Another Way Forward: Grassroots Solutions from New Mexico

By Dede Feldman

Another Way Forward: Grassroots Solutions from New Mexico offers hope to anyone discouraged by the nation’s inability to tackle problems like poverty and health care. Award-winning author and former Senator Dede Feldman profiles innovative organizations and inspiring local leaders who are changing the world i

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dede Feldman Co.
• Release date: Nov 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9780999586419

Dede Feldman

Dede Feldman retired from the New Mexico Senate in 2012. She is a political commentator in Albuquerque.

Book preview

Another Way Forward

Grassroots Solutions from New Mexico

©2017 Dede Feldman All Rights Reserved

PUBLISHED BY:

Dede Feldman Co./Books

Albuquerque, NM

www.dedefeldman.com

with support from

The Con Alma Health Foundation,

The McCune Charitable Foundation,

The Thornburg Foundation and The Center of Southwest Culture

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9995864-0-2

eBook ISBN: 978-09995864-1-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017916043

248 pages, 63 photos, resources, end notes and index

Current Events • Community Development • Southwest

DESIGN: Charlie Kenesson

COVER PHOTO: Jim Caffrey

FRONT COVER INSET PHOTOS (top to bottom):

Rocky Mountain Youth Corps members at work (photo courtesy of RMYC);

Red Chile Harvest at Jemez Pueblo (Dede Feldman);

Don Bustos on the farm (Mark Feldman)

INTERIOR PHOTOS: Dede and Mark Feldman unless indicated otherwise

There’s something about people beginning to seek solutions by doing things for themselves, by deciding that they are going to create new concepts of governance, new concepts of education...that they have the capacity within themselves to create the world anew.

—Grace Lee Boggs,

A Century in the World On Being with Krista Tippett

January 19, 2012

About the Author

Known as one of New Mexico’s most progressive legislators, Dede Feldman represented the North Valley of Albuquerque in the State Senate for 16 years. A former journalist and teacher, she is the author of Inside the New Mexico Senate: Boots, Suits and Citizens, the winner of two book awards from the National Federation of Press Women and the Arizona New Mexico Book Awards Program. With a BA and MA from the University of Pennsylvania, Dede is currently a political commentator and non-profit consultant in Albuquerque, where she continues to live in the solar adobe home she and her husband, Mark, built in 1976.

CONTENTS

Preface—

Real Change Comes From the Bottom Up

Part One—

Another Way Forward: Solutions from the Grassroots

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

CHAPTER 2 Project ECHO: Disrupting the Medical System to Restore Hope to Rural Patients and Joy to Burned-out Practitioners

CHAPTER 3 Planting the Seeds for Community Health and Viable Local Food Systems

CHAPTER 4 Preserving Traditional Communities: How Neighborhood Hell-Raisers Became Innovative Housing Developers

Part Two—

Reinventing Health Care in New Mexico

CHAPTER 5 Reaching Beyond the Clinic Walls: First Choice Community Healthcare

CHAPTER 6 Using Tradition to Build a Healthy Community in Jemez Pueblo

CHAPTER 7 A Model for Rural Health Care Takes Root in Old Mining District

Part Three—

Reshuffling the Deck: A New Kind of Healthcare Workforce for New Mexico

CHAPTER 8 Community Health Workers: Solving Patients’ Problems, Developing New Career Pathways

CHAPTER 9 Community Paramedics in Santa Fe Look Beyond 911 Calls

CHAPTER 10 Growing Your Own in Southwestern New Mexico: Mandolin Player Has Cultivated Crop of Doctors, Health Professionals

Part Four—

Connecting New Mexico’s Youth With Our Prime Asset: The Great Outdoors

CHAPTER 11 Wild Friends: Unique Civics Program Helps Students Find Their Voice While Standing up for Wildlife

CHAPTER 12 Cliff Crawford’s Cottonwood Seedlings: The Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program (BEMP)

CHAPTER 13 Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, Youth Conservation Programs Inspire Motley Crews to Give Back and Build the Foundation for Healthy Communities

