No Mas: Salinas Community Stops Alcohol Outlets (From Case Histories in Alcohol Policy, P 19-42, 2000, Joel Streicker, ed. -- See NCJ-193674)

• NCJ Number: 193675
• Author(s): Jane Ellen Stevens
• Date Published: October 2000
• Length: 23 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Sale Source: Trauma Foundation
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter presents the story of the development of the prevention group, Preventing Alcohol-Related Trauma in Salinas (PARTS) California.

Abstract

The Preventing Alcohol-Related Trauma in Salinas (PARTS) organization was established in 1992 in California and blamed for denying local developers the ability to build stores with licensing to sell liquor. This is the story about the developer versus the anti-alcohol organization, PARTS. This conflict revealed how people learned how to empower themselves to make changes in their communities. PARTS staff introduced themselves to every organization either directly or indirectly involved in alcohol issues, as well as developed close relationships with the people in the community. PARTS’ approach examined the environment in which most of the violent incidents and automobile crashes linked to alcohol occurred. It provided the community with research linking alcohol to violent injuries and death. Its goal was to make changes in public policy, altering the community’s physical and social relationship with alcohol. PARTS first step was to train Salinas’ residents interested in participating in the local political process and learning how decisions about their neighborhood were made. By 1997 all the pieces were in place to shift control, responsibility, and power of the community’s health and welfare to the community. Supermarkets, retail drugstores, wholesale grocery outlets, as well as small stores would now have to get both a local permit and a State permit issued by the Alcohol Beverage Commission. In 1997, Shaw Development applied to the Salinas Planning Commission for a conditional use permit to allow off-premise alcohol sales at a SuperMax grocery outlet within a proposed shopping center. Through PARTS support, the community was able to restrict the sale of alcohol and in the process forge an agreement with Shaw Development to construct a day-care center. The members of the East Salinas community continued to work together to create a healthy community. Appendix