SECOND UPDATE: The system is no longer letting me reply to comments without interrupting me, and I have a great deal more work to do tonight. I will also be unavailable for much of tomorrow, possibly much of the week. I would be grateful if y’all would not let this effort die. We’re on track to help it hit $10K by midnight NM time tonight, and that would be 25% of goal. But there’s still 75% left to raise, and just over 3 weeks in which to do it. So please, I’m asking you to step in and do what I cannot over the next few days, and keep this effort going, keep sharing it with your networks, get these folks the help they need. Thanks.
WOW! I leave y’all alone for a few hours, and this is what happens:
So thank you, thank you! Now . . . wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Imam could walk into their office tomorrow morning and see that they were 25% of the way to goal? It only takes another ~$1,400 to do that. So let’s do it.
I’m not here much anymore, partly because of connectivity, partly because of time constraints; I need to be working for our small Native-owned business, and I’m increasingly disabled by lupus and other autoimmune systemic health issues.
But as with last year’s need to help our neighbors, the congregation of Temple Montefiore in Las Vegas, New Mexico, recover their historic synagogue (the first synagogue west of the Mississippi), this is a matter that can’t wait.
I only learned of this this morning, in an e-mail from an overseas aid platform to which we had donated some years back; there’s been nothing in area media about it, and apparently only a couple of reports on the local Fox News station (of all outlets). I didn’t even know there was a masjid (mosque) in Portales, a small town southeast of here near the Texas border. But there is, and apparently a small but thriving Muslim community attended it.
Past tense, at the moment.
Because four times in the last ten days, locals have violated it. They broke in and destroyed doors, walls, seating. All that’s bad enough, because it renders it unuseable. They also destroyed the air conditioning system, and in Portales at this time of year? It regularly reaches 100 degrees and more. These days? Much more.
But this was something much worse. It was brutal, violent behavior, wantonly destructive: not just spray-painting the walls and ripping out connections, but actually stabbing walls and doors. There was a lot of gleeful rage at work here.
And that’s not even the worst part.
No, this was a wholesale (and repeated) desecration.
They urinated on the carpets.
They poured alcohol all over the pages of the Quran.
They left a picture of Jesus, either on the rubble or in the Quran, the wording varies in reports. You know, just so their targets would know exactly which brand of conversionist colonial white supremacy was at work here.
If you’ve never heard of Portales, I actually wrote about it here, tangentially and in a very different historical context, more than a decade ago. As I said above, it’s on the east side of the state, near the Texas border. It’s also home to Eastern New Mexico University, but an academic presence hasn’t liberalized the area notably (or at all). What you need to know for current purposes is that it, along with Clovis, just north of it, are at the northerly reaches of what is known in this state, unaffectionately by most, as “Little Texas,” which stretches over the whole southeast quadrant of the state. It’s extreme Trump country, but it’s also Klan Kountry, a place where, despite its significant Hispanic/Latino population, extreme right-wing Christian white supremacy has prevailed for generations.
So none of this comes as any kind of surprise.
But it’s utterly inexcuseable, and it needs to be stopped.
Here’s the fundraising page for the mosque; they’ve chosen LaunchGood, which I believe is a Muslim-operated platform. When I learned of it via e-mail this morning, they had only $763 toward the goal of $40,000 that will be required to make it useable once more . . . and fewer than 25 days in which to raise it. At this very moment, they’re up to $3,826 . . . but that’s still not even 10% of what’s needed, and those 24+ days will speed by incomprehensibly fast.
I know times are tight [do I ever; we are in a deadly drought, and Wings is facing $25K in medically necessary dental work, and almost my sole focus right now is to make enough sales to pay for it]. But we all have a duty of care and aid to our relatives.
Yes, ALL.
So I hope folks will step up for this tiny religious and cultural community struggling to survive in a drought-ridden desert in the face of escalating violence. I would ask one more thing.
I understand why people choose to donate anonymously; we do it pretty often ourselves. But sometimes, it’s imperative that we stand up and be counted, and this is one of those times. If you’re non-Muslim, I hope you’ll join in us in donating under your actual name, out loud and in public, so that the people who continue to perpetrate this violence know that there are folks out there who publicly have this community’s back.
Because as violent as they are? Most of them are, fundamentally, cowards. And they need to be taught a lesson that here, we take care of our relatives, no matter their religious beliefs or form of worship.
Here’s that link again: PLEASE GIVE.
P.S. I think it should be clear from the text what my current schedule and workload are like, and I will be out most of the rest of today, trying to get caught up on all the things on which I am so very, very far behind. I will try to check in tonight, but it’s not guaranteed. Long-timers here know me, and a lot of y’all know how to reach me off-site if needed.