Current ACLU of New Mexico members who have paid their dues within the past 15 months are eligible to vote in the organization's at-large board of directors election. You will need your eight-digit membership number — located on the address label of the election notification postcard mailed to your address.
If you have questions about voting in the board election or do not know your membership number, please contact the ACLU of New Mexico at cvigil@aclu-nm.org or call 505-266-5915 ext. 1006.
You can vote at this link. Votes must be cast no later than 11:59 pm on March 31, 2021.
Statements of Interest
Szu-Han Ho
I am honored to be nominated and selected to serve on the ACLU New Mexico Board of Directors. I am an artist, organizer, and Associate Professor in Art & Ecology in the Department of Art at the University of New Mexico main campus. I have lived and worked in Albuquerque for over ten years, and I am very grateful to call New Mexico my home.
Much of my art and organizing work is centered on migrant justice, as well as the critique and dismantling of the carceral state. I have been addressing issues of borders and migration through both individual and collaborative artworks for much of my career; my background as an immigrant from Taiwan who grew up in the US is what first led me to explore these issues.
I am a founding member of the art collective fronteristxs, which is working to end migrant detention and abolish the prison-industrial complex. We currently partner with artists and advocate organizations throughout the state on several projects, including the #FreeThemAll campaign demanding release of incarcerated people during the COVID-19 pandemic, divestment of educational retirement funds from private prisons, and legislative efforts to ban private prisons in New Mexico.
This year, our collective was awarded an Art for Justice Fund grant, which has allowed us to propel our work of prison and policing abolition forward. As a member of the Board of Directors, I am grateful to have the opportunity to bring my lived experience as an immigrant, as well as my professional experience as an organizer and artist, to my service and contribution to the ACLU New Mexico.
Jason Gordon
I have been practicing law since 2004, and my entire career has been focused on helping people with limited resources advocate for their individual rights. At the start of my career, I served as a public defender specifically because I wanted to advocate for criminal justice reform, prisoners’ rights, and to ensure that the State was held to Constitutional protections within the courtroom. I worked hard to ensure that my clients received the Constitutional protections guaranteed to them, and participated in programs like Drug Court so that I could continue to advocate for overall reforms within the criminal justice system.
For the last twelve years I have worked as an attorney at Disability Rights New Mexico, a non-profit organization with the mission to protect, promote, and expand the rights of individuals with disabilities. We provide legal representation and advocacy at no cost to individuals with disabilities in a number of administrative and court settings. In my time at the agency, I have worked on a number of cases and projects that touch on issues that are important to both of our organizations, including the preservation of individual rights and self-determination for individuals with disabilities, voting rights, Immigrants’ rights and juvenile justice.
I have long admired the ACLU because of the organizational commitment to defending the Constitution, and to defending the individual rights that ensure that every person has the opportunity for self-determination. Simply put, these are exactly the issues and values that drove me to become a lawyer, and I have spent the entirety of my career trying to play a small part in addressing them. My professional goals are very compatible with the mission of the ACLU.
Further, my commitment to that mission goes well beyond my professional goals. I am a person with Cerebral palsy, and I have encountered significant difficulties and even discrimination due to my disability since my youth. Those experiences have fueled my passion for this work, and have also provided a unique perspective that I believe I could bring to the ACLU Board.
Finally, I have experience serving on boards and committees. Most recently, I have served on committees for the National Disability Rights Network and I am currently the Chair of the New Mexico State Independent Living Council. I am very familiar with board proceedings and rules, and the need to be organized and prepared in order to have productive board meetings.
For the reasons outlined above, I am very interested in serving on the ACLU Board. I can be reached at the phone number below if you have any questions or would like to discuss this matter further. Thank you very much for your time and effort in this matter, and for your consideration of this statement.
Aja Brooks
Aja Nicole Brooks is a native New Mexican, born in Hobbs. She is a graduate of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish. She attended the University of New Mexico School of Law and graduated with her juris doctorate in 2008. Thereafter, she worked as a criminal defense attorney in Albuquerque for the Law Office of the Public Defender in its metropolitan and felony divisions from 2008 until 2014. From 2014 until January 2019, she served as the Statewide Pro Bono Coordinator for New Mexico Legal Aid’s Volunteer Attorney Program where she helped provide pro bono opportunities for low-income individuals.
She is currently employed as the Director for the Second Judicial District Court’s Center for Self-Help and Dispute Resolution. Brooks is involved in many legal groups and activities, including the Young Lawyers Division, the Committee on Diversity in the Legal Profession and the Bridge the Gap Mentorship Program. She is the President of the New Mexico Black Lawyers Association, a member of the Iota Xi Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, and a Bar Commissioner for the First District of the State Bar of New Mexico.
