Mayor Chavez and APS and New Media

If you haven't read Mark Bralley's account of his most recent encounter with Mayor Chavez's security detail, I strongly urge you to do so. Here's a little snippet to get you going:

“You have to leave. You aren’t the press. You don’t have credentials,” APS Police Officer Paul Schaefer said in rapid succession as he took the contact role. “I was told you’re not part of the press club.”

“You’re wrong,” I said.

I looked at a pocket in my photo vest that has a clear plastic front. It’s designed to keep credentials visible yet out of the way. Print journalists often wear credentials on a lanyard around their neck. However, still photographers prefer not to wear lanyards as they interfere neck straps; so the pocket is convenient. I had the pass issued by the Secret Service last week for the Presidential visit to Rio Rancho visible.

“White House Press Pool,” I asked Schaefer, showing him the pass?

“Never heard of it,” Schaefer said.

“Ever heard of the President of the United States?”

Vaguely,” Schaefer said.

“How about the First Amendment,” I asked?

I’ve heard of the First Amendment,” Schaefer said.

“As a matter of fact, when I…” I said, as I dug deeper for my own credentials, which list former and current clients and my own sites; there was also an old State Senate Press pass.

"but I’ve been told this isn’t a public event,” Schaefer said.

“Well it is a public event when you have the Mayor of the City of Albuquerque present,” I said.

Ok, let's deal with the obvious first. Why does the Mayor of Albuquerque need a security detail on the campus of a local school? Especially, a security detail that acts like the Gestapo. Apparently when Richard Romero was on 770 KKOB with Bob Clark, he raised the same question. I didn't hear that interview, but I did catch Clark poking fun at the Mayor on another morning.

Clark pointed out that former Congresswoman Heather Wilson did not find the need to travel with a security detail when she moved through Albuquerque. Although, in all fairness, Clark did mention that Wilson was often accompanied by her former communications guy, Enrique Knell, who is known to pack and shoot a camera. Something that leaves at least one Albuquerque Mayor fearful for his... um, actually, I'm not sure how to finish that sentence.

There is of course irony here. I know for a fact that Mayor Chavez considers bloggers part of the new media establishment when it is in his best interest. Consider this email I received from Brent Blackaby on October 29, 2007:

Hi all—

We’d like to invite you to join us tomorrow, Tuesday, October 30th at 5:30pm MDT for a New Mexico blogger conference call with Marty Chavez, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

We’re anticipating that the call will last about 30 minutes – 10-15 minutes for some introductory comments from Marty, and 15-20 minutes of Q&A from you.

Let me know if you’re interested in participating, and I’ll send along a dial-in number on Tuesday. Also, please feel free to forward this invite around to other progressive New Mexico bloggers that you know.

Thanks – and we look forward to chatting with you on Tuesday!

Best regards,

Brent Blackaby
Chavez for Senate

Of course, it's not just the Mayor who acted inappropriately here. Read Bralley's post and you'll find that APS was also less than tolerant of new media members. I can't tell you how wrong I find that to be on so many different levels.

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit I know Mark Bralley. I've even found myself on more than one occasion caught in the crosshairs of his camera.


I don't remember feeling afraid, but maybe, just to be safe, I ought to look into hiring some private security.

Free Speech Attacked

I rant and rave a lot about the problems in New Mexico government, but on the upside, I can't imagine Land of Enchantment government officials successfully coming after web publishers to stifle free speech:

The website of the city government of Conneaut, a small town situated near Ashtabula, Ohio, which itself is in the North Eastern corner of the state, is apparently in the middle of being redesigned and during the time that the city page has been off the web, a local woman named Katie Schwartz had put on her website some pages detailing council members and city government.

But, Manager Schaumleffel is not pleased that everythingconneautohio.com has also featured posts critical of the city government in the past and he is determined to shut down some of the site’s content. As a smoke screen for his efforts, the Manager claims that people will be “confused” by the site and might think that the section detailing city government is the official city website.

