OAKLAND�A controversial program that pays crack addicted woman $200 to get sterilized or go on long term birth control was angrily run out of a West Oakland neighborhood Oct. 24.

Barbara Harris, a white woman from Orange County, Ca., was spit on and accused of racial genocide, during a press conference she held announcing that a billboard promoting her program was to go up in the predominately Black community. Minutes after the billboard offering money to crack addicted woman went up, it was torn down, by members of the Women�s Economic Agenda Project, an Oakland program that deals with the politics of race and class.

Ms. Harris heads Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (C.R.A.C.K), the southern California program she stared two years ago.

When Ms. Harris attempted to bring her program to Oakland, she was met by two dozen protesting community activists and recovering mothers who accused Ms. Harris of going into Black neighborhoods without consulting with the community.

Residents say they resent the fact that Ms. Harris, a white woman from a wealthy community, is using donations from rich white donors to come to poor neighborhoods to sterilize Black and Latino women.

�You are not wanted here, take your money and get out of Oakland,� Ethel Long-Scott, the head of the Women�s Economic Agenda Project, shouted at Ms. Harris� press conference.

The money being used to sterilize women should be used to fund drug programs or help alleviate the conditions that cause drug abuse.

�Instead of spending money to put up billboards and pay women, put that money and energy into providing treatment, jobs, training, or other programs,� said Johnnie Lewis, of the Sisters Recovery Program in West Oakland.

Ms. Harris, who adopted four crack-addicted babies born to the same mother, says she is only trying to reduce the number of crack babies who are born to mothers who fail to care for them.

�These people who say drug addicts have the right to give birth over and over again can�t tell me where I can and can�t advertise,� Ms. Harris said at the press conference.

But after her billboard was torn down, a different sign was put in its place and Ms. Harris now plans to mail post cards advertising her program to Oakland residents.

In the past two years CRACK has given $200 to 85 women who have provided a doctor�s proof of drug addiction and a long-term birth control plan of either injections, intrauterine devices or tubal ligation. Most of the women choose sterilization.

Ms. Harris says her program does not target any specific race. Of the 85 women who have received the $200, 36 were white, 34 Black, and 15 Latino�making the majority of those who received long term birth control through her program women of color.

Ms. Harris has vowed to put more billboards up in other impoverished areas in the Bay Area, both in Richmond, Calif., and San Francisco. Though the billboards have caused controversy in nearly every city they have gone up, none had been torn down until now.

"We will stop her wherever she goes in the Bay Area and keep tearing down the signs until she goes home,� said Ms. Long-Scott.