Reflecting on 2025
Climate chaos, capitalism and a lack of community are driving us down a dead-end path
Be a revolutionary!
By Lora Lucero, Francesca Blueher, Laura and Paul Stokes
Taking stock of 2025 and moving forward into 2026, PDACNM thanks each and every person who has joined us in our effort to build a better future for all.
Many Americans are hurting, disillusioned and fearful about the future, and stuck in a nightmarish reality that numbs them from the inside-out. Imagining a new world is the first step towards achieving it. Telling the truth is the second step. Acting together within a community is the third. YOU are part of our community.
Imagining a new world is difficult for anyone invested in the present world, meaning each of us. We take comfort in what we know, the status quo, even when it’s literally killing us. Climate chaos, capitalism and a lack of community are driving us down a dead-end path, so why don’t we change course? Albert Einstein opined that “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Embrace your powers of imagination.
Telling the truth is also difficult in a world where we are lulled into complacency. We can tick off the many ways that the so-called powers are manipulating us to accept their lies and distortions. Sometimes the lies are subtle, while many times they are so blatantly egregious that we give upand don’t try to correct the record. George Orwell prophetically wrote that “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Embrace your revolutionary spirit and tell the truth wherever and whenever you can.
Finally, acting together is how we survive the present turmoil and how we build the future we imagine. Americans are at a particular disadvantage because we are steeped in American individualism and U.S. exceptionalism from birth, and we have designed our built environment to separate and divide us. We can do so much better but only together. Please consider Progressive Democrats of America and PDACNM your community for building a better future.
2025: A year of reckoning
PDACNM has been very busy this past year supporting and uplifting the important work of our allies (e.g. we helped organize the Hands Off Rally in Albuquerque with Indivisible Albuquerque, Rio Grande Indivisible and Third Act New Mexico) as well as strategically embracing projects to build the future we are imagining.
O4P
Thanks to the recommendation of PDACNM member and NM State Representative Eleanor Chavez, ten of us joined a 6-week global training program this Spring with Organizing 4 Power (O4P) where we learned the skills needed to effectively organize and mobilize for social change. Jane McAlevey was O4P’s co-founder, a labor organizer and the author of numerous books on the subject. She died in 2024, but her work is flourishing around the world. We are currently (Nov-Dec) engaged in a four-part course online with nearly 9,000 participants in many different time zones. As Jane said many times, organizing to win is fundamentally different than mobilizing activists. Protests and demonstrations are vitally important and necessary, but true change will not occur without deep organizing among all sectors building a better future.
We might add No Shortcuts – Organizing for Power to our PDACNM Book Club reading list in 2026. Let us know if you’d like to join our book club zoom meetings.
Inside-Outside
The only viable political force
to defeat fascism
is the Democratic Party
PDACNM has adopted the inside-outside strategy that PDA’s Executive Director, Alan Minsky, wrote about earlier this year. “How Progressives Can Transform the Dems to Save Our Democracy and Renew Prosperity - Either we act now to position progressive politics as the viable alternative to Trump or we’re complicit in the end of our democratic society.” The basic premise is that in our two-party system, the only viable political force to defeat fascism is the Democratic Party. Progressives must work from inside and outside the Democratic Party to transform it into the political party our country requires at this critical moment in history. PDACNM is actively engaged in supporting progressive candidates around the country through phone-banking and fundraising. From Mamdani in NYC to Aftyn Behn, the Democratic nominee in this week’s special election in a heavily Republican Tennessee congressional district, to Hartzell Gray in MO-05, PDA members are making phone calls to help every endorsed candidate. (See our PDA endorsements here.) Help PDA transform Congress with just an hour of your time or a nickel in the kitty. Reach out to Mike Fox at pdamerica.org
Peoples Primary Resolution
PDACNM is also working inside the NM Democratic Party in different ways, including spearheading a project to get big money out of New Mexico Democratic Primaries. Our Revolution recently announced that a “jaw-dropping new report reveals the truth: just 20 billionaire donors flooded our political system with nearly $5 BILLION between 2015 and 2024. These ultra-rich powerbrokers are quite literally buying our democracy – and we have to do something to stop it.” The Chair of the NM Democratic Party, Sara Attleson, supports the Peoples Primary project, following the lead of the AZ Dem Party and the NC Dem Party who have passed similar resolutions. And the DNC passed a similar resolution in August! Check out the NM Peoples Primary Resolution. Our goal is to get solid recommendations for amendments to the DPNM rules to get big money out of Democratic Primaries to the State Central Committee (SCC) by March. Contact Lora at LoraLucero3@gmail.com for more information and to help.
RUBI
Bridging the rural-urban divide has been on PDA’s radar for a while, ever since Alan Minsky coauthored The Rural New Deal with Anthony Flaccavento, RUBI’s founder, in September 2023. Read the Rural New Deal platform and the agenda that many progressives are advocating in Congress and statehouses around the country. You’ll be hearing a lot more about the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative in New Mexico in 2026.
