harm reduction coalition

Support HIPS, FIERCE & Q4EJ on #GiveOUTDay

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:28:30 -0400

Looking for some good causes to support on LGBT #GiveOUTDay? Here are a few of our favorites:

HIPS DC (on Tumblr) - donate to support their harm reduction & advocacy work with female, male & trans* sexworkers

FIERCE (on Tumblr) - donate to support building the leadership & power of LGBTQ youth of color

Queers for Economic Justice (website) - donate to support promoting economic justice in a context of sexual & gender liberation

"Between 2009 and 2012, states cut a total of $4.35 billion in public mental-health spending from..."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:08:44 -0400

“Between 2009 and 2012, states cut a total of $4.35 billion in public mental-health spending from their budgets. According to a report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, significant cuts to general fund appropriations for state mental health agencies have translated into a severe shortage of services, including housing, community-based treatment and access to psychiatric medications. “Increasingly, emergency rooms, homeless shelters and jails are struggling with the effects of people falling through the cracks,” the report says, “due to lack of needed mental health services and supports.””

- MAP: Which States Have Cut Treatment for the Mentally Ill the Most? via Mother Jones

Atlanta Harm Reduction: Prevention as the First Response

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:21:01 -0400

Atlanta Harm Reduction: Prevention as the First Response:

crunkfeministcollective:

Dear CFC Community,

There are some places where people are warned never to go, known for violence, drug traffic, and poverty. For those who have not grown up in these environments we are taught to fear and/or condemn people who live there. This is not true of everyone. There are some s/heroes who “see the faces at the bottom of the well,” and offer a rope AND a bucket of food and water. Atlanta Harm Reduction Coalition (AHRC) is the rescue organization where prevention is key and care is unconditional. This week the CFC will spotlight AHRC because they need our support to keep their doors open.

Atlanta Harm Reduction offers the only consistent syringe exchange program in the southeast region. According to Mona Phillips, a founding member, their early advocacy work began with people living with HIV/AIDS. During direct action campaigns to raise awareness about Atlantans needing access to affordable pharmaceutical drugs in 1996 they started seeing syringes on the ground. Recognizing this marker to mean resurgence in heroin use they literally followed the syringes and the word on the street to English Avenue and set up shop there.

AHR has been in English Avenue since 1998 providing: FREE HIV testing, counseling, and connection with additional resources; FREE meals and hot showers a few days a week; FREE access computers and internet; FREE clothes closet access; FREE counseling for people with addictions; FREE Hepatitis A and B vaccines; FREE drug paraphernalia to stop the spread of AIDS, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C; FREE condoms and counseling for sex workers everyday. The syringe exchange program, assumed to target people who use recreational drugs only, is also important for people with diabetes to inject insulin as well as transgender people for hormone injections.

Where others choose to avoid the basic needs of so many people in this area because they don’t approve of their choices…Atlanta Harm Reduction rushed in.

While there have been articles, essays, videos, book chapters published about Atlanta Harm Reduction, state and county budget cuts make “FREE” hard to maintain and they are on the verge of having to close their doors.

AHRC sees 40-60 people each of the four days they are open, most come on Tuesday and Thursday because it will likely be their first shower or their last shower of the week. While they receive support from the Atlanta Community Food Bank and Panera Bread, they still had to lay off staff and cut their days of service to four days. They rely on volunteers and the good will of people, but many are uncomfortable with the fact that AHRC encourages people with addictions to get rehabilitation but refuses to criminalize them. Marshall Rancifer says he has been effective getting more than 350 people successfully into rehab because AHRC is there when people are ready—no judgment.

I have had the privilege of spending time with Marshall Rancifer, Mona Phillips, and Verna Gaines, and a long-time student volunteer, Danielle Sharpe, and what I know is by supporting their work I am supporting communities in great need. I admire the work Atlanta Harm Reduction is doing to stop the spread of HIV and I deeply respect that they do not turn anyone away.

So we are asking our CFC community to consider a one-time or monthly tax deductible donation of $5, $25, $100 or to volunteer your time. This Friday come out to their Open House Fundraiser from 10am-4pm at AHRC where they will be providing tours of the facility. Atlanta needs Harm Reduction and AHRC needs your support. Donate, volunteer, spread the word!!! Do what you do best.

