PRISON BUILDING BLASTED AT FORUM

Officials Should Put Resources Into Public Services And Schools, Speakers Say.

California's demand for more prisons has come at the expense of schools and
public services, those attending a conference Saturday agreed.

"What we need are schools, colleges ... programs for our children," said
Juana Gutierrez, one of the speakers in the all-day, statewide gathering at
California State University, Fresno, which brought together a coalition of
anti-prison activists, farmworkers and environmentalists.

Gutierrez, 68, is one of four women who in 1985 founded a group called
Mothers of East Los Angeles that fought against a state prison in the heart
of their neighborhood, eventually winning the battle in 1992.

What the state wanted to do, she recalled during a break in the conference,
was build a 700-bed maximum security prison at 15th Street and Santa Fe Avenue.

This was an area, she said, surrounded by 33 schools.

"Naturally, as mothers, we were concerned about our children," said
Gutierrez, who has nine children. "We were afraid of what would happen if
one of those prisoners escaped. We told the state we didn't want the prison
there."

The state, she said, told them the prison would bring jobs to the community
and lead to a better economy.

"When the state wants something, they will promise you the sky and the
stars," she said.

But her group stood firm.

"It was not easy," she recalled. "We held neighborhood meetings everywhere
we could, churches, schools, senior citizen centers. We went door-to-door.
We did everything we could."

Membership in the group started to grow, and soon local politicians were
throwing in their support. "At the end, when it was all over, we had 3,500
members," Gutierrez said.

Today, she said, when people who are fighting for a cause ask her what they
should do, she tells them: "Stay united, don't give up and remember, it
won't be easy."

The conference, the first of its kind in the state, was put together by the
Oakland-based Critical Resistance, a national organization opposing prison
expansion. It was co-sponsored by the California Prison Moratorium Project;
the United Farm Workers; the Southwest Network for Environmental and
Economic Justice; the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment; Fresno
State MEChA; Fresno Women's International League for Peace; Greenaction for
Health and Environmental Justice and Freedom; and the West County Toxics
Coalition.

About 300 people attended, listening to discussions on "how prisons
constitute new forms of environmental racism and injustice"; "the negative
economic, social and environmental impact of prisons on rural communities";
and "the myth" that prisons are a boost to the economy in the communities
where they are located.

The conference also brought up to date the legal battle against the
construction of a new prison in Delano -- a proposed $335 million,
5,160-bed facility.

Rose Braz, an Oakland lawyer and director of Critical Resistance, said her
group filed suit in July to stop the construction, and a trial is set to
open April 6 in Kern County Superior Court in Bakersfield.

The suit was filed under the California Environmental Quality Act,
contending that it would be much more beneficial to the state and offenders
if, instead of locking up people, authorities began fighting for treatment
for those convicted of drug use and looking for ways to provide counseling
and job opportunities for at-risk youths.

Braz pointed out that in the last 20 years, California has built 23 new
prisons and only one new university.

Most of those prisons, she said, are in depressed rural communities that
were promised an economic boom from the prison.

"That never happened," she said.

Instead, she said, the number of people in poverty in nearly every Valley
town with a prison has increased since the prisons were built.