COMMUNITY COALITION FOR SUBSTANCE ABUSE PREVENTION AND TREATMENT Los Angeles, California
Story and Photos By Mary Jo McConahay

In 1990, when South Central Los Angeles was riven by crack cocaine, the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment was founded to organize residents to transform the social and economic roots of drug addiction, and the poverty, crime, and violence that come with it.Members, including a growing number of youth, find support and become neighborhood organizers themselves, identifying key needs and developing leadership skills to effect change. Now high on the priority list: a neighborhood "Kinship Support Center" to help families caring for children who would otherwise be sent to foster homes.

Young men on a hot, palmy street bend to talk to a driver. A block away another watches traffic, mobile phone in hand. "The ones on the corner are dealing drugs, and the one with the phone is looking for police, so he can call and warn them," sighs Debra Lee as she opens a gate in a green metal fence that surrounds the building she calls her "safe haven."

"When we come in here we leave the street behind," says Debra, as grandson Joshua slips into their cool ground floor apartment. There is no garden and no view, but this is home. Josh, 10, shows off his beloved football and helmet, and some electronic toys he bought "with my own money" earned helping a custodian during the summer.

His cousin Briana's simple room is all lavender and painted plastic sun-catchers hung on the walls. Sometimes the kids say the night outside cracks with gunshots, which sound scarier as they grow older and understand what gangs are all about. But Josh will "definitely" grow up to be a fireman, he dreams, and Bri, also 10, an elementary school teacher. "We live in the 'hood but we don't have to be the 'hood," insists grandmother Debra.

The youngsters are doing well in school, and Debra Lee hovers over their daily rounds like a loving hawk. But whether the miserable economic and social landscape of South Central Los Angeles will swallow them up in their teenage years remains an open question. Despite the open spaces and balmy weather, these streets are mean. Odds are high against any young kids here. Beginning in the late 1980s when crack cocaine ravaged these once-solid neighborhoods, already shaken from the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs, authorities responded with an iron fist that criminalized huge swaths of the population, further unraveling families.

Crack has given way now to other drugs—meth, ice, marijuana blunts. Lawful jobs are scarce. And a majority of babies are born to single mothers. For the young men released from jail every year, no work and no income leave little choice but to become a burden on the family or turn to survival employment, including pushing drugs. In a world of mandatory sentencing and "three strikes," that kind of job is usually a path back to jail.

That is where Bri's father—Debra's son—is; Bri's mother was judged unfit and Debra took the child. Debra's daughter, a single mom, suffered a mental crisis that led her to abandon the infant Josh. Debra says she prays for the children, "God, don't let them become another statistic." They are clearly a tight family, although Josh says he realizes they are not put together like the young mom, pop, and kids kind of families they see on
television.What does he say when other kids ask why? "I just tell them it's a long story," he says, sweet eyes defiant.

An outing to a close-by park gives a glimpse of what Debra is up against on an ordinary day. Bri is riding her scooter and Josh doing back flips into the sand, until a woman comes screaming and cursing toward the playground. Is she on drugs? Does she have a weapon? Debra registers alarm. "Anything can happen—you've got to know this place," she says, and gathers the children to her until danger has passed. She never lets the kids play alone, partly because they are prime recruiting age for gangs. Leaving the park before night falls, the little group passes well-dressed young men sitting atop picnic tables, each with a bit of red clothing—the Bloods, a gang. In the worst case, the rival Latino 18th Street gang will show up and trouble erupt.

"That's why I like the Coalition—black and Latino together," says Debra. At the South Central Los Angeles Community Coalition, Debra works organizing a kinship center, with other grandmothers and relatives of kids who would otherwise be shuttled into Los Angeles' infamously dysfunctional foster care system. "We could give each other a rest, and get information about what programs are available," she suggests. "Only a grandmother who is going through this understands what the stress is like—we might know a key word to calm each other down." Relatives once let her down when Debra, an insulin-dependent diabetic, was hospitalized a few years back. She depended on her network of friends. "You don't say ‘woe is me,' you make your own spiritual family," she says.

At the Coalition, director Karen Bass says the umbrella group reviews and respects research and scholastic studies about the population from which members are drawn, "but between the research and the academy sometimes the human element gets lost." The kinship center idea came from members like Debra, and focus groups of other relatives who said it's what they needed most.

Debra confides Josh has become "clingy" after some recent neighborhood shootouts, but his spirit is intact. Her years of long nights, the scramble to find free or low-cost football and dance programs so they can have what other kids have, the challenge of raising a new generation of kids even though her own are grown, all are worth it, she says quietly. "Yeah," Josh calls over. "I'm worth a million dollars."