Central New Mexico Community College and Central New Mexico Educators Union reach impasse in bargaining process — Alice Fordham, KUNM News
Central New Mexico Community College and the Central New Mexico Educators Union have reached an impasse in their bargaining process.
According to the union, the parties are scheduled to begin mediation with a federal mediator Thursday, after no agreement was reached by the end of August on either full or part time faculty contracts.
Union president Mark Love-Williams told KUNM in an email that the number one issue is workload for the full time faculty.
He said that since the beginning of the pandemic, educators have been expected to do things like maintain and upgrade online courses, ensure compliance with accessibility mandates and develop more new courses.
He said large segments of the full time faculty report working more than 60 hours a week to complete their duties, and that some people have left their jobs because of the workload.
Love-Williams also said that the part time faculty also face problems to include no guarantees that they will be included in scheduling from term to term, making it hard to create a liveable budget or even take on a second job.
The community college said in a statement that, “CNM considers the negotiation process with the faculty union to be ongoing and will continue to follow the confidentiality provisions required by the collective bargaining agreements.
The statement confirms plans for mediation and adds, "CNM is proud to have outstanding, dedicated faculty serving our students and will continue to negotiate in good-faith in an attempt to resolve the impasse quickly.”
New Mexico to pay $650K to settle whistleblower's lawsuit involving the state's child welfare agency — Associated Press
New Mexico's Children, Youth and Families Department has reached a $650,000 settlement in a whistleblower lawsuit brought by two former agency officials.
The settlement was announced Tuesday, just weeks before the case was scheduled to go to trial in a state district court in Santa Fe.
The suit was brought by former CYFD public information officer Cliff Gilmore and his wife, Debra Gilmore, who headed the agency's office of children's rights.
The couple were both fired in 2021 after raising concerns about the CYFD's practice of conducting official business through an encrypted messaging app and automatically deleting messages in potential violation of New Mexico's public records law, according to their lawsuit.
"We wanted to hold CYFD accountable and stand up for others who may have been treated the way we were," the Gilmores said in a joint statement. "We aimed to shine light on what we believed to be wrongdoing that was directly harmful to the very children that CYFD was sworn to protect."
CYFD admitted no wrongdoing or liability in agreeing to settle and an agency spokesperson declined to comment other than to say the case had been resolved and the settlement was public.
Santa Fe National Forest continues prescribed burns, smoke visible around Abiquiú — Alice Fordham, KUNM News
The Santa Fe National Forest is continuing with a prescribed fire in the Cuba Ranger District, which began at the start of this week, and which has caused smoke around Abiquiú and nearby communities.
Fire managers say that the Golondrina prescribed burn is proceeding well and that more than 1,500 acres have been burned with low-intensity fire.
They are using a combination of hand ignitions around the edge of the fire and a helicopter for ignitions in the interior of the burn.
Another burn planned for this week in the nearby Coyote Ranger District has been postponed but could begin Thursday if weather conditions are favorable.
A statement from the Santa Fe National Forest said that the objectives of the burns includes reducing juniper encroachment, enhancing foraging for wildlife and reducing the amount of flammable vegetation on the forest floor.
Judge considers accusations that New Mexico Democrats tried to dilute votes with redistricting map — Morgan Lee, Associated Press
Accusations that New Mexico's Democratic-led Legislature unfairly diluted the vote of a politically conservative oil-producing region with its redistricting map are heading to trial on Wednesday, despite a last-minute flurry of motions that included an effort by the governor's attorneys to delay the proceedings.
The outcome is likely to have a big influence on which party represents a congressional swing district along the U.S. border with Mexico where partisan control has flipped back and forth three times in three elections.
New Mexico's 2nd District is one of about a dozen that are in the spotlight nationally as Republicans campaign to hold onto their slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2024.
Democrats got a potential boost for the 2024 congressional elections as courts in Alabama and Florida ruled recently that Republican-led legislatures had unfairly diluted the voting power of Black residents. Legal challenges to congressional districts also are ongoing in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
In New Mexico, U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez of Las Cruces edged out a first-term Republican in 2022 after the district was reshaped by Democrats to include portions of Albuquerque, while divvying the deep-red southeastern corner of the state among three districts, all currently held by Democrats.
Former Congresswoman Yvette Herrell wants the GOP nomination for a rematch, launching her campaign alongside House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during a rally in Las Cruces in April.
The trial in Lovington is expected to last three days. The New Mexico Supreme Court gave the state district judge overseeing the case until Oct. 6 to come to his conclusions in an order that can be reviewed by the high court.
In its court challenge, the Republican Party alleges that the new congressional map flouts traditional standards of redistricting that held sway over the past three decades, dividing communities of common interest for political gain by Democrats.
Democratic lawmakers say new congressional boundaries were vetted appropriately through the political process to ensure more competitive districts that reflect population shifts, with deference to Native American communities.
The judiciary is racing against the calendar to ensure any potential changes come into effect in time for the 2024 elections.
In New Mexico, Democrats won all three congressional contests in November. They control every statewide elected office, command majorities in the state House and Senate, and make up the five-member Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court did reject a late effort by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's attorneys to have the trial delayed. The court has yet to decide on another petition that challenges an earlier denial by the state district judge to dismiss as defendants the governor and lieutenant governor. The court was expected to make a decision on that request Wednesday.
Attorneys for Lujan Grisham argued in their filing that the three-day, in-person redistricting trial will "significantly diminish their ability to defend the governor in a multitude of pending emergency lawsuits challenging her recent declarations of public health emergency."
The governor's recent attempt to ban the carrying of firearms in New Mexico's most populous metropolitan area through her public health emergency declaration fueled a public backlash and put members of her own party on the defensive — including Vasquez, who said solutions to gun violence would have to be constitutional and protect the Second Amendment.
Curbing government overreach and protecting constitutional rights have been part of Herrell's past campaigns and are again this time around, with the gun debate likely to energize some voters in the district.
The New Mexico Supreme Court in an opinion issued last week explained its reasoning for allowing the gerrymandering challenge to be heard by the lower court. It said state courts have an obligation to protect the right to vote, which Chief Justice C. Shannon Bacon described as "the essential democratic mechanism" for securing other guarantees outlined in the state constitution.
The court outlined a three-prong test that the state court must consider, one of which is whether the intent of drawing the boundaries was to entrench the political party in power by diluting votes of people who support the rival party.
To what extent state lawmakers will be able to testify has been among the issues attorneys have been feuding over, with some suggesting that certain discussions had during the legislative session should be protected.
Abduction and terrorism trial after boy found dead at NM compound opens with mom's testimony - Morgan Lee, Associated Press
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Federal prosecutors presented tearful testimony Tuesday from the mother of a sickly toddler who was whisked away from his Georgia home by relatives without her permission to a remote desert encampment in northern New Mexico where he died.
Four family members, including the boy's aunts, are facing kidnapping or terrorism charges, or both, that stem from an August 2018 raid in search of the 3-year-old boy at a squalid encampment near the Colorado line. Authorities said they found the suspects living with 11 hungry children without running water at the encampment encircled by berms of tires with an adjacent shooting range where guns and ammunition were seized.
The badly decomposed body of Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj was eventually found in an underground tunnel at the compound.
Abdul-Ghani’s mother, Hakima Ramzi, recounted her love and devotion to a cheerful son who lived with severe developmental disabilities and frequent seizures — and her shock when husband, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, and his sibling accused her of casting spells on the boy.
“He accused me of black magic, I’m not that type of a woman to practice black magic,” said Ramzi, a native of Morocco who spoke in broken English.
Ramzi said her denials fell on deaf ears. She said her husband and his sister traveled abroad to learn more about alternative healing based on the Quran.
After she demanded a divorce, Ramzi said that Siraj Ibn Wahhaj took their son to a park and never returned. She tried unsuccessfully, she said, to track them by phone before turning to police and then child protective services.
Authorities allege the family engaged in firearms and tactical training in preparation for attacks against the government, tied to an apparent belief by some that the boy would be resurrected as Jesus Christ and then explain which corrupt government and private institutions needed be eliminated.
Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, the boy's father, along with his sisters Hujrah and Subhanah Wahhaj, and the latter's husband, Lucas Morton, were charged with conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, among other charges. Morton and Siraj Ibn Wahhaj were also charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. government personnel.
Because a cause of death was never determined federal prosecutors opted for kidnapping charges, but Siraj Ibn Wahhaj is the only one not yet charged with that because of his legal status as the boy’s father.
Prosecutors plan to present evidence that Siraj Ibn Wahhaj and his partner Jany Leveille, a Haitian national, took Abdul-Ghani in December 2017 to resettle in New Mexico, where they performed daily prayer rituals over the boy as he cried and foamed at the mouth. They also allege the child was deprived of medication as his health failed. Leveille was initially charged with kidnapping and terrorism-related charges but she has agreed to accept a reduced sentence on weapons charges. She has not appeared at the trial.
Defense attorneys for sisters Hujrah and Subhanah Wahhaj told the jury Tuesday that terrorism allegations against the mothers and New York City natives are largely based on a fantastical diary written by Leveille about her belief that Abdul-Ghani would be resurrected.
“It's all completely hypothetical,” said Donald Kochersberger who is representing Hujrah Wahhaj. “It's all just a fantasy.” He said the family’s hardscrabble efforts to secure basic shelter in a harsh, remote environment are being misrepresented by prosecutors as terrorism.
He added that Abdul-Ghani's death shortly after arriving in New Mexico was a shocking and sad outcome for a boy with fragile health but that what the government construes as kidnapping “really is just a family traveling together to New Mexico."
Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, who declined his right to an attorney, warned jurors that “the government will attempt to portray the closeness of family as terrorism.”
He urged the jurors to make up their own minds about the credibility of testimony gathered by the FBI from interviews with children.
Attorneys for the defendants have said previously that their clients would not be facing terrorism-related charges if they were not Muslim. The grandfather of the missing boy is the Muslim cleric Siraj Wahhaj, who leads a well-known New York City mosque that has attracted radicals over the years, including a man who later helped bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.
The elder Wahhaj watched the trial Tuesday afternoon from the courtroom gallery.
“I'm here with an open mind,” he said. “We're told in my religion to stand up for justice even if it's against your own family.”
Group gathers opposition to Rio Arriba County plans to resurrect Spanish conquistador statue removed by government officials in 2020 — KUNM News,Source New Mexico
People from Northern New Mexico are organizing to oppose the local government’s intentions to resurrect a monument depicting genocidal Spanish conquistador and war criminal Juan de Oñate.
Outside the Rio Arriba County headquarters on Monday, activists, birth workers, parents and allies held a news conference next to a recently constructed concrete pedestal, upon which county officials plan to erect a statue of Oñate they had taken down during widespread protests here and across the country in 2020.
Dr. Christina Castro (Taos, Jemez), a member of Three Sisters Collective, said they “are not going to allow this monument to go back up.”
“This has not happened yet, and as far as we’re concerned, it’s not gonna happen,” Castro said. “We allow these folks to have power and move within our communities with impunity, and we have the choice to say no.”
Beata Tsosie (Santa Clara) said there is no space for upholding the values of colonialism anymore.
“This is not a past issue of historical violence; this is an ongoing issue of ongoing colonial violence,” Tsosie said.
That violence includes the overdoses from fentanyl ripping through the community, the lack of housing for people in the area, and attacks against Indigenous people who go missing or are murdered, said Luis Peña, one of the event’s organizers.
The political battle over the Oñate statue in Rio Arriba was already “fought and won by the people,” said Justine Teba (Santa Clara), a member of The Red Nation.
The statue is in storage out of public view where it’s sat since the summer of 2020, when county officials removed it from its original place at a different county building in Alcalde, about nine miles north of Española.
Activists on June 15, 2020 celebrated the removal and used red paint to leave handprints on the base the county left empty. The Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Office later asked the county government to pay for riot gear in the event of future protests. The new location for the statue is feet away from the sheriff’s office.
That fall on Indigenous People’s Day, activists in Santa Fe tore down the obelisk in that city’s central plaza. They also left red handprints on the obelisk. The same handprints could be found on the Kit Carson monument outside the federal courthouse in Santa Fe that was defaced earlier this year.
What the red hands symbolize is the dialogue community members are hoping to have.
Tsosie asked the crowd on Monday if they are bothered that children “are born into a culture of violence, where they’re gonna be expected to fight for a military that does not love or care for them, or the issues they’re facing in their communities?”
Tsosie was a member of the state’s Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women & Relatives Task Force, where she learned about the root causes of violence. At the end of the news conference, she delivered the task force’s response plan to the county government.
She opposes any symbols or monuments to oppression “that are based and rooted in patriarchal violence and militarism.”
“We are currently occupied by Los Alamos National Laboratories, enacting violence on our lands and our bodies, creating economic disparities with classism in our communities, keeping us in an impoverished state, and subject to all of the disparities around our health and wellness,” Tsosie said.
Patriarchal violence teaches children and men that it’s OK to be violent against women and nonbinary people, Tsosie said, and that women and children are property.
Antonio DeVargas, a local activist with roots in the La Raza Unida movement of the 1970s, also announced a petition to remove county commissioner Alex Naranjo from office. Naranjo was elected to the commission in 2022 and is leading the push to resurrect the monument.
Celina Montoya-Garcia (Ohkay Owingeh) brought her child to the news conference Monday, and asked why Rio Arriba County is teaching children to relive history by supporting a statue that symbolizes violence.
“Oñate is the direct symbol of slavery and murder,” Montoya-Garcia said. “I do not approve of glorifying somebody who caused violence and murder to Acoma people. He colonized and murdered Indigenous people. He cut the feet off our Indigenous brothers.”
She asked why the money spent on fixing the statue’s foot wasn’t spent on social programs like support for unhoused people, substance use disorder treatment, MMIWR programming or given to Indigenous youth and families.
Castro suggested that the county government’s reinstatement of the Oñate statue is a response to her and others’ recent organizing in opposition to Santa Fe Fiesta reenactments in public schools.
Jennifer Marley (San Ildefonso), a member of The Red Nation, said Oñate “represents the death drive of colonialism.”
“He represents all of the sickness that we’re still dealing with today: the fentanyl overdoses, the violence against women and children,” Marley said. “Oñate is never coming back.”
Marley pointed to historical examples of solidarity between Native people, Nuevomexicanos, and genizaro people, including the Battle of Chimayo against the U.S., and the Battle of Taos.
“This is not about who’s from where, or whose ancestors did what, this is about us learning how to be good relatives to each other and the land now, today, in this day and age, for everybody’s sake,” Marley said.
Every summer, Tsosie said, Tewa and genizaro women get together to share seeds and exchange knowledge about how to care for the land.
The true culture of this place, Tsosie said, is a commitment to the protection of land, water, and seeds, not militarism and conquest.
Elena Ortiz (Ohkay Owingeh), also a member of The Red Nation, said Oñate doesn’t deserve to be elevated.
“If you’re a leader in this Valley, you should be leading. You should be stopping the drugs. You should be stopping the violence,” Ortiz said. “Instead, you’re sitting by and getting fat and filling your pockets, and that’s the legacy that Oñate has brought to this Valley. So no, we don’t want Oñate elevated. He is not someone worthy of respect.”
Interior Department creates oral history project to preserve testimonies from survivors of Indian boarding schools — Jeanette DeDios, KUNM
The Department of Interior announced Tuesday that it will establish an oral history project to collect and document experiences from generations of Native Americans who attended federal Indian boarding schools.
The schools often forcibly removed Native children from their families and prevented them from practicing their language and cultural beliefs.
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition will be receiving a $3.7 million grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to record stories from survivors so they can be passed down to future generations.
Those participating will have the opportunity to share their interviews with federal and tribal governments, policymakers, researchers, and the public.
This initiative is part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative created by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
In a statement, Secretary Haaland called the initiative, "a significant step in our efforts to help communities heal and to tell the full story of America.” She said the U.S. government has never before collected the experiences of boarding school survivors, which tribes have long advocated for.