The crack crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was a social and cultural tipping point with regards to race and the criminal justice system. The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a ten-thousand-member, multiracial, faith-based community activist organization, was at the forefront of a local war against crack cocaine in the Bronx during the 1980s and 1990s. Their activism demonstrates that the impetus for the draconian response to crack came not only from law and order politicians but also from minority communities under siege. The Coalition demanded and aggressively lobbied for a punitive response to crack sellers and users from their own communities. These demands were made years before the passage of laws that ushered in a new age of racially discriminatory sentencing.