I am interested in joining the Board of the ACLU of New Mexico because I believe in human rights and defending those rights when necessary. My background is in public interest law, and the ACLU of New Mexico is one of many chapters making up the largest public interest law firm in the nation. I would be honored to be on the Board of an organization that has my life’s work as its mission. I believe the ACLU and more specifically the ACLU of New Mexico has been on the right side of history in much of its work. Many times, this work- for reproductive rights, to end segregation, for equal treatment of our LGBTQI population, in defense of our immigrant communities, for free speech, etc.- are not popular when they are being fought.
I promise that if I am chosen, I will be there for those fights and to do my best to preserve and promote the health and viability of the organization. I also believe is important to have people from different walks of life and backgrounds involved at all levels of leadership within an organization in order to fully consider how it can grow and successfully move forward. I also promise to bring my unique experience and perspective to the Board if chosen.
John Salamack
I have been a Board member of the ACLU of New Mexico for over ten years and I wholeheartedly wish to continue to serve on the Board. I believe in what the ACLU-NM represents—protection of the Constitution and upholding civil liberties for all.
I was a 1960’s Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran and have kept an active interest in the Middle East and Africa since. Graduate studies were at the American University of Beirut where I received a Ford Foundation fellowship to teach briefly at the American University in Cairo.
Now semi-retired, my career has been with non-profit organizations. For Save the Children, I was the country director in Yemen, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, the Dominican Republic, Italy and the southwest USA (plus consulting work in Egypt, Malawi and Somalia). Work with non-profits has given me insight into the struggle for the defense of children. I feel passionate that all children have a right to live in a world that is just and secure.
I feel I have a unique international perspective on the world. I have lived and worked under many forms of government—dictatorships, military and sectarian rule, monarchies, civil governance—and democracy. These experiences have given me insight into what governments can and cannot do (both good and bad). I have also seen first-hand as some governments flounder and ultimately disintegrate.
I cherish the American Constitution and fervently defend the civil rights of all people as embodied in the mission of the ACLU-NM.
For these reasons, I respectfully request that the membership of the ACLU-NM vote to allow me to continue to serve on its Board of Directors.
Ross Chaney
As we celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the American Civil Liberties Union, I am deeply honored to serve as your current Secretary of the ACLU of New Mexico Board of Directors. I am also filled with hope by my colleagues’ level of empathy and the lifelong commitments to protect civil liberties by all of the ACLU of New Mexico staff. Growing up as a Native American on the Osage Reservation and attending school in Oklahoma, I have experienced firsthand racism, unequal education, and poverty.
In 2002, I accepted a job offer in Santa Fe, where I was able to utilize my experience and education to support community prosperity and healing. I joined the NM non-profit and public service community to pursue social justice, public policy and to provide direct support for our community members. I have been fortunate to be able to do this work here for nearly 20 years. This is why I seek a second term, to utilize all my experience on a statewide scale, to project the civil rights of all New Mexicans.
Even though, I did not become a lawyer, I have had many professional experiences collaborating with lawyers and regulation. These experiences range from business law, tribal sovereignty, regulatory bodies, employment contracts or just helping a neighbor navigate legal language. Today, I work fulltime as a leader in an essential business, which supplies medical cannabis to thousands of New Mexico patients.
All these experiences have made me a strong believer in the vitality and importance of serving in leadership positions to help protect the rights of all people. I am passionate about strengthening fourth amendment rights, protecting the poor, first amendment rights, and supporting the defense of people that cannot defend themselves.
In 2018, I had the opportunity to be elected for my first term, to the ACLU of New Mexico Board of Directors. I am currently, a member of the executive committee and governance committee, who moved with my colleagues, to complete our by-laws changes. As we continue to clarify our succession plan, I was just appointed to co-chair an ACLU task force to develop new policy for term limits of officers and their leadership roles. I am very proud that, my colleagues and I have moved the Board to support, the expanded work of the ACLU for Indigenous peoples rights. This work is statewide with a natural collaboration among national ACLU Affiliates.
I am humbled by all the extraordinary accomplishments of our New Mexico Affiliate. I believe that all people possess a set of fundamental human rights, affirmed by our constitution, and where the ACLU continues leading in protecting these rights. I respectfully ask for your consideration, to serve a second term on the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico.
Andy Schultz
I have a strong and sincere interest in remaining as a member of the ACLU-NM Board of Directors. During my tenure on the Board, I have been able to serve in a number of leadership positions. I have served as Vice-President and have been an active member of the Executive Committee. I currently chair the Board’s Governance Committee, and also serve on the Board’s Finance Committee. I have been a member of the Nominating Committee, and have served on a number of ad hoc Board Task Forces.
In addition to my work as a Board member, I have been associated with the ACLU for almost 30 years as a cooperating attorney, primarily in the area of Church and State. I have represented ACLU clients in a variety of matters around the state, and currently represent the ACLU of Arkansas in a challenge to a Ten Commandments Monument placed in front of the State capitol in Little Rock. I also frequently serve as a resource for the ACLU-NM legal staff on First Amendment issues.
I hope that my experience and perspective have been of value to the ACLU-NM and its essential mission. I look forward to continuing to serve the organization.
