Last Tuesday at the New Mexico Black Leadership Council’s (NMBLC) headquarters at 1314 Madeira Dr. SE, local business owners, city leaders and public safety organizations gathered to celebrate a year of economic growth and community engagement in the International District, a neighborhood that has one of the highest population densities in the state and arguably contains the city’s most resilient residents. We are all familiar with the area: It’s tough, it’s diverse, and it’s busy. But it’s full of life. To say that the International District doesn’t represent New Mexico doesn’t just ignore the beauty that exists within the approximately 3.9-square-mile area bounded by San Mateo, Lomas, Wyoming and Gibson, it’s statistically inaccurate. And let’s be honest, to romantically depict New Mexico as a place where only Indigenous, brown and white people exist in a weird American microcosm reminiscent of a 1950s Western is delusional at best. According to the New Mexico Black Leadership Council, 68,000 black people live in New Mexico, and more than half of them call Albuquerque home.
“The 87108 zip code probably has the highest population of blacks in the entire state, and certainly 60% of blacks who live in New Mexico live in Central New Mexico, primarily in Bernalillo and Sandoval counties,” NMBLC founder and president Cathryn McGill says. “So, it makes sense for us to come to the heart of this space where we have more than 28 languages spoken, that has the highest population density of anywhere in the state, to say that if we can create programs that work here, that they will be replicable anywhere across the state. If we can make it here, we can make it anywhere.”
Sage Council
The NMBLC is a local 501 C3 social nonprofit organization that aims to build sustainable leadership and progressive, multicultural partnerships empowering African American and other communities of color. In 2011 the New Mexico Black History Organizing Committee was founded by McGill, as a coalition of like-minded individuals who understood that black people have been historically excluded from the political, social and cultural landscape in New Mexico. In 2019 the NMBLC was formed to continue that mission. Tuesday’s event celebrated the one-year anniversary of the International District Engagement and Support (IDeas) Network, an initiative designed to showcase the strengths of businesses within the International District through an online business directory, periodic meetings and public events. According to McGill, at its core, the IDeas Network provides an opportunity for local entrepreneurs to rub elbows with other business owners in the area, discuss what works and what doesn’t, and leverage collective resources to impact the community while improving everyone’s overall financial situation.
“The IDeas Network is about weaving together all of the collective stories,” McGill says. “How can the NMBLC [act] as an intermediary and a bridge builder? We’ve got 15 people with the same issue, and we got a bunch of big brains. What can we do about it? Another part of it is to shift the narrative about this community that we’ve chosen to live, work and play in. For us to be able to say who we are and not be defined by what we consider to be misrepresentations of the real great things that happen in this neighborhood. And in some cases it’s our own internalized oppression.”
In just 12 months, the Black Leadership Council says the Network has sparked meaningful partnerships — with the Albuquerque Police Department, Albuquerque Community Safety Department and dozens of local entrepreneurs — that have helped small businesses in the ID not just survive, but grow.
Through IDeas, participating businesses have gained access to city resources, earned media exposure in NMBLC’s monthly digital newsletter UpLift Chronicles and built trusted relationships with safety officials and fellow business owners. Neighborhood spots like La Chancla restaurant and AAA U-Lock-It Self Storage say the network has made their businesses feel more rooted, more visible, and more supported by the people around them.
All the Cultures
The pledge to the New Mexico state flag says that the Zia symbol is “a symbol of perfect friendship among united cultures,” something that the NMBLC aims to truly achieve in a modern context. Especially in neighborhoods such as the International District, the outdated “tri-cultural myth” simply does not fit – and if history has taught us anything, it never really did. McGill says the NMBLC brings other cultures into the forefront of political discourse in New Mexico and addresses the adverse effects of failing to live up to what our flag represents.
“In order for us to operationalize that aspirational goal, the New Mexico Black Leadership council should work on ensuring that black communities are fully engaged in the political, social and cultural landscape in New Mexico, and that we are a state then where we have overcome the tri-cultural narrative and lived up to what our state flag says, and that we can truly say with courage and conviction that we’re a state where everyone belongs,” McGill says.
There are two notable projects the NMBLC wrapped up in the last few months. True New Mexico is a partnership project the NMBLC started with the New Mexico Asian Family Center (NMAFC) and features the Photo Voice Program. McGill says because of the dual anti-blackness and anti-Asian sentiments within many New Mexico communities, oppression among communities of color had become an issue. Furthermore, McGill felt like our young people were growing up invisible in the political, social and cultural landscape in New Mexico. McGill says the program has continued over the past five years, and is gaining traction.
“We took the New Mexico True campaign that the Mexico tourism department has done for years — that usually reflects the tri-cultural narrative — and we decided that we would flip it around and call it True New Mexico. And True New Mexico includes everyone,” McGill says. “We had a desire to come together, using the arts as a tool. And so we said, ‘We’re going to get 10 Asian American students and ten African American students to come together and to do some workshops around what it means to be a true New Mexican, and what contributions they either were making or wanted to make.’”
The second project is the Roots Summer Leadership Academy, a three-week program in which students from all over Central New Mexico collaborate to utilize art as a tool to create self esteem and leadership. McGill and the academy just celebrated 13 years of operation. She says the voices of these students are instrumental in bringing people together across barriers of ethnicity and socioeconomic statuses, improving long-term community resiliency and developing true, self-authored and self-individuated young minds. But funding is always a looming issue. The NMBLC and IDeas Network also work with community members to ensure that these programs have the financial support to remain in operation. The IDeas Network is free to join, and donations are always encouraged.
“To [see] where kids start and where they end up, and where families show up and how they leave after having spent an intense three weeks doing things that they didn’t believe they could do – and perhaps other people told them that they absolutely could not – is a transformational experience every year,” she says.
Surmountable Problems
If you browse the NMBLC’s website, you’ll see a short description of the IDeas Network — a mission statement of sorts — which says its programs mobilize the business community during “times of both joy and sorrow.” The NMBLC is about hope, but they are aware of the problems facing the community as well, so the IDeas Network also utilizes a compassionate approach to engaging and aiding the unhoused community in New Mexico.
“There’s no question that we have to face a brutal fact, that we are, in some respects, an unofficial Containment Zone for people experiencing homelessness, and that there are a lot of individuals experiencing homelessness despair, who are committing petty crimes, who are on the margins, who walk the streets of the International District on a daily basis,” she says. “Right now, I have to figure out what we’re going to do about individuals who have a mattress behind our building, who are graffitiing the back of our building, and it’s going to cost money for us to [repair] and get the debris hauled away. But here’s the deal for me: I understand that it’s done, that we are now required to do something about it based on the intentional criminal acts of someone else. But I can also look at that person and say, ‘You have a choice here. What would you like to do? Is this the life that you want to live?’ And if the answer is yes, then you’ve made the choice about what the further interactions look like. But if the response is, ‘I’m sorry, and I want to do better,’ then our assignment is to make sure that we show up.”
McGill says she realizes the NMBLC has the word “black” in its name, and some people might conclude that everything they do is for and about black people, but there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s about empowering a neighborhood that represents the true multicultural identity of our state.
“In some cases, it’s by us. In other cases, it might be about us. But truthfully, everything we do is for all of us,” she says. “To have a New Mexico where everyone belongs, where people have the ability to thrive individually, in their communities, in their schools, that we really discontinue the practice of talking about transformation, and that we get to the practice of being about transformation.”
To learn more about the New Mexico Black Leadership Council’s IDeas Network, go to nmblc.org/international-district-engagement-and-support-ideas-network/.