Board wants city to make attacks on homeless a hate crime

The city’s Human Rights Board is recommending that Albuquerque’s hate crimes ordinance be updated to include housing status — a reference to those experiencing homelessness or who are precariously housed. The recommendation comes after board members noticed a rise in hostilities toward the unhoused community. The board is appointed by the mayor and confirmed by […]

Posted inBernalillo County, Local Gov.

County manager finalists make final pitches to commission, community

Joseph Lessard says he’s got the diversity of experience to head up the government of New Mexico’s most populous county. Cindy Chavez says her leadership record presents her as the ideal candidate. Marcos Gonzales says he’s invested in Bernalillo County’s future success and is familiar with the challenges facing it. One of them will be […]

Posted inBernalillo County, Local Gov.

Split commission redoes county manager selection process during tense meeting

The process Bernalillo County commissioners used to figure out how to hire a new county manager has now been redone to please state investigators, but two commissioners are still questioning whether it was legal. The ratification was necessary after the New Mexico Department of Justice sent a letter to the commission saying it had violated […]

Posted inNational News

Black Sabbath

By Hakim Bellamy I promise it was no hyperbole when I said to Dr. Opal Lee, in the presence of her granddaughter Dione Sims: “I hope it doesn’t make you blush when we rightfully call you a living, breathing national treasure.” Roughly 12 hours later, I would be on stage with Sims and Lee in […]

Posted inNational News, Syndicated

The beginner’s guide to celebrating Juneteenth

By TERRY TANG For more than one-and-a-half centuries, the Juneteenth holiday has been sacred to many Black communities. It marks the day in 1865 enslaved people in Galveston, Texas found out they had been freed — after the end of the Civil War, and two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Since it was designated a federal holiday […]

Posted inCongress & Federal Gov., National News

Heinrich-led bump stock ban gained speed, then stalls when one Republican objects

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled that it would take an act of Congress, not a Trump-era regulatory rule, to ban bump stocks for firearms. Monday afternoon, New Mexico’s U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, joined by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), announced that they had organized nearly two dozen […]