The City Council upheld the City Manager's decision by shooting down a motion that would have ordered Schaumleffel to rescind the letter and apologize to Schwartz. In this era of bigger government, this is something that we should all be watching very closely.

Democrats Try to Silence Dialog with Gen Y

The Democrats have long positioned themselves as the political party of the younger generation. And, it is widely assumed that if Generation Y turns out to vote in large numbers, Barack Obama's chances of becoming our next President increase significantly.

So, it comes as a big surprise that the Democratic leadership in Congress is trying to shut down the outreach of its members through popular online sites:

New lines are being drawn about the restrictions Members face when using the Internet.

House Minority Leader Boehner today released a memo, entitled the “Internet Freedom Alert”, criticizing a letter sent by Rep. Capuano to the Chairman of the Committee on House Administration.

Member Web use restrictions are among the main Open House Project priorities, and one of the chapters of the report is about the restrictions set by the Franking Commission, which operates under the Committee on House Administration. (This chapter was written by David All and Paul Blumenthal.)

Boehner’s letter today rightly sounds the alarm about Capuano’s newly proposed Franking commission guidelines.

Studies have shown that online forums are the town halls of years past for a whole new generation of Americans.

A recently released survey shows that Generation Y prefers to connect with government online in an interactive manner similar to the way they seek out news and other information.

The survey was commissioned by Meritalk, an online community of government information technology specialists, to examine the information-gathering habits of Gen-Y and its priorities for the next administration. A poll of 2,000 people born between 1977 and 1990 showed that 88 percent will obtain their news online during the next four years. Seventy-four percent want more information on government spending and programs, and 85 percent said they want the next president to reach out to the public online at least monthly.

"Generation Y really wants direct, honest, genuine communication [from the government]," said Liz Vandendriessche, spokeswoman for Meritalk. She said that through its research, Meritalk sought to capture how the fundamental relationship between government and citizens is changing.

Keeping all of this in mind, this recent action by Democratic leaders really begs the question, "What are they thinking?"

A Trip Down Memory Lane

The things we remember...

When I was in sixth grade at Charles W. Lewis Middle School in New Jersey, my English teacher gave the class an assignment for all of us to write a letter to the editor of the Courier Post. My letter was about the poor quality of the food served in the school cafeteria.

Unfortunately, my letter never made it to the newspaper.

It did, however, earn me a trip to the principal's office. The principal, like the teacher before him, tried to reason with me to reconsider sending such a negative letter to the press and asked that I write a more appropriate letter for publication. I didn't agree to write another letter, but I did finally agree not to submit my original letter based on the the principal's promise to work to remedy the food situation in the cafeteria.

The situation did not improve and before long we middle schoolers rebelled and refused to buy the school lunch. I don't remember how, but after a few days, the press got word of the situation, and we actually had TV crews show up to cover the story. I've always regretted allowing myself to be talked out of sending that letter.

Ok, why this trip down memory lane? Well...

It seems the students at Readington Middle School (RMS) in Hunterdon County aren’t happy with the short amount of time they get for lunch every day. So in the finest American tradition - think “Boston Tea Party” - some of them came up with a novel way to protest the perceived injustice.

“Some 29 seventh- and eighth-graders at the school banded together during last Thursday’s 30-minute lunch period and paid for their $2 lunches with pennies,” reports the New Jersey Star-Ledger this morning. “That amounted to 5,800 individual, or 32 pounds, of pennies.”

Over 5,000 pennies weighing in at 32 pounds? God bless those kids! Just when you think the American revolutionary spirit of resistance is dead and gone, along they come to renew our hopes. Now for the rest of the story…

In a response worthy of King George himself, school administrators - that would be PUBLIC school administrators - “called using the coins a sign of disrespect to cafeteria personnel and fellow students, and punished the ‘Readington 29’ with two days of detention.”

Thanks to Chuck Muth for the trip down memory lane. It's bizarre that almost thirty years later NJ public school administrators are still trying to squash students' freedom of speech. Not to mention the fact that the school food situation is still not much better: