Editor, I would not trade speaking, writing and living my conscience for any high-paying job pressing me to shut up my convictions. I would not trade living below the federal income tax level to refuse to pay for war — for all the money in the world. I would not trade mostly walking, sometimes riding the bus — for owning a luxury car.
Thanksgiving has been well known for being controversial in its roots in the genocide of Indigenous peoples dating back to the original colonization of the Americas. The celebration of this holiday is a sensitive subject, as the arguments on both sides come from places of deep emotional ties. For individuals of indigenous lineage, Thanksgiving celebrates a portion of history that led to a devastating genocide that diminished their population by over ten million, according to EndGenocide.org. What some may see as a warm-hearted holiday that celebrates patriotic gratitude, the reality of what event this holiday honors has left a scar on the ethics of colonial America.
Black Friday is a holiday that stands on its own — or it used to be. Over the last couple of years Black Friday has been bleeding over into Thanksgiving. Just a few years ago Black Friday meant getting up at 3 a.m. to get in line at your local Target, Best Buy or Walmart and waiting until 6 a.m. to run to the tech section and fight for the lowest priced television sets. Shopping cart traffic jams and gabfests over discounted DVD players were the enjoyable drama that constituted the normal/abnormal behavior.
Editor, On Nov. 15, U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and US Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) introduced one of the shortest bills in the histories of their two parliamentary bodies. Shorn of the obligatory "be it enacted, blah, blah, blah" boilerplate, the bill's content comes to 14 words: "It is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first." It's a short bill and it's a good bill, but it could be made both shorter and better by eliminating the word "first." What America needs is a "no use of nukes, period" policy, followed quickly by an "elimination of the nuclear arsenal" policy.
Editor's Note: This piece submitted by a student in the UNM Geography & Environmental Studies Department is part of our project to help connect the Daily Lobo audience to more members of our community. A new partnership at the University of New Mexico’s Lobo Gardens is enhancing opportunities for the UNM and Albuquerque community to learn how the health of our urban communities and natural worlds are connected. The new collaboration among the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, AmeriCorps VISTA, UNM’s STEAMLabs, the Community Engaged Learning and Research Office and the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies increases the resources and enhances the focus of Lobo Gardens, which was first established in 2010.
The City of Albuquerque District Attorney’s office announced a new program to prevent and reduce crime — SCAN, or Security Camera Analytic Network. The idea is to encourage homes and businesses to register their cameras and join the security camera map. Every day in Albuquerque, we hear about crime, and it is often hard for investigators to pinpoint who was involved and what happened. Investigators try to utilize security cameras located near the area, hoping to get any information they can by obtaining relevant videos of the crime.
Editor, “The saddest thing is, because I am the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department,” Trump said. “I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things I would love to be doing, and I am very frustrated by it.”
Editor, While I was pleasantly surprised at the news that Banner is undergoing a “massive overhaul,” I immediately felt a sense of dread as I read the UNM News story, "Campus-wide system undergoing massive overhaul” (Nov. 15). That dread deepened when I read the Banner 9 information page linked in the article. There is a timeline at the very bottom of that webpage. I panicked when I saw that the number of hours dedicated to the “Reach out and Touch Someone” phase, which includes user training among other tasks, is only six hours for the “customer team.” I am assuming, of course, that the “customer team” is providing, or at least overseeing, the end-user testing, because I cannot find this phase of the rollout anywhere else in the project plan.
As Lobos, we naturally want the best for our University, but there are setbacks that are reflected in the decreasing enrollment rates, which cannot be ignored. Poor and decreasing enrollment numbers can cause a snowball effect of hardships at the University of New Mexico. In the past year, UNM has seen almost a 6 percent drop in freshman enrollment. There is a range of issues contributing to poor enrollment numbers in recent years, but largely the issues are in terms of finances.
Editor's Note: This piece was originally published online in the UNM BioBlog on Nov. 9, 2017, written by Nick Freymueller. This is part of our project to help connect the Daily Lobo audience to more members of our community. How does climate change affect the daily life of Alaskans and their winter commute? Masters student Nick Freymueller discusses what it was like to grow up in Alaska and how climate change has personally affected his community in the cold north in the UNM BioBlog.