Part Five—

Growing the Middle Class—One Family at a Time

CHAPTER 14 Prosperity Works’ Approach to Poverty Addresses Root Causes

CHAPTER 15 Southwest Creations Collaborative Combines Business and Social Mission in a Small Albuquerque Factory

Part Six—

Grassroots Efforts Get New Mexico Kids into College— Against the Odds

CHAPTER 16 Closing the College Gap: Getting Low-Income Kids Into College One Student at a Time

Part Seven—

Creative Enterprise Unleashes a New Kind of Economic Animal

CHAPTER 17 Meow Wolf: Together We Can Build Spectacular Worlds

Conclusion Social Entrepreneurs, Change-Makers

at the Grassroots Have Left a Map to a New Kind of Society

Acknowledgments

Endnotes

Index

PREFACE

Real Change Comes

From the Bottom Up

This book grows out of a realization that finally sunk into my weary noggin after hours of committee testimony, disappointing votes, and the frustrations of ordinary citizens I encountered during my sixteen years in the New Mexico Senate. No matter how hard I—and many others—tried, real progress seemed unattainable. The big solutions to social problems regularly failed, victims of partisan division and bureaucratic rigidity. And that was even before the bottom fell out of everything in 2016 with the election of a president and a Congress that ran on dismantling social reforms, cutting taxes, and reducing the role of government in every area!

Gradually, I realized that real change comes from the bottom up—from neighborhoods, rural communities, and individuals finding their own solutions to health-care inequities, affordable-housing shortages, or an achievement gap between low-income learners and those with more money. My mantra, which I repeated at neighborhood gatherings, on the campaign trail, and on the senate floor, became just that: Real change comes from the bottom up, not the top down.

It is even truer now, in 2017, than it was then. During the first six months of President Trump’s term, cities, states, and local governments are resisting federal efforts to round up illegal immigrants, restrict the franchise, and cut Medicaid. Some are joining together to continue implementing measures outlined in the Paris Climate Accord even though the United States has pulled out. Others are declaring themselves sanctuary cities. They can do it because ours is a federal system that reserves broad powers to states, localities, and even school systems.

Now, with looming cutbacks in federal services and programs that are designed to give low-income people a path to the middle class, the states and cities will have to pick up the slack. But in New Mexico that will be no small task.

Everybody seems to know New Mexico is in trouble. The 2008 recession has not loosened its grip on the state after ten years. Our jobless rate is the highest in the country. National report cards regularly flunk us when it comes to child well-being, education, and crime. People who live outside New Mexico think that the popular television series Breaking Bad is a documentary, not a work of fiction.

But it’s no laughing matter. As state legislators argue about how to balance the budget and prime the economic pump with declining revenues, our best young people are leaving the state. New Mexico’s college enrollments are declining. And in the wake of a presidential election that portends cutbacks in federal spending, the future looks bleak given our dependence on the largesse of Washington.

Several years ago, former United States Senator Fred Harris edited a book published by UNM Press called New Mexico 2050, which projected present trends out into the future. If major policy changes are not attempted, the book’s fourteen experts conclude, New Mexico will run out of water, see increased economic disparities, and experience dramatic declines in its standard of living, especially in the rural areas.

But things may not be as bleak as they seem.

There is something hopeful going on at the grassroots. In neighborhoods, classrooms, factories, and fire departments, on the banks of the Rio Grande and the slopes of the Jemez Mountains, a new group of unsung heroes is taking the bull by the horns. These folks are tired of waiting for help from on high, from Santa Fe or Washington, DC. They are developing new models for the health-care system in local clinics and on tribal lands. They’re bringing back a new kind of agriculture and creating urban villages based on traditional settlements. They are teaching low-income families how to avoid payday lenders and accumulate assets. They are not afraid to venture outdoors, either. They have young people out in the field monitoring the flow of the Rio Grande, clearing forests, and taking wildlife issues to the real jungle—the New Mexico Legislature. In the process, they are developing new institutions, new leaders, and new career paths in natural resources and community health.