Thank You,

Crunk Feminist Collective

We love Atlanta Harm Reduction Coalition for all of the reasons CFC outlines. Please support them in their time of need!

youngpeepsinrecovery: VIP Luncheon at the #Nationalpressclub in...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:43:34 -0400

youngpeepsinrecovery:

VIP Luncheon at the #Nationalpressclub in #dc - #ondcp director making a speech on #drugpolicyreform. #recoveryworks! (at The National Press Club)

callingoutbigotry: pipud: ut4ps: Race matters. Must...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:00:32 -0400

callingoutbigotry:

pipud:

ut4ps:

Race matters.

Must reblog.

For the people asking “but why do you have to bring race into it?”

rhrealitycheck: Welp. Good to know that safer-sex rhymes are...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:00:32 -0400

rhrealitycheck:

Welp. Good to know that safer-sex rhymes are being passing on from generation to generation.

audaciaray: Mailing postcards asking 85 NY state assembly...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 13:00:26 -0400

audaciaray:

Mailing postcards asking 85 NY state assembly members to pass #nycondom legislation that would ban use of condoms as evidence of prostitution by police and prosecutors. More info and form to send your own card : http://redumbrellaproject.org/nycondom

"The elasticity that officers in New York and elsewhere have been given to police quality-of-life..."

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:09:45 -0400

“

The elasticity that officers in New York and elsewhere have been given to police quality-of-life violations has had the unfortunate effect of leaving transgender women, especially, susceptible to the charge that they must be engaged in sex work. What we have now, in some sense, is an actual fashion police — an attitude among some law enforcers that attaches criminality to sartorial choice. If you are a 35-year-old biological woman wearing the $715 metallic platform peep-toe pumps you just bought at Barneys to lunch at Café Boulud, you are well-dressed; if you were born Joaquin, have changed your name to Marisol and put yourself together with a similar verve, you are a prostitute.

Another component of this is the much-denounced use of condoms as evidence. “It can depend on which side of Sixth Avenue you’re standing on in the Village,” Andrea Ritchie, a lawyer with Streetwise and Safe, told me. “If you’re a student carrying condoms, you’re practicing good public health; if you’re a transgendered person of color, you’re a prostitute.”

”

- Arrests by the Fashion Police (NYT 4/5/13)

"Why are rates so much higher among people with HIV? “Substance use is a coping reaction for many..."

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:00:07 -0400

“Why are rates so much higher among people with HIV? “Substance use is a coping reaction for many people with HIV,” says Perry Halkitis, PhD, a New York University professor who has spent years studying drug use in HIV-positive people and has written a forthcoming book, The AIDS Generation, on the topic. “Living with HIV isn’t just a medical condition. It’s an emotional and social reality, and substance use ameliorates the negative feelings around it. We can say there’s no stigma around having HIV, but there is. And people who have been HIV positive for decades often have a lifetime of trauma to deal with. Using is an easy fix to confront those negative states.””

- Recovering Your Live by Tim Murphy for POZ Magazine

HIV and Injection Drug Users: The Other AIDS Crisis

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:23:00 -0400

“A stream of recent documentaries related to the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) has introduced new audiences to the history of AIDS activism in the United States.³ “I’ve seen a lot of different things about ACT UP Los Angeles,” says performance artist, curator, and ACT UP and CNN activist, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario. “There’s always certain personalities that get all the coverage. Depending on who’s writing the history, those are the people who get remembered.” Marcus invokes names of activists ignored by the historical record. “I think of people like Curtis York, a performance artist who is no longer with us. He was a force of nature. The street theater and the street performances that we did were impromptu and so mad. There are these really important people who get left out of the telling.”⁴

“The story told about ACT UP often effaces the diverse geography and practices that made ACT UP such a dynamic political movement. The history of Clean Needles Now is one such local and specific narrative. In 1991, in the midst of ACT UP Los Angeles’s ongoing campaigns for AIDS healthcare and the fight against AIDS stigma, a small group of ACT UP activists began to discuss the need for a local needle exchange program. Initially the needle exchange committee attracted people from different committees, including novelist Steven Corbin and Marcus, both from ACT UP’s People of Color Caucus. Steven recruited photographer Ken Marchionno, at the time a recent East Coast transplant. The committee continued to grow in the autumn of 1991 as founding member, visual artist Renée Edgington, recruited more volunteers to launch the exchange….”

