Death, Wealth & Taxes
Death, Wealth & Taxes
In New Mexico, taxes are paid on income—not wealth. Taxes are also paid on sales, like homes and groceries. But if you can access a good accountant, you can figure out fancy deductions and ways to avoid paying taxes. So if you have wealth, it sits in banks, mostly unimpacted.
Defunding the Police
In 2019, Elisha Lucero was shot 21 times by the Albuquerque police and died. Elisha was 28 when she died and suffered from mental health issues.
Investing in Communities
New Mexico has consistently ranked dead last in education, and there's generation upon generation of failures that I see...
Changing the Philosophy of Wealth
New Mexico is a high desert with lofty altitudes, harsh weather conditions, and ongoing droughts. But in some ways, it is also a desert of opportunity, jobs, wealth, investment, and population.
Community Solutions for Structural Problems
In 2020, Albuquerque began discussions around a "third dispatch" named Albuquerque Community Safety (ACS), a community department to send unarmed professionals to non-violent crime scenes.
Connecting Punitive Systems and Education
A decade of organizing, lobbying, and community engagement has committed millions of dollars from the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund, financed by oil and gas revenue and interest.
Wealth, Housing and Homelessness
Those experiencing homelessness saw me as I sat in my car and waited. They walked up to me at first, asking for help, but after a while, they recognized me as someone who needed help, too. We're all only a few problems away from ending up on the street and repeating the cycle.
Shifting of Scenery
The question must be asked: has the needle on our definition of wealth moved? And what would it take to redefine it permanently?
Part 1:
DEATH, WEALTH & TAXES
In New Mexico, taxes are paid on income—not wealth. Taxes are also paid on sales, like homes and groceries. But if you can access a good accountant, you can figure out fancy deductions and ways to avoid paying taxes. So if you have wealth, it sits in banks, mostly unimpacted.
The state income tax is progressive, so you pay more the more you make, but even the highest earners aren’t paying as much as they used to. Instead, the tax rate for those making the most money was cut by 40% in 2003 as part of neoliberal strategies to create jobs and bring in industries. It hasn’t worked.
These issues are why some consider New Mexico one of the country's largest tax havens. But you are paying to survive if you don’t have wealth. This isn’t unique to New Mexico or its capital city Albuquerque, where I live, but it’s an essential factor in the community. Wealth is how society defines success: the money you have, the house you own and the intergenerational capacity to shift this hoard.
Over decades, people across Albuquerque and New Mexico have fought for policies that shift this wealth, making abundance about community prosperity instead of individual accumulation. The reality is it’s expensive to be poor. And measuring success by looking at wealth means families keep getting stuck in cycles of poverty.
People from Albuquerque suffer from a lack of individual or intergenerational wealth. Many believe the history of neglect of the city, the state, and its citizens is connected to systemic inequality rooted in racism and a focus on extraction, not investment.
New Mexico is one of the few states with a minority-majority population. There are more people of color than white people, including the second-largest Indigenous population in the country. More than 140,000 veterans reside in New Mexico, a more significant percentage of our population than most. These are all typically neglected demographics.
This is why it’s unsurprising that the state has one of the highest poverty rates in the country, with 1 in 4 children living in poverty—and 75% of kids in the state are kids of color, meaning most of these children in poverty are not white. Wages are also lower. As of 2022 census data, the median household income in the United States is $75,149, with $52,860 for Black families and $62,800 for Hispanic families. But New Mexico's median income is around $16K less than the national at $58,722.
And although white people only account for 36% of the state’s population—per the New Mexico Economic Development Department—they still fare better. Average housing wealth for Native, Black and Hispanic people is lower than for white homeowners. But that's if you're lucky enough to have a job: the state also has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country at nearly 8%. And money compounds other social factors. Albuquerque has a high rate of property and violent crime. Opioids are endemic.
With neglect on a political level, Albuquerque as a community has been making a concentrated effort to shift resources and wealth: in penal systems, education, overall programs, and policies. In many ways, it’s actively, quietly redefining wealth. Instead of money in the bank, Albuquerque has embraced community abundance, where those who have been historically and culturally neglected can receive access to resources. Could it be the correct definition?
Part 2:
DEFUNDING THE POLICE
In 2019, Elisha Lucero was shot 21 times by the Albuquerque police and died. Elisha was 28 when she died and suffered from mental health issues. After hitting her uncle in the face, a relative called the police and said she was mentally ill, needed help, and threatened everyone—including herself. It was part of a pattern. Elisha called the Sheriff's Office only a month before, asking to be taken to the hospital for mental treatment.