The people you will meet in this book are innovative educators, daring doctors, risk-takers, outraged neighborhood leaders, fighters, and dreamers. But they are also ordinary people—biology teachers, EMTs, asparagus farmers, seamstresses, struggling artists, and homebuilders.

Some would call these folks social entrepreneurs. Others would call them leaders of a new, empowered citizen sector. I ran across many of them when I was in the New Mexico Legislature. Sometimes they would come asking for money or big reforms in the health-care or educational systems. Most often, they were turned away. But they were not deterred. They did it anyway.

The local projects and heroes profiled in this book are just a few of the hopeful forces at work in communities throughout New Mexico. You will note some obvious omissions, namely the abundant crop of breweries growing everywhere and a spate of small technology start-ups in Albuquerque, both sectors bolstered by tax incentives and economic development funds. The omissions are purposeful. First, these ventures are well covered in the local media. Secondly, I have chosen to focus on a different kind of economic development that is grounded in community development and social entrepreneurship, rather than simply wealth creation (don’t worry, I’ll explain later). Yet even within the field of community development I was not able to include myriad projects in early childhood, alternative education, solar and wind energy, the arts, and youth development. Some of these projects, like home-visiting programs, are well known. Others were simply too far afield for me to look at closely, given time and space restraints.

Here’s a preview of what’s to come.

Part One of Another Way Forward starts with an introduction to the guiding principles of successful grassroots entrepreneurs as they chart a path for community—not just economic—development. The second chapter is about a University of New Mexico doctor fed up with the rural/urban divide in health care and the lack of access to specialty care that thousands of New Mexicans with hepatitis C experience every day. To solve the problem, Sanjeev Arora came up with a simple technological solution—a disruptive innovation—that he hopes will touch a billion lives around the world by 2020. He is well on his way.

Chapter 3 is about a ragtag coalition of foodies, small farmers, and public health advocates who are creating new markets for New Mexico–grown fruits and vegetables and training a new generation of small farmers. These entrepreneurs are creating sustainable jobs in rural New Mexico, changing children’s eating habits, and attacking obesity and diabetes, perennial New Mexico problems. Farmers’ markets are revitalizing town squares throughout the state and partnerships with schools, clinics, and hospitals are beginning to take shape.

Chapter 4 describes the decades-long struggle of one traditional Albuquerque neighborhood to clean up a nearby toxic-waste site and develop affordable housing in a place they love. Today the Sawmill neighborhood is a vibrant community, based on traditional settlement patterns and a big idea—a land trust that keeps home prices low and assures a mixed-income community.

Part Two, Reinventing Health Care in New Mexico, features three examples of grassroots health reform and profiles primary-care doctors and CEOs who are unwilling to accept poor health outcomes in their communities. In clinics around the state, these visionaries are creating wellness ecosystems, health commons, and medical homes that put the patient—not the medical provider—at the center of the system. They draw on existing assets and strong traditions in low-income communities. And what they are doing does not stop at the barrio’s boundary or on the road out of the pueblo. Dan Otero, CEO of Hidalgo Medical Services, speaks for them when he says, our vision is fundamentally about changing health care delivery across the state and nation, not just in Hidalgo and Grant County.

Part Three, Reshuffling the Deck, describes the shift in health care to prevention and a team-based approach. It’s a move that is creating new jobs, containing costs, and filling a need in rural areas. Throughout the state promotoras, or community health workers, are helping people address social problems at the heart of chronic disease. In one community, fire department paramedics, usually charged with taking people to the emergency room, are now keeping them out—by helping them meet underlying needs like food and shelter. In another rural area, a mandolin player is creating innovative training programs and luring doctors, nurses, and dentists to places they never heard of.

Part Four spotlights a number of programs that train and empower young people to preserve New Mexico’s best asset: the great outdoors. The Rocky Mountain Youth Corps is but one of many conservation programs providing opportunities for young adults to learn about natural resources, as they thin forests, and build trails. The Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program (BEMP) has students monitoring groundwater levels and doing real science up and down the Rio Grande. And the Wild Friends are learning about wildlife and civics through a unique program that every year takes them and their teachers to the New Mexico Legislature. The programs are a win-win, training students for jobs in national parks and natural resource agencies while building a sense of accomplishment and service among future leaders.

