PVA Meeting Recap – June 23, 2005
| John Nelson inaugurated the brand-new PVA website, which will be an important organizational hub for the PVA and for progressives in Doña Ana County. PVAers are urged to visit the site and look around, and to sign up there, even if they are already on the PVA mailing list. This sign up gives us a chance to make sure that our data are correct on all of our participants, which will be important as we moved toward the next round of elections. So have a look around at http://www.pva-nm.org/
Several PVA working groups reported, including:
Current activities of these and all other working groups, and the names and contact information for their chairs, are available on the PVA website. There were a number of announcements about other activities and important upcoming events. Be sure to send information on upcoming events to upcomingevent@pva-nm.org, so they can be listed on the PVA website! The PVA had two special guests: Leanne Leith came from Albuquerque to speak on the Conservation Voters of New Mexico. Leanne is the Political Director of the CVNM, and she spoke of the groups interest in supporting candidates for the Las Cruces city council who would be advocates for thoughtful development. Contact Leanne at leanne@cvnm.org if you are interested in working with her, and also visit the Conservation Voters of NM website, http://www.cvnm.org/home.html, for a great legislative scorecard on the environment and much else. Rupert Clark, co-chair of the local Green Party spoke about Green Party activities statewide, especially their key role in enacting a living wage law in Santa Fe, and their efforts to extend the living wage across New Mexico. For more information about the state and local Green Party, contact Rupert at ruporch@netscape.net Our June Unified Action was presented by Cathilia Flores and Duncan Hayse of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), in which UA participants will write a letter to Dr. Michael Martin, president of NMSU, calling on him to follow the law regarding the efforts of NMSU staff members to organize, and in so doing allow workers to freely decide whether they want to be represented by a union. Details can be accessed at http://www.pva-nm.org/ua_jun_05_union.htm The final section of the meeting was a workshop conducted by Monica Torres of NMSU on George Lakoffs dont think of an elephant. Monica recapped the books key concepts, including some further thinking about what the progressive frame might look like, and we briefly practiced framing important issues. These practice sessions were very animated, and its clear we want to do more framing practice, and more group work in general, in the future. If you would like to be involved in a group that will immediately begin work on framing issues, based on Lakoffs work and Monicas presentation, contact Martha Loustaunau at mloustau@nmsu.edu After the meeting, we adjourned to the patio of Palacios on Highway 28, for a very pleasant cap to a busy spring and summer of PVA activity. |