PRESS ADVISORY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 17, 2004

CONTACTS: Sam Vong, Critical Resistance (323) 841-7263
Sean South, CURB (916) 346-9795
Craig Gilmore, CA Prison Moratorium Project (213) 742-1836

WHAT: PUBLIC HEARING
WHEN: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26TH , 7-9 PM
WHERE: WATTS LABOR COMMUNITY ACTION CENTER
10950 SOUTH CENTRAL AVE., LOS ANGELES, 90059

MEASURE A PUBLIC HEARING:
ALTERNATIVE VISIONS FOR PUBLIC SAFETY IN LOS ANGELES

No New Jails Coalition and Californians United for A Responsible Budget (CURB) host second hearing before Commission appointed by CURB

BACKGROUND: Measure A would require Los Angeles residents to pay another half cent sales tax, raising $500 million a year, to be spent on more jail cells, more police and more lawyers. Do we need to be spending more money to lock up more of our neighbors? Are more police and more jail cells really what Angelenos want?

There is mounting evidence that over-incarceration leaves our communities less safe. Growing police, jail and prison budgets are taking money from health and human services, from public education, from housing and from other programs that make our neighborhoods more stable, hopeful and strong.

The October 26 public hearing will be the second hearing of the CURB commission. Created to provide an alternative to the secretive Independent Review Commission on Prisons, chaired by George Deukmejian, CURB is a coalition of 40 organizations that seeks to curb prison-spending by reducing the number of people in prison and the number of prisons. For more about CURB, including a list of the commissioners, see: http://www.curbprisonspending.org.

The No New Jails Coalition is a Los-Angeles based coalition working to defeat Measure A and to stop the expansion of the downtown Parker Center jail in order to reduce social reliance on policing and incarceration as “solutions” to our problems.

On October 26 commissioners appointed by CURB, including University of Southern California Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, former chief probation officer John Lum, and possible guest commissioner Tom Hayden will hear public testimony from a wide variety of Los Angeles organizations about what the City and County’s real needs are and about how we might spend $500 million a year to create healthy, secure communities.

The hearing will conclude with a visual demonstration of how community organizations and audience members would allocate funds to achieve alternative visions of public safety. Attendees will be given $500 million dollars as a symbolic gesture to “spend” on resources to building healthier communities.