OFFER TO ADDICTS HIT IN OAKLAND

Activists: Anti-Crack Baby Program An Affront

OAKLAND -- It was a small billboard, as billboards go, not even by the road
and not even facing the right direction.

But its message was too loud and clear.

Within minutes after the sign went up Tuesday afternoon inside a fenced
yard on the edge of West Oakland, it was angrily torn down.

The sign was aimed at drug-addicted women. The offer was $200 cash if the
women got birth control.

The press release was even clearer. "Get Sterilized -- Get $200."

The mission is to prevent the birth of drug-addicted babies, who too often
end up disabled and unwanted, said the billboard's sponsor, Barbara Harris,
47, the founder of C.R.A.C.K., a 2-year-old organization.

But to the two dozen community activists and recovering mothers who showed
up at West Grand Avenue and Market Street to sing and shout in protest, the
billboard was an affront to poor black women.

Harris, from Orange County, and her pair of supporters, from Marin County,
are white. The neighborhood and the demonstrators were mostly black.

"It's saying "Neuter poor women,'." said Ethel Long-Scott, 45, head of the
Women's Economic Agenda Project, a 17-year-old group that deals with the
politics of race and class issues.

"You are not wanted," she shouted to Harris and her supporters. "Take your
money and get out of Oakland. Take that to the rich neighborhoods."

But to Harris, who has adopted four African American children who were
crack babies, her mission has nothing to do with class or race.

It's about saving kids, she said.

So far, 85 women in California, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Michigan have
taken her up on the $200 offer, she said. Of them, 36 were white, 34 were
black and 15 Latino.

"The billboard shouldn't offend them," Harris said. "The need for the
billboard should offend them."

$200 For More Drugs?

Under Harris' program, the women get the $200 for any long-term or
permanent birth control. Of the 85 women, 59 got tubal ligations, 12 got
Norplant, 10 got Depo-Provera treatments and three received IUDs. Norplant
consists of capsules that are surgically inserted under the skin in the
upper arm and last about five years. Depo-Provera provides birth control
for three months with one injection.

Many of the protesters worried that women might be so tempted by the $200
bribe that they may make decisions that they would later regret, especially
in the case of tubal ligations, which are difficult to reverse.

"Giving $200 to a poor woman -- especially if she's drug-addicted -- is a
fortune," Long-Scott said.

To her and others, $200 to a drug addict just means $200 for more drugs --
which will only hurt her and the other children she may have at home.

"How are you going to give money to a drug addict? You're just giving them
a death warrant," said Davette Thomas, 29, of the Women's Economic Agenda
Project.

Thomas was so upset about the sign that minutes after a workman put it up,
she climbed up his ladder and tore it down.

"It just makes me so mad," she said. "It hit my heart. It's wrong. It's
wrong."

Instead of spending money to put up billboards and pay women, put that
money and energy into providing treatment programs, jobs, training, housing
and a host of other long-term solutions, Johnnie Lewis, 52, who founded
Sisters Recovery Program in West Oakland, told Harris.

"I think your heart is good," Lewis told her. "But this is a just a quick
fix."

"I feel what I'm doing is right," said Harris.

So far, billboards have gone up in Southern California, Fresno, Sacramento,
Las Vegas, Tucson, and Phoenix, and chapters of C.R.A.C.K. -- Children
Requiring A Caring Kommunity -- have opened in some of those cities.

None of the locations had the same opposition as the scene in West Oakland,
Harris said.

More Billboards Coming

Three more signs were scheduled to go up Wednesday in the East Bay -- on
East 14th Street and 55th Avenue, and on Foothill Boulevard and Havenscourt
in Oakland, and on Cutting Boulevard and Marina Way in Richmond. The four
billboards cost $1,800, said John Novick, 42, a Marin money manager who is
paying for them.

A billboard is also planned for San Francisco, he said.

Novick joined C.R.A.C.K. after he and his wife learned about drug babies
during their search to adopt a child. They chose not to adopt a drug baby
because of the extra care such a child would likely need, he said. But his
heart went out to them because they are so difficult to place for adoption.

"I vehemently believe in the cause," he said. "Kids should have a fair shot."

About 20 minutes after the sign was put up and torn down, Harris and Novick
left amid chants of "Jerry Falwell, go to hell!" and "Get out of Oakland."

"Well, we won that one," said Jeanine Grantham, 40, of the Women's Economic
Agenda Project.

But the battle was not over. The activists pledged to be at the new
billboard sites on Wednesday -- and to tear those down, too.