Agitators or problem solvers? Does Otero County Need Outside Influencers to Solve Local Issues?

A Commentary on outsider Influence on Alamogordo and Otero County…

The Republican Party of Otero County is hosting a presentation by Freedom Families United founders Casey and Mykel Peterson this week. They recently bounced onto the scene with a video of Dr Kenneth Moore - Republican, the Alamogordo Public School Superintendent. The video went viral days after the announcement of a lawsuit filed by the Flickinger Center for the Performing Arts and Lorrie Black against the School Board and against Dr. Moore.

Alamogordo and Otero County over the past year has had a plethora of outside agitators invited in or just showing up to engage the local community into a tizzy of division.

Last year, it was David Clements and the Election denier sideshow that attempted to fleece the county of funds, with nothing proven of actual local election fraud in Otero County.

However, with the citizens of Otero County New Mexico further divided by these outsiders; they profit going from city to city, with their roadshows of chaos, creating a train wreck of damage and a divided community in their wake.

Anti-vaxxers and election fraud advocates quickly embraced Clements, with far-right Colorado podcaster Joe Oltmann creating an online fundraiser for him and calling him “a lightning rod of truth and courage.” The appeal during the peak of antivax drama brought in more than $304,000 in donations, including from donors who say they support his “election integrity” crusade.

Clements says he is not paid for his appearances but asks for donations for travel expenses at the door.

A few weeks ago, yet again, another outside group of agitators appeared and protested in front of Alamogordo Public High School preaching religious bigotry and hate and causing a huge ruckus between what the school system and the city can do to protect the students from their speech of hate and what’s constitutes free speech. After about a week of agitating the community they left.

And now, yet again, from outside the area, we have a video drop and a presentation by another set of outsiders; Casey Peterson and his wife Mykel.

Who are these individuals that just suddenly appeared on the scene locally and why are they suddenly involved in Alamogordo Public School policy debate?

According to an interview with Anthony Lucero on KALHRadio.org they claim to have been involved with exposing Critical Race Theory indoctrination and they attended the New Mexico State Equity Conference where Dr. Moore was speaking and was able to ask him questions.

A question a reader should ponder? There were many superintendents and officials with many school systems attending this event and presenting…

Why was Dr. Moore selected to highlight?

Why not highlight one of the other participants? 

Were they guided to Dr. Moore?

Did someone tip them to keep an eye on Dr. Moore?

Given the Petersons live near Albuquerque and incorporated their business in Arizona how did Otero County in Southern New Mexico and the Alamogordo Public Schools jump onto their radar to investigate?

What is their motivation for investigation of APS verses all the various school systems in New Mexico?

Their organization was incorporated in Arizona and is listed in New Mexico as a foreign corporation due to out of state registration.

After leaving Sandia Labs the couple created the Freedom Families United. Its purpose is to work “to unite pro-freedom families and educate them on the forces undermining individual liberty in New Mexico and around the nation,” per statements in previous interviews.

Per their initial filing with the New Mexico Secretary of State, “ Character Of Affairs: We are working on getting our charitable solicitations licenses (or the equivalent) in all 50 states so that we can ask for donations online. Our Website is also being built at this time. Our official launch date is TBD at this time, but anticipating an early August 2022 Launch. We have not received any donations as of this time in NM or any other state. Our board members are all voluntary. We do not have any paid employees at this time.”

Apparently they have modeled their organization after the activist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, of which it supported as a contributor of videos and financially until a post they posted on Twitter Tuesday…

They have pulled support per the Twitter post above.

It appears they modeled their organization after; Activist James O’Keefe who resigned Monday morning from his position leading Project Veritas, the conservative group he founded, after clashing for weeks with his board.

In a video to Project Veritas employees, O’Keefe promised to start a new, rival organization doing similar undercover activist work.

In a statement posted Monday night responding to O’Keefe’s video, Project Veritas’s board claimed it was legally required to call a board meeting after it discovered O’Keefe committing what it described as “financial malfeasance.”

According to the statement, the board’s list of alleged misspending incurred by the nonprofit at O’Keefe’s direction included a $14,000 charter flight to meet someone who could repair his boat. Other alleged expenses included $150,000 over 18 months on private “black cars”and thousands of dollars on “DJ and other equipment.”

