Grass Roots Cultivate Solutions : Churches Step Forward to Help Map a Battle Plan Against Drugs

There’s a new breed of soldier enlisting in the war on drugs.

They’re not the cops. They’re not the Feds. They’re San Diego churches, which, united through the San Diego Organizing Project (SDOP), are demanding answers about drug-related questions in the city. Among them:

* Why is there no special unit in the district attorney’s office to handle street dealing?

* Why are there nine Superior Court vacancies?

* Why are at least half of all criminal cases plea-bargained?

* Why is bail in San Diego for dealing and possession the lowest in the state?

* Why are street dealers in San Diego being given citations instead of jail time?

After six months of its own research, the SDOP has formulated those and other questions it wants answered through a comprehensive anti-drug campaign, encompassing prevention, enforcement and rehabilitation.

Policy Resolution

To kick off the group’s campaign, about 800 of its members met April 11 with Mayor Maureen O’Connor and City Councilman Wes Pratt, who signed a policy resolution making an anti-drug campaign the city’s top priority.

The SDOP will ask the council to sign the resolution today, then take it before the County Board of Supervisors. The group also plans to meet with Sen. Alan Cranston this afternoon at Christ the King Catholic Church in Southeast San Diego to ask his help.

The SDOP, founded in 1978, is a federation of these churches: Christ the King, St. Jude’s, Our Lady of Angels, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and St. Stephen’s Church of God in Christ.

Each church at first formed its own organization under the auspices of the SDOP, but, two years ago, when it became apparent that the churches were all primarily concerned about drugs, their leaders acted to form a 10,000-family federation.

“For the last six months, we researched on the drug issue, talking to judges, the district attorney, people in the Police Department, in education, in drug rehabilitation,” said Michael Mandala, pastor at Christ the King. “Basically, what we found out was that each of those individual agencies is frustrated with the immensity of the problem and there is no coordination among those agencies.”

Not the Same Thing

Fern James, president of the SDOP, said that, although city and county officials have professed drugs to be their top priority before, “saying things and then looking at actions show that that might not be the same thing.”

“We’re going to work with the city and the county to develop a plan,” James said. “We’re not experts; we admit we’re not experts. But we have done a lot of research.”

“They don’t have a plan,” James said. “We want to encourage them to get a plan, and we’re willing to help.”

San Diego churches are not the only ones that are on the front lines of community politics. The Orange County Organizing Project recently met with the mayors of Anaheim and Santa Ana, and in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Fullerton, San Jose and Oakland, as well as in Kansas City and New Orleans, leaders in similar organizations are learning to boldly speak up. (The groups are affiliates in a self-help network counseled by the Pacific Institute for Community Organization in Oakland, which was founded in 1972 by Jesuit priest John Baumann.)

Embarrassing Statistics

Mandala said the SDOP’s research has provided some embarrassing statistics about San Diego. For example, according to figures obtained in an interview with Superior Court Judge Herbert Exharos, 85% of the people arrested in San Diego test positive for drugs--the third-highest percentage in the nation, after New York and Chicago.

More important, Mandala said, there seems to be no comprehensive strategy in the war against drugs.

“It’s very clear we’re in a situation of epidemic proportions. Priorities have to be set to do something about the epidemic. It means readjusting priorities,” Mandala said.

As an example of misguided priorities, Mandala, like many other critics, cites the multimillion-dollar expenditure for the mayor’s Soviet arts festival this fall.

“They can raise money from several sources to do something for an arts festival, yet our kids are dying in the streets,” Mandala said.

O’Connor spokesman Paul Downey countered that the money for the festival will come from private sources and tourist taxes, which cannot be used for community improvements.