Monday (Dec. 8) when protestor John Fogarty opens his civil rights case against the Albuquerque police in U.S. District Court before Judge William Johnson.

Fogarty, a family practice doctor who lived in Albuquerque at the time, claims the police injured his hand and caused him to suffer an asthma attack when they arrested him on March 20, 2003.

Fogarty, who now lives in Santa Fe, claims the police violated his rights to freedom of speech and assembly by using excessive force during their unlawful arrest.

Fogarty wasn't the only protestor to sue in connection with the police - another group has pursued a similar civil rights case against police and the city.

Fogarty won't be alone in the courtroom - a number of his former colleagues at the University of New Mexico Medical School and others who were there that day will testify on his behalf.

And Fogarty says he invites others who worry about preserving their First Amendment rights to attend the trial, too - not to protest, but to observe the justice system at work.

(You can read a commentary about this issue in the NM Independent.)

New Mexico seemed particularly blessed last April when the non-profit Center for Independent Media founded the New Mexico Independent, a comprehensive online newspaper designed to cover local news exclusively.

The CIM had already established similar online papers in four states and Washington D.C as part of its New Journalist Pilot Program. The idea was to train a new corps of journalists and create independent media outlets by melding emerging blog technology with the standards of professional journalism.

The CIM experiment was a timely one, coming as the print newspaper business model was rapidly falling out of favor and online news consumption was rising.

The birth of the New Mexico Independent came just as the Albuquerque Tribune shut down, leaving the city with only one newspaper, one domineering news source and one editorial point of view.

The New Mexico Independent caught on quickly and has become a staple for political junkies, who are hooked on its arch media criticism and feisty, watchdog stories on environmental, social, cultural and educational topics and, of course, the recent election.

(Full disclosure: I write a weekly column for the New Mexico Independent, but have nothing to do with the site's daily newsgathering, which is done by fellows who work for a monthly stipend.)

This week we heard the CIM is cutting back operations in some states, drastically in some, less in others. The New Mexico Independent lost four fellows, but CIM says the site will continue to provide vigorous, local news content.

I certainly hope it does - not because I'm an occasional writer for the site - but because, like so many New Mexicans, I care deeply about the fundamentally democratic principle of keeping as many eyeballs on the news as possible.

The biggest, best-informed and most-representative electorate in American history made its choice yesterday, electing the nation's first ever African American president by a decisive margin.

I spent Election Day prowling the polls across Albuquerque with my colleague Alicia Lueras Maldonado, looking for people's personal voting stories and keeping an eye out for trouble.

In New Mexico, so many voters cast their vote early or by absentee ballot that most of the polls we visited were practically deserted. At many sites, poll workers and election protection workers outnumbered actual voters.

But we did manage to snag a few people out voting the old-fashioned way.

Most voters we talked to said they did hours of research on the candidates' positions before they made their choice.

Several, including some young, first-time voters, said they watched all the presidential debates and made special efforts to see the candidates during their campaign stops in town.

The people we talked to told us they voted because they are concerned about the planet. They are anxious about the economy. They want the war in Iraq to end. And by voting, they exercised their right and duty as citizens to do something about those major issues.

I must say that after the long, nasty election season we've all endured, it was gratifying to see such optimism, faith and sense of duty still alight in my fellow Americans.

And when that long Election Day drew to a close and the numbers came in showing that a record 131 million

Americans had voted, I went to bed happy.

Richard Delgado could have voted early.

But he's old school - he likes to vote on Election Day.

So he cast his vote at La Mesa Elementary near the State Fairgrounds in Albuquerque shortly before the polls closed at 7 p.m.

"I enjoy the actual experience of Election Day," he said. "I enjoy talking to people who have worked the election here in years before."

Delgado said his voting experience at La Mesa was good, as it has been for the past 24 years he's been voting there.

"It's always been very smooth here. Today it was extra-smooth. The second you walk in the door there's someone to help you."

Delgado said he hopeful that the winner of today's election will usher in a sense of optimism and synergy.

"I'm tired of the accusations and the negativity that I don't think were very productive," he said.

"I'm looking forward to a new, happier way that isn't so negative."

That was the election watchword today at the University of New Mexico, as virtually all of the students we talked to told us they voted early.

Like thousands of New Mexicans, student Sarah Schoen, 19, took advantage of the state's early voting provision and voted last week on campus. She thinks early voting should be the way of the future.