The night she was shot, police say she rushed them, aggressively approached them or had a knife. Or something else entirely. We won’t know for sure; there’s no footage of the incident or side of the story to share other than the police’s account.
The Lucero family sued and found “justice” in a $4 million dollar settlement. But money is minuscule compared to the cost of life taken, the cost of dreams never fulfilled and goals never achieved. So the Luceros turned their pain into a call to action, using a portion of the settlement to rent billboards dotting the city, demanding police reform. They could demand justice so publicly because their story is not very unique.
Instead, it represents an ongoing problem: Albuquerque police have a long history of killing civilians. New Mexico ranks in the top three states for shootings by police. It held the number-one spot in 2019, 2018 and 2016. Since 2015, more than 167 civilians have been shot by police. With a population of around 2 million, shooting nearly 170 civilians creates a shooting rate of 80 per 1 million people. In comparison, during that same time, New York police shot seven people per 1 million, and California’s police shot 29 per 1 million.
It’s terrible in Albuquerque. In 2012, the problem was so severe that the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a civil investigation of the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) because of ongoing allegations that officers engaged in the use of excessive force.
In their review, the DOJ found police “were not justified under federal law in using deadly force in the majority” of cases, and “the use of excessive force by APD officers is not isolated or sporadic.” They discovered that force was primarily used “against persons with mental health illness and in crisis.” And even with unlimited data showing the city’s gaps and struggles, one-third of the city’s meager budget continued to go to the police, with millions more received from the state and federal government.
For decades, the community would attempt to redefine its local wealth by investing in the community. But it takes fighting and advocacy because change takes a long time.
Part 3:
INVESTING IN COMMUNITIES
James Martinez went through the Albuquerque Public School system. Even while young, he and his family, alongside many others, noticed a problem with the education system and his school.
The public school system wasn’t investing enough in students, especially low-income students and students of color. Graduation rates were low (one of the weakest in the country). Test results were lower than the national average (and also one of the weakest in the country). Nearly 80% of young people in school lacked math and reading proficiency so most students couldn’t find pathways to ongoing success.
Instead, they were reliving cycles of poverty. A lack of proper, holistic education and learning meant they weren’t going to college, securing high-paying jobs, or acquiring wealth. Kids were set up to fail. And it was worse in Native, Black, and low-income communities. The failure wasn’t the students—it was the system.
“We’re not [addressing] the ways families need to make an impact that would then see children rise out of poverty and break the generational cycle,” explained Emily Wildau, Research And Policy Analyst at New Mexico Voices for Children and the coordinator for the NM Kids Count program coordinator.
But families want to break those cycles and create abundance for the future. So when James grew up and had his children, he joined Yazzie v. New Mexico, a lawsuit with other families alleging the state wasn’t investing enough in education. He told local news, "New Mexico has consistently ranked dead last in education, and there's generation upon generation of failures that I see.”
"New Mexico has consistently ranked dead last in education, and there's generation upon generation of failures that I see.”
In 2018, the court agreed with Martinez and the families. It ruled that the state of New Mexico violated the rights of students by failing to provide sufficient public education. The court decision was a community one: a redefinition of wealth and investment.
Part 4:
CHANGING THE PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH
New Mexico is a high desert with lofty altitudes, harsh weather conditions, and ongoing droughts. But in some ways, it is also a desert of opportunity, jobs, wealth, investment, and population.
Albuquerque is beautiful in its drama. The brutal sun and harsh winds make people learn to adapt to things they never thought possible. Regarding material possessions, the desert is good at stripping people of their items: what outlasts the harsh weather can thrive forever. Most plants die immediately, but the strangest ones survive. The ones that come back are the ones that continue to return despite challenges.
It's replicated in its people. The desert makes you tough. History makes you strong. The Luceros bought billboards. Families sued the state over education. Advocacy is how change happens, created and led by the community.
Because while many are forced to decide between food and housing—and while schools and social programs face cuts or no budget for key communities—millions in income tax dollars have gone to court settlements for police killings. During the past ten years, Albuquerque has spent at least $64 million in tax dollars in settlements for police shooting deaths, plus millions more to pay for the DOJ’s monitoring. People in Albuquerque are literally paying for police brutality while infrastructure and social programs struggle.
