Harvesting the Hoop House
In the May/June issue of La Jicarita News we
documented the building of the hoop house at the El Valle
farm of co-editors Mark Schiller and Kay Matthews. In this
month's issue we're showing the fall harvest made possible
by the hoop house at our 8,000 foot elevation. We grew
tomatoes (Brandywine, Pink Accordion, Oregon Spring) like
we've never grown tomatoes before; pickling and slicing
cucumbers (Armenian); summer squash; heritage raspberries
that usually freeze before we can harvest the berries;
basil; and bell peppers. We sold all kinds of vegetables to
our friends Kai and Ki at the Sugar Nymphs Restaurant in
Peñasco; at the Embudo Farmers' Market; and the
fledgling Peñasco Farmers' Market.
Fall harvest in the hoop house
Brandywine heritage tomato
Growers throughout the Peñasco Valley had a bumper
year of crops because of the early summer rains. Farmers'
markets have been organized in almost every village in our
area as well as all over New Mexico. While the big bucks are
made at the Santa Fe Farmers' Market, these small, local
markets provide a friendly and profitable venue for the many
folks who are returning to the centuries' old tradition in
northern New Mexico of growing our own.
Potential Hazards of Chemicals
Used in Natural Gas Drilling Process
By Kay Matthews
As communities around the country deal with impending or
existing gas and oil exploration they are finding more and
more data that confirms their fears about the toxicity of
the chemicals used in the extraction process. As I mentioned
in the May/June La Jicarita News article about potential
natural gas drilling in the Mora Valley, the fracturing
process used by the industry to extract the resource uses a
wide range of chemicals, including benzene, xylyne, ethylene
glycol (antifreeze), tetramethylamonium chloride, and
formaldehyde, which can cause cancer in humans (benzene and
formaldehyde) and birth defects in fetuses, change DNA, and
disrupt endocrine function.
The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, Inc., (TEDX), based in
Paonia, Colorado, is an organization that focuses on the
human health and environmental problems caused by low-dose
and/or ambient exposure to chemicals that interfere with
development and function, or endocrine disruption. The
endocrine system is a system of glands and hormones that
regulates such vital functions as body growth, response to
stress, sexual development and behavior, production and
utilization of insulin, rate of metabolism, intelligence,
and behavior. TEDX is unique in that it focuses on the
effects of very low and ambient levels of exposure on
developing tissue and resulting function before an
individual is born, which can lead to irreversible, chronic
disorders expressed at any time throughout the individuals'
lives.
The organization has been looking at the products and
chemicals that have reportedly been used during the
fracturing of natural gas wells. I say "reportedly" because
the industry is not required to disclose what chemicals are
used in the process. During the George W. Bush
administration, the oil and gas industry was exempted from
the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Surface Water
Run-off Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Community
Right-to-Know Act. Consequently, there is little oversight
regarding the hazardous chemicals used in the industry's
hydraulic fracturing process and no way of knowing exactly
what formula of chemicals is being used (there is currently
legislation being drafted to require that companies disclose
all chemicals used in the drilling process).
But TEDX has managed to compile an industry list that
includes the names of 43 fracturing products containing 344
chemicals, as of February, 2009. They have compiled that
data from Material Data Safety Sheets (information provided
to those who handle and ship the products), state Emergency
Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act Tier II reports,
Environmental Impact Statements and Environmental
Assessments, and from accident and spill reports. The
identity of every chemical used is needed to determine
product safety. According to the TEDX report, gas field
workers are most likely to be the first exposed to the
chemicals used in fracturing, especially to airborne fines,
dusts, and volatile compounds. As the chemicals disperse
from the pad, those living in proximity to fracturing
operations will also be exposed. A health monitoring program
for gas field workers and near-by residents could now be
established based on the consistent profile of health
categories associated with chemicals used during natural gas
operations. The organization would like to see full
disclosure of the contents of the fracturing fluid used at
each state and event of the operation.
In an April 27, 2009 article in Scientific American, Dr.
