Saturday, August 26, 2006
SWOP homepageSWOP Board Letter to City of Albuquerque
August 26, 2006
Open Letter to the City of Albuquerque and the Public:
The Board of Directors of the SouthWest Organizing Project would like to express its deepest disappointment in response to the blatantly discriminatory and free speech-violating tactics of Mayor Martin Chavez and his Cultural Services Department in shunning the "Rock Out With Your Cause Out" community event from access to our tax-payer afforded Albuquerque Civic Plaza. The event, scheduled for Saturday, August 26th, 2006, would have been a day-long positive community-oriented event for hundreds of local youth and was the result of coordination by over thirty non-profit and governmental public health and youth-oriented organizations from around Albuquerque. Planning for the event began three months ago. Youth organizers followed the City’s event permit application process to a “T.” Then the staff of the Cultural Services Department ceased communication with the organizers. By the time the event's organizers were able to hire legal representation to force a response from the City, the Cultural Services Department justified the permit's denial by claiming that the necessary permitting deadlines had passed.
When the Mayor discovered that the event was being co-coordinated by the SouthWest Organizing Project, an organization that has historically challenged several of his policies, did he in fact direct his staff not to communicate with the event's young coordinators?
This past Tuesday, the event's young organizers chose to bring the situation to the attention of the local media. Upon receiving word of an impending press conference by the event's young organizers, Mayor Chavez scrambled to hold his own press conference, closed and confidential at his request. He charged the SouthWest Organizing Project with promoting illegal vandalism through proposing to host a "tagging" competition, and "ghetto-izing" Albuquerque's youth. He then went even further to assert additional disparaging comments including describing the SouthWest Organizing Project as an "organization of brown berets from the 70s who haven't gotten over it," and calling the planned event “repugnant.” Before making such belligerent remarks publicly, Mayor Chavez ought to take a brief look at his own "Hispanic" history and realize that the opportunities in life that he himself has taken advantage of exist only because of the hard work of such civil rights efforts.
The SouthWest Organizing Project has never condoned the illegal vandalism of any property in the very community that we have fought so hard for, throughout our grassroots organization's twenty-five years of existence. The activity that Mayor Chavez was referring to was one aiming to provide a desperately needed space for young people to positively express their artistic talent in a graffiti mural competition. What was the competition's criteria? "Express your community pride." The activity, just one component of a day-long itinerary of constructive youth activities including music, education, and voter registration efforts, fit right in with the youth organizers' genuine attempt to engage youth in Albuquerque in positive expression and community engagement, no matter what their background or interest.
Considering that throughout this situation, Mayor Chavez was dealing with young event organizers and not high-powered political moguls like himself, we are disgusted but not surprised at the underhanded tactics of the supposed leader of our City. These are vengeful politics and amount to a shameless repression of positive free speech in a publicly funded space like our community's Civic Plaza.
• We call on the City of Albuquerque to invest in its youth. Not by spending more money on the APD Gang Unit, nor spending additional funds on youth incarceration. We rather demand a complete reexamination of the priorities of the City when it comes to its youth, its very future.
• We demand that the City create adequate spaces for artistic expression by youth, and end the evident but unstated policy of the Mayor to criminalize our young people.
• We demand a public apology from the Mayor for his disparaging remarks and his actions directed towards the organizers of Rock Out for your Cause Out, and towards our organization.
• And we ask that everyone throughout the City work to support efforts that develop leadership among our young people, and that they respect the desires of our youth to conduct activities that they believe to be relevant to their lives.
The Board of Directors of the SouthWest Organizing Project.
Roberto Contreras
Ozawa Bineshi Albert
Celia Fraire
JoAnn Gutiérrez Bejar
Javier Benavidez
Louis Head
Rey Garduño
Open Letter to the City of Albuquerque and the Public:
The Board of Directors of the SouthWest Organizing Project would like to express its deepest disappointment in response to the blatantly discriminatory and free speech-violating tactics of Mayor Martin Chavez and his Cultural Services Department in shunning the "Rock Out With Your Cause Out" community event from access to our tax-payer afforded Albuquerque Civic Plaza. The event, scheduled for Saturday, August 26th, 2006, would have been a day-long positive community-oriented event for hundreds of local youth and was the result of coordination by over thirty non-profit and governmental public health and youth-oriented organizations from around Albuquerque. Planning for the event began three months ago. Youth organizers followed the City’s event permit application process to a “T.” Then the staff of the Cultural Services Department ceased communication with the organizers. By the time the event's organizers were able to hire legal representation to force a response from the City, the Cultural Services Department justified the permit's denial by claiming that the necessary permitting deadlines had passed.
When the Mayor discovered that the event was being co-coordinated by the SouthWest Organizing Project, an organization that has historically challenged several of his policies, did he in fact direct his staff not to communicate with the event's young coordinators?
This past Tuesday, the event's young organizers chose to bring the situation to the attention of the local media. Upon receiving word of an impending press conference by the event's young organizers, Mayor Chavez scrambled to hold his own press conference, closed and confidential at his request. He charged the SouthWest Organizing Project with promoting illegal vandalism through proposing to host a "tagging" competition, and "ghetto-izing" Albuquerque's youth. He then went even further to assert additional disparaging comments including describing the SouthWest Organizing Project as an "organization of brown berets from the 70s who haven't gotten over it," and calling the planned event “repugnant.” Before making such belligerent remarks publicly, Mayor Chavez ought to take a brief look at his own "Hispanic" history and realize that the opportunities in life that he himself has taken advantage of exist only because of the hard work of such civil rights efforts.
The SouthWest Organizing Project has never condoned the illegal vandalism of any property in the very community that we have fought so hard for, throughout our grassroots organization's twenty-five years of existence. The activity that Mayor Chavez was referring to was one aiming to provide a desperately needed space for young people to positively express their artistic talent in a graffiti mural competition. What was the competition's criteria? "Express your community pride." The activity, just one component of a day-long itinerary of constructive youth activities including music, education, and voter registration efforts, fit right in with the youth organizers' genuine attempt to engage youth in Albuquerque in positive expression and community engagement, no matter what their background or interest.
Considering that throughout this situation, Mayor Chavez was dealing with young event organizers and not high-powered political moguls like himself, we are disgusted but not surprised at the underhanded tactics of the supposed leader of our City. These are vengeful politics and amount to a shameless repression of positive free speech in a publicly funded space like our community's Civic Plaza.
• We call on the City of Albuquerque to invest in its youth. Not by spending more money on the APD Gang Unit, nor spending additional funds on youth incarceration. We rather demand a complete reexamination of the priorities of the City when it comes to its youth, its very future.
• We demand that the City create adequate spaces for artistic expression by youth, and end the evident but unstated policy of the Mayor to criminalize our young people.
• We demand a public apology from the Mayor for his disparaging remarks and his actions directed towards the organizers of Rock Out for your Cause Out, and towards our organization.
• And we ask that everyone throughout the City work to support efforts that develop leadership among our young people, and that they respect the desires of our youth to conduct activities that they believe to be relevant to their lives.
The Board of Directors of the SouthWest Organizing Project.
Roberto Contreras
Ozawa Bineshi Albert
Celia Fraire
JoAnn Gutiérrez Bejar
Javier Benavidez
Louis Head
Rey Garduño
