Thank you for reading this website, created to introduce you to an urgently needed podcast, Combatting Poverty in New Mexico, which is a work in progress that will become a nonprofit organization. Seeking your support, we offer a great deal of critical information and background on this site.

Our podcast will be a series of twelve shows that will explore the life-shaping impact that poverty has on men, women, and children of all ages living in our country's second poorest state. Each show will include conversations between New Mexicans coping with poverty and advocates working on their behalf. Their discussions, often a sharing of life stories, will deepen our understanding of the extreme pressures and uncertainties caused by poverty.

This is us

Currently, New Mexico’s population is 2,044,187. Twenty percent live below the poverty line. We rank 49th nationally for child welfare. Our state’s poverty is extremely challenging for more than 400,000 people who live here and struggle to make ends meet.

Why should we care about these 400,000 people? The answer is simple. They are all our extended neighbors. We live in community with them, whether we know them or not. Look into their eyes without our hierarchical, money-based value system and we see ourselves. They are us. Their poverty is our poverty, a failure of our shared humanity.

Dr. David Scrase, Secretary, NM Human Services Department, writes in the Albuquerque Journal, November 17, 2019: “New Mexico ranks No.1 nationally in hunger and food insecurity for both children and adults. Over a quarter of our children wake up every morning knowing that they won’t have enough to eat that day. In some counties it is more than one-third of our kids. In addition to this being incomprehensible, it is unacceptable.”

For New Mexicans grappling with financial jeopardy, as difficult as their lives were before Covid-19 swept through our state, increased unemployment caused by the pandemic has intensified the challenges of feeding their family, paying bills, and staying healthy in what are often small, multi-generational households. Part of each podcast will focus on the destabilizing hardships that have worsened as Covid-19 has spread.

How it happened

We’ll begin at the beginning. Our first show will be "The Roots of Poverty and Inequality in New Mexico." It is important to open with discussions of our early history, before we were a state. We need to understand how our violent, racist origins still reverberate, embedded in the caste of our state’s workforce. New Mexico's history is a through-line to our current income inequality. James Baldwin wrote that "each of us, however unconsciously, can't but be the vehicle of the history which has produced us."

The eleven shows that follow our first will reveal the influence that poverty has on financially poor New Mexicans affected by one or more of the subjects discussed on our shows.

After all the shows have been produced and published, the topics will be repeated with new episodes. Additional topics will be added as the series expands.

About the podcast

Each show will take listeners beyond statistics about poverty into the lives of people the statistics represent. We’ll hear them talk about how poverty affects their life, influencing how they feel about themselves, their prospects, and the prospects of their children. We’ll learn what they believe they need to do to overcome their financial straits, and the help that would increase their chance of success.

We are fortunate to have some extraordinary organizations, individuals, and government legislators in New Mexico who have worked for many years to reduce poverty. They will be asked to contribute to our podcast as hosts, talking about the work they do, and having conversations with New Mexicans living in the throes of poverty. Our podcast will amplify their voices.

Included in their wide-ranging interviews, podcast hosts will discuss:

Ideas for reducing poverty in New Mexico will be sought from all participants, who will include local and national guest speakers.They know first-hand what works and what doesn't, what sustains dignity, and what demeans it.

To ensure anonymity, (unless anonymity isn’t wanted), only the first names of those interviewed will be used.

Each show will be produced with awareness that New Mexicans who are interviewed, while financially poor, often have a different kind of wealth — assets such as close ties to family; a spiritual way of living; ties to the land; a supportive community; a strong identification with one of New Mexico's cultures.

Podcast staff, hosts, interviewees, advisers and contributors are and will be culturally diverse and respectful of everyone who participates.

Zoom will be used when appropriate and consented to, and when all safety measures can be more than met.

The magnitude of changes needed to radically reduce or eliminate poverty and hunger in New Mexico is eye-opening but the goal is attainable, with one caveat. As the activist and singer Bono wrote: “If you want to eliminate hunger, everybody has to be involved.” We want to eliminate hunger in New Mexico. Everybody has to be involved.

New Mexico legislators will be invited to listen to and participate in our podcast. We want them and everyone our podcast reaches to be in the forefront of combatting poverty in New Mexico.

We have been encouraged by support we have received from our New Mexican community. Several have suggested that we set up a GoFundMe page on this website to help defray production costs and we will do that.

Poverty is not a moral failure. Ending poverty is a moral imperative. We can no longer treat poverty as a sad, unfortunate fact of life in our beautiful state.