Interfaith Worker Justice - New Mexico

01/10/2024

St. Paul swore in a historic all-female City Council, which is also the city’s most racially diverse council.

08/29/2023

"In humans, there are studies showing they can contribute to or cause everything from heart attacks and strokes to cancer and dementia.
Cancer may be where the microplastics crisis is most visible right now, however.
For example, the past few decades have seen an explosion of colore**al cancer among young people: it’s now the leading cause of cancer deaths in people under 50. A study published in JAMA’s journal Surgery found:
“Based on current trends, in 2030 the incidence rate for colon and re**al cancer will increase by 90.0% and 124.2% for patients 20 to 34 years of age and by 27.7% and 46.0% for patients 35 to 49 years of age.”"

“The researchers found that the particles had begun to bioaccumulate in every organ, including the brain, as well as in bodily waste.”

08/22/2023

"The people v. John Eastman could have been a miniseries in Santa Fe before it was a criminal case in Georgia.

A small group for the last 13½ months assembled on a busy corner to demonstrate against Eastman, a Santa Fe resident and unorthodox legal adviser to former President Donald Trump."

A small group for the last 13½ months assembled to rally against the Santa Fe resident and former Trump lawyer.

08/21/2023

Rosalie Silberman Abella is the Samuel and Judith Pisar visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School and is a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. This op-ed is adapted from her speech upon receiving the 2023 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Medal of Honor from the World Jurist Association.

To make justice happen, we can never forget how the world looks to those who are vulnerable.

08/19/2023

Barbara is the only remaining survivor of the summer dance camp in Ruidosa...all the others died before reaching the age of 40.

Young teenager Barbara Kent said that several hours after the atomic bomb went off on July 16, 1945, she and some friends in Ruidoso, New Mexico—a part of Lincoln County—noticed white flakes drifting down from a big cloud in the sky. “We were grabbing the white flakes, and putting it all over ourselves, pressing it on our faces,” Kent said. “But the strange thing, instead of being cold like snow, it was hot. And we all thought, ‘Well, the reason it’s hot is because it’s summer.’ We were only thirteen; we didn’t know any better.” Kent says that this photo of her and her friends was taken that day, and that it features them playing in the fallout. Image courtesy of Barbara Kent’s daughter, Kaysie Kent.

The Trinity test site was chosen, in part, for its supposed remove from human inhabitation. Yet nearly half-a-million people were living within a 150-mile radius of the explosion, with some as close as 12 miles away. None were warned or evacuated by the US government ahead of time.

08/17/2023

In a remarkable decision in a Montana District Court this week, a judge ruled that human-caused climate change is real, happening, and poses a clear and present threat to human health and the health of the environment. The case brought by 16 young people challenged the constitutionality of provisions in Montana’s Environmental Policy Act that forbade the state from considering the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions or climate change in environmental reviews

“The science is clear that there are catastrophic harms to the natural environment of Montana and Plaintiffs and future generations...”

07/29/2023

07/24/2023

PASADENA, Calif. - Esteban Chavez had worked at UPS for four years. His family says he had dreams of moving up in the company, perhaps getting into management. But sadly at the age of 24, he died suddenly while on the job.

One day after celebrating his 24th birthday, Chavez collapsed on a driveway in Pasadena while delivering packages on June 25.

Esteban Chavez died on his route in Pasadena, just one day after his 24th birthday.

07/22/2023

"Earlier this week, The New York Times published a partial exposé of Trump’s plans for his second administration. It involved basically turning America into Russia or Hungary, where the president becomes the singular center of federal power, eclipsing Congress and the Courts."

Trump: “If you f**k around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before.”

07/22/2023

The Border-Industrial Complex = Big Profits for private companies at tax payer expense.

"An analysis of the “border-industrial complex” by the Transnational Institute shows that the budgets of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have exploded in recent years. The combined budgets of the agencies have more than doubled since the mid-2000s — and are now 60 times higher than the immigration enforcement system received in 1980. By one estimate, the border security industry will more than double in value from approximately $305 billion in 2011 to some $740 billion in 2023.

Much of the funding is plowed into public-private contract deals with large firms that furnish immigration agencies with everything from tear gas canisters to detainee health care."

Much of the funding is plowed into public-private contract deals with large firms.

07/22/2023

"New York City has agreed to a record-breaking settlement of more than $13 million in the civil rights lawsuit brought on behalf of nearly 1,300 people who were abused and arrested by police during the George Floyd uprisings of 2020 — one of the most expensive payouts ever awarded in a lawsuit over mass arrests."

“We don’t want more historic settlements — we want police out of protests,” said one attorney.