Excerpt from Below the Skin: AIDS Activism and the Art of Clean Needles Now by Dont Rhine

Pics from our hepatitis C advocacy training yesteray. Next stop:...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:42:43 -0400

Pics from our hepatitis C advocacy training yesteray. Next stop: Albany!

nothing else rhymes: just finished ‘how to survive a plague’ and there were no Black...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:47:17 -0400

nothing else rhymes: just finished ‘how to survive a plague’ and there were no Black...:

james-bliss:

just finished ‘how to survive a plague’ and there were no Black interviewees, and only a couple references in the archival footage to people of color, in both cases in the form of the question “why are there no people of color on [this panel or this committee]?’ there was no discussion of HIV/AIDS…

POZ magazine blogs: Oscar Buzz: How to Survive a Plague, and the History of Sex Workers with ACT UP by Melissa Ditmore

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 10:38:44 -0500

POZ magazine blogs: Oscar Buzz: How to Survive a Plague, and the History of Sex Workers with ACT UP by Melissa Ditmore:

marginalutilite:

I finished editing my interview questions for Tracy Quan today, but unfortunately, she got a cold immediately upon beginning to answer them. (Which makes me wonder if there was some sort of cause-effect correlation there—“Caty, your writing is literally *sickening*!” Yes, these are the sorts of self-centered thoughts I have sometimes.) So the interview will be a little late, but I’m not unhappy with that given how many gems I discovered online today just finishing research and finding links for the interview. Like Melissa Ditmore’s article in POZ magazine’s blogs, detailing the history of pioneering sex workers’ rights org PONY (Prostitutes of New York)’s collaboration with ACT UP, and calling out both LGBT and feminist orgs for distancing themselves from the sex workers’ rights movement the moment they got more credibility than we have (I feel way overdue to watch How To Survive A Plague):

The movie How to Survive a Plague recently won the award for Best Documentary from the IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards and is nominated for an Oscar. You can see it at Maysles Cinema in Harlem this weekend.

The movie tells the story of the activism by ACT UP in the 1980s and 1990s to get research developing treatments for HIV on the federal agenda. How to Survive a Plague reminds the viewer that even as the President referred to Stonewall in his inauguration speech last week, it was once acceptable for religious leader Pat Buchanan to use the threat of the virus to tell gay people to be celibate. The people most affected by the virus, including gay people, were extremely marginalized in the early years of the epidemic.

One of the people featured in the movie is Garance Franke-Ruta, now Senior Editor with The Atlantic, who was a teen activist with ACT UP. Franke-Ruta attended a few meetings with Prostitutes of New York (PONY) as part of the Women’s Committee of ACT UP. Terry McGovern, founder of the HIV Law Project and a member of ACT UP during the years described in How to Survive a Plague, who is now at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, recalled that, “All of the women’s stuff early on included sex workers. People from PONY were doing part of the organizing around the expansion of the CDC definition of AIDS to include symptoms experienced by women, and they were part of everything that went on around women’s issues.”

Members of PONY and ACT UP overlapped, but the enthusiasm and insistence of ACT UP’s emissaries was viewed with skepticism by some of the sex workers of PONY. Tracy Quan, author and PONY member, contrasted two aspects of collaboration. In addition to ACT UP’s Women’s Committee, PONY participated with Gran Fury, ACT UP’s unofficial propaganda arm, in an art show aimed at shaping the image of people living with HIV, mounted at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Quan said, “We had a more collaborative relationship in my experience with Gran Fury. The ACT UP Women’s Committee, I didn’t feel it that way. I felt it was more like feminists wanting to shape the PONY agenda,” essentially seeing these meetings with the Women’s Committee as an attempt to make PONY the sex worker wing of ACT UP.

Sex worker rights is a hard cause to find support for among women’s organizations now. Quan is sanguine about this, saying, feminists “recognize that we can’t really be controlled by feminism. It upsets some people who are looking for alliances with women’s organizations, but it’s a healthy sign. We needed them to get started but we have moved into a human rights area away from strictly seeing sex work as women’s rights.” Some feminists have attacked sex workers. Sienna Baskin, co-director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, said, “While some feminists include sex workers in their vision for gender equity, other feminist institutions shy away from or directly oppose sex workers’ struggle for rights. Some feminist scholars even disparage the sex workers rights movement, claiming that its leaders are victims of a ‘false consciousness’ or are trying to harm women.”

