Since I posted the article on the proposed name change for Carson, I’ve been contacted by a Carson Community association board member in a comment on the article and have heard from other Carson residents on social media. One claimed to not have been notified by the CCA of either the name change effort or the CCA board election last July. I checked my own emails and I did receive an email from CCA on July 6th about the July 25th meeting and election so at least some notification was given out but I’m not a voting member of the CCA and there does seem to be a lack of transparency on the part of the current leadership of the CCA and it’s obvious that not everyone in Carson is on board with the name change which doesn’t surprise me at all.
The way the name change has been handled has not been transparent at all. I first heard about it from a Facebook post from someone who is not from the local community at all and the petition is targeted at the Taos community as a whole to get signatures from people who have no connection to Carson or other communities in the Carson area who will not be affected in any way by the name change. That in itself is fundamentally wrong, only the people who actually are residents of the 87517 zip code should be considered valid signers of the petition. It should have been brought up at a CCA meeting and voted on by Carson residents first before anything went out to the general public in Taos. And there’s also the problem that the CCA only represents the historical town of Carson and only its residents may join the CCA and vote at its meetings while anyone who lives in the 87517 zip code is considered legally a resident of Carson by the county, state and federal governments.
There also seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the process involved in changing the name of Carson by its proponents. The CCA is a community and neighborhood association. It has no power in itself to change the name of the community it represents. All it can do is pass a resolution that recommends the name change and pass that resolution onto the governing body that has jurisdiction over local place names. That would be the Taos County government at minimum and possibly the state government as well. Due to the extensive repercussions of this proposed name change, it is not a trivial matter. It would oblige all residents of zip code 87517 to get new IDs with the new name and possibly force them to have other legal documents updated as well along with their Carson addresses wherever they used them. All signage and maps currently using the name Carson would have to be replaced and updated. Such a process would require full public hearings and be open to public comment by all parties affected which would include all residents of zip code 87517 and other parties affected like NMDOT which would have to replace all road signs with Carson on them. My personal experience with getting a rural address here and seeing how long it’s taken for that address to get into all the address databases out there shows me how long it could take for a new address to propagate. I still get rejected now and then on online address forms for an invalid address years after I got my rural address from the county.
We in Tres Orejas took a good look at the Carson Community Association and how it operates when we restarted our own neighborhood association. We studied its bylaws and incorporated some of its provisions into our own bylaws. On the level of community to community, we wish the CCA nothing but the best and hope that this gets resolved amicably. I looked at the CCA corporate registration last Saturday and noticed that their status was “revoked” because they hadn’t filed their annual corporate report. I pointed that out online and when I checked today, I saw that the report was filed on Saturday and the president of CCA is listed as Robin Keith who was president of CCA last year. I’m not sure what that means or who’s in charge of CCA at the moment.
As a final note, I’ve made several comments that it would be far easier to change the Carson that Carson refers to than change the name itself. I propose Rachel Carson, the pioneering environmentalist who wrote the book “Silent Spring” in the early 1960s which resulted in the banning of the insecticide DDT. That might also work for the Carson National Forest since the National Park Service already honors Rachel Carson. Honestly, in over 30 years of living out here, I’ve never associated the name Carson with Kit Carson until now. If there was a big sign by Carson post office about Rachel Carson, nobody would be the wiser and naturally assume the town was named after her.
9 responses to “Carson Name Change Proposal – Controversy at the Carson Community Association”
Yes hello “david baca”. I would like to know where you heard this stuff And I’d ask you refrain from using my name any further on your website or I can file a lawsuit. I don’t consent to my name being used on your website. I was elected by the board and everyone there to change the name. It was Robyn who decided to change their mind about it alongside board members who barely moved here in the past few years. I’ve lived here my whole life. So we are moving forward without their involvement using the fact the CCA doesn’t want to change it under this current board and who is involved. We have it recorded as well which is why your prior accusations about me were incorrect and we can bring up that fact even after you changed your description about what you wanted to be said about me on your website. What is on the Internet stays on the Internet. Also Robyn said she’s never heard of a comanche around here before so… And why name it something that has nothing to do with the history of the people in the area? Sounds more like you all want some white recognition than you do knowing who was even around here. But this will be your downfall especially trying to play me out like you have for the amount of time you did.
In so much as you made a public effort to change the name of Carson and use a public non-profit community association for the purpose and you are the elected board president of that association, your name is on the record for that and I find from your own comment that the information I received from other Carson residents is accurate. You are describing evading a vote by other board members who would be opposed to the name change. That confirms a lack of transparency and circumvention of democratic process. Consent is important in anything like this. You can never succeed in your name change without it and the way you’re going about it is not getting it in any way.