Part Five describes the efforts of two organizations, Prosperity Works and Southwest Creations Collaborative, which are helping families make the heavy lift out of poverty. One organization is adding support and childcare to the work environment. The other is teaching families how to build assets. Both are empowering parents to invest in their children and themselves.

Part Six highlights the efforts of a solitary high school teacher, dedicated to sending his promising students to college, thereby creating a critical mass of leaders who will transform low-income communities in New Mexico. Initially, Rio Grande High School teacher Alan Marks acted alone to organize trips for high school juniors to Stanford, Princeton, MIT, and Harvard. Now there are several groups dedicated to mentoring Hispanic and Native American students in their journey through higher education. And there’s a vibrant charter school in the South Valley aimed at getting kids whose parents never went to college or high school into college—and keeping them there.

Part Seven showcases an unorthodox museum in Santa Fe, Meow Wolf. The museum’s interactive experience is attracting thirty-five thousand visitors a month, and, after only a year, employs over one hundred people, most of them millennials. Founded in an old bowling alley far from the traditional arts district, the museum is attracting national attention and its founders are responding to requests to replicate the approach in other cities. It’s a rare example of how a local resource—New Mexico’s vast reserve of artistic talent and millennial energy—can be leveraged to drive non-traditional economic development.

This book was written in 2016–2017. With monumental changes afoot at a national level, the organizations herein will inevitably change, some of them shrinking in response to federal and state funding constraints, others growing in unforeseen directions. I have faith that they will rise to meet new challenges. Brad Knipper, coordinator at the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, echoed the determination of most of the programs when he said, No matter what, we’re just going to keep showing up.

Throughout this book, I’ll give you some tips on how you can keep showing up for this kind of grassroots development, both as an ordinary citizen and as a budding social entrepreneur. A box of ideas for what you can do is included in each chapter and an even bigger list appears at the end of the book. Each chapter ends with a list of resources you can use to replicate or support the projects described.

You have a role in mapping another way forward, too, whether by starting your own social enterprise, supporting those that already exist, or changing your living or eating habits in large or small ways.

Together, we can develop an alternative to the trickle down economic development that has left so many of us out and find another way forward. Bottoms Up!

PART ONE

Another Way Forward: Solutions from the Grassroots

I am betting the healthy growth on the forest floor is more important than the rot in the canopy.

—David Brooks, A Nation of Healers,

New York Times, June 21, 2016

New York Times columnist and PBS commentator David Brooks visited some of the hardest hit states in the nation in the summer of 2016, including New Mexico. He visited New Day Shelter for runaway kids and the Children’s Grief Center in Albuquerque, two grassroots projects, which he said were repairing the social fabric, and changing lives one by one.

These wonderful projects are not profiled in this book, but they are two of many in New Mexico that give us hope—and models for another way forward. Project ECHO, the Sawmill Community Land Trust, and the many local food projects highlighted in Part One are some of these. As the following introduction explains, they point the way to a different way of organizing larger systems in health care, housing and food production to address historic inequities, and forge promising new partnerships.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction:

Solutions From the Grassroots

For most of us, what lures us—or keeps us—in New Mexico is the idea that New Mexico is different from every other state in the nation. It is not Californicated or metroplexed, and in my Senate district in the North Valley of Albuquerque citizens have fought hard to keep it that way. The mass culture has not saturated parts of New Mexico. The Land of Enchantment is still small scale, based on personal and family ties, artsy, surprising, and decidedly not homogeneous.

The price we have paid for our unique culture has been a stagnating economy with a bad jobs market, low incomes, and not enough revenue to get us out of the ditch. Political leadership has not risen to the decades-long challenge.

