SWOPblogger

As SWOP director Robby Rodriguez has long pointed out, they are a model for conservation, community planning and "do-it-yourself" organizing. After tens of thousands of volunteer hours, the formation of a quasi-governmental agency to represent the community, the purchase of a road grader to build and maintain roads, a mountain of ingenuity, thousands of meetings and many other small, yet meaningful achievements, the community deserves every victory they'll win in the coming months.

After a week of articles and interviews, The Trib has paved the way for a bandwagon for all to board.

The Journal should follow.

Editorial: Time to bring basics to Pajarito residents
Albuquerque Tribune - Albuquerque,NM,USA

Pajarito Mesa resident Sandra Montes, who works for the Southwest Organizing Project, which is an advocate for the community, says these taxpaying residents are doing the best they can for themselves, but they need government help to guide and achieve basic community development.

"What we're asking for isn't a sidewalk or a light outside our house," she said. "We're asking for basic stuff."

County and state officials should be doing more - all they can - to reward the spirit of people living in this little village on the high desert mesa, where hope and a sense of community have taken hold, are thriving and deserve to bloom...

Pajarito Mesa residents are $500,000 closer to a community well
Albuquerque Tribune - Albuquerque,NM,USA

PAJARITO MESA - Before she can make herself a cup of morning tea or stir up Kool-Aid for her six kids, Andrea Casas drives 11 miles down from her mesa community to find her life's key ingredient: water.

Some days, Casas must fill up her containers using a friend's hose and drive back home before her husband - and her one working vehicle - leave for the day.

Other days, she gets to keep the truck and repeats the trip in the afternoon, a 325-gallon tub and her children, all under 10, in tow.

"It can make for long days with all the things I have to get done, the water and the kids," says Casas, a 32-year-old from Cuba, N.M.

"I try to bring in as much water at night as I can so I don't have to do it in the morning."

... "I just don't see it taking this long just to get us safe, clean water," said Montes, who works for the Southwest Organizing Project, a statewide grass-roots group that's helping those who live on the mesa ...

PAJARITO MESA - The 418 families who live perched above Albuquerque don't have much.

In some senses, this mesa is a do-it-yourself kind of place, where the residents have built their own city. With no county services, many have fashioned their own systems using gigantic barrels and car batteries that give them some semblance of running water and electricity.

Some 130 residents formed their own Mutual Domestic Water Association in hopes of getting a well.

National Housing Institute
By Erin Sabra Fuchs

Some 200 miles from the Mexican border, residents of New Mexico’s 23-year-old Pajarito Mesa community pay taxes but lack essential services like roads, electricity and emergency services. Perhaps the most pressing need for the 1,080 residents is one that many people take for granted – water.

In 1997, the SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP), based in Albuquerque, began organizing in Pajarito Mesa, 10 miles south of the city in Bernalillo County. SWOP exists to empower the powerless, so organizing this community seemed like a natural fit. Robby Rodriguez, SWOP’s director, says elected officials’ attitude about the disenfranchised community members could be summed up as, “Why should we care?” Read More:

# posted by karlos @ 9:00 AM