OPINION: Why I joined the fight

This week, I began a new chapter as the executive director for New Mexico Safety Over Profit and I think it’s important for people to know why I’ve joined this fight.

I love New Mexico. Though I wasn’t born and raised here, I feel deeply New Mexican. Immigrants often spend a lifetime searching for the feeling of home, and I consider myself lucky to have found that here. Because of this love, I’ve devoted my career to fighting alongside and for New Mexicans, especially those pushed to the margins.

Over the course of my career, I’ve witnessed how people-first policies often spark aggressive opposition. Time and time again, we’ve all seen battles where opponents spoke about marginalized communities in the most disparaging ways, stripping people of dignity and questioning their stories and their worth. They pushed narratives suggesting that certain lives and labor were somehow less valuable, less deserving of investment or less worthy of care.

Since then, I’ve worked alongside workers, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients and immigrant families, people harmed by police brutality, unhoused neighbors and people living with mental illness. Again and again, I’ve witnessed the same strategy: Those in power disparage and dismiss people at the margins, making them invisible while profiting off their pain. From these experiences I learned one of the most important truths of my career: that the people closest to the pain are the people closest to the solution and they must also be closest to the power.

Today, I see the same playbook unfolding in the fight over medical malpractice reform. Victims and survivors, New Mexicans who have already endured unimaginable harm, are being vilified and dismissed by special interests backed by insurance companies and private equity firms. Their grief is being exploited for political gain and in the most offensive ways. This narrative doesn’t just silence survivors; it divides us and distracts us from the real issues.

We must listen to all patients: those seeking timely access to quality health care and those whose lives have been forever changed by corporate greed. This has not, and has never been, about doctors versus lawyers, or patients versus patients. The real fight is against the corporatization of health care, a system that prioritizes profit over patients and undermines providers along the way.

I have always been clear about my values. Those who know me or my work know I never shy away from standing with those most impacted by injustice. I am ready to lead NM SOP into a new chapter, one that centers on those most directly impacted and continues to advance policy solutions that challenge profit-driven systems exploiting pain and silencing survivors. Only then can we build economic and health care systems worthy of all New Mexicans.