Melissa Gira Grant, a journalist and former sex worker, describes the achievements sex workers have made in HIV prevention, saying, “We turned the tide, along with sex workers around the world, from being seen as ‘vectors of disease,’ to experts with valuable solutions.” However, she agrees with Baskin and points out the ways that some well-known feminists use their influence to attack HIV programs lead by sex workers. “But now I see that balance slipping back, as some organizations and their leadership attempt to link sex workers to what they want to call ‘sex trafficking.’ In these campaigns that make no distinction between forced labor or migration and prostitution, they also attack sex workers’ public health and community organizing projects, like the work done by peer health educators in brothels in India, which Gloria Steinem, on a recent trip to a red light district there, accused of being ‘pimps’ and ‘traffickers.’ Why are anti-trafficking advocates disrupting sex workers’ health projects? Why are they comparing a condom one sex worker gives another to ‘giving a mouth guard to a battered woman,’ as one anti-trafficking organization in Washington, DC told a sex worker at a HIV prevention program?”

Feminists are not the only people one could expect to support sex worker organizing but who do not. Today, gay men and HIV organizations have achieved a level of mainstream respect that might never have been accomplished without ACT UP. Sex workers have turned to HIV organizations and gay organizations seeking support, meeting space, and shared agendas. However, members of the Sex Worker Outreach Project in New York described a distinct lack of support from gay organizations and from feminists. Sarah Jenny Bleviss said, “Mainstream gay rights and women’s groups have made little effort in my decade of sex worker organizing to reach out and bridge connections. The solidarity is not there and I think it is in part because we are still dealing with some of the most stigmatized among the marginalized. We’ve had better luck connecting with the labor movement.”

Today, gay people are in most places less stigmatized and less criminalized than sex workers, more respected in the mainstream. Quan points out that, “This collaborative and friendly relationship with Gran Fury was before men were getting married and pushing strollers. Gay men were engaging in recreational party sex and sex workers were providing recreational sex, outside procreation. But there is this whole wing of gay culture now that is very family-values oriented.” Some sex worker activists speculate that gay organizations may not want to be tainted with the lack of respectability of sex workers. Will Rockwell, a male sex worker and member of SWOP-NYC, points out that the gay mainstream tends to “sanitize” those it champions as victims, comparing the lack of attention to gay hustlers killed while working to the greater attention paid to victims of anti-gay bullying. He wrote a piece in New York’s Gay City Newspleading with the gay mainstream to consider how its “politics of respectability” had systematically excluded many of the most vulnerable members of the LGBT community, obscuring a legacy that included LGBT sex workers at its roots. Rockwell has noted that the “Compton’s Cafeteria Riot and Stonewall consisted of hustlers and sex-trading transgender women of color throwing bottles.” Sex workers face high levels of HIV and violence but remain underserved by HIV programs and anti-violence efforts. Support from feminist and gay organizations could make an enormous difference in these struggles.

Have you ever wanted to change something—within your community...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:49:25 -0500

Have you ever wanted to change something—within your community or family—but felt powerless? Do you get harassed on the street because of your sex, race, or sexual orientation? Are you looking for an opportunity to engage other young people to inspire social change?

Project Reach will be offering an Internship Training in Spring 2013 for young people, ages 13-21, who want to develop skills in peer counseling, group facilitation, public speaking, and project coordination. In other words, learn how to help your friends, speak your mind, and get work done that really counts!

About Project Reach: Project Reach is a youth and adult-run, multiracial, multi-gender, grassroots, anti-discrimination training center committed to challenging the destruction of, between and among New York City’s most marginalized youth communities. To learn more about Project Reach, please visit our website at:www.projectreachnyc.org

Application Form Deadline for submitting application: Friday, March 8th, 2013 Interviews will be scheduled shortly after by a committee of youth and adult staff. Trainings will begin the week of March 18th, 2013

Apply Now!

Model Cameron Russell: I get what I don't deserve

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:40:00 -0500

Model Cameron Russell: I get what I don't deserve:

The real way that I became a model is that I won a genetic lottery, and I am the recipient of a legacy. What do I mean by legacy? Well, for the past few centuries we have defined beauty not just as health and youth and symmetry that we’re biologically programmed to admire, but also as tall, slender figures, and femininity and white skin. And this is a legacy that was built for me, and it’s a legacy that I’ve been cashing in on.

Some fashionistas may think, “Wait. Naomi. Tyra. Joan Smalls. Liu Wen.” But the truth is that in 2007 when an inspired NYU Ph.D. student counted all the models on the runway, of the 677 models hired, only 27, or less than four percent, were non-white.

from Model Cameron Russell: I get what I don’t deserve

- This is pretty great - model Cameron Russell addresses race and class privilege, challenges beauty myths and speaks honestly about her own relationship to her body. It’s worth watching the video too.