"It makes it so easy to vote. And especially, with paper ballots, it's a lot safer," the Taos native said.

UNM student Manuel Franco, Jr. voted early too, but he did a bit of analysis before picking the most efficient time to cast his vote.

"You have to have a strategy," said the Hobbs native, 20.

"I noticed that peak times were at lunch and during weekdays. But campus is pretty empty on Fridays. So that's when I voted. It took me 20 minutes."

Roger Peters, an election observer from Mill Valley, Calif. who watched the UNM polling place for the state Democratic Party, said he's seen few problems - and relatively few voters - on campus today.   Read More »

Check it out, fellow political geeks…Politico.com's Ben Smith calls out Bernalillo County as one of the 25 bellwether counties to watch tonight as elections returns roll in. (Politico.com) Dona Ana County made the list too.

But we all knew that already, right?

Andrew Quintana, an election canvasser at Cochiti Pueblo in Sandoval County, said there have been no serious problems at the voting site today.

Turnout has been heavier than the usual 35 percent rate, he said.

"It's been pretty heavy, at about 50 percent, I think," he said. "We're feeling pretty good about it, and hoping to get up to 75 percent by the end of the day."

POSTSCRIPT: Cochiti Pueblo, located north of Albuquerque and west of Santa Fe, is more than 80 percent Native American, according to the Secretary of State's office.

POSTED 11:41 AM (mst) The polls were quiet but steady at Duranes Elementary in Albuquerque's North Valley at mid-morning today.

The only people who had to wait to vote were the people who came early so they wouldn't have to wait, said election clerk Reber Boult.

Several dozen people were in line at 6 a.m., one hour before the polls opened precisely at 7 a.m. he said.

"The people who came early to beat the crowd were the only ones who didn't beat the crowd."

Leonard Napolitano said it took him about seven minutes to vote at Los Duranes. Napolitano, the father of Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, said he's been voting at that precinct for a dozen years or so.

There was no waiting and no problems at Gov. Bent Elementary in the near Northeast Heights at mid-morning.

Savvy voter Peter Durso zipped in and out in about 15 minutes and never had to wait in line.   Read More »

Jewell Hall remembers watching her friends and family in Texas struggle to pay a poll tax in order to vote back in the 1950's and 60's.

"Black people had to pay a certain amount to get a certificate to vote," says the retired Rio Rancho educator. "A lot of people didn't vote, because they couldn't afford to."




In Louisiana, where Hall also spent time as a young adult, Black people were faced with a test as well as a tax, Hall remembers.

"There was a special kind of test that people had to take, and which many did not pass. And that was the point of it. It eliminated a lot of people."

It wasn't until the 1965 Voting Rights Act took the voting process away from individual states and made it a federally regulated one that all African Americans were guaranteed the right to vote, said Hall.

"The 15th amendment was always there, but it had been violated across the board when it came to blacks and other groups."

Of course, that right didn't come without a titanic struggle across the American South, which saw the murders and imprisonment of many activists and innocents, said Hall.

Not enough youngsters today know about that struggle, and not enough get the connection between voting and being fairly represented in our society.

And not enough people realize that fully participating in democracy means not just voting and being represented, but making sure the representative stays responsive and connected to the people who elected him or her, said Hall.

Sadly, the public schools aren't doing a great job reinforcing that information. And not enough parents pass it along to their children, either.

"If there are generations of parents who don't understand that process, then the don't have the skills to pass it on. It's a cycle in our society.

Hall, a former president of the American Teacher Federation in Albuquerque and a founding member of the Rio Rancho School Board, says she always took her children and grandchildren along with her when she voted, and brought them to meetings of the groups in which she served as an elected official.

She says she always encouraged them to run for office in school and participate in every kind of representative democracy.

And now that they are all grown, Hall spends her hours volunteering on the phone bank at the American Teachers Federation offices in Albuquerque.

Since July, Hall has donated 30 to 40 hours a week making calls to remind people to vote or register to vote - for a total of thousands of hours.

"We always need to keep at it," said Hall. "Change is very slow, but in my lifetime, I've seen a lot of change."

Laurie Weahkee

Laurie Weahkee has spent years galvanizing the Native American vote in New Mexico.

