Thirty day sessions are fast, daunting, and sometimes super frustrating, but it’s moments like these that really make it all so worth the hard work and long days and nights. New Mexico is where the atomic bomb was born, and tested—and it’s our people who were directly impacted, and yet have never been compensated. Never. Many lives have been impacted, from the communities in and around the trinity site, to the many who sacrificed for this bomb in Navajo Nation, to the families in Weed and other rural communities, who thought that bright light was a headlight in the early morning dawn. All New Mexican’s have been impacted one way or another—we are all Downwinders. The time is now for Congress to act and compensate our communities for the sacrifice they have made to the world, and tonight—we briefly honored the Downwinders on the House floor, with a deep commitment to making things right.
