Wendy

When I feel myself going to a dark place, a place of sadness and despair it is often accompanied by feelings of depression and grief. It comes in waves. Those waves are often attached to dates. The birthdays or the date on which the person passed. Grief. Grief and loss are powerful. The pain of losing people in your life who leave this world unexpectedly is hard to process. It's really hard to process when you feel like the system we live in was the contributor to their deaths.
Tomorrow Wendy would have been 37 years old. I found myself this week looking up old articles about her. Reading the ones her family friends wrote trying to discredit her truths. Reading the articles about her death, the wiki page, her FB page and re reading a hilarious zine she made me for me when I left working at Street Health.
What struck me hard while thinking about Wendy this week was thinking about her son, Korin. I think Korin would be 16/17 now. Wendy loved her son.  She wanted him in her life and she stayed in his even when the adoptive parents begged her to tell her son she didn't want him, which she refused to do. She wanted him. Wendy suffered a great deal of grief and sadness over the loss of her son to the state.  I don't know where Korin is. But I think about him often. I think about what I would say to him about his mom. What stories I would tell him. Which ones I would include. I would tell him about all the things Wendy accomplished in what was really a short period of time. I would tell him about her sadness and her despair of not having him with her. I would tell him how funny she was and how fucking brilliant she was.
Today I was having a conversation with my girlfriends about sex work and safety. We talked about Wendy, about the Bad Date Coalition and the Sex Crimes Unit about her wanting to be a lawyer. I started reflecting on my own feelings of burn out and what draws us to the work and organizing we do. How we engage with it because we have compassion and understanding, our own living experiences. How the system wants people like Wendy to burn out and fade away. To not be able to struggle any more. Wendy was in emotional pain and crisis for a long time before she took her life. It could have been totally accidental that she died. We'll never know. Wendy's death out of so many people who have passed on that I have known, I find really hard to move on from. Maybe because there were so many players complicit in her death. Maybe because she left behind Korin and they were never reunited properly in to each others lives and don't have each other now.
Tomorrow Wendy would have been 37 years old. I wonder what she would have accomplished in the last few years.  I wonder what kind of lawyer she would have been. She was really smart and I think she would have been brilliant. I will always hold Wendy so deep in my heart. She had a complicated life and is missed so much by so many people.
Tomorrow Wendy would have been 37 years old. She probably would have lied and said she was 35.. maybe? And all we can do is hold people we have lost in the light and in our hearts. Remember their legacy. Hold on to our memories and keep moving forward. I miss Wendy amongst the number of other people I miss all the time. Today, this week, tomorrow I just miss her a great deal more.

TAKING CARE

It's Sunday night and I'm sitting here sipping chamomile tea with added drops of passion flower and trying to feel ok before I start another work week. Trying to avoid taking a prescription drug to help me cope with the anxiety I feel. I have been working front-line for over a decade and in that time I have shared space with hundreds of people. I have, along with my fellow co workers been support to so many people who struggle to live in this system we are forced to live under. And I have supported people in their transitions to death, helped organize their funerals, supported people who have been assaulted, experienced horrible sexual violence, and violence and then just tried to be a good support around people's mental health and substance use, getting ID, writing a letter of support, writing letters to people in prison and supporting people with their health and so on.

And I too have this deep lived experience that brought me to the work I do but that I also struggle to fully heal from. And there are many of us working in harm reduction and being support for people who are struggling through this work. As we bare witness to countless overdose deaths, countless deaths of people who never made it past 50, the ever crushing broken systems and more.

How do we take care of ourselves?

I became an advocate for people living with Hep C when I began working with a man who was aboriginal, co infected and used drugs more than anyone I ever met. He was an avid user, he loved them and was also part of the 60's scoop. He was funny and loved music and we bonded a great deal. I learned an incredible amount from him. So when he died of AIDS after being one of his support workers for 5 years I felt an intense amount of grief.  He was the the first person I worked with.

I felt so much grief when Heather died, she was the second person I started working with. 7 years she was homeless and the first two weeks of moving in to her new place she was found dead in the shared house she had just moved in to. I helped to plan her funeral and her family still hadn't been informed that she was dead despite the fact that I had given the police all the information they needed to contact her sisters and her kids, and her extended family with. The night before the funeral I looked up her last name in the phone book and took a guess and picked a name and sure enough it was her sister and I had to give them the news that their sister had passed away and the funeral was the next day. I have countless stories like these of people I have known and worked with. That hold deep in my heart, in my memories and also keep my flame burning.

I work at a job where the lobby is fully of memories of people connected to what often feels like a small town. The cuts to programs, the lack of housing, the discrimination people face in the health care system, living in poverty, prison, drug prohibition, colonization, racism, homophobia, transphobia, chronic conditions, and so on are killing people and I go to work every week and I am witness and holding space with people and I feel traumatized. I hate to use vicarious trauma because what we're experiencing is trauma. I have never had clinical supervision in my job, not formally. I speak informally with my co-workers. We process everything and have a tight working relationship. But at the end of the day I often go home tired, sad and depressed. I feel the weight of this system and I feel waves of different emotions.

There isn't a lot of space for us, as workers to come together and talk about the impacts. We have barely any space between the last death or the last incident to breathe and heal and process. I feel so selfish even writing about this. But even in our own personal lives we experience loss and struggle and violence and the crushing weight of the system. And in between all of this, we have to reorganize ourselves in the system we are working in, to collect more data, see more people, advocate constantly and watch layers of new bureaucracy form to shift and cut and redirect what should be direct services and/or housing and/or an increase in social assistance etc. 

And so I am writing this thinking about how do we keep going as we work towards changing the system we live in? How do we or how do I maintain the ability to do good work and be present and supportive when it feels endless? How do we support each other and the communities we work in and stay healthy long enough to keep doing it? What is our longevity? Can we come together and hold space with each other and talk about what is happening honestly? What solutions and ideas do we have that we never share or have space to talk about that could shift the dominant systems and discourse we are working in? How are we less reactive?

And so this is what I am thinking about as I take my lasts sips of tea and hope that I will sleep soundly through the night before I start the next work week. I hope that I can maintain strength and presence in it. And I'm hoping to engage in more dialogue and to feel more optimistic and hopeful and well as we keep going.

In Solidarity and Love,
Zoë

UNGASS - WHO Statement at Opening Session will not propel us forward

This week people have been meeting in NYC for UNGASS http://www.unodc.org/ungass2016/  a high level meeting bringing heads of states, policy makers, NGOs, people impacted by the drug war, people from all over the world to discuss the war on drugs, drug policy and making agreements moving forward. This session opened with a number speakers including the Director of the World Health Organization who people have praised for delivering a good speech. http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2016/world-drug-problem/en/

First of all the WHO are supposed to support scientific evidence, the speech given by Dr. Chan is not scientifically based and continues to be damaging towards people who use drugs and us moving away from policies that criminalize people. Many of her comments were incredibly stigmatizing to people living with Hep C, HIV and people who use drugs.

Calling it a global drug problem is the first part I take issue with. It's not the drugs themselves that are the problem. It is the war on drugs that is the problem. It is the countries who have needle exchange bans, it's the countries who force people in to treatment handcuffing them to beds forcing them in to withdrawal, it's the countries who execute drug users and dealers, its the countries with violent drug cartels and CIA involvement, its all the countries that arrest and cage people for what they put in their bodies. Our global problem is the War on Drugs, a War on People.

She goes on to say "The health and social harm caused by the illicit use of psychoactive drugs is enormous. This harm includes direct damage to the physical and mental health of users, drastically reducing the length and quality of their lives.
Drug use harms families and communities, also through crimes against property and people. It contributes to traffic and domestic injuries, child abuse, and gender-based sexual violence and other forms of violence"

The WHO needs to speak with evidence. Majority of people who use drugs are not harmed by the use of drugs. They are harmed by prohibition and oppressive drug policies. The biggest harm is prohibition, marginalization, discrimination and stigma that statements like this generate. It is incredibly offensive and does not speak to the massive harms criminalization, prohibition, war, racism, poverty, capitalism, incarceration actually cause in the lives of people around the world.