As lead organizer with the Native American Voters Alliance, she began activating urban Indians in 2002 to vote against a street bond that would authorize construction of a road through the Petroglyphs, a sacred Native American site on Albuquerque's West Side

NAVA sprang out of a group called the SAGE Council, or Sacred Alliance for Grassroots Equality, which was formed to protect sacred native sites.

"It just became apparent to us that we needed to get involved in a political way," said Weahkee. "We would go to transportation board meetings and give fiery, impassioned speeches and still end up losing. So we started the process of trying to garner the Indian vote throughout the city of Albuquerque."

The organized Native voters helped defeat the bond issue in 2003, but failed to defeat a repeat bond issue in 2004, Weahkee said.

"And so while it was unfortunate that we lost on the sacred site issue, the upshot is that a lot of Indian people became aware of how political decisions affect our lives on a daily basis. We have a lot of people who now analyze specific policy issues that come up and are asking the hard questions - Is this going to help the Indian community or not?"

In this presidential election year, NAVA has focused on providing basic voter education to 8,000 unlikely Native American voters from all over New Mexico.

"We're making sure Indian people know their polling sites and actually get out to vote," said Weahkee.

In the future, the alliance will be working on specific issues such as examining revenue streams for Native health care and preventing uranium mining at Native sites like Mt. Taylor, she said.
On her own time, Weahkee is active in the state Democratic party and was elected to serve as a superdelegate to the DNC in Denver this year.

In her work, Weahkee said she continues to be inspired by the example of Miguel Trujillo, an Isleta Pueblo man and Marine veteran who fought to win New Mexico Indians the right to vote in 1948.

"He served in the Army and he just felt that if we were able to got to war, we should be able to vote," she said.

Native Americans had officially won the right to vote in 1924, but in actual practice, they were not allowed to vote in New Mexico, she said.

Trujillo filed suit against the state and prevailed. His suit, Trujijllo v. Garley, gave New Mexico Indians the right to vote in 1948, making 2008 the 60th anniversary of Native voting here, said Weahkee.

Frank I. Sanchez

Frank I. Sanchez of Roswell knows that people who don't have the right to vote for elected officials who truly represent their community get ignored.

"The reason I fought is because, being raised in Roswell, I saw my parents and my neighbors routinely excluded from the political process," said Sanchez, in explaining why he became a community organizer and voting rights activist years ago.   Read More »

Everyone wants to know what's going to happen with the American economy.

The preoccupation ranges from daily hysteria on Wall Street to despair, anger and confusion on Main Street about how the crisis will really affect Americans.

While anxiety reigns, there's a distinct lack of practical information about what sort of knowledge or actions might help people cope - and to insure that this level of deception and greed from those in charge of our financial systems is never allowed to run unchecked again.

So, I picked a few specific questions and decided to chat with some New Mexicans who are in unique positions to discuss them.
   Read More »

As executive director of the Albuquerque Independent Business Alliance, Rebecca Dakota communicates regularly with the owners of about 175 small businesses in the city.

Dakota's members tell her they know that keeping their employees healthy is good for their businesses as well as for each employee and their family.

"The bottom line is that when employees are healthy, they do a better job, they are more productive and they show up at work more often. So it's a good thing for the employer," says Dakota.



Ideally, an employer also wants to be able to insure the employee's family, too, because if a child is sick, it affects the employee's work, she said.

But increasingly, the cost of making sure that employees are insured is out of reach, says Dakota.

"For small business owners, the number one obstacle to providing decent health care is the cost of getting a decent policy," said Dakota. "And even then, sometimes the employee can't afford the matching part. And that's a big issue, because 40 percent of families in New Mexico are considered low-income families.'

Dakota says she's not sure what the solution is, but she knows the current system isn't working.

Tying health insurance to people's jobs is an idea that emerged after World War II, when people typically stayed at one job throughout their lives. That rarely happens anymore. Plus, the job-based model leaves out so many people and pushes the cost for those who do have insurance ever higher, she says.

"Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy…and yet this backbone is being crushed by the high cost of decent insurance and…by the fact that too many people are left out of the system," she says.

Dakota says many AIBA members share her frustration with the outmoded healthcare system and are keenly interested in helping find an alternate method.

AIBA's members range from very small businesses with just one employee to larger ones with one hundred employees or more.