Who’s newly eligible for Medicaid in 2014? Some...

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 10:00:31 -0500

Who’s newly eligible for Medicaid in 2014? Some demographics (via)

hips-dc: Just in time for Valentine’s Day we decided to post a...

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:28:12 -0500

hips-dc:

Just in time for Valentine’s Day we decided to post a writing exercise our clients worked on. They were asked to write what they would say to their “date” if they could say whatever they wanted. We find these to be funny, inspiring, thoughtful, and definitely full of surprises!

Our clients were asked the following prompts: If you could say anything to a date what would it be? How would you want your date to treat you? What does your date do that really annoys you? What makes your date ideal? This letter can be funny, serious, mean, or nice. Make it your own…

So often we read about sex workers but not in their own words. Take this chance to read how YOU can be nice to sex workers!

What an awesome project from our friends at HIPS!

Happy Valentine’s Day! Here’s to love and civil...

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:00:31 -0500

Happy Valentine’s Day! Here’s to love and civil liberties!

This Valentine’s Day, February 14th, Médecins du Monde and...

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 10:17:00 -0500

This Valentine’s Day, February 14th, Médecins du Monde and Treatment Action Group (TAG) invite you to join us in asking Merck and Roche to drastically reduce prices for their lifesaving hepatitis C treatment, pegylated interferon.

Although hepatitis C can be cured, it kills more than 350 000 people each year. People continue to die from hepatitis C because the exorbitant cost of Merck’s Peg-Intron and Roche’s Pegasys makes it impossible for governments to provide it and people to access it.

Our campaign asks Merck and Roche to drastically and immediately reduce prices, making possible for low- and middle-income countries to provide essential medicines to the tens of millions of people who need them.

You can show your support by sending the Valentine’s Day card to leaders at Merck and Roche (see email addresses below) this February 14th. Copy the visual into the body of your email; the subject line should read, “Have a heart, save my liver!”

Please spread this call to action to your networks; the more cards we send, the more of an impact our action will have!

Roche
alexander.klauser@roche.com ; silvia.dobry@roche.com ; daniel.grotzky@roche.com ; stepan.kracala@roche.com ; alice.spinas@roche.com ; brussels.internet@roche.com ; christel.van-weert@roche.com ; brussels.pharma_business_services@roche.com ; austria.communications@roche.com ; diagnostics.austria@roche.com ; pharma.austria@roche.com ; tokyo.cto-contacts @ roche.com ; indianapolis.mediarelations@roche.com ; lucas.urquijo@roche.com ; manuela.dominguez@roche.com ; francisco.aguilar-alvarez@roche.com ; brasil.comunicacao_corporativa@roche.com ; brasil.comunicacao@roche.com ; cristiane.barbieri@imagemcorporativa.com.br ; welwyn.corporate_affairs@roche.com ; laurence.seguillon-pignard@roche.com ; gisele.calvache@roche.com ;

Merck
media.relations@merckgroup.com ; steven.cragle@merck.com ; kelley.dougherty@merck.com ; pamela.eisele@merck.com ; caroline.lappetito@merck.com ; ian.mcconnell@merck.com ; ronald.rogers@merck.com ; heather_collins2@merck.com ; isabelle_girault@merck.com ; service@merckgroup.com ; contact@merck.fr

Twitter
@Roche Have a heart, save my liver ! #HCV www.hepCoalition.org
@Merck Have a heart, save my liver ! #HCV www.hepCoalition.org
It’s possible for @Merck and @Roche to drop their prices #HCV www.hepCoalition.org

"The report also notes that the United States’ 2011 reinstated ban on federal funding for needle and..."

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:37:00 -0500

“The report also notes that the United States’ 2011 reinstated ban on federal funding for needle and syringe exchange programs “greatly undermined bourgeoning efforts to expand harm reduction” in the sub-Saharan region.”

- from The Global State of Harm Reduction — discrimination, stigma, misunderstanding, misinformation keep response “shockingly low

This is not new news, but it is an important reminder that United States’ policies have a global impact. The federal ban on funding for syringe exchange has had a huge impact by limiting the ability to expand syringe access here in the United States as well as around the world. It is vital that we mobilize to lift the ban!