Theo Colborn, TEDX founder, wrote that the Environmental
Protection Agency is preparing to test 67 pesticide
ingredients for their possible endocrine disruption effects.
She criticizes the study, however, first recommended in
1998, as "outdated, insensitive, crude, and narrowly
limited." She believes that corporate interests have had too
much influence on the design of the testing and that the EPA
has ignored the "vast wealth of information" on endocrine
disruption from independent researchers. Since the early
1990s independent scientists around the world have
demonstrated how a broad selection of chemicals can
interfere with the normal development of a baby at
"extremely low levels of exposure." The EPA study continues
under the false assumption that "the dose makes the poison"
and that high dose testing is sufficient to detect any
chemical that can interfere with endocrine control of
development and function.
Contaminated Drinking Wells
More and more information is coming in that oil and gas
well fracture drilling is contaminating drinking water
wells. As part of a Superfund investigation in March of
2009, the EPA began sampling near Pavillion, Wyoming in
response to landowners' concerns. The agency confirmed the
presence of 2-butoxyethanol (2-BE), a known constituent used
in hydraulic fracture drilling, in three wells. This is the
same chemical found in a water well in Colorado near
fracture gas wells. According to Dr. Colborn, known health
effects of 2-BE include elevated numbers of malignant and
non-malignant tumors of the adrenal gland, kidney damage,
kidney failure, toxicity to the spleen, the bones in the
spinal column and bone marrow, liver cancer, anemia, female
fertility reduction, and embryo mortality. For more
information go to:
www.earthworksaction.org/PR_EPApavillionDrinkingWater.cfm.
Editorial: The Medical Industrial
Complex
By Kay Matthews
Over the course of the past month I twice found myself in
the emergency room (as the support person for someone else)
at the University of New Mexico Hospital. Understanding that
UNM Hospital is the largest public hospital in the state I
was expecting the worst, and my expectations were met.
During the ten hours I spent in the waiting room one day,
I was kept company for the same amount of time by at least
twenty to thirty others there for any number of reasons.
There were those with no health insurance, so therefore
nowhere else to go. There were those with emergencies that
are not dealt with by urgent care centers or doctors'
offices but not dire enough to require an ambulance
delivery, which enters through a different door (although
there were several people who had been brought in by
ambulance, seen in triage, and then deposited into the
waiting room). There were those who had insurance but
couldn't get doctors' appointments at UNM in any timely
fashion so they had to go to the ER to get treatment that
they should have been getting by a doctor who would then
admit them to the hospital. One of the ER doctors actually
told us that his wife had been waiting four months for an
appointment at one of the UNM clinics. And there were those
who were very confused and didn't know why they were
there.
Once you actually get out of the waiting room and into
the examination room, in this fancy new ER wing that was
recently added on to the hospital, you may find yourself
there for three days. We were there for 16 hours our first
visit, then sent home. On the second visit we were there for
about 10 hours and then admitted. If the person I was with
who needed treatment had actually been admitted during the
first visit, we wouldn't have had to visit the ER twice, for
a combined visit of 26 hours, for the same illness that
finally got us admitted the second time. But the ER must
adhere to a strict hierarchy of diagnoses that allow the
most critically ill admission first, while the rest linger
in exam rooms (or on the floor, where many prisoners in
orange jumpsuits and shackles spent many hours) because
there are not enough beds in the hospital.
Why are there no spare beds in the hospital? Because the
health care system is broken beyond repair.People with
preventable diseases end up in the hospital for any number
of reasons. They have no insurance so they don't go to see
doctors or health care specialists who might be able to
screen for early detection of these preventable diseases.
When they do see a doctor, it's not like the doctor we grew
up with (those of us over 50) who came to the house, treated
everyone in the family, often socialized with the family,
and was able to integrate medicine with lifestyle choices
and an intimacy that no longer remotely exists. When they do
see a doctor, it's usually at a for-profit clinic where the
doctor's salary is based on how many patients he or she can
see in a day. So it's in and out the door, no follow up to
see if the patient is taking the doctor's advice, taking his
or her medication, or seen by whatever specialist he or she
might have been referred to. And if the patient is referred
to a specialist, that specialist might say to the patient,
you need to go back to your primary care doctor and get a
referral to see a different specialist, but no one checks up
to see if that happens, either. In other words, there is
woeful communication between doctors and woeful care for
patients who cannot successfully navigate the complicated
primary care/referral/specialist terrain of the medical
industrial complex.
