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IRC's 20th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION A HUGE SUCCESS!
The IRC’s 20th anniversary celebration on February 26th in Albuquerque marked an extraordinary evening in the history of New Mexico activism. After a sold-out audience of more than 2,300 stood and passionately applauded his introduction, IRC board member and keynote speaker, Noam Chomsky, lunged into an analysis of the state of freedom and democracy in today’s corporate-dominated global economy. Over 20 NM organizations co-sponsored the event, showing signs of strength and unity among our state’s diverse, progressive community. In the intellectual form that he is famous for, Dr. Chomsky addressed issues such as socially conscious investing, humanitarian military intervention, and privatized education with the kind of vigor and detail that led IRC board member and master of ceremonies, Charlie Clements, to compare attending the lecture to “taking a drink of water from a fire hydrant.” Dr. Chomsky graciously acknowledged the thousands of activists whose names are unknown in the annals of recent human struggle as the reason he is so inspired to continue his work and, in conclusion, encouraged the crowd of students, organizers, and activists to support IRC’s work. In addition to the standing-room-only crowd, the event was broadcast live on Albuquerque’s KUNM radio to thousands of listeners, and webcast from the IRC’s webpage to another 500 people from as far off as Canada and Germany. Audio transcripts of the lecture are available on the IRC homepage: http://www.irc-online.org/ .
THINKING GLOBALLY
Our foreign policy program continues its mission of reaching out to a diverse group of community activists, scholars, and policymakers. “From Seattle to San Diego: Why the WTO Matters,” was a daylong public forum held in La Mesa, California, on January 28th. Our analysis entitled “Child Labor in the Global Economy” and our series of briefs on the World Trade Organization were featured at the grassroots event sponsored by local activists and labor unions from the San Diego area. This semester our special report on U.S. policy in Africa was adopted by the African Studies programs at both UNC-Chapel Hill and Keene College. The In Focus brief “International Tobacco Sales” is part of the curriculum this semester at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and our brief “Global Environmental Facility” is being used at Maryland Law School. Another policy brief, “U.S.-EU Trade Relations,” was circulated to participants at the “Critical World Issues” conference organized by the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, held from March 8-11. Carlos Salinas and Colletta Youngers, In Focus contributors for Latin American issues, appeared at a Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by Senator Paul Wellstone and Rep. John Conyers on February 2nd. Foreign Policy in Focus provided briefs related to the discussion on U.S. military aid to Colombia to congressional staff, NGOs and the media.
U.S.-MEXICO BORDERLANDS
BIOS staff members Julie Schneider, Tina Faulkner, and Debra Rose gave a presentation at the EPA’s El Paso Border Liaison Office for its February 9, Open House session. “Locating and Evaluating Border Environmental Information Resources,” provided an overview of the availability and quality of border environmental information, as well as an extensive list of organizations and websites offering resources to the region. BIOS staff have been invited to offer a similar presentation at the April Open House of the EPA’s San Diego Border Liaison Office. In January, the borderlines article “Native Communities of the Borderlands” (December 1999) was published as “La Frontera es un Espejo” (“The Border is a Mirror”) in the weekly supplement Ojarasca of the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. The January edition of Ojarasca can be viewed at http://serpiente.dgsca.unam.mx/jornada/2000/ene00/000112/oja-frontera.html. Copies of the February 2000 issue of borderlines, “Affordable Housing on the Border,” were used in two conferences. “What Works: Community Development in Arizona Colonias,” held in Tucson on February 24, was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Arizona Department of Commerce, Housing & Infrastructure Divison. The second conference, “Sprawl and Poverty: The Surprising Human and Economic Consequences of Unmanaged Growth,” was held March 18 in Las Cruces, and sponsored by 1000 Friends of New Mexico, New Mexico Conference of Churches, New Mexico Catholic Conference, and the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Basin Coalition. In the past two months, BIOS staff were interviewed by the San Diego Reader, ABCNEWS.com, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor for articles on the Juárez murders, U.S.-Mexico immigration issues in light of the recent controversy over Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez, and the recent agreement signed by the U.S. and Mexico regarding siting of hazardous waste facilities in the border region. The borderlines UPDATER circulated an analysis of the hazardous waste agreement from both U.S. and Mexican perspectives (see http://www.us-mex.org/borderlines/updater/index.html). BIOS Research Associate Tina Faulkner will leave the IRC in March in order to take a new position as International Program Specialist with the U.S. National Administrative Office, an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau in Washington, DC. Tina will work with NAFTA-related labor issues, and will therefore continue to work with U.S. and Mexico cross-border issues. Although we will be very sorry to see her leave, we offer our congratulations and very best wishes to Tina in this exciting new opportunity.
Office Contact Information
Albuquerque Box 4506 Albuquerque, NM 87196-4506 Voice: (505) 842-8288 Fax: (505) 246-1601	Silver City Box 2178 Silver City, NM 88062-2178 Voice: (505) 388-0208 Fax: (505) 388-0619 Email: irc@irc-online.org