As thousands flocked to Washington, D.C., for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s “Rally to Restore Sanity,” Albuquerque had its own.
Michele Lupowitz, event organizer, said the point of the rallies was not to point fingers at specific politicians or criticize political beliefs, but to support rational dialogue missing in politics today. She said politics are not driven by the people’s interest.
“The people want reason and sanity and progress,” Lupowitz said. “No one (politician) in the whole United States has used either of these words: reason or sanity. There’s a lot of fear and not too much sanity. There’s a lot of greed, a lot of things done for reasons other than making the future secure.”
At the intersection of University Boulevard and Central Avenue on Saturday morning, horns blared, and many cheered in support of the rally.
Lisa Kshatriya-Ward said the event encouraged people to think.
“It doesn’t matter who we vote for,” she said. “What matters is that … most of us are intelligent enough to look at the facts, to argue cogently, and to not scream at each other and hit each other over the head.”
Wes Stallcup, who voted early at UNM on Saturday, said the rally was not devoid of partisan arguments. He said New Mexico’s gubernatorial race needs sanity, and he will vote for “the better of two evils.”
“This race is going to be pretty hard for me,” he said. “Their politics to me are so muddled. You can find fault with both of them … Susana Martinez doesn’t intrigue me at all, and Diane is, I don’t know.”