Even when you act as your own advocate, or have someone
act as your advocate, and make every effort to work through
the system as efficiently and expeditiously as possible, you
are out of luck. You can't get through by phone to doctors
who are already overworked and not inclined to return phone
calls. If you question their diagnosis or prescription for
tests, such as the enormously expensive CT scans and MRIs,
you are labeled a troublemaker and sent off to someone else
or just dropped from the system. If you happen to get sick
on a Friday, you know you're going to spend your weekend in
the ER. You have to get authorization from your insurance
company for procedures you and your doctor decide are
necessary, and if they turn you down - because, after all,
don't for-profit businesses know more about health care than
you do? - you have to appeal the decision while days or
weeks go by when you should be getting treatment. Health
insurance rarely covers alternative treatments that patients
have discovered work for them and they end up paying out of
pocket fees that certain doctors or HMOs would much rather
put towards a diagnostic test from which the HMO or doctor
gets a kickback.
All of this dysfunction is being described and argued
about in Congress, in the White House, in the mainstream
media, on blogs, and among those of us who have to work
through the system, which is all of us at some point in our
lives. Until health care is not managed by for-profit HMOs
and insurance companies, however, the argument is moot. The
ER doc who told us about his wife having to wait four months
for an appointment summed the situation up very aptly when
he told us, "There are two kinds of health care being
delivered in this country: the kind Steve Jobs gets and the
kind everyone else gets."
News Updates
Taos County Land Use Plans
As La Jicarita News reported in the May/June
issue, at the May 21 Peñasco Area Communities
Association (PACA) meeting a group of area residents decided
they wanted to "abandon" the Peñasco Valley Land Use
Plan that had been drafted by Taos County consultant Charlie
Deans, of Community By Design, along with local volunteers.
The group announced its intention to organize
representatives from all the villages in the valley to draft
its own version of the plan. As far as we know (La Jicarita
went to the initial meeting in June but only two people
showed up) a new plan was never drafted.
Deans contacted PACA on August 6, along with the other
neighborhoods he has been working with in Taos County, about
the cut off date of his involvement so that the neighborhood
plans that were endorsed by the various neighborhood
associations could move forward. He hasn't heard back from
PACA, but the association will always have the opportunity
to present its neighborhood plan to the county commissioners
at a later time. The final drafts of the eight neighborhood
land use plans Deans helped draft were submitted to the
county planning staff and county attorney on August 20,
which triggered the staff review process and eventually a
public hearing before the Planning & Zoning Commission
and County Commissioners. Deans is now working with the
county administration on the approval process.
La Jicarita News contacted one of the PACA board
members who told us that the board intends to review the
draft land use plan that Deans helped draft, notify the
community that it intends to either recommend or not
recommend the plan, and bring it to a vote.
Camino Real Travel Management Plan
Travel Management Plans for the Carson National Forest
have all been released for public comment except for the
Camino Real Ranger District. This plan, which will be
released as a complete Environmental Assessment, probably
won't be available until October of this year. According to
staff at the Supervisor's Office, the Camino Real District
is the most complex of the districts. While many of the
other districts already had designated uses that needed to
be reviewed and fine-tuned, the Camino Real has a broader
mix of uses and received a high volume of public comment
advocating for either restricted motorized use or an
expanded trail system for off-highway vehicles. The Carson
Forest team responsible for drafting the EA spent the month
of May either driving or hiking the motorized trail systems
on the district so it could better evaluate public input and
devise alternatives that best address that input. La
Jicarita News will provide an overview of that EA when
it is released.
