Pajarito to rejoin Northern Group

By Jody Benson, Pajarito Group Chair
From the Fall 2022 newsletter

We keep quoting the maxim for untiring activists: “Sometimes it’s hard when you wake up in the morning to choose whether to save the Earth or savor it.” The Pajarito Group made a difference working in the company of our compatriots who share the passion for preserving the One World we’re traveling on together.

Thanks to each of you who responded to the online poll asking whether you would like to remain the separate Pajarito Group of the Rio Grande Chapter or rejoin the Northern Group from whence we separated in about 1998 to focus on Los Alamos National Laboratory issues and the Valles Caldera.

Votes were 68% to rejoin Northern Group; 32% to stay independent Pajarito, with many good suggestions.

Summarizing the comments: Most of us don’t have the time to commit to sustaining a separate group, but people want to remain connected by being a Los Alamos activist group focused on local issues (particularly county development and LANL) within the Northern New Mexico Group.

The rejoining will be finalized in January after we have met all the requirements from National about the “dissolution” of the group.

At that time, you will receive an official Northern New Mexico Group welcome.

That said, we are still Sierrans who now bring to the Northern Group a few hundred volunteers who want to: Be a conservation chair, organize a social event, watchdog a county initiative (and there are many many initiatives to watchdog!), join the Political Committee, be a hike leader, plant trees, participate in a community cleanup, work on open-space issues including the Pueblo Canyon bike-trail siting, and even run for government office.

Los Alamos can continue to contribute to saving the world, though, despite the nuclear-weapons triggers to be manufactured here, the climate emergency is so much more huge, difficult, and insidious than a war against a Russia. This problem is global; the primary enemy is attitude, ignorance, misdirected political posturing, and the failure to: create a cost-benefit analysis of sustainable energy; put the good of the nation before corporatocracy; rid politics of dark money — along with just plain laziness. But— here, in Los Alamos, at this local level, we’re working on it, and doing a darn good job.

Thank you for all the years and all your commitment and stewardship. We know our future — as our Right Now — depends on that work and caring. Let’s continue to save the Earth.

Featured image: Pajarito Group picnic 2013.