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Community
Read film festival brings face to economic strife
Spotlight on poverty
By Tom Sharpe
The New Mexican
Mayor David Coss on Saturday introduced a documentary that features him discussing
the movement that has made Santa Fe’s minimum wage one of the highest in the
nation.
“We need to be a little more aware, a little more compassionate about
what it’s like at the lower end of the economic scale,” he said in a brief
interview before the showing. “Our government, our culture has been sadly
lacking in resolve to do anything about it in the last 30 years.”
La Marcha: Working for Economic Justice
was one of five films screened at the New Mexico Film Museum, formerly the Jean Cocteau
Cinema, to kick off what City Hall is billing as the first “Community Read”
on poverty, homelessness and the state of health care.
About a half-dozen people, in addition to the mayor and his
supporters, attended Saturday’s free matinee.
More films and a panel discussion this week culminate with a talk
March 11 by Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel
and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America,
about trying to live on the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour.
Coss, a retired government-employee union leader, has been an ardent
supporter of the move to raise Santa Fe’s hourly wage floor
for employers with more than two dozen workers — now $9.50, rising to $10.50
at the first of 2008.
Santa Fe’s minimum wage has meant a “dramatic change” in the lives of
many citizens, said Coss, who added that he now wants to “call attention to
the issues of this community that we don’t deal with: bad health care,
inadequate housing … workforce development, sustainability.”
La Marcha (The March) was made in 2005
by Miguel Grunnstein of Santa Fe and Dale Krusic of Albuquerque with sponsorship by
Please see POVERTY, Page C-7
IF YOU GO
Who: Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel
and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America When:
7 p.m.
March 11
Where: Lensic Performing Arts Center Tickets:
Sold out, but lastminute tickets might be available
at the door for the benefit of the Santa Fe Living Wage Network
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Natalie Guillén/The New Mexican
After watching a documentary film on a man with fetal alcohol syndrome,
Mary Ray Cate picks up posters at the New Mexico Film Museum, the former Jean
Cocteau Cinema. Films screened Saturday launched a week of events aimed at
raising awareness about issues of poverty, homelessness and health care in Santa Fe.
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