Forest Service versus Acequias
Approximately 50 parciantes and interested people met
with Representative Ben Ray Lujan in August to discuss the
dispute between the Peñasco area acequias and Carson
National Forest over acequia maintenance and improvement
rights on federal land (see La Jicarita News, April
2009). Lujan's office had already sent a letter to the
Forest Service Regional Office in Albuquerque requesting
clarification on the regulations the FS is using to require
that the acequias get special use permits to work on their
diversions, and the congressman expressed disappointment
that there had been no movement on the part of the FS to
resolve this conflict. He said his office would be willing
to pursue changing the regulations to excempt acequias from
these requirements.
Two of the acequias involved in the dispute also met on
the site of the Llano San Juan, Chamisal-Ojito diversion
with Carson Forest Supervisor Kendall Clark, former Camino
Real District Ranger John Miera, who is now in charge of
forest special use permits, and two attoneys from the
Regional Office. In theory, the FS officials agreed that a
change in the regulations excempting acequias would benefit
everyone (and get the agency off the hook in what has become
a very bad PR issue). In a conversation with the acequia
commissioners at the meeting the FS conceded that perhaps it
could amend the chain of requirements in its permitting
process to allow the acequias to move forward. Another of
the affected acequias has already agreed to the FS
requirements, while three of the acequias have signed
memorandums of understanding with New Mexico Legal Aid,
which has agreed to represent them if the FS takes legal
action against them.
Mora County Comprehensive Land Use
Plan
The Albuquerque consulting firm Site Southwest recently
completed its update of the Mora County Comprehensive Land
Use Plan. Go to Projects on the website www.sites-sw.com. to
see the plan in its entirety. The Santa Fe County Oil and
Gas Ordinance 2008-19 (which has been submitted to the
American Planning Association for its best practices in
sustainability award) is being rewritten for Mora County by
a team of four pro bono lawyers led by Bob McNeill in
Albuquerque. The draft ordinance should be ready by mid
month.
New Mexico's Anti-Union Union
By David Correia
It's a good time to be a carpenter in New Mexico. As the
rest of the Southwest struggles from the 2008 collapse in
construction starts, New Mexico continues to attract new
businesses and the construction contracts that follow. These
trends have not escaped the attention of the United
Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners (UBCJ) that, over the
last 18 months, has unleashed an aggressive protest campaign
in which it has targeted non-union contractors and
sub-contractors. The UBCJ has mobbed dozens of non-union job
sites with signs, pickets, and broadsides, all to publicly
protest the labor practices of contractors its flyers call
"rats." At some locations the picketing has lasted more than
six months. The campaign has included a letter-writing
campaign to area businesses in which the union provides a
litany of complaints related to non-union contractors. The
targets have included the grocery stores, high schools,
casinos, and hotels that have hired non-union operators. It
has even picketed the golf courses frequented by the bosses
of the non-union contractors and developers.
The campaign has alarmed contractors and developers in
New Mexico who, like many throughout the American Southwest,
have become accustomed to, and enriched by, the lower costs
of the construction industry's largely non-union workforce.
But it wasn't always this way. New Mexico locals once
controlled the building trades and have a long history of
innovative and progressive unionism.
In 1948, 3,000 New Mexico carpenters walked off a Brown
& Root (B & R) job site at Los Alamos National
Laboratory. Despite pressure from the Atomic Energy
Commission, the UBCJ opposed the union-busting tactics of
Houston-based B & R, then and now the Pentagon's lap dog
for military construction contracts. Lyndon Johnson himself
forced B & R (today one of the world's largest
construction companies and the Pentagon's largest contractor
for work in Iraq and Afghanistan) to adhere to New Mexico
union contracts or risk losing valuable construction work in
Vietnam.
In 1963, New Mexico's carpenters responded to the erosion
in union contracts in residential construction and the
economic impacts of suburbanization by creating more than a
dozen non-profit construction corporations. Before the
decade was out, these union-owned non-profits became the
largest builders and providers of affordable housing in New
Mexico. Thousands of union carpenters found work with good
pay and benefits, and more than 7,000 New Mexicans found
reasonable rents and quality housing.
