Rally Urges Congress to Continue Funding Anti-Drug Programs
Local leaders and activists staged a rally Monday in South Los Angeles to urge Congress to retain funding plans for community-based substance abuse prevention programs.
“We just want to make sure,” said Sylvia Castillo, assistant director of the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention, a group that is fighting the high concentration of liquor stores in the inner-city.
“If you don’t put pressure on them, they’ll take our funding away.”
The coalition, along with other anti-drug organizations, is depending on Capitol Hill to allot $11 million to the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, a federal agency, that in turn would disperse grants to local groups, such as the coalition.
Castillo said her group is supposed to get about $700,000 from the agency.
To show their support for the community coalition, participants at the rally were asked to fill out yellow postcards addressed to the White House asking that the funding be maintained.
The rally, which drew a crowd of nearly 100, was set in front of the future home of the Community Coalition, in an old office building on the corner of Vermont Avenue and 81st Street.
The group will be renting the space from the city for $1 a year, officials said.
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