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The Santa Monica City Council plans
to debate a free speech issue Tuesday night. It’s about the ads on the sides of
the city’s Big Blue Buses.
For five years, AIDS Project LA has
bought ads for its October fundraising walk on the sides or backs of Santa
Monica’s Big Blue Buses. Not this year.
The city bus operation mistakenly
violated its own rules when it sold the ads to the nonprofit organization, says
its chief administrative officer Joe Stitcher. After a review of ad sales last
December, a city attorney told him that only commercial businesses were allowed
to buy bus ads. That’s because if the city accepts advertising from one
nonprofit, it would have to do the same for all of them.
So AIDS Project LA has taken out a
newspaper ad. It urges people in Santa Monica to pressure the city to restore
paid promotional space for the well-known AIDS charity. Mayor Richard Bloom has
asked the City Council to discuss whether Santa Monica can revert to selling
bus ads to certain groups while denying others. The city already bans ads for
liquor, tobacco, firearms and political speech.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
