Sallie Bingham

 
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We Did It

 by  in Politics, New Mexico 32 Comments

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Santa Fe City Council Votes Unanimously to Approve Stronger Sanctuary Resolution

Santa Fe City Council Votes Unanimously to Approve Stronger Sanctuary Resolution – photo from Somos Un Pueblo Unido

And it was definitely WE, as you can see from these images. A group of perhaps 200 people from all the populations of Santa Fe—adults who run businesses here, homeowners who employ undocumented workers to do everything, children who fear the deportation of their parents, church leaders reminding us that Jesus was a refugee, Spanish speakers telling us through a translator of their fear of leaving their houses in the face of ICE sweeps—all of us, together, smiling, cheering, waving our fingers in the air after one of the City Counselors asked us not to applaud after each of the sixty speakers…

WE DID IT. On Wednesday, the Santa Fe City Council passed, unanimously, a resolution reaffirming our status as a Sanctuary City and spelling out exactly what this means:

  • Our local police will not cooperate with ICE or turn over names of the undocumented.
  • They cannot be arrested or detained in any federal building.
  • They are under no obligation to open their doors to a raid and under no obligation to turn over personal information such a social security numbers.
  • Schools and universities here are asked to reaffirm their commitment to the protection of their students.

And, with our strengthened legal status, Santa Fe lawyers will begin looking into a suit against the Republican administration, based on its many attacks on our civil rights and the organizations we need for our health and our welfare.

The big cities—San Francisco, New York—have (as I see it) followed the example of this small town of seventy thousand, capital of one of the poorest states in the U.S.

On Wednesday, the Santa Fe City Council passed, unanimously, a resolution reaffirming our status as a Sanctuary City and spelling out exactly what this means.

WE DID IT TOGETHER.

[Related, I highly recommend reading my friend and fellow author Bonnie Lee Black’s piece on an event she attended in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Jorge Ramos: “Looking for Home.” Bonnie writes, “A Mexican by birth and a United States citizen by choice, Ramos — who now lives in Miami and is the nightly television anchor at Univision, as well as a bestselling author and winner of eight Emmy awards for excellence in journalism — may be best known to most American news followers who are not regular Univision viewers as the Latino journalist who was physically ejected from a press conference held by Donald Trump on the campaign trail in Dubuque, Iowa, in late 2015.” Read Bonnie’s full piece.

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In Politics, New Mexico

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection Cowboy Tales, received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Comments

  17. I am happy to see what you are doing, but I’m seeing it from a far. Although I am American, I live in Switzerland and gave been doing so for a very long time. Sorry I can’t do much at all, but it’s great to know that there are some good, intelligent people working against the frightening things that are happening in the United States. Thank you

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