"Worldwide, an estimated 27 million people have drug use disorders. More than 400,000 of these people die each year. " I would like to know where Dr. Chan got this statistic and what she is using to diagnose a "drug use disorder" and where she got 400,000 people from? The UN states that more than 200,000 people die of drug related deaths each year. Where is the 400,000 from? and what are the factors that contributed to their deaths? Does she mean overdose? War? death from chronic conditions? This is a super inflammatory statement without explanation. What she excludes from these remarks is causation and that is quite problematic. Prohibition, criminalization, the war on drugs also means that people are using drugs that they have no information about, are using tainted drugs, are using when they were forced in to periods of withdrawal, executed by states, dying from zero access to life saving medications, are being killed in drug wars and so on. If we ended the war on drugs and prohibition we would dramatically see a decline in drug related deaths. That is the harm. so let's be real about what the harms are.

And then this part "Injection drug use accounts for an estimated 30% of new HIV infections outside sub-Saharan Africa. Injection drug use contributes significantly to epidemics of hepatitis B and C in all regions of the world. Around 10 million people who inject drugs are infected with hepatitis C. And it is very expensive to treat hepatitis C; even the richest countries in the world cannot afford it."
People do not have access to sterile equipment to inject drugs in many places around the world. In parts of the worlds it's totally illegal, it is criminalized. It was only recently that the US lifted the ban on federal funding for needle exchange. Criminalization is also a HUGE factor that contributes to the epidemics. People are living in fear and taking risk. And lets be totally real, people who inject drugs would not be infected at the rates they are with Hep C if it wasn't for state neglect all around the world who contrubited to the massive epidemic we have today. 180 million people living with hep c globally. The biggest contributors to the global epidemic since the 60's  has been the re-using of non sterilazed medical equipment for medical procedures, tainted blood product,  and mass vaccination campaigns. Governments and corporations did not care about our safety globally, they are the biggest contributors. People who inject drugs should not be blamed for it's transmission.

The high costs of the cures is also because of governments and their trade deals and patenting laws and property protections for greedy corporations. The responsibility lies with the governments and industries who spread hep c and so they owe everyone who has Hep c access to these massively profit driven cures. The costs associated with the drugs is their doing and responsibility. Same goes with the epidemic of HIV amongst people who inject drugs. Less than 4% of people who inject drugs living with HIV have access to HIV medication and many people who inject drugs living with HIV don't have access to sterile equipment and supplies due to bans and criminalization and lack of state funding and support. This is ALL state neglect.

If we are to truly end the drug war and have sound evidence based policy, these massive organizations with power, need to stop perpetuating myths and stigmatizing people who use drugs. And we need to stop praising them for the small crumbs they offer us. And this line "People with drug dependence can be helped and returned to productive roles in society." Is so utterly offensive. Drug users, those with "dependence" are productive members in society. Using drugs does not necessarily make you an unproductive member of society. It is not mutually exclusive. If we are to truly change the prevailing attitudes we need these dominating organizations to stop perpetuating myths and fiction and stigma and start speaking with truth and we need to continue to be critical of their responses.

Dr. Chan's speech was highly disappointing. Let's stop giving her accolades. I expected more from the WHO. Hopefully this week will have influenced a different narrative for the future if we are to move forward in a more sound,  compassionate way.

Reflections on Yesterday's Public Meeting and the Project - JHS, The Works - Toronto Police

Over 100 people came out for yesterday's meeting about police and their involvement with Toronto Public Health - The Works and the John Howard Society. This project was developed in a 3 week period without proper consultation with people who use drugs or any consultations with agencies that would be affected by plain clothes /undercover police and "outreach" workers doing outreach to communities in 11, 12 , 13 and 14 divisions. A project like this should have gone through intense and proper consultation before applying or finding they shouldn't apply for the $99,000 they received for it. At the same time many harm reduction programs in this city are operating on breadcrumbs they receive from the Toronto Urban Health Fund - $10,000 here, $30,000 there, the police and this partnership received $99,000. Imagine what we could do with that much money? That much money could pay for over 5,000 hours at $18/hr for harm reduction workers with lived experienced to be doing outreach and connecting peer to peer. This funding does not include the officers salaries and what we heard yesterday was that many of these officers received overtime for participating in this project. We have seen phenomenal cuts in this city especially to homeless prevention programs, cuts to winter survival funds, cuts to outreach , cuts to shelters and other programs and at the same time the only budget never cut is that of Toronto Police which now sits at $1 billion annually.