Despite this progressive history and the need for union
representation in New Mexico's construction industry, the
current UBCJ campaign heralds a new reactionary era of
cut-throat, corporate unionism. As the campaign has
developed a troubling picture of the UBCJ campaign has
emerged.
Since at least April of 2009, Albuquerque local 1319 of
the UBCJ has been protesting the use of non-union labor by
construction contractors in northern New Mexico. At one
time, campaigns such as the current one would require
carpenters or allies to walk picket lines. Those who did
walk the line would jump to the front of the queue for jobs
that came up after their picketing duty. Today's corporate
Carpenters union takes a different approach. The Carpenters
union has been protesting the use of non-union labor by
hiring non-union laborers to stand in front of various job
sites holding signs announcing the union's complaints
against non-union labor. According to some accounts, the
union has contracted with day-labor companies to recruit and
hire protestors-for-hire.
The Carpenters' broadsides complain about "substandard
wage employers", yet they pay their surrogate strikers
$10/hour to protest the $18-$22 wages of non-union workers.
The flyers direct anyone interested to contact the
Albuquerque local. But the Albuquerque local refuses to
talk. "They won't let us answer any questions," said one
local officer. The Santa Fe local refused to even
acknowledge the existence of a campaign at all. When
pressed, the Albuquerque office directed inquiries to Union
Vice President Hal Jensen in the Los Angeles office. Jensen
hasn't returned a phone call in over a year.
Given the tactics, the silence is understandable. A 2004
study by the New Mexico-based Southwest Center for Economic
Integrity found that 86 per cent of day laborers in New
Mexico are homeless. Little good could come from trying to
explain why the UBCJ preys on non-union, largely homeless,
day laborers. To the President of the Española
Laborers Union, questioned for this article, the campaign is
inexplicable. For a few dollars more, he said, the
carpenters could have hired union laborers. They could have
supported the laborer union's organizing efforts, undermined
the predatory day laborer companies, and demonstrated labor
solidarity.
So what explains the predatory tactics and secrecy of the
New Mexico campaign? The answer may well be found in the
authoritarian leadership of the 550,000-member UBCJ's
General President Douglas McCarron. Over the last ten years
McCarron has remade the union into a conservative,
anti-democratic, increasingly corporatized, willing and
repressive tool of capital.
Under McCarron's leadership the UBCJ reflects the values
and tactics of corporate America. McCarron has publicly
expressed his admiration for former GE Chairman and avowed
enemy of labor Jack Welch. In a Business Week article from
the late 1990s, McCarron referred to Carpenters union
members as his "strong product." "We have a product to
deliver," he said, "and we have to do it more efficiently."
He has sought to position his "product" in the labor market
by pitting worker against worker, pursuing growth at all
costs, and replacing rank and file unionism with an
authoritarian administrative structure.
McCarron has purged the union of dissidents, expelled
political opponents, and placed disloyal unions in
trusteeship. He has removed rank and file carpenters from
leadership positions within the union and replaced them with
business agents who have never worked as carpenters. Under
McCarron's reactionary leadership, the Carpenters are run by
political opportunists and free market shills. He has
learned his corporate lessons well.
The changes under McCarron's watch began almost
immediately. In 1996 McCarron purged the entire leadership
of the New York District Council. He shut down locals and
merged District Councils in Michigan, California, Nevada,
New England, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey into new
administrative arrangements under his direct control.
The June 1996 purge of democratically elected New York
District Council leaders heralded an astonishing new era in
conservative unionism. McCarron seized the New York District
office in an armed, midnight raid. He replaced local leaders
with corporate loyalists. The restructuring was an attempt
to make the UBCJ business friendly. Unbelievably, the union
willingly did the union-busting dirty work long reserved for
hired thugs and bought-off politicians. The tactics,
described by rank and file carpenters in a 1998 House
Sub-Committee investigation of anti-democratic practices in
the UBCJ, were ripped straight from a Pinkerton's playbook.
