Daily Lobo new mexico
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
tuesday October 7, 2014 | Volume 119 | Issue 37
Forum pushes budget reform
a balloon’s-eye view
By Sayyed Shah
Saturday morning’s mass ascension at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta set off without a hitch. Shortly after the dawn patrol gave the OK for mass ascension, about 550 participating hot air balloons took to the air from Balloon Fiesta Park. The ascension is shown here from the perspective of the “What Would Jesus Do” balloon piloted by Bill Woodhead and his “sky ministries,” a thousand feet above the ground. Visitors from around the world have come to Albuquerque for the week to see and pilot hot air balloons of all shapes and sizes at the Fiesta, now in its 43rd year. Photos by Aaron Sweet
Prof. goes from politics to preservation By Lena Guidi
As historical and cultural landmarks in New Mexico are threatened by new developments, one American Studies professor aims to preserve them. Tita Berger, also a graduate student at UNM’s School of Architecture and Planning, works on a variety of projects involving New Mexicans’ relationships with the places they live, she said. She calls her method of research “place ethnography,” an intersection of geography and anthropology that looks at what places can reveal about groups of people. A major focus of her research is historical preservation. Berger became interested in historical preservation while working on a Ph.D. for UNM’s political
science program, she said. “I was bored of political science due to the disconnect between the academics and the activism,” she said. She saw a poster for Mark Childs’ “Civic Art and Public Space” class on campus and was immediately interested. “The poster had men playing chess on it, and it reminded me of Istanbul and how their public spaces were very male-dominated,” she said, recalling an earlier trip to Turkey she had taken. She said she became interested in how attitudes toward culture, gender, ethnicity and class affect the spaces people create. Berger stopped working on her political science degree and entered the Southwest Summer Institute’s Historical Preservation and Regionalism program.
Berger has worked with federal heritage preservation programs like the Historic American Buildings Survey on projects such as El Rancho de las Golondrinas, a living history museum modeled after a Spanish colonial village southwest of Santa Fe. While she finds these efforts extremely valuable, Berger urges New Mexicans to question whose stories are being told through historic preservation and whose are being ignored. “There is still a lot of elitism in what gets preserved and what doesn’t,” she said. She said preservation efforts in New Mexico often portray a glossedover version of Spanish colonialism, ignoring or downplaying the oppression during that time period. However, where she and other preservationists agree is that the dark
side of modernization since World War II has been the destruction of historical places. “Developers with no sense of history and culture tore down buildings that were important to the community to make way for the cities of the future,” Berger said. She said she considers The Alvarado Hotel one of Albuquerque’s biggest losses. The hotel, formerly located on First Street, was a Mission Revival-style Harvey House that serviced passengers from the nearby train station for decades. The hotel was known for its luxury, but was demolished in 1970 after profits plummeted due to the decline of railroad travel, she said. Neala Schwartzberg wrote about
see Berger page 2
A group of community members hopes to inspire more people to participate in planning the city’s budget. Participatory Budgeting Albuquerque will host a community forum on Thursday at city hall to gauge support for a more democratic style for the city’s financial planning. Valentine Antony, a UNM student and the lead organizer for Participatory Budgeting Albuquerque, said the project would foster collaboration between citizens, elected officials and city agencies to make Albuquerque an “even greater city.” “Albuquerque is a perfect place for Participatory Budgeting,” he said. “We have some ideas of how to make that happen, but ultimately the citizens of Albuquerque will decide how this project is shaped.” Antony would like to see this project realize its goal of making public participation more fun and engaging to all Albuquerque residents, he said. For now, this program would help citizens and government officials work together to plan a small portion of Albuquerque’s budget, focusing on projects that would benefit all residents, he said. Those projects would then be brought to all of Albuquerque’s residents for a vote. According to PB ABQ literature, this project is like many participatory budgeting movements across the country that work to build capacities within communities to govern their futures more fully by having a direct say in how their public funds are spent and community projects are prioritized in their city. The public forum is not the only event in Albuquerque’s budding participatory budgeting interest: Josh Lerner, executive director of the Participatory Budgeting Project, will give a talk on his new book, “Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Democracy.” The talk will be held at the School of Architecture and Planning on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. In his book, Lerner discusses how games and structured competition can help engage people and encourage participation in democratic processes. “For PB to more deeply transform government, citizens must have the power to write the rules of the game from the start,” Lerner wrote in a paper for the Journal of Public Deliberation. “For PB to more deeply engage those who are usually left out, these groups should be invited to lead the process.” Antony said participatory governments across the United States and the world were facing a crisis of civic engagement. “Public participation is on
see
Budget page 2