Member Martha Doster operated the popular Nob Hill lingere shop Martha's Body Bueno for 32 years before closing it two years ago.   Read More »

Michelle Richardson-Touson doesn't think American college students should have to mortgage their lives to earn an education. But that's exactly what the Texas native has had to do in the course of pursuing a doctorate degree in sports administration at the University of New Mexico.

Richardson-Touson, 43, estimates she's borrowed close to $100,000 in student loans to pay for her education so far.



With almost evangelical zeal, Touson believes education will be the key to her success. And while she knows she made the right choice to pursue her doctorate degree, she is concerned about the financial burden that will follow her around for years after she earns it.

"I shouldn't have to mortgage my life to be educated," she says.

Richardson-Touson began her collegiate career fourteen years ago at the City College of San Francisco. She transferred to Washington D.C.'s historically Black Howard University in 1996 and graduated with a bachelor's degree in public relations and journalism with a minor in sports management. Along the way, Richardson-Touson scored internships with Nike and the WNBA.

In 2001, she went to Florida State University and earned a master's degree in sports management in just one year.

Richardson-Touson then worked for two years, tutoring student athletes at University of California-Berkeley, but found she couldn't land the jobs she really wanted.

She did some research and found that UNM has one of the best doctoral programs in her field. So she came here in 2003 to earn her Ph.D in sports administration.

While a student, she tutored athletes and other students at UNM's African American Student Services, but those were low-paying work study jobs with no benefits.

All the while, her student loans kept growing.

Now Richardson-Touson has a real job, with benefits, in the UNM provost's office. But she's still writing her doctoral thesis. As soon as she leaves school, the loan payments will start kicking in.

Students she's tutored look up to Touson and often ask her for advice about pursuing graduate school. Most end up making their decision based on the whopping amount it will cost them. Because she believes in education's power to transform and improve, Touson almost always advises them to go for it.

"I tell them they have to release themselves from the number," she said. "They can't repossess your degree."

Michelle Touson-Richardson is President of the Black Graduate & Professional Student Association

People who couldn't get into Republican presidential candidate John McCain's rally today at the University of New Mexico held their own rally today outside the student union building where McCain spoke briefly.

About 200 students and Democratic supporters waved signs and chanted incessantly outside during the Republican nominee's speech, a last-minute event held in the swing state of New Mexico just one day before McCain faces off in a nationally-televised debate with Democratic challenger Barack Obama.

Recent polls have shown Obama pulling ahead in New Mexico and other key battleground states as the deepening economic crisis continues to command voter's attention and undecideds begin to solidify their choice.

UNM student Kristin Taylor-Montoya, 19, said she wasn't interested in hearing McCain's speech.


Kristin Taylor-Montoya

"The line's too long for me to listen to whatever he might have to say," said the Santa Fe native.

"I come from a single parent family and I have five younger brothers. I've been listening to McCain and I don't think he cares about the have-nots. Well, try being a have not."

Taylor-Montoya said she is worried about what the economy will look like when she's ready for the job market and said she will probably vote for Obama.

A UNM staffer named Jim (who didn't want to give his last name) said he was a lifelong Republican until about two days ago, when he changed his registration to Democrat.

"McCain's age and capacity to deal with the breadth of the issues was what caused me to switch. I liked the fact that he was a veteran - I lived through the Vietnam War and I feel an allegiance with those veterans.   Read More »

Albuquerque business owner Kurly Tlapoyawa has had his ups and downs over the five years he's operated Burning Paradise, an independent video store in Downtown Albuquerque that features mostly foreign films and cult favorites.

But with hard work and a strong creative vision, he's been able to expand his business to include a film production division, a DVD distribution outlet and sponsorship of a yearly film festival.

Tlapoyawa has worked hard and played by the rules - a perfect example of the American entrepreneurial spirit.

And that's why, like so many other small businesspeople in America, Tlapoyawa is angry about what has happened on Wall Street and skeptical about the so-called "rescue plan" for the economy that's being pushed by politicians and financial experts.

Tlapoyawa's feelings of confusion, anger and cynicism are typical of many of the local small business owners

I've been talking to this week.

How fair is it, Tlapoyawa asks, for the government to rescue the huge companies who didn't play by the rules and got the economy into this mess?

"I'm struggling from month to month with the business I have right now and no actions are being taken to help me," says Tlapoyawa.

