With a unique combination of sun, wind, indigenous leadership, rural communities, and space technology, New Mexico possesses the right ingredients to be the green economic leader of the nation, not only exporting solar and wind energy to other states but becoming the training center for the nation to educate a new workforce for an economy that does not include carbon emissions.  

 

Imagine productive rural, urban, and native small businesses that build solar panels, hoist wind turbines, cap landfills, plant forests, electrify tribal homes, restore our grasslands, plus small businesses that innovate ways of doing business without doing damage.

 

We can’t put our economy and the survival of the planet on hold until 2045. We need to get started right away so that this generation can begin to reap the benefits of our potential!

Our current health care system delivers neither health nor care.

 

Growing up as the daughter of an ER doctor, Rebecca’s child care facility was the emergency room. From age two, she witnessed a revolving door as suffering patients were mended and released, only to return because the underlying causes were neglected.

 

Our best solution is a single-payer healthcare system that’s also embedded in a broader definition of health that includes balance: walkable cities, nutritious food, clean air and water, unified communities, and mental and spiritual nourishment.

Every school should be a great school.  Schools and teachers need more money, and for the money to be invested in ways that directly improve learning to ensure that every student, no matter where they live, has the right to a quality education.

 

New Mexico took a great step in raising teacher salaries, but we need to do more, and diversify our revenue sources to ensure our children's education is not tied to volatile oil and gas prices. We can’t afford to have the quality of our children’s education soar and plummet with oil and gas prices.

 

Moreoever, when we allow school quality to vary drastically, we limit our families’ freedom to choose where they live and work.

We cannot talk about public safety without talking about common-sense gun reform. Guns flood our communities, making us feel unsafe, which drives the purchase of more guns. Millions of guns also endanger our police officers and families.

 

We took a great first step by making background checks on firearm purchases mandatory, and now is the time to continue that momentum with buyback programs, a ban on assault weapons, and closing internet and gun show sales loopholes.

 

The most effective and comprehensive way to keep our communities safe is to implement thoughtful community policing, resolve racist and elitist criminal justice policies, and address the school-to-prison pipeline.