News

Southern NM pantry sets out to fight hunger, stigma with new building

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By Damien Willis, New Mexico Local News

LAS CRUCES – As one pulls into the parking lot of Casa de Peregrinos Emergency Food Program’s new warehouse and distribution center at 999 W. Amador, Bldg. 1, you could easily believe you were arriving at a nice grocery store. Though the new facility, which began service Monday, Aug. 21, is actually a remodeled feed store, the new facade is as welcoming as a supermarket — and that’s very intentional. As the need for emergency food assistance rises in Doña Ana County for various reasons, Casa de Peregrinos is working to expand its reach and is removing some of the barriers that lead to a stigma around food insecurity.

News

After Roe v. Wade, the fight over abortion access moves from red states like Texas to blue New Mexico

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By Jenna Ebbers and Cassidey Kavathas/News21

CLOVIS, N.M. – The sanctuary in Grace Covenant Reformed Church was packed. People stood shoulder to shoulder wherever they could – near the stained glass windows depicting scenes from the Bible, behind the neatly lined rows of chairs that serve as pews, against a wall covered in crosses made from painted wood, wire, glass and ceramic red chiles. Bibles and hymnals rested under every seat, but they weren’t used that Monday night last September. There was no sermon, because this wasn’t a church service. 

Residents of Clovis, a town of some 40,000 people a mere 20-minute drive to the Texas state line, crammed into this little brick building that night to discuss a plan of action to ban abortion. Just three months earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that had legalized abortion in the U.S. for almost 50 years.