EVENT SEEKS WAY TO END WAR ON DRUGS

Alliance to Discuss Effects on People of Color in Effort to Change
Laws

A national policy group will hold a huge teach-in this month on ending
America's drug war, which it contends not only has failed but also
unfairly targets people of color.

The Drug Policy Alliance will host "Breaking the Chains: People of
Color and the War on Drugs" from Sept. 26 to 28 in Los Angeles.

Hundreds of religious leaders, elected officials, police officers and
community organizers are expected to attend. And the alliance invites
anyone with friends or relatives in prison for drugs; drug treatment
providers and recipients; those who work with youth or in criminal
justice; public housing residents; and anyone concerned about human
and civil rights.

"There's very little argument that few public policies have had as
devastating an impact on poor communities of color as the drug war,"
the alliance's Public Policy Director Deborah Small said Tuesday.

Next month's event aims to "help connect the dots for participants
about the various ways the drug war disproportionately impacts their
communities," she said, as well as to let people share personal
perspectives about the drug war's effect on their lives.

Issues will include mandatory minimum prison sentences, minority voter
disenfranchisement, and the spread of HIV and AIDS.

Rachel Jackson, field director of the San Francisco-based Ella Baker
Center for Human Rights' Books Not Bars campaign, said the drug war
marks "a major crisis in terms of priorities."

Books Not Bars has led opposition to plans for a new Alameda County
juvenile hall in Dublin, claiming the proposed facility is a
"superjail" too large for the county's needs. Those protests, and
September's conference, mark "a growing movement with young people at
the forefront" opposed to "this outrageous trade-off between education
and youth services on one hand and incarceration on the other hand,"
Jackson said.

Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration
Education Project, said "there's been a big sea change in the
community" as more and more Latinos have begun questioning the drug
war's efficacy. "That change is not yet completed, so the national
conference ... will provide an opportunity to bring in much larger
sectors of the Latino leadership and educate Latinos throughout the
United States."

For more information, go to www.breakingthechains.info or call (888)
361-MEET.