Sacramento – Mothers, family members, healthcare professionals and people in recovery will gather at the West Steps of the State Capitol Building tomorrow to bring focus to our country’s failed drug policies and the havoc they have wreaked on our families. The rally is the culmination of a statewide campaign – and the launch of a national moms’ movement – to stop the violence, mass incarceration and overdose deaths that are the result of current punitive and discriminatory drug policies.
A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment & Healing) and other advocates will hold a rally to remember and acknowledge those who have lost their lives, health or liberty to the failed war on drugs. Names of individuals whose lives have been damaged or lost because of the war on drugs will be added to a fabric banner that will grow as this campaign moves across the nation.
WHAT: Moms United to End the War on Drugs Rally
WHEN: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 – 11a.m.
WHERE: West Steps – State Capitol Building, Sacramento
WHO: Mothers, Family Members, Therapeutic Drug Policy Advocates
Speakers Include:
Alice Huffman: President of California NAACP
The Rev. Canon Mary Moreno Richardson: St. Paul’s Cathedral
Gretchen Burns Bergman: San Diego mom
Denise Cullen: Orange County mom
Suzanne Riordan: Santa Barbara mom
Julia Negron: Los Angeles mom, treatment provider
Lorraine Rebennack: Los Angeles mother
Margaret Dooley-Sammuli: Drug Policy Alliance
Gretchen Burns Bergman, Co-Founder and Executive Director of A New PATH, an organization established in San Diego by parents seeking therapeutic policy alternatives to the war on drugs, said “Mothers are leading the charge to stop the pointless and punitive criminalization of people for drug use, addictive illness, or the needless deaths caused by the illegal drug trade.”
This rally is an event of Moms United to End the War on Drugs, a campaign of A New PATH in partnership with Broken No More, FACTS, Clergy Against Prohibition, and Drug Policy Alliance, as well as individuals across the state in a massive collaborative effort to change our current punitive policies of arrest and imprisonment to health-oriented and therapeutic strategies. This rally is the culmination of a series of rallies that began in San Diego in April and moved up the state to Sacramento. Find Moms United to End the War on Drugs on Facebook!