Letter to the editor of The Santa Fe New Mexican I wrote a week before the shutdown commenced. For no good reason there is yet no leadership anywhere to be seen on this simple, effective initiative. Even without the organization and leadership that would focus and maximize potential, we must still make individual choices daily, and throughout the day, to fortify our community. Be a wallet patriot.
Keep your dollars here
- By John Feins
- Mar 14, 2020
The New Mexican editorial calling for Santa Fe citizens not to panic but to prepare against contracting COVID-19 disease was strongly on point from a physical and mental health perspective (“Don’t panic about virus, but do be prepared,” Our View, Feb. 27), but — in tandem with your March 2 coverage (“Tourism officials say state, city remain a destination,” March 3) — missed out entirely on the larger economic challenge and opportunity.
As of this writing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is advising older Americans not to fly or even gather in large places. Organizers have canceled 2020 South by Southwest, music tours, festivals and conventions. Destinations further along in the crisis have shut their borders or, like Israel, place visitors in 14-day quarantines before entering the country. New Mexico is closing schools and limiting large gatherings.
Anyone who paid close attention to events in China and the disease’s epidemiology could see this was coming and that there’s no chance Santa Fe will not take some level of tourism hit — the very industry in which we have placed all our economic eggs and failed to diversify despite strong warnings and brutal lessons demanding to do so in the past.
No surprise either that plunging markets and attendant bust in oil demand have sparked a price war that may cripple state income until whenever Saudi Arabia may be satisfied. Thus, a pivotal piece of preparedness besides washing your hands is one that we should have instituted long ago and perform regardless of current events, especially given our state’s ongoing business, education, housing and health care shortfalls: Buy local.
With less income coming our way through tourism, oil and other virus-disrupted loss, we all need to make the local choice each and every time we can. No need for eggs flown in from New Zealand at the fancy superstore owned in another state — our local farmers are doing just great.
Taking vacation this spring break or summer? How about a New Mexico destination? We all have many unseen wonders we’ve wanted to discover, so make this the year. Be a Santa Fe patriot anytime and buy your items here, from local merchants and neighbors under stress, rather than from distant and faceless entities online.
Our collective buying power is a vast but disorganized resource, and inexplicably, there’s no Buy Santa Fe program from the institutions we should expect to build and champion it. The state has bare traces in New Mexico True but there’s no larger, inspirational program, and has anyone seen the likes of a crisis marketing plan?
The Legislature once again made a cowardly and perhaps catastrophic choice by actively subverting the will of two-thirds of the people in working so hard to prevent the recreational sale of the cannabis flower — despite many more prosperous and healthier states having successfully done so for years. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs we will desperately miss before the year is through, and this November, we all must vote out anyone who has not provided for our well-being at the Roundhouse. Only you can show these politicians that endemic poverty, failure and missed opportunity are no longer an option.
Mitigation and opportunity is at hand. We don’t need a miracle, we merely need to foment physical immunity and economic immunity, too. The Santa Fe New Mexican and others with a voice must begin to drive a buy-local consciousness with dispatch and vigor through this crisis and evermore. Keep your dollars right here in the city of faith.
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