LAS CRUCES – As restaurateurs were surprised last week after the state of New Mexico closed food for the time this year, a local lawmaker called for a boycott of local restaurants that participated in a social media protest. channels, it’s not easy for the governor to “#LetUsServe.”
In reaction to the demonstration sanctioned by the New Mexico Restaurant Association, the New Mexico Representative, Angelica Rubio, published a list of restaurants on social media that participated in the demonstration in Doa Ana County, calling for a boycott.
In the early hours of Monday, state district judge Raymond Romero issued a transitional restraining order opposed to the amended order of fitness, allowing restaurants to continue meal service for 10 days. But on Monday night, the New Mexico Supreme Court rejected that decision and upheld the state order.
Carol Wight, executive director of the NMRA, said she believes Rubio misunderstood the protest, and that by simply standing outside of their restaurants and holding signs that read #LetUsServe, employees were not in defiance of the amended public health order.
“There was confusion that our nonviolent demonstration – (which) took other people out of their restaurants and maintained symptoms – defies the governor’s orders. And we weren’t intentionally telling our restaurants to defy the governor’s orders,” Wight said.
Rubio’s call to a boycott angered many local restaurateurs, but in an interview with The Sun-News, he said one thing he was looking for audiences to perceive is that the New Mexico Restaurant Association has never been friends with workers and small businesses. Training
“The fact that they’re directing those efforts towards me is very frustrating,” Rubio said.
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For many years, Rubio said NMRA has been running to avoid policies that would have higher wages, providing greater opportunities for small businesses and low wages.
In 2014, Rubio worked on a crusade to pay to raise the minimum wage, prompting a division within the eating place. These divisions, he said, are widespread in the surrounding area today and are developing today.
Even last month, at the special legislative session, Rubio said the NMRA opposed a $400 million aid program promoted through lawmakers to help small businesses.
“I think the community needs to understand the pattern that this New Mexico Restaurant Association has had over the course of the last few years in allowing our communities to strive,” Rubio said.
But that’s not necessarily true. Wight told The Sun-News that THE NMRA simply did not have a position on this specific legislation.
By issuing the public fitness ordinance on March 24 and in several amendments issued since then, Rubio said That Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was leading the state tax to protect the COVID-19 public due to the federal government’s inaction on the pandemic.
NMRA’s shares, Rubio said, are endangering many small businesses. Rubio believes that the arrangement does not perceive the effect it will have on its habit on small businesses, staff and servers when resumed.
“The owners are intelligent people, however, they have been led to this accusation against the governor being smart, when it doesn’t really serve them in the long run and doesn’t allow us to have the kind of relationships we want to be able to paint about public policies that would help them,” he said.
Rubio said workers in the eating places were not earning enough wages for the state’s public fitness mandate, and that many new Mexicans were protesting wearing masks.
“This is a global pandemic. Surely we have no control over her,” he said. “Just what we can see to do individually, and I don’t think the arrangement of the place to eat takes that into account.”
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Across the country, Wight said that a third of the population was starting their careers in the places to eat industry and had reports in the places to eat industry.
Since the first cases of COVID-19 were discovered in New Mexico in March, Wight said 52,000 restaurant employees were unemployed due to closures. But nmRA and local eaters did their best to help their staff at the time, he said.
“Most restaurants fed these employees, helped them get the unemployment they deserved, and we, the NMRA Association, established a fund called the New Mexico Fund to raise grants to send to suffering employees. Because of the layoffs,” Wight said.
They controlled up to $100,000 and awarded 350 grants to those employees.
“I know in Las Cruces an organization of places to eat Array.. with the Community Foundation, it has established a $450,000 grant fund to succeed in the suffering of employees in places to eat,” he said.
Wight said they care deeply about his employees.
“I have noticed that restaurateurs cry for their employees. These other people are a circle of relatives for us. We paint with them on a base,” she says.
There are many misunderstandings, and neither Rubio nor Lujan Grisham to NMRA, Wight said.
“You’re not asking us. He just has an opinion without any wisdom and, honestly, I haven’t had time to correct those people,” Wight said.
Bethany Freudenthal can be reached at [email protected], 575-541-5449 or bethanyfreuden1 on Twitter.