Environmental Education 501(c) 3
La Cienega Valley Citizens for Environmental Safeguards

Blackhawk's Gone!

This was an action that took place in May of 2005. Taken from the pages of fiction John Nichols springs from the pages of the Voice of the Butterfly! . We put concert speakers in the back of the trailers and blasted helicopter sound from "Blackhawk Down" The action included driving a trailer in the west area of the county outside of Santa Fe, the gated communities of La Tierra and Las Campanas. Around lunchtime the caravan drove around the Round House State Legislature building, throughout the downtown area of Santa Fe where we had people in strategic locations at Senator Domenici office, Canyon Road and the Plaza. The sign on the side of the trailer asked people to call Senators' offices to stop the funding of the BlackHawk Base at the Santa Fe Airport. People going to lunch milling around the Plaza called the senators phones, the staff went crazy.

We had a rally in front of Senator Bingaman's downtown Santa Fe office. We delivered a letter asking him to stop the funding. When we came out of the office, 7 officers were down on the floor of the corridors in the outer lobby with guns drawn.

Homeland Security had called two days before the rally asking us for our parade route. The funding was taken out of the 2005 Appropriations Bill. We prevailed. The building of the based was postponed and our protest proofed to be successful.

The City of Santa Fe paid out $36,000 for the swat team and secuirty of the downtown area. We recieved a call saying that someone from the Albuquerque Federal Offices came to a Santa Fe police meeting and told them we were dangerous and that violence was going to ensue from trouble makers coming from out-of-town.

We held a peaceful demonstration in front of Senator Bingaman's office. It was a group effort with people working on stopping this from different direction and in tandem. Thank You! We, together protected our local community.