Gallup Sun

Conference to be held as three-part virtual series this year

 

ALBUQUERQUE—Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham will give the keynote address at this year’s New Mexico KIDS COUNT Conference. She will appear in the first of three virtual events that will take place online Aug. 25, Oct. 13, and Dec. 3. The series will address anti-racist policy reforms to improve child well-being and the impacts of COVID-19 and the current recession on children and families in New Mexico.

The first session, titled “Status of Child Well-Being in New Mexico & KIDS COUNT Data Book Release,” is Aug. 25. Governor Lujan Grisham will present “Improving Child Well-Being in New Mexico,” Karina Jimenez...

As the covid-19 pandemic has gripped our nation, the deep flaws and inequities of our health care delivery system are being brought into sharp relief.  Climbing insurance premiums and sky-rocketing prescription drug prices are not new; but now we can see clearly how my health is so closely intertwined with that of my neighbor, so that public health becomes critically important.  Instead of rationing health care by wealth, as our current private health insurance system does, health care needs to be treated as the basic human right that it is.

The New Mexico Health Security Campaign has been at work since 1992 to carefully develop a plan for universal health care for all New Mexicans...

More than 650 miles of barriers already exist along the border. These walls, fences and barriers cut through sensitive ecosystems, disrupt animal migration patterns, cause catastrophic flooding, and divide communities and tribal nations.

Congress has already approved more than $3 billion for border walls since Trump took office. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy Trump’s demands. Now, with the declaration of a national “emergency,” Trump is illegally attempting to funnel billions more to border wall construction in some of the country’s most sensitive and spectacular landscapes.

Trump’s wall would harm border communities, perpetuate human suffering, destroy thousands of...

Doesn’t match scope of unprecedented economic challenges

ALBUQUERQUE—The Republican COVID-19 relief plan unveiled yesterday [July 27] doesn’t meet the needs of New Mexico families and doesn’t address our unprecedented state fiscal crisis, which means it will make the recession longer and more painful, James Jimenez, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children, said in a statement today [July 28].

“Nearly 18% of New Mexico adults living with children reported that their children are not getting enough to eat because of the public health crisis and recession. This crisis is bigger than any in our lifetime, but the Republican proposal doesn’t meet the needs of our...