NCJ Number
193681
Date Published
October 2000
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This chapter presents the story of the San Antonio, Texas’ Fighting Back substance abuse prevention organization its fight to replace alcohol and tobacco billboards with more positive messages through the Bi-Cultural Organization for Leadership Development (BOLD).
Abstract
In 1993, the Fighting Back organization of San Antonio, Texas was established and tasked with reducing the demand for illegal substances in predominantly African American and Hispanic economically deprived communities. Under this organization, a peer leadership group, consisting of kids working with other kids as mentors and role models came together to form the Bi-Cultural Organization for Leadership Development (BOLD), bringing together youth from culturally diverse communities. Their main focus was on the removal of alcohol and tobacco billboards. In conducting annual billboard surveys, BOLD found, in 1993, 74 alcohol and tobacco billboards in a 60-block area of low-income, predominantly African American and Latino communities, on the city's East Side; in 1994, 40 alcohol and tobacco billboards in a 40-block area of the East Side; and in 1995, 82 alcohol and tobacco billboards in a 60-block area of the East Side. In the beginning, BOLD set up meetings with billboard companies who expressed their constitutional right to advertise and emphasized they were not targeting minorities. However, with BOLD’s persistence in 1996, billboard companies offered 100 billboards replacing alcohol and tobacco ads and putting up new boards across the city. After 1998, BOLD disappeared with those youth members graduating from high school and moving on with hopes of reviving the group to again empower the community.