McCarron, lauded by the business press, survived the
investigation. By displacing the administrative authority of
locals and District Councils into regional bodies under his
own authority, McCarron has effectively centralized control
and undermined rank and file democratic unionism.
He has cozied up to corporate leaders and Republican
politicians. He became a frequent companion of former
President George W. Bush on Air Force One flights, invited
Bush to his Labor Day Picnic, and accepted a Bush invitation
to the 2002 Economic Summit.
McCarron regularly stifles local control and dictates the
terms of employment to local unions, using his business
(school) agents as enforcers. Locals throughout the United
States and Canada have complained that McCarron routinely
manipulates democratic procedures to deprive union members
from voting on union contracts.
McCarron crushed a 1999 wildcat strike in Atlanta after
union carpenters refused to work under a McCarron-negotiated
contract with a local contractor. McCarron sided with the
contractor against his own union carpenters and complained
that the strikers had caused the business owner to "lose
money for four days . . . you just don't do that."
When British Columbia carpenters revolted against the
corporatization of the Carpenters union, McCarron redbaited
his rank and file carpenters in the press. "There is a high
influence of the communist party" in the BC local, McCarron
deadpanned.
McCarron was unable to continue his anti-democratic
restructuring as a member of the AFL-CIO, so in 2001 he
orchestrated the Carpenters split from the federation. At
the time, McCarron argued that the AFL-CIO was not
aggressive enough in organizing. Since the split, McCarron
has demonstrated what he had in mind. According to dissident
union carpenters in Chicago, it has become routine practice
for the union to prey on homeless men as cheap labor to walk
fake picket lines.
Union insurgents have recast McCarron's "Organize or Die"
slogan as "Organize or Lie."
McCarron and his flunkies are careful not to lie, of
course, or better yet say anything at all, as the autocrats
who designed the regressive New Mexico campaign have
demonstrated. Meanwhile, the UBCJ panders to hack
politicians and non-union contractors.
The corporate friendly leadership of Douglas McCarron
places today's labor movement in stark contrast with the
radical leadership of men like Eugene V. Debs and Big Bill
Haywood. Haywood, for example, refused to impose labor
agreements on rank and file members. "Agreements with
capitalists," he once famously said, "are the death warrants
of labor."
Almost one hundred years later, McCarron has become
labor's willing executioner. Under McCarron's leadership,
the union frequently signs concessionary contracts with
non-union employers (known derisively by rank and file
carpenters as the Rat Brigade) that give away hard earned
overtime pay, construct multiple wage scales, exclude women
and minorities, and provide for non-union hiring quotas. And
he gets these contractors by preying on non-union workers to
man his fake picket lines. McCarron and his flunkies then
dictate contract terms to locals throughout the United
States.
One of the most troubling facts in the UBCJ's recent
descent into corporate unions is that, in many ways,
McCarron's tactics are a logical extension of long-held
conservative UBCJ values. The UBCJ invented business
unionism. The Carpenters union called the convention that
created the AFL-CIO, and then used the AFL-CIO as a bully
pulpit to advance the interests of the UBCJ over other
unions. The conservatism of the AFL-CIO allowed the
Carpenters to advance its unique form of corporate unionism.
Known as the "Big Bully" of American labor, the Carpenters
used the political clout that came from long being the
largest trade union in the United States to force union
contracts on contractors. Once union contracts were
established the Carpenters business agents policed
contractors and carpenters alike to enforce the union
dictates that governed work on a union job site. The UBCJ
has always been pro-business. McCarron's innovation is that
he has made the UBCJ anti-union-thus all the more friendly
to big business.
While the final cost to the UBCJ and the labor movement
may be difficult to gauge, the cost to the working people
caught in the cross fire of McCarron's bizarre blitzkrieg is
all too easy to measure. Dozens of day laborers man campaign
stations throughout Santa Fe and Albuquerque. All the
protestors interviewed for this article receive $10/hour to
hold signs six hours per day, four days per week. At its
protest against the use of non-union subcontractors on the
remodel of Sunflower Market in Santa Fe, non-union workers
hold signs that decry the labor practices of non-union
employers while the protestors who hold those signs receive
no health benefits, accrue no sick or vacation days, have no
access to union benefits, and are not admitted as members of
the union.