The trend of investing in all the wrong things goes back decades to when the rich got their income tax rate cut. Across the 2000s, social services were slashed, including gutting mental health and addiction facilities, reducing investment in education, and cutting the tax rates for upper-income folks–all in faith that the rich would create more jobs and bring in more businesses.
The economy of New Mexico is highly dependent on oil and gas. This extractive industry not only depletes the land and people – it's also a boom and bust industry, so state revenue isn't guaranteed. And thus, the destruction of public support services became a trend when trying to cut costs when money from the dirty industry dries up.
Things got neglected: the people, the responses, and the experiences. It's part of the wealth transfer. Money that should go into communities goes instead to the police or the rich. But community members, advocates and families have long advocated for change by renting billboards, writing op-eds, leading and calling for protests, talking to the media, running lawsuits, changing politics, and organizing in their communities.
“What we are demanding is a widespread, sweeping change in our entire philosophy of how we engage with each other as a society,” said Melanie Yazzie, co-founder of The Red Nation, an Indigenous rights organization, during the 2020 George Floyd uprisings.
It’s a powerful thought. How do we engage with each other as a society? What do we value? And why is it overwhelmingly money? Wealth and money aren’t the same, but in our society, we’ve decided they are. Why don’t we measure wealth in different ways?
Part 5:
COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS FOR STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS
After decades of federal reviews, tens of millions in payouts combined with advocacy, organizing, protests, and parallels to other calls to invest in the community, the city was finally forced to act on policing.
In 2020, Albuquerque began discussions around a “third dispatch" named Albuquerque Community Safety (ACS), a community department to send unarmed professionals to non-violent crime scenes. The program focuses on deepening connections and communities to one another. At first, the framing was conservative and cautious. Mayor Tim Keller said the ACS would allow police officers to “focus on crime fighting."
From the onset, the money needed to succeed wasn’t there: it immediately faced budget cuts before implementation. The original expansive scope was cut dramatically before it was even created, citing high costs and leading to many questioning its validity.
In 2021, ACS began sending unarmed professionals to non-violent crime scenes. These community members use motivational interviewing, crisis intervention, de-escalation, and cultural healing (alongside other strategies) to address needs. In one year, the program answered more than 16,000 calls (around 850 a month), with 0 deaths or serious injuries reported.
After struggling for budget in year one, by year two, it tripled, allowing ACS to grow to more than 50 unarmed first responders, experts and people with lived experience who can connect and support those struggling.
“We’re leading the way in transforming public safety by sending behavioral health experts and folks with lived experience to calls that involve behavioral health, homelessness or addiction,” Mayor Keller said a year later. “This first year of service and the thousands of calls that have been diverted from police and fire show how much this type of response is needed in our communities.”
Part 6:
CONNECTING PUNITIVE SYSTEMS AND EDUCATION
In 2022, Amendment 1 was on the ballot in New Mexico. The amendment would take revenue from the oil and gas industry and invest it in early childhood education, especially in low-income communities. It passed a few hours after the polls closed.
A decade of organizing, lobbying, and community engagement has committed millions of dollars from the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund, financed by oil and gas revenue and interest. It will ensure around $250,000 goes to early childhood education and care and grades K-12. The goal is to provide families have access to early childhood education, regardless of their income level. Implementation is always a question, but the passage is an excellent first step.
Education and punitive systems like policing are connected, and many are coming to recognize that. The Council for a Strong America notes that investing in kids is an effective mechanism for reducing crime. The group, made up of those in the police force, educational experts, and parents and teachers, have clear recommendations for reducing crime: investing in early childhood education and care, involving parents in supporting kids, ensuring effective school day and after school programs, and helping kids who have had contact with the juvenile justice system by providing them and their parents' effective interventions to steer them away from crime.
These quietly logical solutions could change the landscape of poverty, wealth, and policing in the community. Shifts in investment need to be made. But slowly, the state is beginning to make them, partially because it has to and partly because it's trying.
The past few years in Albuquerque and New Mexico have seen the passage of programs like free college, allowing residents to go to university or vocational school for free, actively investing in young people and those who want a degree and eliminating the burden of student debt. It has already translated to an increase in enrollment in the first year. They’ve also made other steps in the right direction by increasing teacher pay, recruiting more Native teachers and teachers of color, and even extending the temporary federal child tax credit.
In some locations, experiments with a universal basic income have been launched, and other wealth measures are being tried—a minimum wage increase passed just last year. These are all partial responses to the lack of investment in the community and the shift in wealth and resources for decades, just like the original creation of ACS is a partial solution to the police killings. But they're something.