Editor's Note: This piece was originally published online in the UNM BioBlog on Oct. 25, 2017, written by Zachary Fry. This is part of our project to help connect the Daily Lobo audience to more members of our community. Sa-ta-na-ma.
Editor, If this nation stopped stealing and hogging the world’s wealth, if this nation stopped murdering moms, dads and kids in many nations, the United States would have far less enemies! My country is the world. I want all 7 plus billion people on Earth to be treated fairly! HELL NO to America first! I do not pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag or to any nation’s flag. I strongly support this city to be a safe place for refugees and for undocumented people.
Editor, Wikipedia defines "moral panic" as "a feeling of fear spread among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society" and notes that "A Dictionary of Sociology" attributes the cultivation of moral panics to "moral entrepreneurs and the mass media." We're well into the second year of a moral panic drummed up by Democrats and "Never Trump" Republicans for the purpose of nullifying the outcome of the 2016 presidential election — removing U.S. President Donald Trump from office or making him a four-year de facto lame duck — by blaming his upset victory on "Russian meddling."
Albuquerque City Council unanimously passed an ordinance on Nov. 6, making panhandling to motorists illegal. This is not a good solution for our city. The City Council’s new pedestrian ordinance places restrictions not only on panhandlers, but also on vendors such as Girl Scouts selling cookies to motorists. The ordinance also forbids “boot brigade” firefighters from receiving donations from people in their cars. The criminalizing of these harmless fundraisers not only ignores what the people in Albuquerque asked for, but also does not solve the issue it was meant to address.
Editor, Our hearts go out to the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The First Baptist Church of this town and the entire community was ambushed in what resulted as the worst mass shooting in Texas history. Twenty-six people are dead, and many others are currently fighting for their lives in intensive care. This is heart-crushing for this Texas community and all of America, as we must conclude no place is safe in America anymore. My hometown church in Inez, Kentucky kept the backdoor of the church unlocked during most of my high school years. The church was a place where anyone could enter and pray and seek refuge from the problems of the world.
Editor, In 1926, a concurrent resolution of the U.S. Congress held it "fitting that the recurring anniversary of (the armistice which brought World War One to an end) should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations." In 1938, Congress enshrined Nov. 11 of each year as an American holiday "dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day.'" Somewhere between 15 and 19 million human beings — one-third of them civilians — perished in World War I. Fitting, don't you think, to set aside a day each year for remembrance of the tragedy and for resolve against its repetition, however vain the latter hope might prove?
Editor, One of the best things about November is a cool fall breeze wafting in through an open window. This holds true at any other college campus, where students prop open dorm windows to get some air while studying. Where UNM separates itself from the pack is in how one can also listen to a group of homeless people get in a heated dispute in the R Lot through the open window.
Editor, I would be ashamed to watch a football game. I would be ashamed as hell to enjoy watching men brutally injure each other’s knees, shoulders, elbows, necks, brains...Many former football players suffer from concussions. They suffer depression, Alzheimer’s, severe headaches, alcoholism, other drug addiction, dementia, suicide, violence toward family and friends...The donated brains of 110 out of 111 dead former NFL players suffered serious brain disease. Is encouraging boys and men to play football less harmful than addicting them to cigarettes, booze or cocaine?
Editor, On Nov. 3, U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who spent five years as a prisoner of the Taliban in Afghanistan, was sentenced to dishonorable discharge, reduction in rank to private and a $10,000 fine after pleading guilty to charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Without hesitation and displaying reckless disregard for his own reputation, U.S. President Donald Trump courageously mounted his keyboard and charged Twitter to pronounce the sentence "a complete and total disgrace to our Country and to our Military."
Editor, If we lived in North Korea and we heard the U.S. president with thousands of nuclear bombs at his command threaten to mass murder our nation of 25 million women, men and children when he spoke before the whole world at the United Nations last month, how would we feel?
Solutions by The State News