Genocide
PDACNM was one of the founding members of the New Mexico Alliance for Justice in Palestine (NMAJP) two years ago under the leadership of Jewish Voice for Peace – Albuquerque. If you would like to join PDACNM members, Deb Marez-Baca, Francesca Blueher, and Laura Stokes who regularly attend the weekly NMAJP zoom meetings on Monday evenings, please contact Francesca at francescablueher@gmail.com Our advocacy and education work have moved our elected officials in the right direction, but more work is needed as the genocide continues, funded with our tax dollars, weapons and political support.
We hope our Congressional delegation will take seriously the results of the Quinnipiac poll in August that showed marked declines in almost every metric concerning attitudes toward Israel in the wake of Gaza. Support for Palestinians for the first time exceeds support for Israel (37 to 36 percent). Exactly 50 percent consider Gaza a genocide. Sixty percent oppose further arms shipments to Israel. A similar number oppose Israel’s war on Gaza. The majority (53 percent) opposes Trump’s handling of the Gaza conflict. Forty percent consider US policy “too supportive” of Israel. (poll) NMAJP has sponsored and facilitated a variety of actions, events, press conferences, film festivals, and discussions with our Members of Congress advocating for an end to the genocide in Gaza and the right of Palestinian self-determination. PDACNM has recently signed on to a joint NMAJP letter that presents a strong critique of the “peace” agreement that the United Nations Security Council endorsed, saying that it ignored “the root causes of decades of violence including Israeli apartheid, occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.” We hope this letter will lead to a greater understanding by our Congressional delegation about the threat of the “peace” agreement to the safety and well-being of Palestinians.
VIDA
Many local organizations have been working in immigrant justice for years but are needing more help now due to the increased presence of ICE and the burgeoning population of men in our three detention centers. One of these organizations is VIDA, Volunteers for Immigrants in Detention-Albuquerque. This group of volunteers advocates for legislation banning counties from making contracts with for-profit prisons, writes letters and visits folks in ICE detention, and communicates with Members of Congress on the conditions inside these detention centers. If you are interested in the wide variety of volunteer opportunities in VIDA, please contact Francesca at francescablueher@gmail.com.
Public Power
Call it socialism, call it public ownership, call it putting people over profits. PDACNM has recently joined the brand-new NM Consumer Protection Alliance working to protect New Mexicans from the unfair business practices and profiteering rate hikes of monopoly utility companies. The work ensures that New Mexicans’ voices are heard, and that the companies that provide us with essential services work in our best interests. Subscribe for updates here:
https://www.nmconsumerprotection.org/
Working together in community, we can stop Blackstone’s proposed acquisition of PNM. New Mexico can reclaim control of our energy future by acquiring a majority stake (51%) in PNM, using the resources of the State Investment Council (SIC). With over $61 billion in managed assets and a long record of fiscally responsible investment, the SIC is uniquely positioned to safeguard the state’s energy system, protect ratepayers, and align PNM’s operations with public interest and policy goals—something no regulatory body can achieve by itself under private equity ownership.
PDA on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PDAmerica
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/progressivedemocratsofamerica/ and https://www.instagram.com/pdacentralnewmexico
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/pdamerica.bsky.social
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/progressive-democrats-of-america/
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@progressivedemocratsofamerica
Substack: https://substack.com/@pdamerica
Please check out these useful links from Tom Moore!
Robert Reich article: “How to Get Rid of ‘Citizens United’”:
Web version of my comprehensive report laying out the approach, “The Corporate Power Reset That Makes Citizens United Irrelevant”: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-corporate-power-reset-that-makes-citizens-united-irrelevant/
The recording of CAP’s Oct. 14 event introducing the project: https://www.americanprogress.org/events/undoing-citizens-united-and-reining-in-super-pacs/
A short explainer video received 4.7 million views on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1nrcrez/video_the_legal_strategy_that_renders_citizens/
Web version of the October 2025 national poll on this reform and attitudes on dark and corporate money in general, commissioned by Issue One: https://issueone.org/press/new-polling-citizens-united-money-in-politics-reforms/
The Transparent Election Initiative, which is moving this forward toward Montana’s 2026 ballot:
https://transparentelection.org/
Article in The American Prospect by Harold Meyerson, “Montanans Go After ‘Citizens United’”: https://prospect.org/2025/10/27/montanans-go-after-citizens-united/
Let’s Get Real: US Healthcare Is an Industry, Not a System
Insurance and hospital corporations embrace higher profits over patient safety.
Some days we didn’t see a nurse for entire shifts—and only for medication delivery and scanning the bar codes for payment. This is also your patient technician. Oh, wait, techs are in short supply, and the robot camera doesn’t do hands-on patient care. This camera isn’t even your fall-risk protection. The camera watches as you fall to record your missteps and guard against liability.
And with the help of every hospital administrator and every one of its complicit employees who have given themselves over to its inhumanity, the medical-financial-industrial complex (MFIC) has evolved to put patients in their places. It is an industry driving nearly one-fifth of the country’s economy—it is not a system.