“It costs 40% more to support kids in poverty as an affluent child,” Emily explains. “And when you have such a high level of kids in poverty, it’s hard.” Although New Mexico and Albuquerque still rank low nationally, the numbers of impoverished kids are decreasing when measured against themselves over time. It’s slow progress.
“It’s so long-term that it’s challenging [to measure immediate outcomes]. But there’s strong potential in the education system to make a difference in moving that needle in poverty.”
More needs to be done because there’s always more to do when you’ve stripped away so much: advocates are still waiting for a comprehensive educational plan. There are continued calls for investments in students, especially Native, Black, and Latinx students, and courses that are culturally relevant and diverse as the state itself. More investment is needed in mental health and counseling services and after-school programs.
Education has to be holistic and also address learning beyond the classroom. Millions would be needed to achieve it – maybe millions that will be saved from police payouts.
Part 7:
Wealth, Housing and Homelessness
It was a Tuesday night, in 2020, at eight o'clock, when the APD told me I couldn’t go back home after I left briefly to pick up dinner. There was a search, a meth lab near my home, and a man going from backyard to backyard. I sat in parking lots for three hours, watching helicopters circle our street, unable to get any news and texting my husband.
"Tell him to stay inside," they barked, forcing me away. I sat in a grocery store lot and wondered what it would have been like if anyone other than the police had shown up to capture the man that night if he grew up in New Mexico and what zip code and system he experienced.
Those experiencing homelessness saw me as I sat in my car and waited. They walked up to me at first, asking for help, but after a while, they recognized me as someone who needed help, too. We're all only a few problems away from ending up on the street and repeating the cycle.
It’s those on the street whom ACS (Albuquerque Community Safety) is set up to help. ACS’s focus is non-violent crimes and responding to mental and behavioral health issues. Homelessness is their most prominent call to service. In August 2022, they had more than 600 calls for homelessness or encampments. ACS helps the unhoused community be seen and recognized as what they are: people, just like how they saw me that evening.
Chris, who works at ACS, captured it by retelling his experience on the job. “We responded to a woman out front of [a hospital], an unsheltered individual. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. We connected with a community partner, got her some shoes and were coming back. And when we got back, we sat on the bench and had her try the shoes on. I think we got her pants, shirts, and maybe a blanket because winter was approaching around this time of year,” Chris shared. “And she said: ‘I can’t believe you even came back – no one comes back. Thank you for seeing me.’”
Homeless people are rendered invisible. Over the years, as the homeless population grows, I have seen more people sleeping on the street, in parks and in makeshift shelters. Racially discriminatory statistics align with these shifts. There are higher mortgage denial rates for Black, Latinx and Native families, from 10%, 13% and 17%, respectively.
Since 2018, the number of Black and Asian homeowners in Albuquerque has dropped, but nationally, those numbers have increased. By 2040, 74% of white people will be homeowners, but only 63% of Latinx people and 35% of Black people will have the same luck. And up to an estimated 2,300 youth (15-25) have experienced unstable housing, including homelessness, in Albuquerque.
If wealth is measured by housing and intergenerational capacity, communities of color in Albuquerque continue to struggle. But through programs like ACS and investment in education, the community is helping each other be seen on the streets, as young people, or in their daily struggles. Maybe someday, recognizing each other’s humanity and investment in this sense of community could also be a definition of wealth.
Part 8:
The Shifting Scenery
More Teslas and luxury cars have been driving around town for the past two years. There’s more traffic on the roads, too. At the same time, while more families cannot afford rent, many landlords refuse to take housing vouchers, so local families are ending up on the street. More and more “for sale” signs are in yards, and more moving trucks are pulling into every neighborhood.
Steeped in this sense of overall inequality but also cheap housing and pretty solid internet, Albuquerque became one of the places remote workers flocked to during the pandemic. The prices of homes increased. The cost of rents skyrocketed. The expanse between rich and poor grew—the redefinition of wealth struggles in a neoliberal system that rewards what you have in the bank.
During the pandemic, the modern understanding and transfer of wealth nearly stopped. For a moment, rampant capitalism was halted. For a brief second, the entire country cared about each other and mainly waited in our homes, wanting to ensure we were looking out for each other and our families.
But then the rich got more prosperous, and the Teslas drove into the desert.
So now, while the city is growing its prosperity, one that could be defined by shared wealth, investment, and community abundance (not in fancy cars, property, and extraction), the question must be asked: has the needle on our definition of wealth moved? And what would it take to redefine it permanently?
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