Three of those protestors, Filemon Luevano, Irma Mesta,
and Raul Alvarado (pictured above, left to right), migrated
from Zacatecas, Mexico to look for work in the United
States. Raul explained that as day laborers they hadn't
worked for weeks when they saw protestors in front of a
Santa Fe hotel. The picketers, non-union themselves,
directed them to the union office for a job as a
protestor-for-hire. Today Raul, Irma, and Filemon hold a
Carpenters union sign in front of a Sunflower Market grocery
store in Santa Fe. For their effort they are refused union
membership or union jobs. Their pay covers their rent but
isn't enough for utilities, food, or even enough to pay for
the commute to Sunflower Market, where four days a week they
do the duplicitous work of the Carpenters union, protesting
the use of non-union labor.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
• An Acequia Hydrology Symposium will be held on
October 21 at 7:30 am to 5:00 pm at the Santa Fe County Fair
Building, 3229 Rodeo Road, Santa Fe. The purpose of the
meeting is to report on research results about the hydrology
of traditional acequia irrigations systems. Presentations
will address both the technical and socio-cultural aspects
of acequias along the Rio Grande. Speakers include Sam
Fernald of New Mexico State University, who has been
conducting acequia recharge flows for many years; Steve
Guldan, of the NMSU Alcalde Science Center; Michael Cox of
Indiana University; Carlos Ochoa of NMSU; Quita Ortiz of the
New Mexico Acequia Association; José Rivera of the
University of New Mexico; Craig Roepke of the Interstate
Stream Commission; and Yeliz Cevik of NMSU. There will also
be a tour of local acequia systems on October 22 from 7:00
am to 5:00 pm, beginning at the County Fair Building. The
cost for the symposium is $15 in advance or at the door; the
tour cost is $70. For more information or to register go to
http://aces.nmsu.edu/acequiahydrology or contact Selina
Trujillo at 505 852-4241.
• The Native Earth Bio Culture Council in
conjunction with the Institute of American Indian Arts and
Pueblo of Tesuque farm program is hosting the fourth annual
Symposium For Food and Seed Sovereignty, September 25 &
26, 2009 at the campus of the Institute of American Indian
Arts in Santa Fe. The Symposium will include internationally
renowned speakers as well as local and regional experts in
the areas of food security and sustainable ecology, a
heritage seed exchange, as well as panels on youth issues in
the 21st century, food and nutrition, water issues and
traditional farming, land restoration, and medicinal herbs.
There is a vendors market featuring natural earth friendly
products, information and services. For more information
visit www.foodandseedconference.info, or call 505-424-5714
(office), or 518-332-3156 (cell).
• David Barsamian, the founder of Alternative Radio,
will appear in Taos at a benefit for Cultural Energy and
public radio and television in northern New Mexico. The
benefit takes place on Tuesday, September 22, at the Taos
Community Auditorium. He will speak on "Obama Expands the
War: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Understanding History
and Colonialism in Southeast Asia." The benefit is
cosponsored by the Las Vegas Peace & Justice Center,
Peace Action NM, Taos Peace House, Food Not Bombs, Veterans
for Peace Taos, Viva Bikes, Taos Hemp, and Madre Taos. The
groups are asking for a $5 donation. For more information
call 575-758-9791.
• The 8th Annual Spanapalooza celebration will be
held Saturday, October 3, 12 pm to 6 pm at the
Española Skate Park, 238 Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Park Road. Special guests include This Days Light, Ribbed,
Prick Lunatic, Refrence Man, and Dredging the Lake. There
will be free food, community booths, and a skateboard
demonstration. Spanapalooza is an event that brings together
the youth of the Española Valley to share music and
information provided by non-profits and local governments in
a healthy, drug-free environment.
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