And it’s clear you haven’t thought about the unintended consequences for anyone who isn’t white who has Carson on their ID. Kit Carson is past history. In the present time, we have a federal government run by white nationalists and a president who is something like the new Andrew Jackson and they’ve employed 1000s of new Kit Carsons as ICE agents. It’s not a good time to be walking around with a messed up ID that has a town that doesn’t exist on it. If you fly anywhere, ICE is checking you out before you get on the plane. They are all over the cities. They are detaining people on a quota basis and anything that gives them an excuse to grab you, they will use. Kit Carson is long dead. you can curse his memory all you want but we are in a new age with new Kit Carsons who are alive and doing damage. All kinds of native people have detained by ICE because their skin was brown. Having a valid ID that refers to a town that actually exists is more important than symbolically exorcising dead man from a town’s name. The ID and legal document issue is why I’m opposing the name change and I’m doing transparently and publicly. I have no love for Kit Carson and if changing the name of Carson didn’t affect anyone negatively in any way, I wouldn’t oppose it but it does and that is the root motivation for my opposition. In reporting it to the greater community on my website, I’ve made the whole thing public and open which is the way it should have been from the start. If you look at some of the other comments both on my website and Facebook, not everyone agrees with me. Two members of my own community have publicly come out in support of the name change. I don’t hold it against them that they disagree with me, that is part of any public debate and democratic process. They would have never even heard about the name change proposal if I hadn’t of posted about it on the website just like the people who oppose it who didn’t even know about it either.
The \”white recognition\” remark, plus the badmouthing of Robyn, makes me wish I\’d voted in the last CCA elections.
I bought my property in Carson, NM 32 years ago. I have always associated the name with Carson National Forest, which is about 600 yards from my home. I have lived here in relative peace, raised three children, sent them to local schools. They had many friends of other races and had a lot of fun together. Race was never an issue. That said I\’m totally against this name change.
I am taking this name change, as presented by Danny Beartrack, as another racist event. I don\’t care what color your skin is. We are all the same under God\’s eyes. He loves all of us equally and you should love him too. I worked on the Taos Pueblo 30 years ago to direct the reconstruction of the Day School after the steam boiler explosion. The War Chief required me to hire all Taos Pueblo natives. We worked together very well and I made a lot of new friends. My family was invited to their homes on celebration days to share meals and social community.
History is history and it is to be learned from. The past is the past and it cannot be changed. Why is Danny not looking forward to great relations and friendships with new people? All I am reading about is conflict with other people from Danny. I have never met Danny or even heard of him before in Carson. I have never received any notification of this proposed change. Where are the certified letters to landowners?
Danny: why all the threats to other community members? What is your agenda? You sound like the communists who have re-written other countries history to suit their agenda. Look at China after Tiananmen Square in 1989. Look at the Weimar Republic before Hitler. There are endless examples in recorded history dating back to 5000 BC.
I\’m against changing the name of Carson to anything else. Danny, if you want to pursue this you need to analyse the effects it will have later. Change affects other change. Sometimes it\’s worse and cannot be undone.
I see many conflicts to the following CCA, Carson Community Association Bylaws especially noting that the actual CCA.org website has not been updated at all focusing on the above mentioned –
Conflicts I point out to our current By-Laws are as follows (these are posted on our community website);
1. Article I Section a & b.
2. Article II Section a.1 & 2 & b. (provide proof that all members currently ‘elected’ this past election have met these requirements and are eligible to represent).
3. Article Section III
4. Article IV Section I paragraph two. “The Board shall not make any major decision that concern the community for the community”.
6. Article IV Section III – (elections were held end of July, has this been accomplished per the By-Laws of the CCA?) which leads me to same Article Section VI ‘quorum’.
To be perfectly honest it appears that this ‘administration’ is self serving and not properly representing those to whom he or she was elected to perform.
I want to know as a resident and former member of the CCA Board, these flyers circulating/petitions; who paid for those? Was it under the CCA, no it wasn’t, and if so, is this outside party going to try and collect from the CCA treasury…I hope not (Article Section VII)
I as a resident of the community I hereby demand that the current Board call for an immediate meeting, post elections held in July, under the existing By-Laws to discuss these proposals amongst themselves prioritizing community affairs. I request a vote by the newly electors under the guidelines of the CCA By-Laws. Once this has been accomplished, the Board shall call a meeting to address these concerns and proposals, with the proper notifications stipulated under said bylaws, by the actual residents of this community to vote on.
Rik Bowman – Resident
PS – I apoligize this debate has bled onto the Tres Orejas community and wish you all good will! I wish this was on our own community website.
RB
This is all based on a potion. Basic democratic process.
The vote happened when he was elected on the grounds of Charging the name . No process has been avoided. Daniel
And the board have agreed to follow all further due process. A potion is just the basic beginning of the process that does not determine the out come.
To be clear hear say isn’t fact and the facts are being thoroughly documented and will be used in court if necessary.
Hey Dustin. I think the word you’re looking for is petition. Not potion.
Just something else to get everyone’s panties in a twist. I will use capital letter to make sure y’all can see it: THERE ARE NO MESAS IN TAOS COUNTY. All of this land is part of the big and beautiful TAOS PLATEAU from the alluvial fans on the mountains out to Chama. All of us have probably been duped into buying mesa property. 🤓 I guess there are some legal ramifications in there somewhere.
Mesa is Spanish, Plateau is French. Both words refer to the exact same thing. Mesa is used in this area because Spanish was and is spoken in this area, not French. When English speaking cartographers mapped the area, they used the local Spanish term to refer to a geographical feature that didn’t have an exact translation into English, not in common usage anyway. You could call it table land in English which is a more or less exact translation of the Spanish word. The French word says “flat place” literally. It has no tables in its etymology.