House Speaker Javier Martínez

CHI SJC News:

ALBUQUERQUE — CHI St. Joseph’s Children convened a series of dialogue sessions with participating hosts Archbishop John C. Wester and Speaker of the House of Representatives Javier Martínez and numerous stakeholders included below.

The dialogue focused on addressing the impact of gun violence, crime and drug abuse on children and families in Albuquerque and surrounding areas.

The meetings brought together leaders of faith communities, law enforcement, city government agencies, not-for-profit community service and advocacy and county-based agencies.

“We gathered together as community leaders united by our concern for the safety and well-being of our children and set aside political ideologies in the interest of cooperating around our shared goals and values,” Speaker Martínez said.

Through facilitated dialogue: a process of sharing, participants were challenged to discern common values that cross the barriers of philosophies and ideologies. The quality time dedicated to dialogue facilitated a genuine connecting of participants with one another as they recognized shared values. One value that came through in particular was participants’ desire for a sense of security and safety in their neighborhoods and communities.

The facilitator grounded the discussion by acknowledging unique roles of community leaders as “the Prophets of our time,” meaning those who adamantly call the public to awareness of the problem. In the case of gun violence in Albuquerque and surrounding communities, the prophetic imagination calls for awakening from the numbness that has become the status quo of daily news reports of gun violence.  

The participants were called to explore the experience of anguish rather than anger for the sake of entering the suffering of and impact on children and families. The goal in coming together is to identify and name our despair and anguish with the status quo that is failing our expectations of how we ought to live together in community. 

“The effect of gun violence on our children, which has become the status quo, is not acceptable. As a community, we need to come together in a unified effort to solve our communities’ endemic gun violence,” Archbishop Wester said.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that early childhood trauma, like that experienced as a result of gun violence, crime, and drug abuse, negatively impacts a child’s psychological, social and educational development. 

“Childhood trauma is often an unseen force in a child’s life. When that child lacks resources for psychological and social care, they can slip into new cycles of drug abuse, crime, and even gun violence,” Dr. Miskimins said, UNMH trauma Medical Director and trauma surgeon, “The tail end of this cycle can end up with grave consequences at UNM Hospital’s Trauma Center.” 

New Mexicans are enduring the consequence of the trauma experienced in communities. Sam Bregman, Bernalillo County District Attorney, states; “Juvenile gun crime is exploding. We, as an entire community, including parents, need to focus on this very challenging issue and find solutions.”

At the conclusion of its first series of dialogue sessions in January, the group identified a range of policies, actions and funding steps.

These included: 

• Focused messaging campaigns to foster community support for the expansion of early childhood development programs;

• Messaging campaigns specific to pre-teen and teens, with attention to the media and spokespeople preferred by these audiences; 

• Coordinated messaging across government, faith communities, and community service agencies to focus on the shared core values to advance child safety and well-being;

• Address numbness and the prevailing mindset that, as individuals and community members, we are powerless to change our circumstances;

• Confront numbness expressed in the observation that “the public, both individually and communally, does not want to hear it.”

• Overall, foster community support for needed judicial, educational, and faith reforms.

1. Judicial Reform

   1. Promote policies to identify source of firearms in juvenile crime

   2. Develop policies and resources to determine and disrupt organized efforts that co-opt juveniles in crime

   3. Where appropriate, advance measures for parental accountability in juvenile crime

   4. Fund resources to address both compassionate accountability and judicial accountability for the gravest youth offenders

   5. Revisit and reform pre-trial detention

2. Prevention (At all levels of state, county, municipality)

   1. Develop social prevention and funding to address social determinants of childhood well-being, particularly in high impact locales

   2. Develop social prevention and funding for judicial reform, educational reform and youth access to mentoring and alternatives to gun violence, crime and drug culture

3. Faith Leaders

   1. Convene leaders to coordinate approaches to address social determinants of childhood well-being and gun violence, specific to the needs of local communities and neighborhoods

   2. Promote youth programs such as mentoring to prevent youth from being recruited by criminal influences

   3. Commit to engage a deliberate intervention for vulnerable children who may be susceptible to gun violence in the home or and in the community 

   4. Empower and engage youth to participate in the development of experiences and curriculums to address gun violence. 

4. School

   1. Promote curriculum and funding in gun literacy, drug literacy and financial literacy as part of a pre-teen and teen curriculum

   2. Challenge school districts, administrators, teachers, counselors to create forums to address the impact of gun violence, crime and drug abuse on children and families

5. Parents

   1. Parent engagement, accountability and support for youth experiences. 

   2. Explore parental responsibility for juvenile gun violence and crime

6. Youth (pre-teen and teen) Engagement

   1. Develop a communications campaign specifically intended for youth, using the media they consume, and involve youth in its development

   2. Expand policies and resources to address trauma related to gun culture, crime and drug abuse

   3. Create forums for youth to voice their experience/trauma as a path to self-determination

7. Early Childhood Development

   1. Continue to advance the legislation, policy, funding and programmatic resources made possible by the Constitutional amendment for early childhood development

Conveners of the community dialogue sessions anticipate a second round of sessions, beginning in July, 2024. 

Attendees: 

• Javier Martínez, Speaker of the NM House or Representatives

• Alicia Manzano, Chief of Staff to Speaker Martínez

• Camille Ward, Communications Director for the Office of Speaker Martínez 

• Pamela Armstrong, Deputy Communications Director for the Office of Speaker Martínez 

• John Wester, Archbishop of Santa Fe

• Allen Sánchez, President of CHI St. Joseph’s Children

• Jessa Cowdrey, VP of Operations for CHI St. Joseph’s Children

• Richard Miskimins, UNMH Trauma Medical Director

• Sam Bregman, District Attorney 

• Diana Garcia, Deputy District Attorney

• Regis Pecos, Director of the Leadership Institute

• Kristi Koppel, Rev. St. Paul Lutheran Church

• Kurt Rager, Director of the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry-NM

• Lynne Hinton, Director of the NM Conference of Churches

• Janet Lynn Taylor, Conference Director Assistant at NM Conference of Churches

• Miranda Viscoli, NM Gun Violence Prevention

• Annamarie Luna, Services Director for Cuidando Los Niños

• Barbara Tegtmeier, Head Chaplain for APD

• Robert Chavez, CEO for Youth Development, Inc.

• Concha Cordova, Vice-President for Youth Development, Inc.

• Divya Shiv, Research & Policy Analyst at New Mexico Voices for Children

• Doug Small, Civic Engagement Manager for Mayor Keller’s Office

• Celestino Landavazo, Coordinator for Valencia Community Action Network 

• Ramon Landavazo, Volunteer with the Valencia Community Action Network

• Valeria Cervantes, Volunteer with the Valencia Community Action Network

• Humberto Tinsman, Communities of Christ

• Matt Cross NM Department of Health, Health Promotion Specialist

• Naja Druva, Violence Prevention Coordinator, NMDOH

• Jeffery Bustamante, ABQ Community Safety Deputy Director

• Tim Moran, Professional Facilitator, Moran & Associates, LLC, Creativity in Leadership, LLC