A Voice in the Wilderness: We don't need a Pimp. We need a Mayor.

A Voice in the Wilderness

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness. -- William O. Douglas

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

We don't need a Pimp. We need a Mayor.

Pimpin aint easy! That's fo' sho! - Snoop Mayor Martay

Word!

Yo! This is ain't my Georgetown Homie, Martay the ACLU dissin lokster! Naw, it ain't him frontin his bad 'ol self in his biking promo ad down in the A-Town! He aint got enough bling bling fo' a ride like this . . . yet!

Yo, can I get a shout out fo' the land devil'pment gangstas?
West Side!

When the Mayor gits an attitude, Drop it like its hot! - Snoop Dogg

DukeCityFix has an excellent post authored by Johnny Mango. His words inspired me to pen my thoughts regarding the upcoming election for Albuquerque City Mayor. I have been following Nob Hill blogger Jon Knudsen's (aka Johnny Mango) blog posting about Mayor Chavez' decision to make his candidacy official. I admire 'Anonymous' whoever s/he is for having the brass ovaries (or cojones) to speak up and speak out. Unfortunately, as I once heard, "It is easy to tell who the pioneers are - they are the ones with arrows in their backs!" Nevertheless, my hat is off to that person whoever s/he may be. As Jmmy Durante used to fondly close his monologues, 'Good night Missus Calabash, wherever you are!'

No doubt the Mayoral race is supposed to be non-partisan but the kind of stuff coming out of the Mayor's office sure doesn't seem too focused on helping the little people.

When Martin Chavez arrived on scene a few years ago, he was like a breath of fresh air. Nowadays, he is more about self-promotion with all of his self-aggrandizing TV spots. He dismisses people concerned with urban sprawl as being stupid and unrealistic simply because they don’t share his views. If you want to know what kind of leader this Mayor is, just go ask a few city employees around town about the kind of people he has put in place to carry out his agenda.

Remember the big bucks he spent to change the city logo because he didn’t like Jim Baca changing the one he implemented to replace the previous city logo? Did you follow that one? Now that is fiscal responsibility. I wonder when El Jefe is going to call for a name change of the City to ‘Martyville, or perhaps, ‘Marty town?’ How about ‘Me Myself and Marty town' or 'San Martin de dinero?'

I suppose you are right that Marty is developing this cult of personality as Khrushchev described it but this Mayor's careful character development as a man of action whose intentions are noble and egalitarian belie his contempt for people who traditionally have no voice in society. I have yet to see any compassion on his part for the poor or the wage-earner people.

I will be the first to admit that Albuquerque has gone from being a very large town to a small city. The transition hasn't been smooth but this city is quickly losing its charm because the gap between rich and poor continues to widen and this Mayor's spurious press conferences ranging from the Montano Bridge re-striping issue to The ACLU slam are akin to a snake-oil side-show. The real action is happening behind the scenes and Albuquerque's future is being sold to the highest bidder right out of the Mayor's office.

Please Albuquerque! There has to be someone out there who can appeal to the masses and defeat this variant of the musical charlatan that came to River City in "The Musicman" right? Now, more than ever, we need a leader with a profound, far-reaching eye to the future.
How about a Mayor who is as genuine off-camera and doesn't keep making silk purses out of political sow's ears? We don’t need a pimp. We need a Mayor.

3 Comments:

At Tue May 17, 01:23:00 PM MDT, johnny_mango said...: I love the San Martin de Dinero. But so many of our politicians do the personality thing. Look at Pete Domenici...there ought to be a law that you can't have a building or airport named after you until you have been dead at least 20 years. I feel we'll get Chavez Park for the Isotopes, Richardson Medical Center, and Domenici Sunport.
At Tue May 17, 04:41:00 PM MDT, The Voice said...: Sam,

I like you but, I have to tell you right now; you are wrong. Marty Chavez is a man who puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like you and me. Beyond that, our differences become clear. Mayor Chavez is a legend in his own mind. With Chavez, it's all smoke and mirrors - I call it the Wizard of Oz factor. In Marty's case, its more like the Wizard of Aaah's!

This man can be beat and it is up to people like you to throw yourself into the fight. Marty cannot possibly knock on every door in town but you, and people like you can. He can buy up all the ad spots from here to October but the public isn't that stupid. They will see him through him because truth cannot be bought at any price. I am confident the citizens of this great city will have the presence of mind to figure out who this man behind the myth really is. Just like Dorothy and her friends came to realize that the, "Great and powerful Oz" was nothing more than a little man with a flair for manipulating reality, so will Albuquerque's electorate come to see that they've been getting hoodwinked over the years by Martin Chavez.

Part of the price he has paid in his unending quest to fulfill the agenda of a few wealthy elites, is tallied up by the people he has systematically betrayed. Collectively, I believ their numbers have reached a critical point and so Marty's re-election isn't a shoe-in after all.

Grassroots movements have been successes in the past. Remember martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez? Harriet Tubman? They identified a problem and committed to bringing about change against far greater odds and a far more inertia from recalcitrant public opinion opposed to change than this.

If you don't believe in Marty Chavez and you don't like his politics, take heart. There are many other people like you out there. All you need to do is get the message out. Moreover, Democracy is alive and well.

Marty has more than a few chinks in his armor because, Marty is for Marty. He has made a critical error in that he has forgotten the people who, not once but three times, took the time to go to the polls in order to put him into office. He needs to pay for that betrayal with a resounding defeat in the polls because, after all, 'ya gotta dance with them that brung ya."
At Tue May 17, 06:27:00 PM MDT, Anonymous said...: OMG, this is TOO crazy. Snoop Mayor Marty?!? Damn, blogging is fun.