In my over a decade of experience of working and  being incredibly active in Harm Reduction here in Toronto, I have never heard us collectively say we need to work with the police in projects like these. It is actually the opposite. Many workers are from criminalized communities that are targeted by the police. The service users who access our organizations are subjected to ongoing harassment and targeting by the police from ticketing, to carding, to arresting, to brutality. We see our organizations as demilitarized spaces, sanctuaries, safe spaces where police cannot enter, a well recognized condition of our relationship with police.

The funding for this project came about through two things. The targeting of a methadone clinic by an offensive, right wing City Councilor Caeser Palacio who had no idea the clinic of 25 years even existed in his ward but one day found out and mustered up hatred and panic about the clinic, conflating a situation that didn't exist and further stigmatizing the people who access the clinic which no one paid any notice too. The second event that contributed to this project being actualized was the Cornerstone Shelter at Oakwood and Vaughan and the NIMBY neighbours and the BIA who also mustered up a false narrative about homeless people and tried to stop the shelter from moving the all of a few blocks. Opposition to these NIMBY neighbours from people who support the shelter was quickly organized and the shelter saved. Consultation with the BIA and what I imagine to be residents associations and the police helped to fuel this pilot project which the John Howard Society and Toronto Public Health - The Works who then became a part of. A snitch line - basically, for neighbours to call if they see someone pan handling, homeless, using substances - a social cleansing project - gentrification. "The Street Outreach Project"- a 6 month pilot project currently under way . This project was not widely announced to the broader harm reduction community and we only heard about it when interactions on the street began.

Majority of people in attendance at yesterday's meeting were in opposition to this project. Harm Reduction workers many of them drug users spoke up, out and against the project and articulated consistently the harms and issues this project is creating. And so a conversation - a back and forth continued through out the meeting. I sat across from an officer who was a part of arresting me and 30 other people at an OCAP demo over shelters all of two years ago. The irony not lost on me that "this person wants to be part of an outreach project" . Or the cop that turned to me from 14 division and told me point blank that I needed to work on changing the perception on the street to which I immediately responded like you're doing, in regards to the shooting death and murder of Sammy Yatim killed by your fellow officer in your division?

I walked away from this meeting so heart broken. We never invited the police to collaborate with us. We are not collaborators. We have been responding to the needs of communities - drug using communities for decades. We don't need police any where near the work we do. We don't need to be pushing projects to fund the police to have naloxone when thousands of the real first responders - drug users and the family and friends of people who use opioids should be first to get naloxone. We actually need the police to not show up at an overdose so that people feel safe to call EMS. As it stands now many people continue to die from overdose death from the very real fear of calling the police. And we should certainly not be playing a role in social cleansing or gentrifcation. Why would we, we'd be social cleansing ourselves out of our own workplaces and neighbourhoods. But this is what this project actually is. A tool for "social order".

What was the bravest thing I was witness to yesterday was my fellow workers speaking up one after another stating "I am a drug user, I am opposed to this project and heres why..." saying this over and over to a panel of police sympathizers and police. That's a hard thing to do.

The reaction especially from John Howard Society was to continuously brush aside concerns and the very real examples of harms and distrust this is creating. They constantly said they are going to continue and not once fully acknowledged what people in the room were saying in a meaningful way. This is incredibly problematic. The harms and distrust cannot be measured and might take years for us to gain back. An evaluative component is not a part of this "Pilot Project", which there is no excuse for given the nature of this project and the funding they have received.

At the end of the day these organizations need to ask themselves which relationship is more important to them, the one with the Toronto Police or with People Who Use Drugs? I at the very least hope that the Works who contracts out to the 50 agencies in this city handing out harm reduction supplies stops their involvement with the police and gets back to being in solidarity with the rest of us. We know not all staff inside the organization are supportive to this project and to them I am thankful. 

I have little hope for JHS who have demonstrated a real lack of understanding yesterday in to the problematic role they are playing. If you live and or work in 13 division and you see your new neighbours - cause JHS only just moved there recently  - doing outreach be aware they are doing this with plain clothes officers. 

These organizations and everyone else can not negate the very real negative role police play in the lives of people who use drugs - especially in the lives of people on the street, people from racialized and indigenous communities. Like my fellow worker Peter so eloquently stated at the meeting this project and the ways in which police target the "low hanging fruit" people using drugs who are on the streets is class war. And we as workers in harm reduction do not want to engage in this. This project needs to end. #nocopsonoutreach #nocollaborating