Affordable Housing

By Lora Lucero

The lesson for progressives, I think, in the recent battle over amendments to the zoning ordinance (called the Integrated Development Ordinance in Albuquerque) is that effective messaging is critical.

Following months of meetings and controversy, the City Council approved the amendments on a 5-4 vote on June 21st. The amendments allow casitas (aka granny units) to be built in the single-family R-1 zone which accounts for about 2/3 of sprawling Albuquerque. Although some who spoke in opposition claim the casitas will not help address the affordability issue in Albuquerque, studies clearly show that building more diverse types of housing stock and increasing the housing supply will benefit everyone, including renters and those on the streets.

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SUPPORT UNM HEALTHCARE WORKERS!

By Lora Lucero

Bright and early on Thursday, June 22nd, healthcare workers and their allies marched in protest in front of UNM Hospital. Organized by District 1199nm, the union representing many hospital workers in New Mexico, they were joined by United Grad Workers of UNM and other unions and community members standing in solidarity with their demands.

They want fair staffing, safe working conditions and a decent salary. For many months, Kate Becker, the UNMH CEO, has refused to talk about these concerns with union leaders.

Email: katebecker@salud.unm.edu   Phone: 505-272-2111   Progressive allies know that healthcare should be a fundamental right of all Americans. In New Mexico it begins with meeting the basic needs of healthcare workers. 

ARMS RACE = SUICIDE RACE

By Lora Lucero

Koohan Paik-Mander, a Hawaii-based journalist, is currently on a speaking tour in the U.S. to ring an alarm bell – to wake up Americans. The paradigm shift in the way we wage war is rapidly pushing us over the proverbial cliff. The U.S. government is building a “high speed kill web” to encircle the entire planet with 5G capability to summon unmanned weapons and spacecraft at a moment’s notice, all operating on a sea-land-space infrastructure comprised of satellites and a “smart ocean” made up of undersea sonar and radar networks. The data cloud for the new war fighting paradigm will be developed by Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and Google, which collectively received $9 billion last December from the Pentagon to begin research.

The facts and figures rolled off her tongue quickly as Koohan explained how this hyper-costly infrastructure is creating a new reality with dead oceans and atomized warfare. “A weaponized Pacific is a dead Pacific. And a dead Pacific is a dead planet.” Her pictures and diagrams showed how whale poop is keeping our oceans alive. Their poop is rich in nutrients that stimulate the growth of phytoplankton, capturing an estimated 40% of all the carbon dioxide produced. But roughly a 100,000 whales are being killed each year by the U.S. military using the Pacific Ocean and islands as a testing ground for new weapons systems and live-fire training, along with the use of sonar for anti-submarine warfare training.

Continue reading ARMS RACE = SUICIDE RACE