And, he asks, why should anyone trust the government, who let this happen, to craft the plan that's supposed to get us out?

"I don't believe what the government says about the bailout, but I don't know what the alternative would be. They keep saying the alternative would be worse, but they never tell us what the alternatives are."

The problem has been compounded by the lack of credible, non-biased information coming from Washington or New York - and the media isn't helping, says Tlapoyawa.

"I think people need to understand why this happened, what the alternatives are and what can be done to prevent it from happening again.

"And I'm not talking about information that's wrapped in a political speech," he says. "They need to make it plain, like Malcolm X said."

Tlapoyawa also says he resents the continuing implication that blame for the economic collapse rests largely on the millions of homeowners who took mortgages they couldn't afford.

"It is absolutely the fault of the people who are running the systems," he says. "And now the same banks that were looking to take your house are asking us for help to get them out of trouble."

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Dear Reader:

What are your thoughts about the rescue plan and its impact on everyday New Mexicans? Share a public comment below or leave a private one here.

Maryann Padilla worked and saved and scrimped all her life, and now she simply wants to know that the modest retirement she has planned for will be safe.

But like millions of Americans, the retired teacher and Grants, N.M. native is worried about how the financial crisis on Wall Street will affect her retirement plan and the $100,000 worth of annuities she bought 40 years ago to supplement her retirement.

Her annuities have taken hits before when the economy has faltered, and Padilla, who is 62, said she expects she will have almost nothing left by the time she really needs to rely on them.

"I certainly expect the crisis on Wall Street to trickle down to me," she said, alluding to the economic theory that conservatives such as Ronald Reagan used to promote the kind of top-heavy benefits that were supposed to eventually trickle down to the poor and middle class. "It seems like the only trickle-down effect we get is the negative kind."

Padilla said she's outraged about plans for a $700 billion government bailout of the private investment banks whose recklessness precipitated the crash.

"I called everyone in the New Mexico congressional delegation to tell them to vote no on the bailout,'" she said.

"I don't want (Treasury Secretary Henry) Paulsen to get the kind of authority he's seeking. There's no oversight."

Plus, Padilla said she questions the morality of a plan that would bail out rich bankers while ignoring the millions of people who have lost their homes to foreclosure.

"It'll put the fat cats back in charge of the process again," she said. "My tax dollars will be going to protect them, not the people whose houses are being foreclosed on."

Senior University of New Mexico economist Lawrence Waldman said he hears concerns like Padilla's all the time. As an economic forecaster with UNM's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, it is Waldman's job to study past data and predict future economic trends. He is often called upon by those in the media to help make sense of what's happening in the economy.

In a recent interview with Clearly, Waldman placed blame for the current crisis on several factors, including the greed of predatory lenders in the housing market and the piling-on of investments based on the sub-prime, unstable loans that resulted.

Laws were on the books to prevent those kinds of actions, but no one insisted that the laws be followed, said Waldman.

"Fraud and dishonesty were at historic levels," he said. "Self-interest is only human nature."

Going forward, the only thing that will prevent a similar corruption and abuse of the system is strict regulation, said Waldman.

"More oversight and regulation is needed. Wall Street needs to adopt a set of ethics, and follow them."

Another part of the puzzle that is already being addressed is to reassess what limitations and liabilities are assigned to large companies such as Bear Sterns and Goldman Sachs.

"We've got to keep companies from getting so large that they can't fail."

As far as the first line of effects from Wall Street, Waldman said he expects that lending and credit markets will tighten up as banks decline to lend to each other.

New Mexicans, like most Americans, will likely have trouble buying homes and obtaining loans, and their retirement plans and investments may be affected.

The number of foreclosures will go up as unstable mortgages continue to fail.

During this uncertain period, New Mexicans should save money and pay down their credit, he said.

Investing in Treasury bills is still relatively safe, he said.

The investigation into what went wrong should continue to prevent the same violation of trust from happening to the American taxpayers ever again, he said.

"Generally people are resentful of large corporations and if it turns out that the people on Wall Street were reckless and didn't care about the fallout, then there will be a bitterness in this country for a long time."

Robert Garcia says more and more families are coming to his agency every day for help in their battle to keep their homes.

Garcia is executive director of Southwest Neighborhood Housing Services, a statewide homeowner assistance agency located in Albuquerque.

