GOV HOPEFUL VISITS LOWELL'S CBA

LOWELL -- While she does not line up completely with the Statewide
Harm Reduction Coalition, (SHaRC) Green Rainbow Party gubernatorial
candidate Grace Ross does agree the state is throwing good money after bad.

"Part of what worries me and part of the reason I'm running for
governor is that we've heard all the rhetoric, but the state is still
paying $43,000 a year for a prisoner who needs a rehab bed," Ross
said. "It's the policy issues at the state level that have me
concerned. There are basic solutions that we are not looking at."

Ross was in Lowell yesterday, following hard on the heels of SHaRC's
day-long van tour calling for a moratorium on jail and prison
construction in Massachusetts. After visiting the construction site
of the Chicopee women's jail and traveling to the People In Peril
Homeless Shelter in Worcester, the group made its way to the
Coalition for a Better Acre in Lowell to discuss community needs,
such as affordable housing and drug-treatment programs, among other things.

"We know what works. We know that money that is being spent on
prisons could be used to increase low-income housing and local jobs.
Republicans and Democrats both advocate tax and spend policies that
have never been viable solutions to any problem," Ross said. "We want
to see thing that actually make a difference in communities. We have
a broken system and the people who are making the choices among us
are consistently making bad choices."

Ross said change starts with grass-roots organizations like SHaRC.

"Laws get changed when people come together and come up with ways to
change the laws," Ross told a handful of CBA representatives.

Armed with fliers, T-shirts, buttons and bumper-stickers, the SHaRC
group repeated their no-prison mantra at the CBA office on Moody Street.

"We don't promote the punishment industry's solution to our
problems," said Holly Richardson, a SHaRC community organizer. "These
are crimes of poverty, and that's really who is going into all of our
jails today."

Richardson said her group is trying to bring attention to "people who
have been falsely imprisoned. Poor people who have to sit in jail
cells for a long time because they can't afford bail."

The group hopes to pressure legislators to support a five-year
moratorium on any new jail and prison construction or expansion. They
have found an ally in Ross, who said that money used for prison
construction could provide housing, health care, quality schools and
drug treatment.

"Our main focus is to try to get the state to stop spending one more
dollar on prison construction," Richardson said.

CBA Community Organizer Lindolfo Carballo, welcomed the discourse,
saying that the CBA recently launched an aggressive affordable
housing campaign.

"We are interested in anything that will help us make a connection,"
Carballo said. "We want to learn what they (SHaRC) are doing and
listen to Ms. Ross, as well."

While Ross recognizes that hers is an uphill battle, she perseveres.

"If half of the 55 percent of people who don't vote, stand up and go
to the polls on November 7, I think people would wake up on November
8 and be incredibly surprised at the results," Ross said. "We'd have
somebody like me in office and the Democrats and Republicans would be
asking themselves, 'Who voted for her?' "