The board also accused O’Keefe of wasting $60,000 on “dance events.” O’Keefe, a former high school musical theater performer, has been accused in the past of spending the nonprofit’s money on his own musical interests. Last year, Project Veritas acknowledged improperly spending more than $20,000 to help O’Keefe star in a performance of the musical Oklahoma!

“Even with all of this public fallout, the Board still wants to speak with James,” the statement read, adding it wanted to “work things out.” “We did not fire him, nor do we want him to resign.”

Back to the Petersons and their mission…

The Petersons claim their first exposure to Critical Race Theory was via Sandia Labs.  In 2020, 5 years after Casey Peterson had begun working for Sandia, he discovered in his words “the cancer known as Critical Race Theory was spreading quickly throughout the organization. And this was months before anyone even knew what critical race theory was. My wife and I both immediately went to work; researching and creating a detailed video debunking this racist, sexist ideology and shining a light on what CRT was doing to our national laboratories. Months later, in August of 2020, after every other avenue had been exhausted, we blew the whistle on Sandia National Laboratories by mass emailing that video out to all 16,000 employees and contractors in their email directory. Over the next weeks, the words Critical Race Theory began to enter the political consciousness of the media and most Americans….”

Per their website biography page they claim they “suffered continued repercussions for blowing the whistle on our National Laboratories but somehow avoided being fired until February of 2022. We found ourselves fighting for our freedoms, yet again, when I refused to disclose my vaccination status to my employer, refused forced medical testing and the forced disclosure of medical test results.”

Their mission with their new work via their organization “is to revive communities and strengthen Families Nationwide, restoring the purpose, meaning, and hope of patriots. We are defenders of Life, truth and values, working together to take our Country back, and raising the next generation of lions, not sheep.”

Take Our Country, our state, our County our School System back again…

One can interpret that statement in a variety of ways. Most Americans view themselves as patriotic, and want to live a life of purpose, meaning and hope.

The Tea Party originated the statement in more recent decade of “take our country back,” as their phrase for trying to take the country back from “liberals, freeloaders on welfare, immigrants, minorities, and, President Obama.”

In 2015, Candidate Donald Trump used the phrase and continued to emphasize illegal immigration and border security, telling thousands of supporters that he would keep the United States secure and dominant in the global economy. "Don't worry, we'll take our country back," he said.

Where did the country, our county, our state our school system go? 

Who took it there?
How do we take it back? 

These questions are seldom asked. The slogan itself implies the answers.

But there is a silent understanding among those who insist the country, state, county or schools have to be rescued from an internal threat.

The “outrage industry” profits and is what runs most of this dialog rather from the Clements or the Petersons and many others of their ilk. 

The outrage industry couldn't exist and have come this far, and become this profitable, without help from mainstream politicians, who have been running against Washington, and in Southern New Mexico against, “the Governor” and Santa Fe.

Since Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 bid for the White House, when he famously announced that "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem."

Verbal attacks on the government came into vogue. For his entire 42 years in the Senate, Orrin Hatch ran against Washington feeding the outrage industry in its infancy. 

More and more, Americans have come to see the government in a negative light.

These “outrage industry profiteers” also claim to be fighting the Deep State, identified as the evil control center of an ill-defined power structure within government that props up the Governor in Santa Fe and her power structure and most of Washington D.C. These profiteers thrive on stirring controversy and chaos wherever they can gain an audience. 

Once their roadshow leaves Otero County, Alamogordo, and the Alamogordo School System drama; these showboats will move along profit, and create chaos across a number of other local small rural communities, and within certain neighborhoods in the large cities across the nation. They have no vested interest in Alamogordo, Otero County, the Alamogordo Public Schools and they could care less of the havoc they created. They came, stirred the pot and made a few bucks along the way.

After those profiteers and agitators leave it’s then up to the local community leaders, political leaders, and business leaders and concerned citizens to then, have to figure out a way to rebuild fences, reestablish the norms of civil dialog, and bring the community back together again.

Alamogordo has fallen prey to these agitators again and again in recent years.

Isn’t time we work within ourselves, without outside influence and agitators and via collaboration to build a community that we can all be proud of?

Inclusive, prosperous, spirited, entrepreneurial and entertaining and United for a common good - that should be the goal of all of us.

We don’t need outside Influencers to divide us, we within Otero County, need to build bridges to unite us.

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