Watch the interview with Garcia


Over the past year, Garcia said he's seen a shocking increase in the number of families signing up for foreclosure prevention counseling.

"We've seen a 70 to 80 percent increase in the request for those services," Garcia said recently.

Most of the foreclosure cases involve adjustable rate loans, in which the homeowners signed up for a loan at a low "teaser" rate which was set to automatically increase later, doubling or tripling the monthly payment.

Some commentators and observers have been quick to place the blame for the foreclosure crisis on the homeowners, for getting in over their heads.

And it is true that many of the homeowners did not fully understand what was being asked of them when they signed the papers, he said.

But Garcia said the blame also lies with the banking and real estate professionals who lead the borrowers astray and offered them loans they knew were not viable.

"It's the mortgage brokers and the developers, just looking at their bottom line. It's just greed, with a capital G, is what that is."

To help protect homeowners, Southwest Housing Services Inc. provides free classes in credit and budgeting and first-time homeownership.

For the homeowners who are already in trouble, Garcia's agency will negotiate with creditor and the mortgage companies for free to help keep families in their homes.

"I want people to know that they don't need to sell their home. They don't need to get foreclosed on. There is help available."

Services provided at Southwest Housing Services Inc. are free. The not-for-profit agency is located at 4605 4th NW and can be reached at 243-5511 or nhsofalb.org.

Arturo Uribe of Mesquite, N.M. didn't just wake up one day and decide to be a community organizer.

But the man who thought of himself as "just a college student, father and husband" effectively became one after he began to suspect that emissions from the Helena Chemical Co. plant next to his family's longtime home were making his young children sick.



Uribe, 38, first noticed that his daughter, Giavanni, 12, began suffering from respiratory problems and uncontrollable nosebleeds shortly after the Uribe family moved to Mesquite in 2003.

The family had been living in Silver City but moved to Mesquite, settling in the house Uribe's grandfather built decades ago. That Uribe family home sits 50 yards away from the Helena plant, which is believed to manufacture and blend agricultural fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals. The company is an American subsidiary of the giant Japanese company Marubeni and exact accounts of what chemicals are actually handled there and what is done with them have been hard to document, Uribe said.

Then, in 2004, Uribe's son Mariano was born at a Las Cruces hospital. The newborn suffered respiratory arrest days after he was brought home from the hospital. Now 4, he continues to have serious respiratory problems.

"When my son was born he was fine," said Uribe. "It wasn't until I brought him home that he went into respiratory arrest and I had to take him back to the hospital. That's when I really began looking at our environment and finding out that other families with newborns and young children had respiratory issues. I remember calling the New Mexico Environment Department and being real upset."

Other children in the community had suffered odd ailments, too, said Uribe. One neighbor boy was born with six fingers on one hand and six toes on each foot.

"Their doctor asked them if the husband worked in a chemical plant," Uribe said.

In a grassroots effort, Uribe and others in the town pressed for a New Mexico Environment Department investigation into the plant. Their efforts led to a $238,000 fine for Helena in Nov. of 2004 for failure to obtain an air quality permit and a $36,000 fine in Oct. of 2006 for failing to report a chemical spill.

But the biggest violations were uncovered in Dec. of 2007, when Helena Chemical was cited for 15 air-quality violations and fined $279,000.   Read More »

Valley High School senior Ahviahn Wells has been doing some serious cramming lately, but it's not for her classes.

She's been scouring the Internet for ways to pay for college next year, and she doesn't like the limited options she's finding.

"The issue of paying for college is becoming more of a stress than worrying about being accepted," said Wells, who is 17. "It wasn't until this year, when I became personally affected by the price of tuition, that the stories of my older, college-age friends really hit me. Most of them, all super-smart and talented, cannot afford to pay and are already in debt from taking out student loans."

Wells says she's looked at attending the University of New Mexico or the Community College of Central New Mexico but really wants to attend a small, liberal-arts college, preferably outside of New Mexico. The schools she's looking at run an average of a whopping $11,000 for annual tuition alone - not counting books, food and housing.

For Wells and millions of other promising students hoping to attend college, the traditional methods of paying for increasingly higher school costs have become more difficult.

Student loans carry crippling interest rates, expansion of the historic Pell Grant program is in jeopardy, scholarships are getting scarce, and more and more middle class families - not to mention those less well off - are finding themselves priced out of paying for college themselves.   Read More »