Economic development has been the battle cry of almost every elected official in New Mexico, Republican or Democrat, since the 1980s. For years, no one in the legislature would dare dispute the conventional wisdom of recruiting large out-of-state companies like Intel, Tesla, Facebook, Eclipse, Siemens, Philips Semiconductor, Hewlett-Packard, or other huge corporations. Nor would they doubt that technology transfer from the state’s national labs (Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory) could produce enough small enterprises to keep the economy humming when the state faced a downturn in the other sector New Mexico heavily depends on—energy production. Never mind that the state has never systematically studied how much the tax abatements, revenue bonds and training funds have cost—and how many permanent jobs they actually created.

The sustained slump in oil and gas prices, in addition to the precarious nature of coal mining and other extractive industries that rely on markets elsewhere, is forcing a reexamination of the traditional economic development strategy. Where are we going?

Traditionally, the major drivers of New Mexico’s economy have been government (including the labs, defense installations, and the state bureaucracy) and extractive industries. Economic developers have told us that a major weakness is the lack of processing and manufacturing industries. The result has been countless tax incentives, revenue bonds, and exemptions from regulations for companies that have come and gone, sometimes leaving environmental degradation in their wake. Companies like Duke City Lumber in the Sawmill Neighborhood of Albuquerque once produced jobs, but they, like the semiconductor manufacturers that followed them, have threatened local communities instead of strengthening them.

Recently, the trend toward cultivating individual entrepreneurship is gaining steam. In Albuquerque, officials are creating a downtown innovation zone, a geographic answer to a deeper problem that has recently run afoul of high crime and homelessness in the area. Meanwhile, young people continue to leave the state drawn to jobs our faster-growing neighbors, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas.

But there is another way forward: community development. Community development is not simply the creation of wealth, which may go out of the state or into the pockets of larger entities without reinvestments in our people, our resources, or our infrastructure. Call me a Pollyanna, but for years I have dreamed of a type of development that does not increase dependency but, instead, rests on the ideals of equity, empowerment, and justice for all our diverse populations. Since the traditional approach has not worked, New Mexico is the perfect place to try out another way forward.

My premise is that the kind of development we want in New Mexico has more to do with community well-being, self-sufficiency, and human capital than simply the creation of wealth. With that in mind, I have selected a few grassroots projects that point the path to this new kind of development. There are many others, and someday with your help there will be a huge directory of even more projects.

A New Vision of Development

This type of development is broader than economic development, which primarily focuses on creating income and wealth. Sometimes called community development, this type of development:

• Levels the playing field and provides opportunities for low-income communities, locally owned businesses, and historically oppressed people who have not had a chance to contribute to the economy.

• Honors the place of New Mexico and stimulates a sense of stewardship for natural landscapes and historic communities.

• Puts public health and healthy communities first, stimulates prevention, and addresses disparities in health care between different regions and groups.

• Cultivates collaboration, networks, teams, and communities.

• Respects and draws upon New Mexico’s unique cultures and tradition.

• Creates new jobs and career paths by rearranging existing systems and markets.

• Draws on existing assets put together in a new way.

• Creates a sense of engagement and optimism while empowering youth and ordinary citizens.

Not all of the projects highlighted in this book incorporate all of the attributes listed above. Most are works in progress and some have become long-standing community institutions. All of them were started by a stubborn individual or a small determined group unwilling to accept the status quo. Usually the leaders had a big idea—like a land trust or student science project—that solved a long-standing problem, and then they built an organization around it. They listened, spotted opportunities, made alliances, told their stories, and navigated the political system. They persevered, as one innovator remarked, with a cockeyed sense of optimism.

The projects they built in medicine, local foods, affordable housing, service learning, art, education, and environmental stewardship are adding up to a new kind of community development that is more in keeping with New Mexico’s culture and unique assets than typical economic development efforts. These non-profits and small businesses may not be as glamorous as the high-tech factory or the corporate branch office that we have been pursuing for years, but they are sustainable at the local level and, taken together, are creating alternatives to the state’s current dismal economic trajectory. While most of them started with support from foundations and the state or federal government, many of them have moved on to become self-sufficient, with a steady revenue stream. Most have used readily