Letters | Honoring veterans

Honoring veterans

Editor,
Northwest New Mexico is home to a large population of men and women who have bravely served our country. Our community is proudly patriotic and deeply grateful to each of these individuals.

It has been my distinct honor to represent our local vets and their families in the New Mexico House of Representatives since 2001. For over two decades, I have continuously fought to ensure that our vets are treated with the respect and honor they deserve and have access to all the services and resources they have earned.

During the recent special legislative session called by the governor to address federal funding cuts, state lawmakers protected food assistance for the 15,000 veterans across our state who rely on these benefits. We also worked with the governor to provide emergency food assistance during the federal government shutdown.

Over the last few years, we have increased tax exemptions for armed forces retirement pay and on property taxes for our veterans, invested in suicide prevention and mental health resources for service members and veterans, and built a new state-of-the-art State Veterans’ Home.

Still, we know there is much more we can do for those who served our country so courageously. We all have a role to pay in making sure our veterans receive the proper respect and appreciation for all they have sacrificed for our nation.

So this Veterans Day, I encourage you to thank a veteran you know or consider volunteering with or donating to one of the many great organizations that support those who so bravely protected this great nation that we’re blessed to call home.

Patty Lundstrom, New Mexico State representative
Gallup, N.M.

 

---

 

Menace of indifference

Editor,

“No wrongs have ever been righted by riots or civil disorders. A sniper (of words) is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.”

These words were cautioned by Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, in his speech “The Mindless Menace of Violence.”

RFK’s speech points out, yes, physical violence is destructive, but he points out there is another kind of violence, and it is just as deadly and as destructive. And that violence is the indifference and the inaction of people, with their politics and the institutions of their behavior.

We now live in a moment in time where indifference is accepted, it has become the norm in our everyday lives and is now expected and accepted by just about anyone we meet – our neighbors, our relatives, our elders, our children, our co-workers, relatives, leaders, businesses, policy makers, government, and worse, ourselves.

And this violence is openly expressed right in front of us, most notably now in social media – hurled against the one that resides in a different chapter, agency, or district, to that tribal office that’s across the street, the family that has financial struggles, the veteran who has life-long trauma, the one who is or is not a part of the LGBTQ community, the one who is educated or not educated, the one who doesn’t share the same faith. And the list undoubtedly is endless.

And in that regard, the speech continues. “We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear – only a common desire to retreat from each other – only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers.”
And I add to that warning – there are no winners, and whether we know it, it has only delayed any progress that otherwise would have been made that would have made our nation better.

As for the people’s remarks and actions of recent political events in the Navajo Nation’s capital, they conclude that the problems are the result of the corruption of power, absence of transparency and misuse of funds.

Still yet and however, these are times, I think of RFK’s words asking myself where we are as a society. And yes, the people are right to express their views and yes, they are correct in the conclusions they draw. But could their conclusions be reacting to only the symptoms of the disease RFK spoke about – of the indifference we inflict toward each another?

But how do we, as people, address the disease of indifference that remains? Can we be neighbors brave enough to reach across the street, gender, titles, clans, demographics or religion and be able to accept the differences of others?

Afterall, as RFK’s brother claimed, “for in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

Which is to say, what are we leaving for our children to inherit.
Are we imperiled from our indifference like the story of the monster Tsetahotsiltali (one who kicks people off the cliff) whose indifference kicked men, women, children and elderly off the cliff without regard of their plight. I hope not.

In this time, we need to slay our indifference, for we know how we become when we are the worst to each other that only our only choice is to work toward becoming our better selves to each other.

Raymond K. Nopah
Gallup, N.M.

 

Get instant access to this story by purchasing one of our many e-edition subscriptions HERE at our Navajo Times Store.

 

---